Re: Yet another [cross] installer
Hi,
2010/3/5 Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl@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."
Reply to: