gerbick | # 11 | 2011-02-16, 21:48 | Report

And everybody is using proprietary, opened up, open source OS's now?

rm42 | # 12 | 2011-02-16, 21:56 | Report

That where things are trending to. Android may not be 100% open, but it sure is a lot more open than Windows and iOS. They seem to be finding a warm reception.

PS: The N900 did not do too bad for being a phone with $0 marketing.

Radicalz38 | # 13 | 2011-02-16, 21:59 | Report

If nokia is really heading that way as fast as they can then there's no doubt this is how would they end up.

I prefer them to go slowly and think a million times

gerbick | # 14 | 2011-02-16, 22:02 | Report

That prior statement was just chock full of idealistic banter. The stance is that Android isn't as open as Maemo or MeeGo.

And for the record, neither Maemo or MeeGo are 100% open when you factor in the device drivers. MeeGo made better strides into resolving that than Maemo. There's no truly, fully, 100% open device.

There's only "more open" but those devices aren't truly selling - otherwise, we'd already have new Maemo (only one Maemo 5 device released) or MeeGo would be here now (where is it?).

The likelihood of those things happening implicitly show the viability of that market and leads to stuff like Ballmer being on the stage and saying things like WP7 is the way forward (it's not).

Open source has a lot of hurdles to overcome before it's the leading selling item. I can't wait until that happens. But it ain't right now.

And that's realistic.

j.s | # 15 | 2011-02-16, 22:11 | Report

I haven't bought windows anything for over 15 years.

What I want to know is why Nokia thinks going with a platform losing share is going to improve their situation, and why microsoft thinks further restricting a platform is going to turn around its plunge.

MartinK | # 16 | 2011-02-16, 22:16 | Report

Well, there is, the OpenMoko Neo FreeRunner, citing the their FAQ:
BTW, even the graphic drivers are open.

The actual usability of the Neo FreeRunner is another matter, but it exists anyway

spanner | # 17 | 2011-02-16, 23:15 | Report

These No-GPL conditions are part of the app marketplace agreement, right? Since Microsoft is re-selling everything sold through the marketplace, wouldn't the burden & responsibility of supplying source code etc for GPL apps fall upon them? If that's true then I can see why they wouldn't want to shoulder an extra level of legal & technical complexity. Apple too.

The real f*ckup is designing a system where there's only one authorised 'teat' from which you suck your software. That's the exact opposite of open source. If you could download & run WP7 binaries from sourceforge it wouldn't matter a jot what arbitrary conditions MS imposed on their app marketplace.

(I'm curious why they singled out GPL version 3 specifically though.)

gerbick | # 18 | 2011-02-16, 23:45 | Report

Was. I definitely was a fan of Open Moko; however it sorta fizzled rather quickly. It just... never went anywhere unfortunately.

That's why I'm pissed off that Maemo and MeeGo aren't where I need them to be.

shockgiga | # 19 | 2011-02-17, 00:01 | Report

if they can make HALO REACH run properly on it, maybe then ill consider it and actually pay for the game.

javispedro | # 20 | 2011-02-17, 00:55 | Report

Well, not even Meego is a big fan of the GPL3 these days.

(Obviously, since you cannot redistribute your own applications to WP7 phones, the GPL2 is also incompatible with WP7 as much as it is incompatible with the iPhone for the same reason).