These are the slides of my talk at FrOSCon 2011: "Innovation especially in the mobile market is currently driven by mostly proprietary technology. Not only Apple with its iOS and accompanying products but also Google with its behind-closed-doors development approach towards Android are threatening approaches which foster open development processes. Which technologies and business models can survive in such an environment? This talk will give an overview on the current Open Source and Free Software commitments of companies driving the mobile market. I will give insights into how much Android is actually free in GNU's sense of freedom and cover the potential of driving forces of the mobile evolution such as app stores to foster free access to data, code and people."

1. „This will be the year of Linux
on the desktop“

2. The Netbook backdoor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ASUS_Eee_White_Alt.jpg

3. The Netbook backdoor
D
EN
IE
D
B
Y
U
SE
R
S
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ASUS_Eee_White_Alt.jpg

4. http://www.zazzle.com/i_love_smart_phones_hat-148564865729429126

5. Smartphone Market Share Q1 2011
Others: 3%
Microsoft: 4%
RIM: 13%
Android: 36%
IOS: 17%
Symbian: 27%
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1689814

6. Smartphone Market Share Q1 2010
Others: 4%
Microsoft: 7%
Android: 10%
RIM: 20%
Symbian: 44%
IOS: 15%
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1689814

7. Software/Apps
Operating System
Hardware

9. Operating system
●Completely proprietary (besides some parts)
●That's it

10. Dev tools
●iOS SDK: Developer program fee ($99/year)
●Xcode (Objective-C)
●Mac only

11. Apps/Ecosystem
●Only on Apple's App Store
●Not GPL-compatible („Usage Rules“)
●The Usage Rules are very scary for every Free
Software developer
●Open Source software exists nevertheless

12. Apps/Ecosystem
Fun fact: The Developer Program license
agreement does explicitely forbid you to
use the location services API for fleet
management.

14. Operating system
●First proprietary, then open, then proprietary
again
Source code not available
●
No political backing by Nokia anymore
●

15. Symbian

17. Operating system
How many points out of 100 do you
think Android would score in a test
auditing its openness?

18. Operating system
●Most parts licensed under GPL (Linux), LGPL
(WebKit) and Apache License (Android specific
components)
Trademark owned by Google
●
Source code released „at will“ by Google
●
Officially maintained by Open Handset
●
Alliance which is not a legal entity

19. Operating system
Development behind closed doors
●
●Linux kernel forked without merging back
(who's to blame here?)
●There exists a Contributor Agreement though
it is highly unlikely that many 3rd party
contributors exist
Very good documentation
●
No public Roadmap
●
Closed apps like Gmail and Market
●

20. Operating system
Fun fact: Android scored 23 out of 100
points in the Open Governance Index
http://www.visionmobile.com/research.php#OGI

21. Dev tools
●SDK: Can be freely downloaded, source in
repo only
●Win, Mac, Linux
●ADT plugin for Eclipse
●NDK: For C or C++ development

22. Apps/Ecosystem
●Android Market: central app repo
●Installation of apps directly is possible (easily)
●Market is GPL-compatible

23. Vendor ecosystem
●HTC: Sense UI is now (probably) open source
●Motorola: Proudly presented by Google
Samsung: Unlocked bootloaders? Hired
●
Cyanogen
==> All in all, vendors have not much to say

24. Patent craze

25. http://blog.thomsonreuters.com/index.php/mobile-patent-suits-graphic-of-the-day/

26. http://esearch.oami.europa.eu/copla/design/data/000181607-0001

27. http://esearch.oami.europa.eu/copla/design/data/000181607-0001

28. Is there a way towards truly
open smartphone OSes?

29. Not as long as patent and
related laws are revised
categorically!

30. A Free OS needs to be governed
by a community of users,
developers and vendors; not by
a single company

31. The Web is the only truly open,
device-independent platform

32. Browsers in smartphones are
very powerful (in terms of
performance)

33. Access to phone functions
● Accelerometer/Orientation => DeviceOrientation (W3C)
● Location => Geolocation API (W3C)
● Camera/Audio => HTML Media Capture (W3C)
● 3D capabilities => WebGL (W3C)
● Offline apps => Offline web applications (W3C)
● ...

34. Most probably 50% of all native
smartphone apps could very
well be implemented as Web
Applications

35. Mozilla is one of the most
important driving forces behind
this

36. What are the major barriers for a
wider distribution of web apps
instead of native apps?
●Finding apps
●Launching apps

37. Enter Mozilla's Web Apps spec:
https://apps.mozillalabs.com/
Allows devs to let the user
install their website into his
browser

38. The Web is the future of mobile
Free Software!
Think about it when starting
your next mobile software
project...