Why Open Source Phones Still Fail
 

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2356603,00.asp

"Free software is all about the unexpected. Carriers hate the unexpected.

by Sascha Segan

The ultimate hacker phone, the Nokia N900 is the truest expression of Linux—the OS and the philosophy—that you'll find on mobile this year. It's a great niche gadget. But...."

Re: Why Open Source Phones Still Fail
 

Whatever. See Android, and then talk again, PC Mag. If partial OSS is good, full OSS should be even better. We'll see how smart PC Mag is when Maemo and Symbian dominate the market as a two pronged approach.

Re: Why Open Source Phones Still Fail
 

It is? I guess I missed something. I've heard these more often:

Free software is all about choice
Free software is all about transparency and security
Free software is all about sharing
Free software is all about rms ;)

but "the unexpected"? Uhm, I don't think so >.>


edit:
Actually, after some more thinking, I really have to go on a small rant about this.
"Free software is all about the unexpected". Excuse the language but he just pulled this sentence out of his a s s. It does not have any meaning whatsoever. "Oh, look I'm writing about the mysterious unexpected, oh I like hearing my own voice so muuch". Seriously. If anything, you can just skim over any piece of source code, follow some mailing list, and know about every tidbit of info about the future. Just about nothing is unexpected within free software. There's simply more opportunity for people to do things. The whole process itself is very, very overviewable and transparent. I mean, is closed software less "unexpected"?? Seriously, who writes this stuff... >.>

Re: Why Open Source Phones Still Fail
 

I respect Sascha Segan a lot (mostly because he is always to make the Apple-fans pipe down a bit and calls them on much of what they claim) - and I'd say he makes a lot of sense even here.

Re: Why Open Source Phones Still Fail
 

The writer expresses a near-fatal dichotomy between his first and last premises:

Doomed to fail-- oops, spoke too soon: T-Mobile can save the day.

As for his initial point, substitute "uncontrolled" for "unexpected". That's the key here for carriers. What was truly unexpected was the the iPhone would place such a burden on AT&T's networks, making both phone and network victims of their own successes. That had nothing to do, of course, with anything remotely open sourced.

I'm guardedly optimistic. Nokia could drive consumers to demand devices like the N900 from their carriers with compellng marketing. But... so far, no signs it's in the company's DNA...

Re: Why Open Source Phones Still Fail
 

What Randall said: think "uncontrolled" rather than "unexpected". The article was clear about the disruptive nature of outsiders playing in the carriers' sandbox, and there are more active projects in the OSS community than the control freaks can contemplate.

Re: Why Open Source Phones Still Fail
 

Did anyone actually read the whole article? It's not about what is wrong with the N900 but what is right. American carriers fear the open nature of the N900 because they can't predict its usage(and ATT was burned when iPhone users started to live on the web). They fear geeks for the same reason. The reference to TMobile states that because they are building out their network and it is not yet clogged with data traffic, they might be able to profitably go after the geek market with the N900.

Re: Why Open Source Phones Still Fail
 

Yup. My analysis still stands.

Re: Why Open Source Phones Still Fail
 

Insightful as usual,

how *is* nokia creating an 'image' in the usa?

how would you, Texrat, construct a coherent image campaign? What is the positioning, what kinds of faces do you show? The couple of videos i've seen go in a nice direction.

Nokia can play on the 'made in europe' image more strongly... "you are getting the *mercedes* of phones". It can also really kick apple in the face by showig pros - cool IT dudes - standing IN a server farm and using their phone to ssh in and control the big iron - a real closeup of the ssh session and fast thumbs flying over the keyboard - just for a second. (i know it is pointless to ssh to a machine in front of you, but we are talking about images here)

No time. cheers

Re: Why Open Source Phones Still Fail
 

tmobile is going hspa+, clog that.