Re: [Fsuk-manchester] MeBoo and Android

[Michael Dorrington]

Tim Dobson wrote:
> On 02/06/10 00:15, Luke Taylor wrote:
>> I think that any discussion of MeGoo (or whatever it's called now) would be 
>> much more popular if it was a discussion about MeeGo and Android. I know a 
>> few people who are massive android geeks and would be v. interested. If 
>> people fancy, I would be more than happy to research and prepare a talk 
>> about how free Android is and what it means for free software as well as 
>> privacy issues etc. to compliment the MeMoo talk - what do folks think?
> 
> Meego's biggest problem when you try & evaluate whether its free or not
> is that you run into the problem that it's not been released and no-one
> really has a bleeding clue about it.
> 
> I can talk at length about the plans that Maemo had for version 6,
> including their free phone stack.
> 
> Here's a fairly dated [the n900 hadn't been released at the time]
> article comparing maemo to android.
> 
> http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/10/27/1335227/Comparing-the-Freedoms-Offered-By-Maemo-and-Android
> http://cool900.blogspot.com/2009/10/comparing-freedom-on-maemo-and-android.html

My response to your previous email with those links:
http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/fsuk-manchester/2009-11/msg00042.html

> from my perspective, I'll admit the key difference is technological:
> the maemo userland is pretty similar to that of a gnu/linux desktop -
> Xorg, gtk/qt etc. The fact that maemo uses the debian package system
> make it better and better [even if they did manage to create dependancy
> hell through bad QA].
> 
> The android stack of free [as in freedom] but proprietary framebuffer
> with userland based on Android's own sdk - a free [as in freedom] but
> propriety version java the more I get uncomfortable...

I too want something based on standard GNU desktop. Ideally, I'd like it
to be just Debian, using apps designed for the small touch screen
interface. Maemo, while not being whole that, shows that it could be done.

> Still, people have created their own android distros sucessfully - it's
> been ported to the openmoko freerunner and yet I'm yet to see a
> community spun maemo distro.

There was Mer <http://wiki.maemo.org/Mer> but it has become inactive
"due to the introduction of the MeeGo". :(

Mike.

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