The Linux promise
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| When you think “iPhone”, you may just soon find yourself thinking “lock-in”
| with every feature, as a customer of Apple’s phone, services, and partners.
| Fortunately, hope springs eternal. Increasingly, all other handset
| manufacturers are coming together and embracing Linux as their platform.
| Linux fundamentally promises “freedom” and “openness”, enabling you to
| unshackle yourself from vendors who wish to tie you in with their hardware,
| software and services. Linux also spoils you for choice: You get access to a
| much larger base of software that is being developed or ported to mobiles.
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http://www.livemint.com/2008/06/17232359/The-Linux-promise.html
Google exec: Tight creative loop critical for Web products
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| Android, the open source Linux-based mobile platform, the development of
| which is under the jurisdiction of the Google-led Open Handset Alliance, will
| ensure its competitive advantage by employing "Internet style innovation,"
| said Andy Rubin, senior director, mobile platforms, Google.
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http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/061708-google-exec-tight-creative-loop.html
Recent:
Google Exec: Android To Beat iPhone
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| Rich Miner even went after Apple's handheld darling. "Once you have devices
| out there from Motorola, HTC, Samsung, and so on, there's a much larger
| potential market on Android than for the iPhone," he said. "[T]here's a
| single manufacturer, it's targeted at a particular demographic, and it falls
| far short of the 1 billion mobile phones sold every year worldwide."
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http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/03/17/google-exec-android-to-beat-iphone
iPhone vs. Android : An Open Source Devs Perspective
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| According to Andrea Gazzaniga, software development manager at mobile open
| source vendor Funambol the answer is not entirely clear. In a rambling
| overflow presentation at AjaxWorld's iPhone Sumitt, Gazzaniga attempted to
| outline the differences and similiaraties between iPhone and Android.
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http://blog.internetnews.com/skerner/2008/03/iphone-vs-android-an-open-sour.html
Feeling the heat at Microsoft
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| A couple of years ago you reiterated that IBM was Microsoft's biggest
| competitor and you said not just on the business side, but overall. If I ask
| you who is Microsoft's biggest competitor now, who would it be?
|
| Ballmer: Open...Linux. I don't want to say open source. Linux, certainly have
| to go with that.
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http://www.news.com/Feeling-the-heat-at-Microsoft/2008-1012_3-6232458.html?tag=ne.fd.mnbc
Unlocking Android
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| Miner says that more than 750,000 developers have downloaded the tool
| required to write an Android-based program, four times as many as accessed
| the iPhone’s tightly regulated kit. That means Android users could have far
| more mobile applications to choose from. But we still don’t know how those
| apps will stack up next to Apple’s. Android-equipped phones—set to go on sale
| this summer—should be less expensive than the iPhone, since manufacturers
| won’t have to pay licensing fees for the software. But instead of getting
| free, ad-subsidized service, like Google’s e-mail, you’ll still shell out to
| carriers. Which makes us wonder: Is this really so new, or just another
| offering in the crowded mobile market? We spoke with Rich Miner, head of
| Google’s mobile-platform division, for some clarity.
|
| [...]
|
| Q: Aren’t there other open-source phones out there?
| A: There’s open-source, and there’s what the industry refers to as open.
| There are other Linux-based initiatives but all of the other things you need
| to build a phone, like media codecs [software decoders], Web browsers, phone
| dialers, databases, security models—all that stuff is built on top of Linux
| in ways that aren’t necessarily open. Linux ends up being a very small
| portion. Everything a developer needs to build a phone, we’re releasing
| open-source.
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http://www.popsci.com/gear-gadgets/article/2008-06/unlocking-android
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