OStatic

With the growing importance of the "mobile web" and applications that run on the device that we used to call a cell phone, open source users and developers are facing some fundamental choices. Just as open source software is not the mainstream offering for desktop computers, open source phones are the exception rather than the rule. But if you dig a bit, and you're willing to spend money or time, even your phone can be an open device.

If all you want to do is develop or run open source software on your handset, then all the major players have you covered. You can buy a copy of Visual Studio to develop applications for Windows Mobile, or download a free beta of the iPhone SDK from Apple, and share your software to your heart's content. Well, almost: Apple is going to maintain some control over what iPhone users can buy from their devices, and it's not yet clear how this will play out with open source software.

But what if you want not just the application layer, but the underlying phone itself, to be open source? In this case, you have two main choices. The first, and the one that has gotten the most press lately, is Google Android. No Android phones exist yet, but Google has started releasing the software - a GPL'd kernel - and they've announced plans to use the Apache License for the final software. Using ASL rather than GPL means that handset manufacturers will be able to add their own enhancements to the Android code without any requirement for sharing back with the community.

Android only gets you so far with open source; although the software itself will be open (or at least it will start as open, though there could be closed parts in any particular device), most people will need to pick up a closed device from some member of the Open Handset Alliance to run it. If you want openness all the way down, you need to turn to OpenMoko.

With OpenMoko everything is open source: the software (GPL and LGPL licensed), the hardware plans, even the CAD drawings for the case. The tradeoff is that it'll cost you about $400 for their second-generation device (due out this month). Most regular cell phone users are unlikely to be willing to put that much premium on freedom.

One final possibility is interesting to those who like the OpenMoko hardware but think Android has a better chance of delivering sophisticated applications quickly (due to Google's clout and cash bonuses for development): run Android software on an OpenMoko phone. Though not currently possible (due to conflicts between Android's required instruction set and the CPU used by the available OpenMoko phones), this could happen in the future as both projects evolve.

Are you waiting for more open phones to become a reality? Or is the operating system in your phone of no more interest to you than the one that runs your car's engine?

• Android
• openmoko
• phone