Dave’s Guide to the Best of the Web

Apple’s iPhone is a pretty sweet device from all reports, but by no means perfect. While many consumers enjoy the device for its own qualities, many open source advocates and other strange geeks (I’m talking about myself, so I feel qualified to make fun of myself) look upon the iPhone not so much as a gigantic step forward as an actual device, but rather as what it represents - a push for more innovation and a challenge to the incumbent cell phone carriers to offer more.

But what if everything Apple is offering and will offer will in the long-term be considered only a footnote in history? I think that there is a grand possibility that this will happen. Why? Because of a small company called OpenMoko which is building upon the revolutionary concepts of open source.

Open Source rebels against the traditional concepts of capitalism in some senses. I have talked to many who embrace that traditional concept and when explaining to them the options they have from open source I often find them responding with befuddled expressions indicating their confusion as to how anything that is really free can also be really profitable. If you aren’t a geek (yeah, with big glasses and never having met a girl in your life) you might not be aware of open source - but its real and revolutionary. You would probably recognize some of its successes such as Linux (an operating system and the grand-daddy of successful open source software), Mozilla Firefox (the web browser), or OpenOffice.Org (the office suite).

Open source is spreading itself throughout society. While initially operating mainly within the confines of computer software it has spread to the furthest reaches of the imagination - including cell phones. OpenMoko has recently released to the public (though asking that only developers purchase them) the Neo1973. This phone is expected to become widely available according to The Economist in November 2007. OpenMoko is an open source phone. It provides most of the features hardware wise you could hope for in a phone and then leaves the phone open for innovation by developers and users. Developers can write applications for it, users can connect to it on any of a variety of carriers. No longer is one locked into a mandatory (and unnecessary) set of applications or to a certain carrier - rather the phone is designed to allow anyone to design applications for it and to be utilized by any carrier that will allow it.

So, take a look at the OpenMoko sites. They are attractive, the phone is attractive, and the concept is attractive. While OpenMoko’s Neo1973 isn’t the phone to buy just yet, I expect it to begin chopping up market share like crazy in the near future. OpenMoko has two sites - the first is for the public consumption of the phone, the second is for developers (or those interested in weird things) to view and assist in the creation/editing/maintenance of the code base/featureset for OpenMoko’s cell phones.

Bookmark OpenMoko. They aren’t anybody just yet - but they will be.

Note: I am aware that Ubuntu is not “Linux” in its most technical and basic conception, but it is one of the best distributions of Linux available and I chose it as a representative of the whole.