“Good news, open source enthusiasts: as they’ve done with pretty much every one of the Android phones and updates, Samsung has posted the open source code for the Ice Cream Sandwich version of the Galaxy S II’s operating system. While the update itself is only available in Europe and South Korea, any international version of the i9100 can apply it, and with the open source code ROM builders and other modders will be able to do more advanced ports and advanced ROMs.”
Hi David.
I see some special characters on your article that shows kind of squares. “as they’ve” and “he Galaxy S II’s operating system”
Please fix it.
(You are also free to erase this comment since it is just administrative stuff).
Thanks
Just relating to the Iranian interview with Stallman.
Yes, the source is available (Open Source), but is it free software, preventing creating tyrants?
== forgive me for the comment below, couldn’t resist ==
It is also just like with breasts at a strip club: http://polykaj.pl/assets/Grafika/_resampled/resizedimage235324-CowT…
Hi pysiak
I learned that the difference between Open Source and Free Software is just philosophical.
Open Source does not just mean “here it is the source code”
In legal terms Open Source and Free Software shared the almost same use licenses. You can see that the software licenses that OSI consider Open Source are almost the same than the software licenses that the FSF consider Free Software.
Any close source driver, it is not open source. Any binary blob it is not open source. Just showing the source code and not describing its use license it is not open source.
Any discussion of what is better, open source or free software it is just philosophical and differ a lot from person to person, that I why I prefer just to stick with the legal terms and the rules you have to follow on each license.
Lame. Try again.
It’s worth pointing out that Samsung have only released their fork of the Android kernel as open source, which they are legally obliged to under the GPL.
Does it include drivers or are those supplied as binary blobs ?
If drivers are included (I doubt it), this might help Cyanogen. Otherwise, it’s pretty useless.
Any binary blobs will be included on the phone, so you’ll be able to use them with a modified version of the kernel.
There are so many versions of the SGS II. I can’t keep track of what is common between them and what are just re-brandings.
Does anyone know if this is applicable to the T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S II?