And honestly, let's think about the other open source projects out there right now, shall we? The FSF loves pointing out the community behind freerunner is also behind Linux..yeah, when has that ever been a flawless experience for anyone with an excellent UI to match? Never. Because to the users and the hackers and the developers, it doesn't matter that much. When you're comfortable installing the likes of arch or gentoo, the command line is your friend and it all makes sense and you know how to fix issues. If you've only spent your entire life using Windows and you don't know how to do much, it's unusable. I have tried SO many times to get some people to switch to newbie-friendly distros like Ubuntu because I was sick of maintaining their Windows machines, and it's still impossible for a lot of them. The people who care about the freerunner wouldn't care so much about the major gripes most users would have about the phone. That is why this will never stop being an extremely niche product.
My two cents: Despite the feeling that I probably do have the know-how to fix some problems if I got a freerunner, I wouldn't buy a freerunner because I want a phone that just works with everything that I want with a minimal amount of hassle. Yay open source..I use Linux, but my main desktop will be OS X for convenience because Linux will never be able to match that. Just like how I got an iPhone..not because the ads told me they were cool..but because the phone just works and has everything I want. And in the very rare occasion I don't, and someone else hasn't come to the rescue, I could just open Xcode and hack something together. The freerunner can't even come close to it even if I hacked together a phone by myself with everything I want in it. I'm paying the price for convenience? Sure. But how much more time would I be paying in if I had a freerunner I could hack, but where nothing worked the way I wanted and it had no hardware I was interested in? Too much, especially some stuff that's totally out of my control and/or ability.
Oh yeah, this is all assuming the developers will love you forever if you fix a problem for them. If they don't..well..I suppose you could fork.
I'm trying not to criticize the people who are doing this, really, I love them for it. But if certain entities can get off their unjustified high horse(s) and get out of their fantasy worlds (cough fsf regarding the iPhone 3g cough) that would be nice.
Uh, I'm releasing other open source software (really free as opposed to shotgun-free, btw) which I have labored on in both private and professional time. I am already part of the "open source" community in my own areas of expertise, and that's more than most people do. It is not my fault nor my responsibility that the OpenMoko FreeRunner's UI is in a primitive state, nor am I obligated in any way to fix it. Every developer has their spheres of expertise, and you can't expect everyone to contribute to every project. Nor do they have to contribute in order to have the right to an opinion.
My video was certainly more constructive and fair than it had to be, I could have really laid into them. All I'm doing is pointing out that the FSF's contention that the OpenMoko project is anywhere near ready to challenge the current gen of smartphones is totally absurd.
> The developers will love you forever if you help them fix it. So will everyone else.
Fortunately I have a feeling of self-worth driven by other projects besides the OpenMoko project. I don't have to be involved with the project to express an opinion about it. And can anyone who has watched the video say I was inaccurate with either of them?
> So get off your ass and start helping, or at least stop criticizing the people that are donating their time to help keep software Free.
I am not criticizing the people, I am criticizing the product and the FSF's assertions. Completely different things. The OpenMoko guys are great, and I wish them luck. They need it, the smartphone market is in high gear with a lot of competition, and Apple has set the "good" UI bar and "quality" hardware bar extremely high.
So stop making excuses. A spade is a spade, and the FSF's bullshit "5 reasons to avoid iPhone" article is an atrocious me-tool hype-grabber on the order of RMS's criticism of Gates's philanthropy.
This is why commercial software ends up with such great user experiences compared to open source software.
Instead of posting an "lol" comment, it would be more helpful to patch the problematic areas of the Openmoko codebase. That way every person in the world would theoretically benefit from the 10 minutes of their time. Sitting and watching the video is worthless, and I wish I could post a sarcastic video about that.
Basically, as I mentioned above... if open source doesn't work for you, it's your fault for not fixing it. The developers will love you forever if you help them fix it. So will everyone else. So get off your ass and start helping, or at least stop criticizing the people that are donating their time to help keep software Free.