[Gpephone-devel] intersection with openmoko?

[Nils Faerber]

Joshua Layne schrieb:
> Hi all,
Hi!

> This is probably a silly question and I am missing something fundamental,
> but how do this project and openmoko overlap (if at all) - I know that the
> UI is different, but what about the underlying subsystems?  I have looked
> (ok, glanced) at both architectures and they don't seem to be the same. 
> Yet I happened across a transcript of #openembedded that mentioned a
> neo1973 with an openmoko base and a g(pe)^2 frontend.
> 
> What am I missing on this?

Not much, good observation ;)

fact is that both projects suffer from being started non public so they
did not know from each other. Both had good reasons for doing so.
So far the history.
Today we have very good contact tothe OpenMoko developers. Their goal is
to implement "a" software stack for the phones they want to sell. Their
main objective os to make their phones usable.
The main goal of GPE Phone Edition is to create an environment and stack
that is as LiPS [1] compliant as possible, based on open source
components and being developed as an open source project. G(PE)^2 has no
concrete hardware target and is in fact desigend to run on a browad
range of devices.
OpenMoko in contrast has especially in its UI quiet strict constraints,
partially coming from the hardware design partially from their UI
designers. Not necessarily bad, but a difference to G(PE)^2 which aims
to be flexible, so thzat it can be customized to different look and
feels as easy as possible.

So where does this lead?
Well, especially the UI layer has differences from the architecture
point of view. But also a lot of similarities like we both use X11,
GTK+, Matchbox, etc. Parts that are today counted in the GMAE [2], the
Gnome Mobile And Embedded platform. We are sitting together with the
OpenMoko people in this forum and exchange ideas and hopefully one day
also implementation parts.

One part we might more closely work together with OpenMoko in th enear
future is exchanging LiPS compliant parts. This will hopefully be
beneficial for all of us if OpenMoko, G(PE)^2 and other start to base on
an to become industry standard set of APIs for mobile specific tasks.

[1] http://www.lipsforum.org
[2] http://www.gnome.org/mobile/

Does that give you an idea?
Buttomline is that we think that OpenMoko and G(PE)^2 are different
enough to have a productive coexistance and even can cross contribute
and collaborate.

> thanks in advance.
> josh
Cheers
  nils faerber

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