Mar
17
2010
Bradley wrote about mobile software freedom, a field that I’m obviously deep into because of my work at Funambol. His quite long article Musings on Software Freedom for Mobile Devices contains an analysis of the situation, which mobile platforms are more freedom-promising and why (in short: Maemo/Moblin merged as Meego and Android/Linux). I only disagree [...]
Tags: android, cloud, freedom, gnu, iphone, market, mobile, mobile cloud
Feb
15
2010
This is good news for mobile free software (or open source, as you wish to call it): Maemo and Moblin joined forces today. I had lots of expectations for Maemo, but so far Nokia hasn’t pushed it enough. This merge of the two project may give it a new life. Now the issue is [...]
Tags: intel, maemo, meego, mobile, moblin, motorola, Nokia
Jan
10
2010
I can’t get my head around one feature of Google’s superphone: why did they put that scroll-click-button at the bottom of the phone? Shouldn’t the touch screen be enough to use the phone? Besides, being so close to the bottom edge, can it really be used? If anybody is still thinking that Google wants to [...]
Tags: apple, disruption, google, iphone, mobile, nexusone
Oct
17
2009
Just don’t buy that combo: Mac and BlackBerry are two very closed environments, they don’t want to be interoperable, they hate each other and their customers.
Not that I would make such mistake, never. But I have friends that do this kind of stuff and then I’m enough of a friend to share with them the [...]
Tags: apple, blackberry, data, fail, freedom, interoperability, mac, mobile, windows
Jul
07
2009
Mobile cloud computing represents an opportunity for the free/libre open source software movement that is just as big and radical as cloud computing, maybe even moreso. This is part 1 of a post about it, part 2 will follow shortly.
By the end of 2009, 4 billion people will use mobile phones. By 2013, that number [...]
Tags: cloud computing, community, free software, free software business, funambol, mobile, mobile cloud, saas
May
19
2009
In a recent discussion with friends I realized that tivoization is a sub-optimal world to describe the problem that the Free Software community has with freedom being controlled by those that control the hardware. The word clearly targets one specific company, so the problem gets somewhat reduced in scope. The real issue is not limited [...]
Tags: cloud, community, funambol, gplv3, locked devices, mobile, mobile cloud
Jan
14
2009
The good news today is that Nokia relicensed the Qt (pr: cute) libraries under the GNU Lesser General Public License, demonstrating that the mobile ecosystem is where things happen. The GNU Lesser GPL is a license that allows non-free and free software to co-exist. Yes, with the LGPL the FSF admits that non-free software exists. [...]
Tags: business, freedom, fsf, gpl, gtk+, lgpl, mobile, Nokia, qt, qtopia, strategy
Jan
09
2009
Today is one of those days that starts with a sweet taste.’ The FSF has declared another victory for its BadVista campaign: Vista is a clear failure for Microsoft and for FSF it’s time to devote energy to something else. (btw: did you donate to FSF?)
Upcoming Windows 7 won’t be any better because it’s on [...]
Tags: badvista, campaign, community, gnu, linux, microsoft, mobile, palm, vista
Jan
06
2009
And Nokia didn’t know about it. The Linux-based Maemo platform had all the potential to radically change the cell phone landscape long before Apple came out with the iPhone. But Nokia preferred to be ultra-conservative and marketed the Internet Tablet devices such as the Nokia N810 as a toy for geeks.
Maybe this strategy has [...]
Tags: community, free software, freedom, internet tablet, maemo, mobile, n810, Nokia, qtopia
Dec
30
2008
After one year spent using my (pretty old) cell phone for more than just sms and audio calls, I understand better some of the new challenges that the free software movement have to face.’ I already wrote about the implications of GPLv3 on mobile handsets, but that post only scratches the surface of the issues.
The [...]
Tags: free software movement, freedom, gplv3, handset, mobile, social