[maemo-developers] Corporate ownership of open source projects [LWN]

[From: Igor Stoppa]

On Sat, 2008-05-03 at 10:00 -0400, ext Ian Lawrence wrote:

> It is like that game of 'pass the parcel' you play as kids when you
> unwrap a layer of a present when the music stops. It does not matter
> how interesting each layer is (Hildon Input Framework etc) if the
> final layer has a padlock around it. It would have been better to have
> played 'Hide and Seek'  instead, you get no prize but at least you
> know whats gonna happen and its free.
> 
> Maybe a clever solution to this would be for Nokia to take some dead
> product that everyone has forgotten about and completely open it.
> Hell, even make some marketing splash like:
> 'In response to community feedback we are releasing 'X' under the GPL.
> In its time 'X' had the most innovative power management on the market
> but we think that this can be improved by a 'lots of eyeballs'
> approach. Prove us right, do your bit for the planet and join us on
> maemo.org'
> I'd hack on it anyway

Sadly the padlock (and i'm not denying that there is one) is around some
of the most boring or crufty stuff, not really on the family jewels.

To hack on the hardware you would need:

-serial console:
that can be obtained with some hacking by attaching a level shifter and
a serial connector to the serial pads exposed, it would be enough to
release schematic and layout (although i think there are already
unofficial howtos)

-undocumented HW:
TI has opened some of the latest and greatest HW but afaik nothing is
going on regarding older products. We have been asking them to release
it since we shipped 770.
So much for the "Nokia can exert more pressure than a single developer"
mantra. One could argue that we should not have used closed HW and I
respect the argument, but containing cost was one of our goals and Nokia
buys gazillions of OMAPs. Guess which chip was cheaper ...

Then we have some legacy Nokia ASIC that AFAIK is still in use in
phones, where many more features are used than what we have in the
tablet. Namely Retu/Tahvo and following variants. Again a HW design
decision that had pros and cons. We have already enjoyed the pros, now
it's time for the cons. Personally I doubt that we would have any real
problem in releasing the specs, but when the chip is inside so many
devices already on the market, lots of people get nervous (to understate
it) when there might be some lawsuit on the horizon for safety threats -
the chips are involved in battery charging. Or SIM handling - another
hot topic with operators.

-closed SW:
There are some bits that are quite trivial. I don't think anybody with
some programming experience would have problem at stitching together a
replacement for dsme & mce, given the functional specifications. The
state machines implemented are not so straightforward, but a simple
start to get going is probably not too difficult to obtain.

Then comes bme: charging the battery is something that nowadays is
described quite well in the application notes of many battery charging
chips, so google would be able to provide all the needed information for
some primitive charging sw, but again this is a lawsuit waiting to
happen. If common sense was more diffuse and companies didn't have to be
paranoid, probably more opening could be done, but i'm skeptic about
anything happening on that front at the moment.

Finally we have the WLAN module and FW, which are again developed under
NDA and it's quite unlikely that the manufacturer is willing to release
the source.


In the end I think what would be realistically possible - and i'm
already completely sure that many won't be satisfied and will complain -
is that Nokia provides one person whose sole task is to support the
community by mantaining the closed code and providing new binaries that
link against recent libraries. The community would still be able to set
the direction for the development and ask for updates, so that these
closed areas would not hold back work done in the open part. Which is
the majority.

And I think it would be only fair that, having Nokia enjoyed the
benefits of taking these shortcuts (mostly can be summarized in not
using better/more open HW), now it will take also the pain of providing
continued support for the closed components.

This is my personal opinion - not to be taken as a promise or plan - but
as an advice in what the community could do/demand to keep the old
devices alive.

Anyway note that in order to do proper low level kernel development, one
needs also measuring tool and special boards that allow for precise
measuring of what the sw is doing. Nobody in the community has such
setup, so some help from Nokia for validation would still be required.

-- 
Cheers, Igor

---

Igor Stoppa
Next Generation Software
Nokia Devices R&D - Helsinki