The road ahead: Even more basic

In a previous blog post, I explained Openmoko was trying to focus on a stable 'Base' image. An image that contains only the linux stack, a settings application and an install application. But last week the FSO team were gathering at the main site at Taipei. They have talked about the framework and how some new services should work. But that was not the only thing they talked about...

Did they have a chat about cows?
No, they talked about the future of Openmoko and how they would obtain the goal of a working phone that is totally opensource. We, the community has complained enough that there were to many 'basic' problems. Like suspend not working. Wrong coordinates on a rotated screen. Echo when someone called us. So they wanted to solve that by going 'back to basics'. And that was the slogan that emerged from that meeting.

But what is 'Basic'?
'Going back to basics' means something different to many people. That can be seen on the posts that came on the mailing lists. For some people 'Basic' is making all phone functionality work reliable. Others sees it as making new phone software. Others don't want the basics blablabla, but want the framework in the basic image as soon as possible and go further from there. What Openmoko sees as 'Basic' can found on different places, like the 41th weekly engineering news. They think 'base' as something that isn't GUI. So the settings and install application from the 'Base' image will be de-prioritized. They want to optimize Linux for the openmoko and improve the user experience without making or introducing new functionality.

So much blabla, what exactly are they focusing on?
At the moment, they are focusing on the following things:

• They want to reduce boot time, so the phone is also handy in emergency cases. Because an cell phone that's off and is only useble after 5 minutes booting, isn't very handy when you want to call an ambulance.
• Optimize the touch screen driver on the Neo FreeRunner. The driver was written without thinking about finger usage and could have some improvement in that area.
  
• An generic python loader. So will Openmoko optimize the startup time of python applications. Python is commonly used for small applications, so it should be handy to optimize this. Also the next-generation application (like tichy and paroli) will be using python.
• They also want to improve the suspend and resume system, because many bugs are related to some suspend or resume failure.

But now they want to hear from the community, which 'Basic' problems should be solved. (Apparently Openmoko has heard our complaints about not involving the community in the process and want to improve on that issue. Big bravo for Openmoko)

So they are stopping to work on FSO?
No, The people working on the framework will still be working on the framework. For openmoko the framework is one of the most important things. It will eventually give developers/hackers the opportunity for talking to the phone's hardware, with nice and easy dbus messages. Almost all other people involved with the kernel will be executing the 'back to basics' thought. Openmoko has also hired some new people. So together with the community they will try to get the next milestone.