Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Re: Free the Platform!!

Looks like someone else had the same itch



Yet another link to the presentation above here. Get more info on the Linux phone here and here. You can get some more information on the State of Linux phones

THERE HAVE BEEN a lot of phones claiming to be 'Linux phones' and those that do run a Linux kernel, but they all miss the point of Linux: to be open. FIC is about to change that in a big way with a truly open phone, the OpenMoko.


Some of these phones are already in the market from Motorola and others. Companies like WindRiver and MontaVista also make Linux based stacks but I am not sure how open they are and whether it is possible to change/upgrade everything.

Within a few years more and more companies will release mobile frontends to their webapps. Just as Gmail recently did. As of now Symbian, Windows CE and Palm and the main OS'es for smart phones. Who then will win the battle for the dominant platform? Java has an enviable position right now as it has already been deployed in many phones already. If Sun opensources Java under GPL then there will be even more widescale adoption in the open source stacks. Nokia Series 60 also allow programming in C++ and Python now so thats another race.

1 comment:

santosh said...

> If Sun opensources Java under GPL then there will be even more widescale adoption in the open source stacks.

:-) How did you ever know?