CFSONID
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What is this?
This page is about the Campaign for Software Freedom On Nokia Internet (tablet) Devices, an effort which is about bringing 100% free/open source software to Maemo as well as the derived Internet Tablet OS releases. The effort is not endorsed by Nokia instead it is a project from Maemo users/developers, device owners who are concerned about the lack of FOSS-licensed ...
* device drivers (WLAN, Bluetooth, DSP software, GPS) * hardware management daemons and libraries (BME, DSME and related libraries) * critical userspace applications (virtual keyboard)
... in Maemo and the IT OS.
Goals
What the campaign is about to achieve is the following:
# Users should be able to install any compatible OSes on their Nokia IT devices and have all the hardware working properly. # It should be possible to port and put Maemo on other non-Nokia devices like it is possible to e.g. port Fedora to any machine.
FAQ
Isn't Maemo free software/open source already?
Well, at this time (June 2008) it has not been decided what piece of software is actually part of Maemo and what not. However if making Maemo 100% free software for Nokia means stripping out all the important stuff that make it a self-contained and usable environment than this is not the goal of CFSONID.
Even popular distributions like Debian and Ubuntu contain non-free software
Sure and those projects have their own groups who spend days and night to make them completely free and some distributions have reached this goal: BLAG, gNewSense, Ututo-E
Furthermore if you buy the right hardware (e.g. Intel graphics card) you can avoid proprietary drivers and make use of all the features the device provides. In the Nokia Internet Tablet devices you cannot simply change hardware.