Thanks. Great, very helpful answer!<br><br>Hank<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 1/18/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Sencer</b> <<a href="mailto:alisencer@gmail.com">alisencer@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
On 1/18/07, hank williams <<a href="mailto:hank777@gmail.com">hank777@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>> What I mean by this is that it seems everyone is saying that the big<br>> difference is that you can get 3rd party *real apps* on the phone.
<br><br>Actually I think most people are saying, that you have full access to<br>a) the hardware and b) to the sources of all applications that run on<br>it. And not only do you have access to the source, but the freedom to
<br>change and redistribute the changed application. That's the deciding<br>factor. "3rd party apps" in general have been a distinct feature of<br>every smartphone so far, the only reason it's being discussed today at
<br>all, is because Apple is disallowing it.<br><br>> Now I am not saying open source isnt great. But from your *average* users<br>> perspective I would love to hear the advantages of the open source for these<br>> devices.
<br><br>By "average" user, I assume you mean those people that do not program<br>or administer complex software. Well, let me try it with an analogy:<br>What benefit does somebody have from "freedom", when he is not
<br>interested in making use of it (i.e. working the same job all his<br>life, voting the same party no matter what, etc.) because his main<br>objectives - feeding his family, doing X or doing Y - are equally<br>possible under a repressive regime and in a free country? It's simple,
<br>you'll likely still be better of in the free country, because the<br>freedom enables improvements that you will eventually benefit from,<br>even if you never specifically worked (in a hands-on way) towards<br>those specific interests. Now that doesn't mean that as soon as there
<br>is freedom, you automatically and directly are better of if you don't<br>make use of it; it's merely the beginning of a process. So today, and<br>for the 1st generation devices that run openmoko, you may (as an
<br>average user) not reap immediate benefits, but you will help enable a<br>success through freedom, in that the other people that do have the<br>interest and/or skill necessary to turn that freedom into a benefit<br>for everybody.
<br><br>> Is this just a geek issue? It seems like most of the apps described<br>> on this list could be done with any of the windows mobile phones. I'd just<br>> love, for my own edification, to hear why this is wrong.
<br><br>For example the PIM/Messaging applications (which areguably are the<br>core of a smaratphone) are not limited by what the device-makers are<br>able and willing to develop. You could add sending SMS over HTTP,<br>sending voice-mails via E-Mail, automatically sending notifications
<br>that you are delayed for appointments and for how long (by checking<br>the calendar, the GPS coordinates, and the average speed of your<br>movement). Now the point is not only, that it is possible to write<br>these applications, but that the functionality can be seamlessly
<br>integrated into the existing base-applications, and everybody is able<br>to benefit from it. With bluetooth and usb on board, there is a very<br>real possibility of expanding the possibilites in a way that is simply<br>
not possible on windows mobile or symbian, because you simply cannot<br>access certain aspects of the phone. As a simple example: Many older<br>wifi-cards that can do WEP but can't do WPA are limited due to<br>software, not hardware reasons. But given that you already paid for
<br>them there is no incentive to do that work. Similar with bluetooth<br>functionality, many early phones (looks at nokia) only had a very<br>limited support for certain bluetooth functionality ("profiles"), and
<br>that limitation was due to sotware reasons, not hardware reasons. And<br>interested people that had the time and skill still couldn't do<br>anything about it. People were simply stuck with a castrated phone.<br><br>
[Quoting from a later mail:]<br>> This is because big open source projects are often done by teams where everyone can do<br>> what they want. This tends to mean there is no singular unified design vision.<br><br>That's not necessarily the case. In fact I know plenty of counter
<br>examples. Open source does not dictate _how_ the software is to be<br>developed or designed. So when you say:<br><br>> But good UI doesn't work that way.<br><br>that is correct, but it's not necessarily a statement about open
<br>source in general.<br><br>> But the bottom line is that my biggest problem with phones is that they are just not<br>> designed well. The pretty much all suck!<br><br>Well, I do not think that open source is a huge enabled in that
<br>respect either. So while it doesn't necessarily have to be better or<br>worse than closed source, the code-licence simply isn't a good<br>indicator to judge the likely quality of the UI.<br><br><br>Regards<br>
<br>Sencer<br></blockquote></div><br>