Openness (was RE: Concern for usability and ergonomics)

[Milan Votava]

(sorry for my english)

I'm subscribed for this this thread for about 6m now. I don't want to 
be rude but:

1/ 99% of this thread is about an unrealistic things to be 
implemented on a non existent (underpowered) device. Who in the World 
cares about things being discussed in this thread? People wants to 
use their pones, to make calls, send sms/mms/emails. I'm being tired 
to read over and over about these obscure requirements and ideas 
posted here. Animations like on an iPod? Buy an iPod!

2/ I believe we are going to be a victims of a huge manipulation. 
There is a company like FIC. There are some adventures like Sean who 
are looking for their fortune. What's the way? To offer to companies 
like FIC a product like Neo with reduced costs. Why the costs are 
reduced? It's simple. There is bunch of people around the globe 
waiting to spare their time to help. You just have to pretend to be 
one of them....

3/ As you can see, the 'openness' of this project is at least in 
question. As time goes by, there is more blah blah then some concrete 
information. There are some vague information about GTA1/GTA2 but 
overall, the entropy  is going to 0.


Milan


At 01:02 13.6.2007, Andrew Becherer wrote:

>My mother told me to never feed the trolls but when I see an obvious
>misrepresentation of the opensource and free software movements I have
>to pipe up for posterity and the google cache.
>
>Not to knock the work of people like cr2 (who based on a Google query
>is an awesome resource for Linux on proprietary handsets) but
>xda-developers.com is an entirely different ball of wax than OpenMoko.
>I once had the opportunity to meet with Peter Brown (the executive
>director of the Free Software Foundation). Peter told me that one of
>the greatest things about Richard Stallman is his role as a reference
>point for all of us involved in opensource and free software. We can
>each measure how "free" we are based on where we place ourselves as
>compared to RMS. He is THE free software benchmark. That said Richard
>Stallman stated his only objection to the Neo1973 and OpenMoko was the
>closed source GPS code. The Neo1973 and OpenMoko are just about as
>free as a phone can be and it is my understanding that the GPS code
>can be replaced with free software thereby making it a "free" phone!
>
>Let's compare this to the xda-developers site. Currently on the front
>page of xda-developers is the following news item:
>
>"For years and years, xda-developers has offered access to a
>collection of ROM images for 'our' phones. These images, often
>released by mobile carriers or device resellers, contained a version
>of the Microsoft Windows Mobile OS (or one of its predecessors) as
>well as customization added by one or more OEMs in the chain."
>
>FIC with its Neo1973 hardware and OpenMoko with free software are
>creating a truly open platform. Trading in hacked up images of
>proprietary software distributed against the terms of the licensing
>agreements isn't the type of freedom of which I would want a point.
>
>Should the Neo and OpenMoko come to pass they will be a true
>alternative to proprietary phones. FIC and the all developers who
>participate in the development of OpenMoko should be applauded and
>remarks such as yours should be ignored.
>
>--
>Andrew Becherer
>Undergraduate, Computing and Software Systems
>University of Washington, Tacoma