Voikko for N800 Internet Tablet + some AbiWord

A short note in case some people are interested: I just built Voikko, the open source Finnish spell-checking software, for Nokia N800. Instructions are available on how to install it. Note that I only very shortly tested it from the command line ("works, good"). I mainly wanted just to try reprero to do something, which provided to be very easy.

Apparently the ISP I used to host the files does not allow directory browsing. The Sources.gz file tells the whole story, ie. I also built and provide enchant, hunspell libraries which are not included on the tablet itself.

Addendum: I also tried building AbiWord to test Voikko graphically, using Ryan's instructions. I built the needed packages gsfonts, fribidi, libgsf (newer than maemo 3.1's libosso-gsf), libwmf and wv - they are now available in the same repository as Voikko. I quickly tested the AbiWord I built, but removed it from the repository as for some reason I didn't get hildon UI even though it should have been configured, eg. no keyboard input, and also because the plugins would be very much welcome too and I had some problems with those. But I did load up some text file and succesfully tested the spell-checking feature of AbiWord in Finnish, and it worked fluently :)

Openmind/Mindtrek

Openmind was held as part of and partly preceding MindTrek. On Tuesday the 2nd of October, talks included those from Novell, LiPS, Gnome etc. and also some Finnish companies like Saunalahti and Codento (as part of the Star Wreck Studios talk). Also our company, Nomovok, offered a talk about open source in public sector. For me the most interesting speech was that of OpenMoko by Michael Shiloh from FIC.

On Wednesday Open Source Business and Innovation was one track of the five in MindTrek. Speeches included those from Sun by Thorbiorn Fritzon and from Canonical by Amy Jiang (in picture). One especially nice thing was that also one of the keynote speakers in MindTrek Plenary was about free (as in freedom) software, namely The age of literate machines - a visionary look at open source by Zak Greant from Foo Associates, mozilla.org and more. I think it was a good general introduction to not just the term open source but the more general freedoms, since the public in general might be more interested in the freedoms free software gives than only the fact that one can see the source code - not too many people are coders after all.

The best part anyway was meeting the people, since concerning many talks I knew most of the stuff presented and the information given is probably more of use to people not that knowledgeable in libre software. Openmind Club on Tuesday evening was a successful event together with the various coffee breaks and lunches.

When a device simply works; TrekStor vibez

It's interesting to think whether a device is so simple that you just don't need any changes to it, and you have no relevant risks running proprietary software on the device. Take for example this TrekStor vibez 12GB I just bought. Its software is not free as in freedom, but related to freedoms it does play my FLAC and Ogg files just fine, in a gapless way and is really smooth to use. On the other hand, on my Nokia N800 I already feel constrained in some ways. And then again, I'm quite satisfied with my Panasonic camera.

After pondering for a while, I came to a conclusion that if the device is a) constantly holding my personal data and b) able to communicate via various wireless methods to the Internet and other devices, then I'm starting to (really) yearn for a completely free software.

Connected and non-connected devices

In the case of Vibez, it has the features I need, and I don't need to think about whether there is some proprietary software connecting to other devices or to the Internet - the only case where it is connected is when it acts as a USB mass storage device to my desktop computer.

(Of course, there are a _few_ small features I would like to add and share with others if I could, but it's not fatal not to have those.)

With the camera, it's quite similar. I take photos and before I actually do anything with the data, I've already transferred those off from the camera, and the camera surely does not share any of my photos with the surrounding device even by accident. When the cameras get integrated Bluetooth or WLAN connections, I probably would like the camera software to be libre, too.

(And of course, I also have a couple of UI issues with my camera, which I would like to fix already...)

But with eg. an Internet Tablet, I'm communicating with my friends, it saves my passwords, it has constantly an access to WLAN networks and my Bluetooth EDGE phone. There is a lot of proprietary software on the N800, including lots concerning the access to hardware and many base libraries. I cannot change them or access the source code for them. What I would like to do with the Internet Tablet would be to install eg. the latest ARM version of Debian with eg. an "n800"-task. Or just be provided a similar setup out-of-the-box, ie. so that there is no way a power-user or a developer could feel hindered because of the proprietary software components in the device, even if the default configuration would naturally be so that all that is hidden from the casual user.

Coming back to my previous comparison with the FIC's Neo GSM/GPS device, it _is_ build completely with OpenEmbedded/Ångstrom, and it seems it will be a somewhat similar experience to the freedoms I'm enjoying on my desktops when using eg. Ubuntu, Debian and openSUSE. I can also give contributions to any software in it, if I want. And if I don't want, I can just use the (hopefully) quality software and be assured I can always check things if I want to.

Oh, the vibez itself

Aside from these thoughts, I really have to heartily recommend the TrekStor vibez to anyone in search of eg. a successor to the iAudio's M3/X5 devices, or anyone needing more than 4GB of storage and the playback ability of FLAC and Ogg Vorbis files. My previous player was a two-year old iAudio M3, and vibez has a remarkably smaller size, _very_ nice UI and other features. I hope that iAudio has some kind of a response in its mind, since iAudio 6, the rather comparable 4GB player from iAudio, is really lacking storage-wise if compared to vibez, and possibly in features too.

