How open is the N900 really?
 

Hi!

I'm considering to order a N900 in the near future but there are still a few open questions regarding the openness of Maemo/N900.

So below the hood - how open is it really?

• Are there some binary only drivers?
• Are the user apps all opensource?
• ...

I remember reading something about driver blobs and the "taskbar" being proprietary but nothing substantive.

Re: How open is the N900 really?
 

Binary only drivers = video driver = binary blob.
Most of the apps are open source, but people can release under any license they want, so not all will be.

Re: How open is the N900 really?
 

pretty open. Probably the most open mass produced phone out there is you ask me. More than likely you can even run debian on it.

Yes some of the hardware and respective drivers are binary only but I can understand that

Re: How open is the N900 really?
 

http://forums.internettablettalk.com...ad.php?t=31967 ;-)

Re: How open is the N900 really?
 

http://wiki.maemo.org/Open_development

Feedback about that wiki page welcome at http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=340947

Re: How open is the N900 really?
 

A couple of links to clarify
http://wiki.maemo.org/Documentation/...l_Architecture
http://maemo.org/development/sdks/ma...documentation/
http://wiki.maemo.org/Why_the_closed_packages
To me it is very nice that maemo development is contributing directly to upstream projects, and that benefits everybody.