Basic Ubuntu 9.10 installation question

[Daniel Sobey]

On Thu, 2009-11-12 at 13:12 +1100, Russell Coker wrote: 
> 
> Mobile phones are NEVER designed for Linux, they are designed to run a 
> locked-down proprietary environment which may involve a Linux kernel and some 
> GPL user-space.
> 

This was true a few years ago before the openmoko.

Everything except the modem firmware is open source (it would not be
legal to have this modifiable ). This includes the Linux kernel, the
mobile phone stack the user space interfaces. The circuit diagrams are
cc licensed so you could potentially build your own phone from scratch
if you know how to solder.

Android is also open source and you can hack your phone or get a
developers phone where you can fully flash with your own software.
The syanogen mod is a distribution of this and everything is open source
after google complained and had them remove the proprietary google apps.

Symbian is now or will soon be fully open source, I have not yet looked
at it and do not know if enough is open and if you could potentially use
it to build your own phone os from the ground up.

Nokia is also developing a phone stack for the n900 Internet tablet.
The stack is not yet open source but nokia has stated that they will
release the source code soon so you should be able to use it in the
future. You should be able to flash your own stack to this phone.