“OpenMoko, the company behind the open source FreeRunner handset, is giving up on creating a new version in favour of fixing the old one and working on a new secret project. In a presentation at OpenExpo in Bern, the OpenMoko CEO, Sean Moss-Pultz, told delegates that development on the new handset – GTA03 – would be postponed while the FreeRunner is fixed and the company focuses on ‘Project B’. Staff levels are to be cut, though it seems some specialists have already left the company.”
These guys failed because of poor vision. They didn’t keep in mind that what was revolutionary about their phones was the open hardware platform, not the software. So they wasted a colossal amount of money, time and mindshare working on a new phone software stack that nobody wanted and really sucked in the end. Had they just released a WM phone with fully documented driver specs and linux drivers it would have been out the door two years ago in huge numbers and we’d all be running android or some other linux phone variant on it right now.
It really is a shame because even now with all the linux phone environments we can see that it isn’t really open unless you get all the drivers specs too and the FOSS community could have provided the software. There is nothing we can do about the hardware.
Every major chipset or phone maker releases “open” reference design hardware to encourage developers. OpenMoko was probably itself based on a ref design.
That would not have been a significant value-add for OpenMoko, unless OpenMoko could have generated the volume sales (without full software?) to bring down the per-unit cost for the manufacturing run.
OpenMoko had to be a complete linux phone software platform, or nothing. It they couldn’t do that in-house, then they needed a partner.