Thread: Maemo 6 / Harmattan on N900?
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slux is offline slux
2010-01-29 , 22:33
Posts: 68 | Thanked: 24 times | Joined on Jan 2010
#522
Originally Posted by fatalsaint View Post
This was discussed here.

There are more proprietary components making up the base of Maemo than there are Android. They both have proprietary drivers, but some of the other parts of maemo that actually make it function are closed off as well. The base Android OS is totally available for anyone to compile and use and put their own drivers in place.

Plus, using things like xda-dev's isn't the best way to express "openness" considering, as I mentioned elsewhere, cyanogen got a Cease and Desist order from Google for distributing their proprietary software (maps, market, etc).
Well, I for one don't think it's that simple as was discussed on that thread. The governance is only one thing... another thing is that the difference between even the Android and Maemo base platform may not be that great if you count in the Google Apps which do provide some pretty basic functionality as well.

Device manufacturers can add even more non-free software on top of that and/or modify the base Android system without releasing the modified versions anywhere because of the Apache license used for all of it.

Also, if you look at the rest of the apps installable for the platform, most of Maemo's apps seem to be open source while Android has about 10 free software apps available.
Last edited by slux; 2010-01-29 at 22:38.