> As has been shown time and time again, vendors really don't want the burden of keeping your handset up to date forever because there is nothing in it for them, aside from perhaps avoiding too much negative press.
Then stop locking the bootloader and let me put the latest version of CM on my phone. I'm not going to buy Motorola and I'm not going to buy Samsung. Samsung won't release their kernel modifications for Froyo which are needed by the CM team to get CM7 running on the Galaxy S devices... Motorola is keeping the bootloader (and thus kernel) on their phones restricted. They're also not even close to timely on their updates. My D1 is running Gingerbread fairly stably, especially considering it's ONE maintainer disappeared two weeks ago due to personal financial concerns. OTOH, only one device is running GB from the manufacturer/carrier and that is Google's own phone.
Let me use my damn phone, I'll take care of the updates. I don't know how much simpler we can make installing CM7 and I know there are some/many/random-number people who have gone CM just to get the latest Android version.
Just developing GPL software for a certain part of an embedded system doesn't necessarily require all other hardware parts to be GPL'ed as well, just as your BIOS being proprietary doesn't violate the GPL if you're running Linux.
Would be great to see a fully open-source phone some day. I believe OpenMoko was striving for this goal, too.
Part of the problem is that they haven't shipped Froyo officially. But yes, manufacturers, even HTC, have been up to 6 months late delivering code as required via GPL.
Are we missing even Eclair source? I know Froyo and GB have changed things enough with some of the drivers that forward porting has been harder than expected... but if Eclair's source is missing, it seems the proper response is some sort of campaign to get Samsung in gear. I do think that HTC responded to GPL complaints when they had held out so long on releasing their kernel mods.
As I said elsewhere in the thread, vendors don't have to release source for drivers (kernel modules); AFAIK every Android phone uses proprietary GPU drivers at least. So even if a vendor released all the source that they're required to release, that may not be enough to create a custom ROM with a future version of Android.
This story was the one that broke the camel's back for me, in terms of waiting for Samsung/T-Mobile to ship a 2.2 update for the Vibrant. I dug around and found "Eugene's Ginger Clone" 2.2 ROM and installed it yesterday. My Vibrant is noticeably snappier, battery is lasting longer, and it's now devoid of bloatware.
But yes, I think someone is hacking on the Vibrant, but last I asked in #cyanogen or #koush, I was told that no one wanted to work on the S-G-S phones until more source was released by Samsung.
Also, that guide follows the same template as all their other build guides. If it works, I'm impressed, but I suspect it is a preliminary copy/paste job waiting to be filled in or expanded upon.
Then stop locking the bootloader and let me put the latest version of CM on my phone. I'm not going to buy Motorola and I'm not going to buy Samsung. Samsung won't release their kernel modifications for Froyo which are needed by the CM team to get CM7 running on the Galaxy S devices... Motorola is keeping the bootloader (and thus kernel) on their phones restricted. They're also not even close to timely on their updates. My D1 is running Gingerbread fairly stably, especially considering it's ONE maintainer disappeared two weeks ago due to personal financial concerns. OTOH, only one device is running GB from the manufacturer/carrier and that is Google's own phone.
Let me use my damn phone, I'll take care of the updates. I don't know how much simpler we can make installing CM7 and I know there are some/many/random-number people who have gone CM just to get the latest Android version.