[maemo-users] Nokia: Linux Needs to Learn Business

[From: Theodore Tso]

On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 12:47:25PM -0500, mathew wrote:
> Aniello Del Sorbo wrote:
> > I think that what Ari wanted too say is that Nokia and the industry in
> > general is not YET ready to work the way the open source community
> > wants them to.
> >   
> Well, goodbye then Nokia. We'll all switch to OpenMoko or Android.
> 

I'm not speaking for Nokia, but I've talked to a number of folks from
Nokia, and the problem is that their suppliers are not willing to
release specifications under any kinda of NDA that would allow them,
or someone else, to release open source device drivers.  If they did
this, they would either be late to market by 6-12 months, which is an
eternity, or they would not be able to use the latest hardware which
has a combination of the latest functionality (i.e., 3G support, GPS,
WIFI, etc. all on one chipset) that competitors such as Apple and
iPhone might use.

I very much doubt that Android or other Linux mobile solutions will be
much different.  Android in particular tries to make it such that
application vendors don't even know that they are running on a Linux
OS; what they see is a restricted Java environment.

If people are willing to use Open Moko, despite its relative
disadvantage in terms of battery lifetime, and bleeding edge features
--- that's a tradeoff that Linux geeks can make, if they want.  I
suspect though that for commercial success, it will be hard for Open
Moko to complete in the general population who will always find cool
features like GPS, 3G, Wifi and UMA support, etc. very attractive.

Regards,

						- Ted