So, like everybody else in the world, I was intrigued by the announcement of the iPhone. But like most Open Source folks, I was unhappy with the OS and the general closed format of the dang thing. What options are there for people who believe in Freedom but still want a cool phone?
I currently own a Treo 650, which is fine, and which runs the venerable Palm OS. However, the once-thriving Palm Open Source community has pretty much dried up, leaving me without much in the way of interesting apps for my phone device.
Thanks to Mike Linksvayer's notes on the subject, I got a link to the OpenMoKo project -- an effort to make a standard, Linux-based phone OS that uses ipkg for application installation and update. The first phone supporting the platform will be the FIC Neo1973, which looks pretty awesome and fairly similar to the iPhone (see this review from Linux Devices for some photos).
OpenMoKo isn't the only game in town. TrollTech has a Linux-based Greenphone running their funky Qtopia platform, although it apparently doesn't work with their Qtopia Open Source version. And Nokia has this weird Maemo platform, but it only seems to run on their Internet tablet thingies.
Mike gave a good link to an article about Open phones on PC Magazine. But I'm going to be looking out for availability of the OpenMoKo-enabled phone. I guess I'll have to switch phone providers -- Telus, my provider, only has CDMA service, and the FIC phone uses GSM. So, I dunno. But it'd be cool to have a mobile device that was fun and interesting and that I could believe in and want to hack on.
tags: openmoko iphone greenphone maemo
What Chris refuses to blog about
So, talking to Chris last night at the yulblog First Wednesday, I found out he wants to quit blogging. "I don't really have anything I care about enough to blog," he said. "The only thing that's piqued my interest lately was the execution of Saddam Hussein. I just don't want to blog about the iPhone."
I told him I thought it'd be a good idea to make a blog just listing the things he refuses to blog about. He wouldn't commit to the idea, so I guess now I've taken over that job. In other words: Chris won't blog about the iPhone.