[Liverpool] Maemo - back from the ashes?

[Andrew Bates]

ahh just seems like there's a difference in use of the word 'firmware' like
there is a difference in the use of the word 'monitor' in the fields of
Computing, and Sound Engineering (I know Bob knows what I'm talking about!).

As for the driver issue, I dunno. After having a look up at that GTA04 you
mentioned, that actually seems like a very very usable solution, providing
that OpenMoko itself is anywhere near usable (as what I would expect from a
modern smartphone OS anyway). The one major thing that put me right off the
Neo Freerunner was the completely abysmal specifications of the phone which
by 2008 were already, at best, 5 years old.

If you do get your hands on a GTA04, I would very much look forward to you
showing it off at a LUG meeting, would be cool to see what it can do.

On 24 June 2011 19:07, Bob Ham <rah at bash.sh> wrote:

> On Fri, 2011-06-24 at 16:54 +0100, Andrew Bates wrote:
> > On 24 June 2011 16:43, Bob Ham <rah at bash.sh> wrote:
>
> >         It is actually (still) possible to buy a phone with 100% free
> >         software, the Neo Freerunner:
>
> >         I know a lot of the Android phones are different though,
> >         they have proprietary firmware *and* proprietary drivers
>
> > As for Android handsets, there is Cyanogenmod as replacement firmware.
>
> There's a difference in nomenclature here.  By "firmware", I'm referring
> to code that runs on a device within the phone, as opposed to the CPU.
> For example, with the Neo Freerunner, there is code that executes on the
> GSM modem itself.  This would be "firmware".
>
> Then there's code that runs on the phone's CPU.  In my nomenclature,
> that would be "software".  This includes code for things like the user
> interface.  It also includes code for things like talking to the GSM
> modem; ie, "drivers".  (In actual fact, just to complicate things, that
> would be code running on the CPU talking to code running on the
> modem :-)
>
>
> In those terms, Cyanogenmod would be called 'software'.  A phone with
> Cyanogenmod would have free software for things like the user interface,
> proprietary drivers for talking to devices and proprietary firmware that
> runs *on* devices.
>
> In an ideal world, all of the code would be free.  With the Freerunner,
> everything except the code running on the GSM modem is free.
>
> (To scupper the cause of freedom, there may even be legislation to
> prevent free GSM modem firmwares as such a thing would give people the
> ability to do whatever they wanted in terms of GSM wireless, including
> the ability to disrupt GSM cell communication. See
> http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Open_GSM_Radio )
>
>
> >  Or if you really wanted to, i'm sure you could plonk Mer or MeeGo on
> > there :p
>
> I would still need proprietary drivers :-(
>
>
> --
> Bob Ham <rah at bash.sh>
>
> for (;;) { ++pancakes; }
>
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