Openmoko on Design

Tue Jul 29 12:20:29 CEST 2008

On 29 Jul 2008, at 09:23, Marcus Bauer wrote:
> ...
> Openmoko should concentrate on kernel and driver work, power 
> management
> and working hardware and a basic set of apps. ...

+1
As Openmoko push more open hardware out the door, people will come 
running to do cool stuff on it.
It's the "blue sky" talk of "evoking innovation", "actualizing 
contributions" and "imagination resources" that is building 
excitement about Openmoko and leading to disappointment.
Honestly, if Openmoko said "the Freerunner is a free, open, Linux- 
based mobile phone that runs Trolltech's good old Qtopia phone 
software" then people would still be queuing up to buy it.
"oh, and by the way we're also developing some software of our own 
and you can try the open alpha if you want to" would be better than 
this "building the future" sort of stuff - although the latter phrase 
strictly indicates "it's not ready yet", it's far more evocative and 
emotional. We think we see our dreams *today* - no wonder people are 
peeved when they're dashed.
Stroller.