The quest for a truly open smartphone: can it be done?
- Tuesday, 27 October 2009 09:16
The recent release of the Symbian kernel source code under the Eclipse Public License (EPL) has generated some discussion in the open source software community about the challenges of building a truly open smartphone platform. Software freedom advocates are concerned because none of the existing open source mobile platforms with mainstream viability are entirely open.
OpenMoko, a company that spun off of FIC in 2007 with the aim of building an open smartphone, was once regarded as a promising contender. The company ran into difficulty, however, and was ultimately forced to halt its phone development efforts and pursue alternate projects. OpenMoko found that the cost of producing 3G smartphones was prohibitively high for independent device makers and it was simply not possible to do without using proprietary firmware.
