yes, i get spam SMS. around contract-renewal time, i get a bunch of highly-undesirable get-your-service-through-us messages, which are definitely spam. moreover, i have automated systems sending me SMS, and i'd like to do client-side filtering on those so i'm not alerted except when i want to be. i could do some of that server-side, but (eg) the phone knows where i am, and the server doesn't, which makes client-side a better place to do "what time is it where i am today, and do i like being woken at that time" filtering.
i'm not convinced that "making phones work is massively expensive in terms of man hours and I just can't see the model for this.". making operating systems is massively expensive in terms of man-hours, but these can be and are made for free (see http://www.dwheeler.com/sloc/redhat71-v1/redhat71sloc.html , a 2002 estimate that red hat 7.1 involved around eight man-millenia of effort).
i'm not saying that all complex things can be made successfully on the free-software model. i'm saying that some can; mere complexity is no bar to a free-software model.
i have used open devices in the past that were failures (my agenda PDA, for one), because the code, in the end, didn't shape up. i have used open devices that were very successful (my laptop, under linux; my iRiver ogg player, under rockbox). i don't know which of these openmoko will turn out to be. i hope it will succeed, but i'm aware it may not. i'm not prepared to concede, however, that the project is implicitly impossible.
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i'm not convinced that "making phones work is massively expensive in terms of man hours and I just can't see the model for this.". making operating systems is massively expensive in terms of man-hours, but these can be and are made for free (see http://www.dwheeler.com/sloc/redhat71-v1/redhat71sloc.html , a 2002 estimate that red hat 7.1 involved around eight man-millenia of effort).
i'm not saying that all complex things can be made successfully on the free-software model. i'm saying that some can; mere complexity is no bar to a free-software model.
i have used open devices in the past that were failures (my agenda PDA, for one), because the code, in the end, didn't shape up. i have used open devices that were very successful (my laptop, under linux; my iRiver ogg player, under rockbox). i don't know which of these openmoko will turn out to be. i hope it will succeed, but i'm aware it may not. i'm not prepared to concede, however, that the project is implicitly impossible.