[Gpephone-devel] Motorola Linux question

[Nils Faerber]

Andrew Fenn schrieb:
> Hi,
Hello!

[I had to approve your post, are you already subscribed or did you use a
different address?]

> Sorry I haven't had a lot of time to research this but my phone is a
> Motorola A1200 and has the Linux kernel loaded on it with Motorola's
> propitiatory GUI wacked on top.

We also have one of those at hand, Orange/FT was so kind to provide us
one for hacking.

> I was wondering if anyone knows of a project to rip out Motorola's GUI
> and make the phone "free-er"?

It is a hard work.

Motorola did a pretty good job to nail the software into that thing :(

First of all they use some SE-Linux variant. So even if you get root
access on it you will not be able to kill system processes or to write
to critical parts of the flash.
So you have to replace the kernel first.
If you look at open-ezx and then at the Motorola open source site you
can get what seems to be necessary. But the Motorola kernel they provide
is incomplete and buggy. And even after compiling it (fixing) the bugs
you get a kernel which runs the basi machine but quite obviously is not
the same as the pre-installed kernel image from Motorola - almost
nothing works anymore.

So yes, it should be possible to replace Moto-stuff on it.
But it will be a major effort to do so and I really do not see much
point in more or less reverse engeneering their stuff, creating a nice
and free envrionment and basically giving that to Motorola for free.

Motorola does a pretty bad job at working with open source. I do not
like the idea of helping them unless they do better. For now I do not
see any tendency at Motorola to do so.

So in case some from Motorola is listening here:
Please open up your Linux based devices!
Repect the open source licenses, especially the GPL!
And if you want to be a good player, support the open source community
at large - look at Nokia how to do that properly.
If you do so you will gain a lot of respect and support from the
community I am sure.

So long story short, I am not a big fan of working on the Linux Motorola
phones because I think they are almost not worth being called "Linux
phones" - this is misleading. In case someone should still want to do,
well, be our guest! It will still be welcome, of course.


Orange/FT was so kind to provide us another phone now that we might
start hacking with: HTC C600 (aka SPV C600). It is a quite standard
design from HTC which should be hackable. This is then at least a more
honest project - we free that from from its original OS which has
nothing in common with open source.

Another very very interesting target of course will be the OpenMoko
Neo-1973 phone - truly the first real Linux phone that deserves the name ;)

> Thanks,
> Andrew
Cheers
  nils faerber

-- 
kernel concepts GbR      Tel: +49-271-771091-12
Sieghuetter Hauptweg 48  Fax: +49-271-771091-19
D-57072 Siegen           Mob: +49-176-21024535
--