Ted Ts'o: kernel developer

Before lunch, Theodore Ts'o, the first Linux kernel developer from North America, talked about the history and current direction of the Linux community. He made some very valid points.

Ts'o talked about the problems developers face regarding intellectual property law, including copyright issues with the DMCA, patent trolls, and trade secrets, and urge programmers to get involved with the political process. He went on to discuss one of the hot topics in open source software: GPLv2 vs GPLv3. He clarified the arguments a little more, but said that Linux will probably never adopt GPLv3.

He then urged developers to work to make software easier. Microsoft and Apple have spent millions on usability testing, and the Linux community needs to band together to improve Linux usability. Also, he talked about getting ISVs to adhere to LSB. "Some software will always be proprietary," Ts'o said, such as tax preparation software and games, but he then challenged developers to change that.

Lastly, Ts'o said that the Linux community should convince others to use open formats, such as OpenDocument, since those formats are available on Windows®. Once those people have switched to open formats, they are clear to move to Linux, since compatibility is always an issue in a platform switch.

Lunch

Lunch was served in the atrium area of the Congress Center. It was a decently-priced pasta bar with chicken and vegetables.

OpenMoko

After lunch, the trio attended Ian Darwin's talk on the OpenMoko project. He started off with this soundbyte: "Can you ssh into your phone?" He outlined some ways that people like to change their phone. Some just want the little things, such as display prefernces, themes, ringtones—things that the major carriers tout as the features to have. Other people want medium-level features, such as adding new third-party applications, as well as self-authored applications. Most phones are incapable of this, but the environment for this is slowly changing. Even fewer people want significant changing features, such as replacing the entire operating system of the phone. This is the point of the OpenMoko. Give people the most choice and they will change it as much as they feel comfortable. Giving users unlimited choice, Darwin said, is "religion, not marketing."

Darwin pointed out the differences between the development of the Internet and of mobile phones. While the Internet is based on open standards with "few barriers to entry", but mobile phones have expensive implementations and specifications, as well as secretive development. Obviously, this results in more innovation on the Internet than in the mobile phone industry.

So, rather than focus on selling a service, FIC is developing a robust hardware platform which users can decide how they wish to use it. The intended software is OpenMoko, a Linux distribution built for the Neo1973, the phone depicted on the OpenMoko web site. FIC's business model for the Neo1973 and OpenMoko is to sell hardware and give away the code for free.

Darwin went on to explain the hardware and software architecture of the Neo1973, and explained that users are free to choose TrollTech's QTopia platform, or even Sun's JavaFX Mobile. Users could even choose a BSD, should the BSD community ever develop a distribution for mobile phones.

Interestingly, there was a guy sitting behind me using a Nokia E770 Internet Tablet with a Dell Bluetooth keyboard to take notes. It runs Debian, and the lad was using an LCARS theme. I'm not a fan of Star Trek, but, damn, that thing looked really cool.

Next: Town Hall