Comment woo! (Score 1) 147
A win for everyone!
Seriously though, hopefully this turns out the way id planned, and the linux and open source stuff doesn't get canned.
Actors age. (So do machines, but not the same way.) I think the main reason they killed off Data in the last Star Trek movie was the difficulty explaining away Brent Spinner's signs of age. So they set up a new character who's supposedly a sort of continuation of Data, all ready to to play the role in the next sequel
That sort of makes sense, but I'm thinking they replaced Data because, like his replacement, the earlier robotic/child-like Data is much more interesting than grown up Data (or any android) who has emotions and acts pretty much human.
... but doesn't expose you to tinkering with the widget set or dealing with "low-level" protocols like X11."
You're overreacting a little -- you don't need to know anything about X11, you just make a typical DisplayInit() or OpenWindow() call.
Letting people talk X11, create widget sets, install crazy operating systems (look ma! I'm running hurd!), ssh in**... It is too low level of an abstraction to be useful...
...
Basically... look at what Firefox is doing and why they are successful.
I know you're just making an example, but firefox is not an OS and besides, it's much easier to write an app for this phone than to write a firefox plugin. But, because the widget set isn't restricted, something like firefox can just be compiled for it (although lighter-weight browsers run faster).
Basically, pick a language you know and open a window.
Here's a simple python example that actually draws an image on my phone:
import pygame, time
pygame.init()
pygame.display.set_mode( (480,640) )
image = pygame.image.load("pic.png")
pygame.display.get_surface().blit(image, (5,5))
pygame.display.flip()
while 1: time.sleep(1)
It's just an illustration, but development is easy, although the graphics hardware is not that fast.
Picking a standard widget set? A standard look & feel? Sure, maybe they could have done that better, although they worked on it, but if you want to restrict people from ever changing the look of their buttons, etc., that's where Apple and the iphone development fits best (yes, I know it's very popular), not linux.
If you want a successful platform, you need to remove the ability to have a bazillion widget sets...
I'm not really sure what you're looking for, but it doesn't sound like you want an open source phone. It's a linux platform -- you can install whatever you want on it. Apple, Microsoft, and Google are happy to restrict what goes on their phones. And you don't really need to use X on openmoko devices -- if you prefer something else, you can still use Android, Qt, etc.
If you just said Openmoko should offer a standard look and widget set, I could agree. Openmoko had and still was developing their own UI look and feel, etc. but allowing only one widget set on a linux platform ignores lots of developers and applications. There are plenty of linux apps that can be cross-compiled and tweaked and plenty of open source developers who don't want to be forced to code using only your favorite UI widgets.
It's a naive, domestic operating system without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.