Alternatives to FR

[Warren Baird]

On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 10:21 PM, Wolfgang Spraul <wolfgang at sharism.cc>wrote:

>
> Just want to say thanks for writing this up!
> It's tough, but I think you pretty much sum up the experience of a lof of
> people. It's the best that we could achieve (I worked for Openmoko before).
>

I understand - I hope I didn't sound too accusatory...   I don't think it's
anyone's fault, and in fact I'm very impressed at the improvements that have
been made.   In my more optimistic moments, I think the FR might at least
become a usable phone  with limited smartphone capabilities in the near
future...

Sounds like a plan.
> We all want a 100% free phone, but we gain nothing from building on sand.
> So with the FreeRunner in the state it is, I think development will
> fragment
> for a while, until it comes together again in a new attempt at a 100% free
> phone one day. Until then, if the hardware is not stable you cannot do
> kernel
> development, if the kernel is not stable you cannot do middleware, if
> middleware is not stable you cannot do apps.
> Doing it all at the same time like with the FreeRunner lead to what you
> described above.
>

Yeah, I think that's a lot of the problem...  when you combine unstable HW
with unstable kernel, it's very hard to build a solid phone stack...   but I
don't think that the work going on now is wasted - it's (slowly) converging
towards a pretty good phone stack, and I think once there's a good candidate
for decent hardware with a reasonable kernel, it'll be quite impressive.



-- 
Warren Baird - Photographer and Digital Artist
http://www.synergisticimages.ca
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