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Or more appropriately, when is open source not open source? The answer, I’m sad to say, is when Google get involved. With the release of Android many people got excited about this new open source development environment for mobile devices. Unfortunately, the current license is not an open source one. Android, at this point in time, is not released under the Apache license. What they do say is:

“Once the SDK reaches a more finished form, Google intends to release most of the components under the Apache v2.0 open source license ”

which could mean tomorrow, next year or never. Also note the use of ‘most’ – either it’s open source or it’s not – pick one Google. It also means that even if most components get released under the Apache license, Google could still keep, and use any licensing they like on key components. That is to say Google would be able to pull a “Tivo”.

Don’t get me wrong, I fully understand that Google paid for Android and it’s their product. What I do object to is the claims that it is opensource. At this juncture is is most definitely not. So far all that Google have released is what is required by the GPL and LGPL.

Truly, I’m disappointed.

_{»crosslinked«}

Tagged with: android • google • opensource • software
November 13, 2007 13:18

Over the last couple of days I’ve been trying out a series of applications, the two are just a bit of fun really although I suppose they could be a little useful. Earlier this week I had been messing about with SuperKaramba which I eventually removed after it decided it was going to delete some files after I’d modified them, fixing a couple of bugs. The concept of SuperKaramba is fairly sound, I just worry about why I suddenly lost an entire plugin folder for it. Maybe it didn’t like my modifications, I’ll never know. I also noticed that my cpu usage never went below 30% – It had to go, but it was at least interesting to have a look at and it did introduce me to a bit of Python, something I’ve been avoiding looking at for some time now. I haven’t got anything against Python, it’s just yet another language I’m going to have to learn, along with Ruby – but I have no idea what the ‘on Rails’ bit is about, I’m assuming it’s similar to LAMP, although I prefer it in its xampp form.

Gltail is a little Ruby application that allows you to look at your logs in 3d. I know it’s not very ‘linux shell’ but it is fun to see. You also get a good idea of which files, images etc are attracting the most attention. A stream of spheres spits out from each client or server.

The sphere’s get bigger and smaller depending on a number of factors, but generally the amount of traffic . There are a number of plugins available for it to allow the monitoring of things like apache logs, or mysql queries. The thing I liked most was that it connects to remote servers over ssh and can use keys. There are a couple of flash movies on the gltail page, one showing when the author was ‘slashdotted’. Gltail is a Ruby application, so it’s another opportunity for learning what I’m going to start calling YAFL – Yet Another F&%$ing Language. I enjoyed throwing a few logs at it to see how well it managed, but could never really compare to the author’s ‘slashdotting’.

Tagged with: opensource • software
October 20, 2007 10:46

Since August 8th, 2007 I’ve been making rootfs, kernel images and package updates for the gta01 available via my buildhost. It seems that the official Openmoko buildhost has been down for a while due to RAM issues and it looks like I’ve, hopefully, been able to help out in that respect. Take a look at the graph below

showing the download bandwidth used, in MB for my buildhost. It’s worth noting that the figures for October are to the end of yesterday, whereas August and September are for the entire months.

The last time something like this happened was when I released the very first asterisk live cd although my guide did dramatically increase my hit rate 😀 – incidentally you can get PXE boot and CF card booting editions from the same page as the live cd.

Tagged with: image builds • neo 1973 • openmoko • opensource • software
October 19, 2007 19:12

I work at LinITX.com and we sell the X2040 LCD display from Pertelian. LCDproc supports the LCD with no problems but there was no driver for lcd4linux so wrote I one. It has been submitted and accepted for inclusion in the lcd4linux project svn repo. I’ve documented it on the lcd4linux wiki.
As an addendum using multiple displays is possible with no real issues.

Tagged with: hardware • opensource • software
October 1, 2007 22:15

Now that Qtopia is opensource I’ve managed to get it to build for my gta01 and I’ve added that to my build schedule so that everyone can benefit. Here’s a short video I made – this one turned out an awful lot better than my first attempt, thankfully.

I found it much better to use the snapshots rather than the official images.

Tagged with: neo 1973 • openmoko • opensource • software
September 17, 2007 16:40