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Posts: 1 | Thanked: 0 times | Joined on Oct 2009
#1
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.
 
Psymastr's Avatar
Posts: 183 | Thanked: 66 times | Joined on Sep 2009
#2
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.
 
Posts: 1,096 | Thanked: 760 times | Joined on Dec 2008
#3
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
 
Posts: 119 | Thanked: 110 times | Joined on Sep 2009 @ Prague
#4
 
qgil's Avatar
Posts: 3,105 | Thanked: 11,088 times | Joined on Jul 2007 @ Mountain View (CA, USA)
#5
 

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Posts: 15 | Thanked: 51 times | Joined on Sep 2009 @ Helsinki
#6
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.

Last edited by PetriS; 2009-10-17 at 20:26. Reason: removed duplicate link
 
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