Archive for Open Source
by Imran Ali
July 6, 2008 at 7:40 am · Filed under Open Source, Openmoko
Last Friday, pointedly coinciding with Independence Day celebrations in the US, Openmoko launched the latest edition of its open source Neo handsets, the FreeRunner. Unlocked from carriers and running an open OS, the FreeRunner really is a product of independence day and stands in stark contrast to the impending iPhone launch next Friday.
Features such as a tri-band radio, wifi, touch screen, Bluetooth, A-GPS and graphics acceleration are kinda mundane now ,and actually so is open source software. What’s quite unique about the FreeRunner is the remixability of the handset’s physical form factor.
Openmoko has made available downloadable Pro-Engineer format CAD files under a Creative Commons license for the developer community. Sadly, the CAD files aren’t available for lower rent 3D software, which might encourage further experimentation. Nevertheless, it’ll be interesting to see how the developer community adapts the insides of FreeRunner to various form factors and application areas.
You can find the CAD files here…
by Ewan Spence
July 3, 2008 at 7:06 am · Filed under Nokia, Open Source, Symbian, UIQ, Sony Ericsson
With hindsight, if the Symbian partners had made the move to open source the base OS, the triumvirate of user interfaces, and place all the developer tools and knowledge in a single place a year ago, it would have been seen as leading the way in the mobile. And while the pragmatist knows that this move will have been months in the planning, it looks a touch more defensive than it actually is.
Make no bones about it, this is a big deal. Imagine if Microsoft suddenly decided to make Vista open source. To commit to putting out every line of code under an open source licence such as the Eclipse Public Licence)
Nokia had made the move to buy out the remaining partners in Symbian, thus gaining control and ownership of the company; it’s IP – primarily the Symbian OS; and the staff. The staff would become Nokia employees, and the operating system would be placed into the Symbian Foundation, and over a two year period it would be made fully open source, alongside the S60, UIQ and MOAP user interfaces (which eventually would be integrated into a single UI, the unified platform of Symbian OS, due in 2010).
In the short term, not much is going to change. The manufacturers have their product line-ups sorted for the festive season and into 2009. The Symbian OS has a strong roadmap, with updates roughly every six months to the base code will remain. Long term the per handset fee (of roughly $5 a unit) will be removed, all the code will be visible, and a unified UI will help the developer base focus on making more programs, rather than make one program run on more than one UI.
It’s the medium term where it gets interesting; the point where Symbain does the switch over, and could (if not managed correctly) take their eye off the ball with all the management meetings and staff re-orientation. There’s also the fact that the UIQ interface is now effectively dead – the unified UI will be based on S60 and take elements of UIQ and MOAP. UIQ have laid off a little more than half their staff, and I wouldn’t expect to see another major iteration of UIQ now – which leaves Sony Ericsson with a phone OS that could now be at a dead end.
It’s certainly interesting times, and a bit of a gamble on Nokia’s part, but tat the very least they’re only gambling the same amount of money they would pay Symbian in licence fees over a year or so. So financially it’s worth taking.
And if they can establish Symbian OS as the default OS (just as MS-Dos did) then it will pay off in spades.
by Ewan Spence
July 3, 2008 at 5:41 am · Filed under Twitter, Open Source
My old Warrant Officer always used to say (in that low voice of menace) that you should never just state a problem, but state a problem followed promoptly by “here’s what I think we should do.” So if Twitter is Fail-Whaling, then we need another service. Lots of people have said it needs to be de-centralised, that it needs to be replicabla,e it needs to e open-source, using as many standards as possible,
Evan Prodromou has done just that. Welcome to Indenti.ca.And yes that does point to my account there, and not the top, because the site is still in it’s early days, so there’s no direct friend import via your address book (or the Twitter api, heh-he).
That early days is worth pointing out - Identica’s big problem is people may be expecting a full range of Twitter services (heck we expect the full range of Twitter services from Twitter) but I suspect that with an Open Source code base they’re going to get a lot of eyes looking over problems and tweaks - it appears for example Dave Winer is already nudging the code that generates the RSS feeds.
If I was Twitter, I’d hope the big section in their VC pitch addresses an Open Source, Distributed system as a threat, and how they would counter it. If their defence is “we’re the biggest” and “it’s hard to move away from Twitter with your friends” then Identica might be a game changer, if not in the form of the final site, but in the final code-base.
(Cross posted from www.ewanspence.com)
by Imran Ali
January 28, 2008 at 11:03 am · Filed under News, Google, Nokia, Open Source, Greenphone, Android, Linux
A few hours ago, Nokia announced its proposed $153m acquisition of TrollTech…a curious and surprising development. So what does this mean?
- What will happen to Trolltech’s famously open source handset, the GreenPhone (that predates even the OpenMoko platform)…will we see some Linux-based Nokia handset in 2008?
- Nokia’s press release focusses on TrollTech’s cross-platform development technology - will the adoption of Qt be Nokia’s defence against Google’s Android?
I have my fingers crossed that this acquisition is Nokia’s ‘openness moment’ 
by Imran Ali
September 16, 2007 at 7:58 pm · Filed under Devices, Platforms, touch screens, BUG, Open Source, Wifi, GPS, Tuxphone, Greenphone, Chumby, Openmoko, Long Tail
My dad was an electrician by profession, but even from childhood, he loved to take things apart and rebuild them into something new. An original tinkerer/hacker; when thieves stole a TV from Dad’s car, he designed and retrofitted an alarm of his own design; when we couldn’t install a doorbell to our aluminium framed front door, he designed and built a bell triggered by the opening of the letterbox. He’d love what the Bug Labs guys are about to launch…
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Bug Labs’ BUG product is something I’ve been jonesing to see for a couple months. BUG is essentialy an open source, modular consumer electronics platform that purports to making hardware design as easy as writing web applications.
The BUG system consists of…
- The BUGbase: a Linux-based computer with wifi, ethernet, USB, some onboard memory and rechargable batteries.
- BUGmodules: The company plans to offer GPS, cameras, touchscreen, motion sensors, keyboards and audio modules over the course of the next few months.
- Software: A combination of a software API and a developer community (BUGnet); I’m interested to see how Bug will enabled the various hardware components to be ’scripted’ together.
Open source hardware is nothing new - from my good friend Surj Patel’s Tuxphone project, to Trolltech’s Greenphone, the Chumby and Openmoko’s Neo1973 - but BUG’s moving beyond a single device made of open source components, to a series of hardware modules that can be combined and remixed into new device categories. BUG may represent the opening of the Long Tail of consumer electronics.
The implications on mobile communications are profound. What kinds of niche wifi messaging devices will BUG enable? Imagine the development of GSM, EDGE or 3G BUGmodules, leveraged by the BUGnet community?
Maybe BUG will enable my Dad to remix his car alarm with periodic texts asserting its GPS coordinates next time it’s stolen…
