Greetings all,<br><br>I just wanted to give a quick update on the
status of Android on the Freerunner as supported by Koolu. Currently we
are looking at licensing issues with respect to the global market with
particular reference to the media codecs included in Android, but are
still making great progress on an image for distribution. Ironically,
this puts us in a situation where it will be easier for us to release
actual source code, build tools and instructions, before actual binary
images. We will be announcing everything tomorrow from a
telecommunications conference in Brazil.<br>
<br>In the last two years of working with Koolu, I have had the
opportunity of being in direct tutelage of Jon "Maddog" Hall, which has
helped shape my views on open source. With his permission, I am posting
the message below on his behalf to insure that it made it to the
community list.<br>
<br>Best regards,<br>Brian Code<br><br><br><br>Greetings to the list,<br><br>First of all, I might say the the role of
"Chief Advocate" for Openmoko was the idea of the conference
organizers, not me. I was happy to be either the CTO of Koolu or the
Executive Director of Linux International, but since I was at the
conference at the request of Openmoko, and since I was on a panel
representing the "openness" of their philosophy, the organizers wanted
a title that reflected that...<br>
<br>Secondly, Koolu does "work" with Openmoko in many ways, so I did
not "indicate" that we were working together. We are working together.<br><br>Third,
I am an "open source advocate", actually leaning toward "Free
Software". But I am also a pragmatist, and there are some times when
you have to tread lightly with "openness" until you find out what is
going on.<br>
<br>So a short time ago Google released a massive amount of code called
"Android". Since Koolu was not part of the Open Handset Alliance we
could only look at it from the outside like a lot of other people.
Recently an issue was brought up regarding patent royalties due on
various codecs inside of the code. Even though the code itself is
under the Apache license, in various jursidictions royalties have to be
paid on the distribution of that code due to patents that are infringed.<br>
<br>Sometimes a lot of these royalties are bunded with the hardware, so software people do not really have to recognize them.<br><br>Some
distributions of Linux get around this by writing code that allows for
these royalty-bearing segments to be dynamically linked separately from
a code build. Ubuntu and Debian both do this<br>
as distributions.<br><br>Unfortunately
we found that while the royalty bearing code for Android was in a
separate source code directory, the code could not be built without
that royalty bearing code being included in the binaries.<br>
<br>This created the issue of Openmoko removing the binaries from their
server. In my opinion they did the right thing. Rather than
jeoprodise Android, Openmoko and Google, they temporarily removed the
offending code. I say "temporarily" because I feel that once the issue
is completely understood there will be a work-around that will allow
open source developers to move ahead.<br>
<br>In the meantime our team of programmers is working on the issue.
We are talking with the companies that originally wrote the code trying
to understand the exact use of it, and we are talking with the
licensing agencies to understand the implications. I am encouraging
the company that first introduced the multimedia codecs to work with
the Open Handset Alliance to identify these areas and other potentially
royalty-bearing areas that might affect Android, and to make them more
visible, so people can understand and deal with them.<br>
<br>I can not speak entirely for the company of Koolu. While I am the
CTO, I am not a major stockholder nor a director of the company. I can
tell you that Andrew Greig, the CEO and Brian Code, the Technical
Director both know, understand and appreciate Open Source. As far as I
know it is the intention of Koolu to contribute back the changes that
we make to the Android code to the <span>community</span>. Koolu understands the leverage that is inherent in Open Source.<br>
<br>Recently we made some announcements of timeframes for putting the
code up on the web. Those were formulated before we knew about this
royalty "issue", but our intent is to proceed as fast as possible to
meet those goals.<br>
<br>I hope this answers people's questions and issues around this.<br><br>Warmest regards,<br><font color="#888888"><br><span>maddog</span></font>