Freerunner ships with unsupported release? Why?

[Steve " 'dillo" Okay]

On Mar 17, 2009, at 19:52 , Ron K. Jeffries wrote:

>
> The Wiki says, in part:
> Choosing a distribution Official/current. As of December 2008, the  
> phones ship with Om 2007.2.
> It is not supported by Openmoko Inc. anymore. The branch currently
> supported by Openmoko Inc. is Om 2008.12

I would imagine that this is because, like many electronics products,  
the devices shipped from OM with what was the current
firmware at the time, but has since been deprecated. It's difficult  
if not impossible to expect them to get their distributors to flash
all the stock they have on their shelves to the latest version and  
then go back and do it again in 3 months when an even newer version  
is out.

The distributor I bought my GTA02 from here in San Francisco is a  
neat little co-working space just a few blocks from my apartment.
They have only a vague idea of what's in the box. Somebody knows  
somebody who's involved in the OM project and convinced them
to become a stockist. So I had no problem paying them and getting the  
device from them, but they're a bunch of web designers and marketing  
people
and it's just silly to expect them to know how to flash an embedded  
Linux device.  My plans for the first evening i had it were to do the  
unboxing
and then flash it to the latest firmware.

Believe it or not, but this is actually a good problem to have  
because it indicates that OpenMoko is shipping in volume through a  
distributor network
rather than just handfuls of systems from their own factory.

----Steve