Where to get a smartphone *NOT* under contract?

Christopher Browne cbbrowne-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org
Thu Aug 18 20:12:59 UTC 2011


On Thu, Aug 18, 2011 at 3:39 PM, William O'Higgins Witteman
<william.ohiggins-H217xnMUJC0sA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 18, 2011 at 01:02:51PM -0400, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
>>On Thu, Aug 18, 2011 at 11:31:00AM -0400, Christopher Browne wrote:
>>> Indeed.  One of the more unsung brands that seems rather good is Archos.
>>
>>Too bad about 90% of android tablets currently violate the GPL.  How nice
>>of them.
>
> I have heard this, but so far just from enemies of Android/Google.  As
> for as I know there have been no enforcement actions.  The Android
> devices I have looked at all have the GPL and source code available -
> though it usually takes some digging to find it.

I don't consider myself an "enemy," but I have to agree with the claim
that they sure do *seem* to be violating the GPL.

http://projectgus.com/2010/07/open-source-in-android-tablets/

I had a (now-non-functional, seems to be a power issue, but not sure)
WITS A81e; none of those involved with vending it were willing to
provide the kernel sources that they used, and, as consequence, even
though there are quite a lot of them around, there aren't custom (and
better-than-stock) user environments ala CyanogenMod.

The Chinese manufacturers seem to be notably notorious for these
violations.  They live in an environment where Western laws are
recognized strangely, if at all, and it appears they are reluctant to
give their local competitors the leg-up of letting out information
about device drivers.
-- 
When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the
question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists





More information about the Legacy mailing list