Talk:TuxPhone
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As a FYI.. this article seems to imply a level of organizational intimacy between TuxPhone and the SV Homebrew Mobile Phone club that really isn't there. The topic came up recently on the SVHMPC mailing list, and here's some of what was said...
From: http://telefono.revejo.org/pipermail/svhmpc_telefono.revejo.org/2007-January/000519.html
On 1/25/07, adrian cockcroft <adrian.cockcroft at gmail.com> wrote: > Right now Wikipedia mentions SVHMPC under the > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TuxPhone entry and links to > opencellphone.org > > I think that it makes most sense to call the phones we are making > TuxPhone <blah> where each distinct design has a different <blah> and > related phones have some kind of related <blah's> > > The vision Matt has of a componentized open design that can be > reworked into everything from a tiny embedded system to a big touch > screen portable computer seems a little different to the OponMoko and > Trolltech Greenphone concepts, although we will all be sharing > software. > > I also thought that "myPhone" was a good name. The domains myphone.* > are parked, and there is a fairly moribund sourceforge VOIP project > called myPhone. I like the name because it captures the > personalization that we can incorporate into a homebrew design. See > sourceforge.net/projects/myphone On 1/25/07, Matthew S. Hamrick wrote: Technically... "TuxPhone" is Surj Patel's baby. If Surj is okay with us using that name, then I'm all for it. However... for the record, I would like to reiterate the somewhat complicated story of TuxPhone, opencellphone.org, hbmobile.org and the SVHMPC. Way back in 2005, Surj Patel and Deva Seetharam (working in Boston), Casey Halverson (working in Seattle) and me and Mike Perry (working in Silicon Valley) noticed that SparkFun was selling the GM862 GSM module in single unit quantities. I think each of us had some issues with the way the carriers and the big guys were building mobile phones, so I believe we independently came up with the idea of building our own phone based on the Telit GM862. I started evangelizing the idea of what I now call the "complete open phone," but encountered some pretty serious skepticism (I didn't know Surj, Deva or Casey at the time.) I got a bit discouraged when my boss(es) at PalmSource told me, in no uncertain terms, that they didn't want me working on something that would cheeze off their customers. So in 2005, I dropped the idea. In 2006, I read a C|Net article that talked about the work that Surj, Deva and Casey were doing. I took it into work and tried again to point out the benefits of an open platform for experimentation. I didn't get fired, but I sure as heck didn't get encouragement. At this point I also started chatting with Larry Cohen and Surj Patel via email. Surj and Deva were "fired up" about their project, they were calling "TuxPhone." Their excitement was contagious and I dusted off my GM862 and started to work again on a device I called the "FrankenPhone" and later the "SqueakyMoPho." The latter being a reference to some of my earlier work with putting the Squeak Smalltalk environment on small devices. At this point I was quickly reaching the limits of my ability. It's been several decades since building circuits was my primary job. Larry knew some people that might could help with the hardware I wanted to build, but before we could seriously engage them we hit on the idea of doing the club. Response to the first meeting notice well exceeded my expectations, so it was clear that other people were involved. It also started getting obvious that I wanted the largest number of collaborators, and that a Smalltalk based phone would discourage a number of people from participating. Thought I still consider Smalltalk to be a superior programming environment, I figured that "C" being the lingua-franca of the software world would allow the largest number of people to participate (thought I consider SqueakyMoPho as being on hiatus, not being canceled.) After chatting with Surj, we both thought it would be a good idea for all of us to work on the same project. Since his TuxPhone project was well underway, I simply joined it. But over the summer, we all started suffering from an acute "lack of time." I was spending time organizing SVHMPC meetings, Surj was working on the eTel conference and Deva was working multiple jobs to make ends meet. But this was after I had "officially" joined TuxPhone, and was included in some of the opencellphone.org pages. Colin Cross started working on TuxPhone somewhere around here, and in fact got a prototype working for FooCamp '06. So... if you want to talk about people's roles in the TuxPhone project, I think you could say that Surj and Deva were TuxPhone's parents. Colin was the Dr. who delivered it, and I was maybe the "God Parent." That is, I didn't have to change any of it's diapers, but told everyone I knew how cool it was. I like to point this stuff out, because sometimes the media gets bits and pieces of the story and over-simplifies things. For the club, 2006 was a year where a lot of us spent a fair amount of time going in different directions. And the funny bit is that it took something like the iPhone to get us all to converge on a common hardware definition. But based on the meeting we had last night (and oh yeah... I should probably publish some notes) our latest group design looks to have considerable energy. It was fun to joke about calling it the iPhoney or the iClone(tm), but the two devices couldn't be further apart. Whereas the iPhone(tm) will be a slick device running proprietary software for a mass audience, our design will run open software, the designs will be published with a Creative Commons license and will be targeted for experimentalists, hobbyists and even companies who wish to have a starting design for niche, "Long Tail" products. As it is delivered, it will definitely be less polished than the iPhone(tm). And thought it's fun to gently rib the Apple guys, they worked very hard on the iPhone(tm), I wish them the greatest success, and I don't want to diminish the name they're building for their product. (Besides, on the off chance the iPhone goes the same way as Copeland, Cyberdog, Lisa, Newton, Macintosh TV and the Motorola ROKR, I don't want to be anywhere near the same name.) We really are building radically different devices and appealing to different kinds of people, so calling it something like TuxPhone2 is much more appropriate. But... as I said above... TuxPhone is Surj's baby, and we shouldn't use the name he came up with unless he's cool with it. (Hmm... maybe I should post this email in the discussion section of the Wikipedia page.) Now... that being said... I'm not above blowing my own horn a bit. The "Complete Open Phone" concept is something that I believe many people have thought about, but Larry and I were the first people I can remember who put all the pieces together (though I'm perfectly willing to be proved wrong.) The Complete Open Phone has the following characteristics: 1. It's based on standard components, available to individual innovators without usage restrictions or NDAs. 2. To the extent that it uses encumbered intellectual property, it uses it in a way that allows unrestricted non-commercial use. In other words... if you use patented technology, the patent-holder should allow non-restricted non-commercial use. 3. The hardware designs are available via a Creative Commons license. 4. The software is available via a generally accepted open source license (BSD, MPL, GNU, whatever.) Finally, the objective of the "Complete Open Phone" is to provide a family of hardware designs that hobbyists or commercial entities may use as the basis of innovative, value-added projects or products. My personal goal is to create an "ecosystem" around the Complete Open Phone designs. I hope to interest commercial vendors to mass manufacture our base-level designs so innovators will have inexpensive hardware with which to start prototyping. At the same time, I'm hoping that hobbyists and businesses with leads into niche, "Long Tail" markets will adopt one or more of our designs, then modify it to make it serve their needs. (And at this point I really do have to shout out to Craig and Gordon over at GumStix. I think they really do grok this stuff, and in making inexpensive electronic "building blocks" are some of the best friends the hobbyist could have these days.)
Mhamrick 22:47, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
