Hi, 2010/3/5 Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <l...@lkcl.net>: >> It is nice if we can hack manufacturers toys, but if those are >> non-free to hackers, why should we "officially" support them? > > because they may turn out to be "toys" numbering in the several > hundred thousand to millions of units (e.g. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skytone_Alpha-400 which is MIPS-based and > was at such a compelling price-point that over thirty OEMs that we > _know_ of absolutely absolutely pounced on it. and the manufacturer's > OS is yep, you guessed it: emdebian-based. but that's another story)
Wow! I did not know they used emdebian. Anyway I got one similar netbook [1] and I found a similar version (same CPU) but free "Ben Nanonote" [2]. Nowadays, I would get [2] instead [1], as it has better community support. > by providing people with a truly free operating system, the chances > are that one of those people will turn out to be an excellent hacker / > engineer who will have enough time on their hands to reverse-engineer > the device and create a proper free/libre kernel, _once_ they are into > an entirely "free/libre" operating system and thus can install the > tools of their choice. Again, is free *ware about cracking and reverse engineering? Get free hardware to run your free software ! :-) > remember: i've been there with reverse-engineering of PXA27x HTC > smartphones, using WINCE (HARET.EXE and gnuharet.exe) and it took up > about eighteen months of my life. having a truly free/libre OS > already on those machines would have made a big damn difference. Sure, by the time I guess there was no openmoko/n770/n8xx, that would probably save you some months of headaches. > that having been said, the sheer overwhelming number of such "toys" > coming out with e.g. android at the moment makes it far more likely > that one of said "toys" will have the linux kernel source available, I GOOG we trust?! :-) But, yes, we hope companies using open/free source release their software as part of their license agreement (BSD/GPL/...), but that is not happening just yet. (it is even worst on Asian contries). [1] http://www.g-netbook.com/GL-740I.html [2] http://en.qi-hardware.com/wiki/Main_Page Kind regards, -- Héctor Orón "Our Sun unleashes tremendous flares expelling hot gas into the Solar System, which one day will disconnect us." -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-arm-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/dd0a3d701003050447i1815625fs5b9976c29c249...@mail.gmail.com
