Google's Buying Out Motorola For 12.5 Billion USD

[liam]

That only works if the patent owners are actually willing to license them. Apple is not, they intend on using their patents to ban their competition rather than licensing and making money that way. This gives Google the firepower to launch a countersuit, which can be used to leverage a cross-licensing agreement that the other side wouldn't agree to otherwise.

And the initial Google blog post about it mentioned patents quite prominently. It was definitely a large part of the reason they made this purchase. I'd guess controlling the whole stack is seen on an equal footing in terms of importance, or even a nice bonus, rather than the primary reason for purchasing Motorolla.

Quite recently Motorola made it clear they WANT people to pay for the use of their patents so I don't think this would be a problem.

[Zhick]

I hope this doesn't mean Motorola's version of Android becomes the "stock" version of Android. The Motorola Defy is probably the worst Android phone out there due to crashes, high battery use, and a lack of features in its software that people actually want and need...

That's why I run CyanogenMod7 on my Defy. You should try it, it's great and makes me <3 my Defy.
And if anything I'd expect this to mean the opposite, meaning Motorolas handsets using a more stock Android, like the Google Nexus phones.

[V!NCENT]

Yippy! Android. The worst phone OS in human history, with the exception of Windows Mobile...

Ditch this shit.

I'm waiting for open Maemo/Meego stuff. Maybe they care...

[Cyborg16]

Yippy! Android. The worst phone OS in human history, with the exception of Windows Mobile...

Ditch this shit.

I'm waiting for open Maemo/Meego stuff. Maybe they care...

You serious? I'm waiting for my N900 replacement... package management on maemo sucks. It could work, but somehow the official package manager on the N900 simultaeneously sucks and has compatibility issues with apt-get.

Maybe someday we'll just be able to install debian on phones...

[RealNC]

Maybe someday we'll just be able to install debian on phones...

I thought you can already do that:

Install Debian on Android
Debian Android Installer

[curaga]

Yippy! Android. The worst phone OS in human history, with the exception of Windows Mobile...

Ditch this shit.

You've never used Symbian, have you :P

[Cyborg16]

I thought you can already do that:

Install Debian on Android
Debian Android Installer

Chroot? I know about that. I was talking about replacing android completely. Probably for now relying on android to provide battery management, phone software and underlying drivers makes sense though.

[Ansla]

Chroot? I know about that. I was talking about replacing android completely. Probably for now relying on android to provide battery management, phone software and underlying drivers makes sense though.

Do you also know about Openmoko? The Freerunner hardware is old and buggy, but there is a 3G update in the works.

[Cyborg16]

Do you also know about Openmoko? The Freerunner hardware is old and buggy, but there is a 3G update in the works.

I've seen the old version, yes, but from what I could find out the devices had quite a few limitations. I'm hoping at some point debian or another distro can be installed on many smartphones the way you can just install linux on most laptop/desktop computers now and expect everything important to work and to have a device that's really competetive with mainstream devices but running open source software.

Is that going to happen with openmoko? Has it ever happened with open source hardware development? It's possible, but I don't have high hopes of that happening, but an atrix or galaxy S2 on debian? Probably won't happen in the lifetime of those phones but I don't see why we can't hope to see that happening a few years down the road.

In the mean-time I'll do the next best thing and use debian-chroot on top of android as RealNC suggested.

[b15hop]

You serious? I'm waiting for my N900 replacement... package management on maemo sucks. It could work, but somehow the official package manager on the N900 simultaeneously sucks and has compatibility issues with apt-get.

Maybe someday we'll just be able to install debian on phones...

Is it just me?

I get the feeling there will be a sea of phone distro's that will probably come out after we hit the phone upgrade wall. At this stage, phones are in the quick technology acceleration stage. So in the space of a 10 years they advanced at rate so fast, that phones only a few years old, look like bricks in comparison. I bet that the upgrade wall will stop soon, if it hasn't happened already. Seriously, how much better can phone technology get. Otherwise they'll overtake the PC market in no time. (like that'll ever happen!)

Once we hit that wall, the open source community will flourish... Think about it... Could you just imagine ubuntu on a phone? If not ubuntu, there will be other similar open source phone os's that will come out to compete with Android and iOS. Maybe not a technology wall but more like a buffer since new technology creation never stops. Either way phones will be very powerful in the next 10 years...

Think about what we'll be doing with these phones... Apart from all our personal stuff... : Music, videos, documents, work files, credit card, etc... It'll happen. Trust me. It's already happening. I don't think people will want to settle with just Android / iPhone. People will want to use a flavour of linux possibly.

I personally can't wait till that wall is hit, because I'm sick of the fanboy attitude towards smart phones. It's reminiscent of the car manufacturer bias that people have. People literally defend their little gadget like it's got feelings and is possibly hurting more than an inflated ego. Even though in 5 years time it will be more than likely chucked in the waste bin along with every other smart phone. Well hah! That's when I'm sure the linux 'hacking' community will shine.