Maemo has a competitor in openness - OpenMoko

Great news for all the people who want their mobile devices to have some of that trustworthiness than their desktops. Two new, largely open Linux mobile devices are now or soon to be available: Nokia N800 (using maemo platform) and FIC Neo1973 (using OpenMoko platform). The former is a WLAN Internet Tablet, while the latter is a GSM/GPRS phone - but both share quite a lot in terms of RAM available (128MB), storage (eg. MicroSD), screen (ca. VGA touchscreen) etc.

Everyone knows already about maemo - Nokia's entry to open-source world. It's also clear that they have only began the path, and there are obvious compromises to the "openness" which is so widely touted about maemo - browsing is done with a closed-source browser, and with regards to media playing no open audio or video format is supported while many proprietary formats are. Being "open" is not just "you can install open source applications", it's also standing behind the open movement that is providing much of your device's functionality, and Nokia is not (at least yet) doing that, most probably partly because they are a big company.

OpenMoko, however, seems like a much more fresher start with regards to openness - with maemo the number of closed parts is too high to measure, but with OpenMoko it's clear that the process has been started from "all open" point of view. "Open, But No As Usual"-presentation illustrates this quite nicely.

At this point, it's of course clear that Nokia has already had a product out for over a year, and a new product is now selling. It may very well be that the largest mobile company in the world will dominate the device sales by other means - marketing, hardware quality, whatever. But still, it's clear that OpenMoko-based devices are superior in openness, so if they can match Nokia with product quality otherwise, and come up with new devices (eg. a WLAN-device), they might be in for some nice market share. It's all uncertain at this point, but highly interesting.

It's also interesting to see if this is where Nokia is stopping with its progress towards libre/open world (not just software), ie. "semi-open and relatively safe", or is it seeing that making even non-obvious (from marketing point of view) moves towards supporting eg. open media standards is worthwhile in the long run. I don't see any big improvements on this front if comparing Nokia 770 and N800, even though the development environment has again improved.

Game consoles and Linux

It's been announced long ago that PS3 will have Linux, though it's yet not sure if it's the actual OS for games or a dual-booting feature. Now there are people deciphering that an interview further emphasizes the possibility of Linux in Wii, too. And whether that is true or not, and whether Nintendo's Linux is a fully open platform or a proprietary one (except for code required to be published, eg. kernel), a fully open GNU/Linux for Wii is under development and scheduled to have something real available before Wii even ships.

With all this going on in entertainment devices and other embedded devices, one can only speculate if the possible successor for Xbox 360 will have Linux, too? Or would it be perhaps too humiliating to some parties...

Embedded Debian gadget of the day

We often hear the most stories about all the cool multimedia entertainment devices running Linux, but here's a "real" embedded device without all the glitter: Embedian's EBC-series. There's no single purpose those have designed for, so you can pick your box and put into use. I can see various amounts of eg. industrial automation you could do with this device, and do it with a fast start - everything is ready for attaching eg. measurement devices. Also the tools for controlling eg. sensors, robotics or for analyzing data might also be readily available in some open source project already, or could be implemented on top of some more general open source solutions more easily than developing from scratch. The devices seem to have designed with heavy environment requirements in mind, so those are definitely not the choice for home environment, but offer quite nice amount of opportunities in industrial environments.

Of course, stuff like this has been available before, but combining Debian with low-power devices (max. 2W) like the EBC-series' models should give a good run for the money for any proprietary solutions with regards to flexibility and price.

About the last bastions...

Related to the my first post, open source graphics drivers seem (Intel) to be having some boost (AMD) just now. This can only be a good thing, especially if the AMD (which bought ATI) part really happens. Closed graphics drivers are a pain to use, install or integrate in an otherwise open system like Linux. It would help if there was one other Big gfx chip vendor besides Intel that releases high-quality open source drivers. I believe it when I see it - the MIT (X/DRI part) and GPL (kernel part) licensed drivers with full support for all features. There were rumors about XGI releasing all of its drivers as open source, but nothing has been heard since ATI bought a part of XGI. AMD is a different thing, though, because AMD is competing directly with Intel.

Sony has got an embedded Linux

Sony Mylo looks like a nice Linux device. I have to emphasize the word looks, since the device looks really nifty, at least if the point was to make bit toy-like device with a nicely embedded qwerty keyboard. Sony seems to experiment with different kind of new entertainment devices, but it's hard to say what people are really interested in using it. Mylo can't connect to other devices via Bluetooth, and its display is similar in resolution to what's on my GSM phone currently. And there are just too many half-baked music player solutions already on the market, Mylo also has small storage space and plays only proprietary audio formats.

