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These are the slides of my talk at FrOSCon 2011: "Innovation especially in the mobile market is currently driven by mostly proprietary technology. Not only Apple with its iOS and accompanying products but also Google with its behind-closed-doors development approach towards Android are threatening approaches which foster open development processes. Which technologies and business models can survive in such an environment? This talk will give an overview on the current Open Source and Free Software commitments of companies driving the mobile market. I will give insights into how much Android is actually free in GNU's sense of freedom and cover the potential of driving forces of the mobile evolution such as app stores to foster free access to data, code and people."
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„This will be the year of Linux on the desktop“
The Netbook backdoor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ASUS_Eee_White_Alt.jpg
The Netbook backdoor
DENIED BY USERShttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ASUS_Eee_White_Alt.jpg
http://www.zazzle.com/i_love_smart_phones_hat-148564865729429126
Android: 36%
Symbian: 27%
IOS: 17%
RIM: 13%
Microsoft: 4%
Others: 3%
Smartphone Market Share Q1 2011
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1689814
Android: 10%
Symbian: 44%
IOS: 15%
RIM: 20%
Microsoft: 7%
Others: 4%
Smartphone Market Share Q1 2010
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1689814
Hardware
Software/Apps
Operating System
●Completely proprietary (besides some parts)●That's it
Operating system
Dev tools
●iOS SDK: Developer program fee ($99/year)●Xcode (Objective-C)●Mac only
Apps/Ecosystem
●Only on Apple's App Store●Not GPL-compatible („Usage Rules“)●The Usage Rules are very scary for every Free Software developer●Open Source software exists nevertheless
Apps/Ecosystem
Fun fact: The Developer Program license agreement does explicitely forbid you to use the location services API for fleet management.
Operating system
●First proprietary, then open, then proprietary again●Source code not available●No political backing by Nokia anymore
Symbian
Operating system
How many points out of 100 do you think Android would score in a test auditing its openness?
Operating system
●Most parts licensed under GPL (Linux), LGPL (WebKit) and Apache License (Android specific components)●Trademark owned by Google●Source code released „at will“ by Google●Officially maintained by Open Handset Alliance which is not a legal entity
Operating system
●Development behind closed doors●Linux kernel forked without merging back (who's to blame here?)●There exists a Contributor Agreement though it is highly unlikely that many 3rd party contributors exist●Very good documentation●No public Roadmap●Closed apps like Gmail and Market
Operating system
Fun fact: Android scored 23 out of 100 points in the Open Governance Index
http://www.visionmobile.com/research.php#OGI
Dev tools
●SDK: Can be freely downloaded, source in repo only●Win, Mac, Linux●ADT plugin for Eclipse●NDK: For C or C++ development
Apps/Ecosystem
●Android Market: central app repo●Installation of apps directly is possible (easily)●Market is GPL-compatible
Vendor ecosystem
●HTC: Sense UI is now (probably) open source●Motorola: Proudly presented by Google●Samsung: Unlocked bootloaders? Hired Cyanogen
==> All in all, vendors have not much to say
Patent craze
http://blog.thomsonreuters.com/index.php/mobile-patent-suits-graphic-of-the-day/
http://esearch.oami.europa.eu/copla/design/data/000181607-0001
http://esearch.oami.europa.eu/copla/design/data/000181607-0001
Is there a way towards truly open smartphone OSes?
Not as long as patent and related laws are revised
categorically!
A Free OS needs to be governed by a community of users,
developers and vendors; not by a single company
The Web is the only truly open, device-independent platform
Browsers in smartphones are very powerful (in terms of
performance)
Access to phone functions
●Accelerometer/Orientation => DeviceOrientation (W3C)●Location => Geolocation API (W3C)●Camera/Audio => HTML Media Capture (W3C)●3D capabilities => WebGL (W3C)●Offline apps => Offline web applications (W3C)●...
Most probably 50% of all native smartphone apps could very well be implemented as Web
Applications
Mozilla is one of the most important driving forces behind
this
What are the major barriers for a wider distribution of web apps
instead of native apps?
●Finding apps●Launching apps
Enter Mozilla's Web Apps spec:
https://apps.mozillalabs.com/
Allows devs to let the user install their website into his
browser
The Web is the future of mobile Free Software!
Think about it when starting your next mobile software
project...
