Re: [Ghm-discuss] [gnu-prog-discuss] Planning the next GNU Hackers Meeting

[Christopher Allan Webber]

I would also like to see GNU move into this space.  We've seen GNU/Linux
head down this path several times but flop and fail (and never
completely free of course, often times not even close, but the
infrastructure pointing in a direction that *could* have become free).

I've sometimes wondered if GNOME really could head in that direction.
Something that maybe looked a lot like:

 - Freesmartphone.org or ofono as the generic phone stack (the design
   seemed good, good enough for ofono to pretty much duplicate/rip off
   entirely ;))
 - GTK+3 as the UI kit.
 - Something that looks a lot like Maemo 5 for the phone bits.  Maemo 5
   had a really great GUI, had a lot of proprietary bits, but was really
   super pleasant to use.
 - Instead of reinventing the distro, try to work *with* distros like
   Debian, Trisquel, Fedora to get the mobile tooling packaged.
 - Also, on the "tablet" front, I've been using Gnome 3 on my combo
   laptop/tablet thinkpad x220.  It's *very nice* in tablet mode, and
   thanks to the intel drivers it's possible to completely run a free
   software system with this.

We've seen a lot of attempts to move into the tablet/mobile space that
have failed because it's hard, because it wasn't clear what the future
would look like here, and because manufacturers have felt the need to
reinvent everything.  Something along the lines of the design of meeting
Gnome 3 and Maemo 5 halfway while using a generic API under the hood
like freesmartphone.org provided would really fit that pretty well.

 - Chris

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

> Most users are moving from PCs to phones and tablets.  GNU needs to
> make this move, too, somehow.  The issue is to find a feasible path.
>
> It is a hard problem because of several difficulties.
>
> * The new hardware is a lot more secret than PC hardware.
>
> * Much of the hardware is tivoized.
>
> * We need work on software for phone calls.
>
> * The GUIs may need to be very different.
>
> * Lots of important features are patented and developers
> are actually being sued.
>
> For legal reasons, it is vitally important for us not to find out what
> the specific patents are.  To have such knowledge would make us more
> vulnerable.  If you ever happen to know about specific software
> patents, please DO NOT talk about them in email to software
> developers.  Especially not in email, whose existence would be
> provable later.  Eyes shut is the rule with this twisted system!