OStatic

With the growing importance of the mobile web and applications that run on the device that we used to call a cell phone, open source users and developers are facing some fundamental choices. Just as open source software is not the mainstream offering for desktop computers, open source phones are the exception rather than the rule. But if you dig a bit, and you're willing to spend money or time, even your phone can be an open device.

As news of Openmoko's harsh but realistic look at the road ahead ripples through the open source and mobile technology sectors, there will be, beyond a doubt, much speculation on how the project's challenges could have been minimized and its successes built upon. Perhaps Openmoko's attempt to bring a completely open mobile phone to the world was Quixotic. Perhaps it was a good idea that simply launched at a bad time. Perhaps it was (and still is) a very workable idea -- or maybe it will always have an extremely niche appeal. Openmoko's pulling away from FreeRunner phones (and looking toward its Plan B ) might well work out just as Michael Lauer writes on his blog -- not at all as a death sentence, nor as any sort of indication that free platforms don't work (or aren't desired) on mobile phones.

BURLINGAME, Calif. - Can the power of open source be harnessed into the form factor of a cellular phone? That's the question Taiwan-based OpenMoko hopes to answer positively, when it starts to roll out its OpenMoko platform and phones later this year.