Musings on Software Freedom for Mobile Devices
Linked by tessmonsta on Tue 16th Mar 2010 08:55 UTC
GNU, GPL, Open Source Today's mobile space is owned by the likes of Nokia, RIM, Apple, and Google. While some of these corporations have embraced some open source components, a full FLOSS solution has yet to gain traction. Why? Blogger Bradley M. Kuhn posts thoughtful analysis of the current state of Open Source in the mobile space.
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RE[3]: Design Thinking
by lemur2 on Tue 16th Mar 2010 14:12 UTC in reply to "RE[2]: Design Thinking"
lemur2
Member since:
2007-02-17

"because most desktop users care about user experience and fancy desktop effects and theres better funding in enterprise solutions."

That's a unfunded affirmation. People want things to work. They want to work with technology, not work for techonology. Apple is loved not because of the desktop effects, it's because of simplicity, well defined goals and technology that helps people get their stuff done.

This mentality of users want eye candy must stop. Eye candy without purpose just get in people's way. But if used to improve familiarity and fluidness on interfaces they can bring great value.


Meh.

http://amarok.kde.org/en/releases/2.3.0
(play the clip, Apple has nothing to compare to this)

http://www.digikam.org/drupal/about?q=about/overview
http://www.digikam.org/drupal/about?q=about/features
(I have found better features for photo management here than anything that Apple has)

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/features.html
(Apples stuff doesn't have anywhere near this level of coverage of formats, nor platforms for that matter)

http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/
(power and features ... perhaps best of breed)

http://www.firebirdsql.org/
(often overlooked, but very powerful)

http://gcc.gnu.org/
(the compiler that produces more software for more platforms than any other)

http://www.beowulf.org/
(nothing if not innovative)

http://www.alfresco.com/
(not innovative, but the only competitor to Sharepoint)

http://www.eclipse.org/
(the original and best ide)

http://www.apache.org/
(the original and best web server)

http://www.cherokee-project.com/
(if you don't have a powerful machine, you can still have a web server)

http://www.puppylinux.org/
(blindingly fast because it runs from RAM)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_CD
(try before you install, check that everything works on a machine, only available for open source)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_repository
(still the only means of installing software with a guarantee of having no malware)

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/features/
(the browser that broke the back of IE dominance, popular for a reason)

http://why.openoffice.org/
(not innovative, but it has got 20% market share where no other Office suite could make inroads into MS Office dominance)

http://opendocument.xml.org/
(open, interoperable formats are an innovation that benefit millions ... commercial office suites have never offered this)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Software_Distribution
(a very solid kernel that lesser commercial vendors have forked)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KHTML
(the origin of webkit)

http://meego.com/
(it will be alone in letting users decide what apps they want on their smartphone)

None of these were Apple's idea.

Edited 2010-03-16 14:16 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 4