The device is using Wind River's embedded Linux system, which apparently is somehow related to Red Hat. Interesting. I wonder what's the state of openness of the Wind River Linux and products using it, if compared to eg. MontaVista Linux (products based on which are currently mostly closed except for the parts absolutely required to be open) or Nokia's Maemo (with which Nokia actively works _with_ the community on many fronts, though which still has some strictly closed parts, too).

More and more companies are jumping on the Linux train. Now if only they would also jump the open source & community train, instead of trying to handle Linux like an old-fashioned proprietary software.

Devices and open media formats

While the digital video and audio world is largely governed by more or less restricted formats like MP3 audio, MPEG-2/4 video, Windows Media, AAC etc., the openness of available truly open and royalty-free formats does not scare everyone. Among the interesting developments in both mobile and non-mobile devices I've find for example the following:

• Iwod G10 sounds like an interesting device, at least as a concept, that can play FLAC files in addition to MP3 files, and also is able to play Nintendo games. Too bad the memory is expandable my only 1GB cards - hardly enough to play much lossless-compressed audio.
• Volvo's Digital Jukebox supposedly provides your car with perfect-quality FLAC music too.
• Olive Symphony looks like the most high-end device currently on the market that's just for playing digital music.
• And last, as closest to my personal usage field, are the great music players by iAudio - all supporting at least Ogg Vorbis and (in the bigger devices) FLAC. iAudio 6 might be the perfect combination currently - small size, all important open music formats supported and enough storage capacity for moderate uses (4GB).
  

A lot more can be found on xiph.org's wiki (though it's mainly about Ogg Vorbis support). The main problem still is that AFAIK a very large majority of portable music player sales are governed by Ipod, which supports only restricted formats. I do appreciate the folks doing eg. iPod Linux, but I tend to think there's no support if there's no built-in support. The hardware manufacturers should start to stand behind open formats, and stop fighting each other on who has the most dominating restricted format they can ask license fees from. For example, even the largely likeable Nokia 770 lacks the support for Ogg audio and video, which means the manufacturer for some reason or other does not want to support "openness" in some fronts yet, while it clearly is very open and standards-endorsing in some other fronts. But Nokia is not in the music or video business as such, and business-wise it's always easiest to just support the mainstream formats, restricted or not. It's the pure audio-video entertainment device manufacturers that should start to support open formats first.

As a sidenote, it was nice to see this year's Assembly's video broadcasts in completely open Ogg Theora video format. I bet they have had some need for heavy hardware though, since unlike eg. Ogg Vorbis lossy audio codec and FLAC lossless audio codec, Theora is not really a completely optimized codec at this point, though the latest release improved a bit. But with Fluendo's very fluent (eh) combination of Cortado Java applet and Flumotion, it's now really easy to provide open media streams even though the battling proprietary operating systems (Windows and Mac OS) do not support anything open. This is how it should be - giving the open option to anyone as easily as possibly, and then at some point people could notice that why they need to use Java applets for playing something that plays in any free software operating system (like Linux or the BSDs) without any problems.

Free software - for the people

Greetings, fellow human beings. Here you have a new blog about happenings in the free/libre/open-source software, intertwined with the communities around it. It's an interesting world with no borders, consisting of people and companies believing eg. in the success of open-source as a development and business model, and/or in the general virtues of this way of developing the information society around us. I'm happy to see so many companies trying to (and sometimes succeeding to) find their way of embracing FOSS, or Free and Open Source Software, in their businesses. I'm especially happy to see new products that are not just "running Linux", but also being developed together with the community so that both the product and the components it uses are better than they would otherwise be.

I'm a computer user since ca. 1985, and have a M.Sc. degree from Helsinki University of Technology. Nowadays I work in a company called Nomovok, which develops open source based embedded solutions - suits me well. On spare time, I'm running the Ubuntu Finland site (an Ubuntu Linux information site for the Finnish people), translating some open source programs to Finnish, representing Finnish Wikipedia as a media contact and doing various bits of other stuff all around.

I'm interested in developments of the Ubuntu Linux, and related to it the fantastic Debian project with its GNU/Linux operating system on which among else Ubuntu is based. Furthermore, I'm interested in the open source and open format developments covering the last bastions of closed, proprietary desktop software - gcj/GNU Classpath (to replace Sun Java), Xiph.org/Ogg media codecs and Dirac (to replace WMV, MOV, MPEG-4, MP3 and other restricted formats), Gnash (to replace Adobe Flash player), DRI (to provide open source 3D drivers for all cards) etc. I like it more to celebrate the advancements in this free/open world, than to dwell on the negative things happening in our everyday lives (and especially beneath it). There are fortunately pages and people I can support who are trying to make this new digital world a better, more equal place for both people and businesses (Electronic Frontier Foundation, Free Software Foundation (also the FSF Europe), DefectiveByDesign.org, Open formats, ...)

So, stay tuned for posts about libre software, the communities around it and products that utilize the software & participate in the communities.