Exactly 10 years ago, on July 9th, 2007 we started to sell+ship the
first
I don't really have to add much to my ten years [of starting to work on] Openmoko anniversary blog post a year ago, but still thought it's worth while to point out the tenth anniversary.
It was exciting times, and there was a lot of pioneering spirit:
Building a Linux based smartphone with a 100% FOSS software stack on the
application processor, including all drivers, userland, applications -
at a time before Android was known or announced. As history shows, we'd
been working in parallel with Apple on the iPhone, and Google on
Android. Of course there's little chance that a small taiwanese company
can compete with the endless resources of the big industry giants, and
the many Neo1973 delays meant we had missed the window of opportunity to
be the first on the market.
It's sad that Openmoko (or similar projects) have not survived even as a
special-interest project for FOSS enthusiasts. Today, virtually all
options of smartphones are encumbered with way more proprietary blobs
than we could ever imagine back then.
In any case, the tenth anniversary of trying to change the amount of
Free Softwware in the smartphone world is worth some celebration. I'm
reaching out to old friends and colleagues, and I guess we'll have
somewhat of a celebration party both in Germany and in Taiwan (where
I'll be for my holidays from mid-September to mid-October).
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