GTA02 is now an expensive brick

Neng-Yu Tu (Tony Tu) tony at openmoko.com
Thu Jan 8 06:12:03 CET 2009


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Hi Craig-

There are some points I want to explain.

> B> My point wasn't to LOSE more money by selling to you for $10.  My point in selling now is to try to not get screwed a second time when OM drops support for it, like they did for the GTA01 last month.

If OM ourselves have un-limited resource, we want push each device using
latest kernel with most updated driver patch, and could synchronized all
 developer effort into 1 distro. But people have their favorite
collection, like GTA01 still some people's favorite because it has
faster graphics response time. There still people using GTA01, also
distro supported (like beartech's SHR). IF you have questions, could
still post on kernel/devel list, people might could provide more
solutions there.

> I didn't buy this phone as a gadget to work on for months that MIGHT eventually make a nice GPS. For half the price I could have gotten a real open source kit and the parts to put together something like this, minus GSM.  Something with a REAL SDK, fully open and STABLE source, and support from the company that sold it to me. 

Some essential difference Openmoko with other device:

A company want to provide a open-sourced device, could have closed
development process first, fork linux kernel with their tree, have
something tweak/workaround at kernel/device driver. And release their
stable build (boot/kernel/rootfs) and SDK. Then stay the fork, mostly,
do not need/want/put resource into upstream.

Openmoko release the source before product release (no matter GTA01/02
or 03), community people who using similar platform could also benefit
from the start. And we keep tracking latest kernel with our device, and
 toolchain/other needs also evolve with community needs. And try to
upstream if possible. And we open hardware schematics for people want to
 know more about design or potential hardware issue. We hope that our
effort that also helps open source community more understanding device
development and also knowing/improve issue and fix it.

What if we use montavista/windriver/wince/whatever make a device first
then release(open) crappy/ok linux kernel, it won't be Openmoko.

> I bought this to use as a phone that I could get into, add to, and modify if I wanted to.  That's how FIC marketed it, as a consumer ready device, open source, with MAYBE a small power issue in that it wasn't supporting stand by mode.  OM wasn't it's own entity, or if it was that wasn't made clear.

We are sorry if people not satisfy our products in every standards, our
mistake/argument also all public.

> I'm just pissed off that I spent $400 on a device that was supposed to be my next phone, and 8 months later it's still sitting in a box because it's not usable as a normal daily phone.  And it doesn't help that people keep saying the FreeRunner was marketed as a development platform, when it clearly wasn't.

We are sorry if FR make you think as expensive brick, If you have
usability issue, could go to support.openmoko.com and open ticket, we
could help you there.

Regards,

Neng-Yu Tu (Tony Tu)
Openmoko, Inc.
Support
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