[wellylug] OpenMoko orders taken from July 9th ..

[Adam Bogacki]

>
>
> On 01/07/07, Adam Bogacki <afb at paradise.net.nz> wrote:
> >
> > detail. Recently the main developer admitted he had been avoiding it
> > for other reasons - commercial espionage by competitors
>
>
> How does that work, for an Open Source product?
> I mean, they have to distribute the source when a unit is sold, so it can
> all be read at that time ...
>
> -jim
Sean Moss-Pultz is the moving force behind the concept of an open-source
customisable / hackable phone, which was taken up by the Taiwanese company
(I think) TFC. Googling by his name and 'OpenMoko' should lead you to
more relevant
material.

He (AFAIK) was behind setting up  ' community at lists.openmoko.org' and
was  for a long
time an active participant, but recently had gone quiet until the final
release announcement.
There has been a lot of publicity about Jobs and Apple coming up with
similar but proprietary
capabilities in iPhone, and also Nokia. The Taiwanese company is not
wedded to
open source, but seems happy to use it as an alternative business model.

The big question at the moment is whether there is a large enough
critical mass
of developers who will get behind the project to make it viable in
technical and commercial terms.

It's price should drop  with mass production, but the big unknown is
whether it can get to the next stage.
It might be good if various institutions acquired one or two and used
them as test beds to drive
student projects in developing interesting and creative apps.

A phone which walks the dog and gives you a wet smooch behind the ear ?
Perhaps not.
But it could morph into a mobile computing / multimedia device, assuming
the power to cost ratio
of microprocessors keeps increasing.

Cheers,

Adam Bogacki,
afb at paradise.net.nz

'
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