Thread: N950 with MeeGo this year, but who trusts Nokia anymore?
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nilchak is offline nilchak
2011-03-02 , 23:29
Posts: 1,097 | Thanked: 650 times | Joined on Nov 2007
#227
Originally Posted by EzInKy View Post
Odd as this may sound to you, this is exactly why you should support open over closed. Forget commercial apps, they are a dead end in the long run. Companies exist to make money and to do so they have to take money from you. That is a win/lose proposition because as soon as your money becomes meaningless to them compared to the potential billions available from others they will drop you like a hot potato.
I think you are over simplifying the open/vs closed in the case of a device mfrs.

While softwere is much easire to develop and distribute as a open source / open model, a good polished hardware like a smartphone is much difficult to produce/manufacture and distribute as a open model.

Unless Nokia commits to the N900/N950 etc whcih supports open software, you wont have a device to run your open model on.
If Nokia (or any company) drops that support of the device, slowly over time the open software development for the platform will also vanish ... why you ask ? Cause users will buy devices which are more current and hance the open software has no ecosystem to thrive in - not on a age old device anyway.

The Sharp supported Zaurus is a good case - great ecosystem and open development around the Zaurus, but once Sharp dropped the ball with the Zaurus devices, the open development community slowly vanished and is gone now. And I dont use my old Zaurus anymore either - cause there is newer better hardware.

As for manufacturing an open hardware platform - thats a whole different ball game. Only OpenMoko came anywhere close to that model and still couldn't compete with closed hardware manyfacturers.

So its more complex than just an ideological issue.
 

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