my opinion is to stop wasting our forces on clearing the road off the stones that apple is putting in our way. what for? for those cheapass sturbucks-buy-a-song.app? wifistore?
i think our resources would be better used in taking what we have, what we know, and what we've learned from 1.0.1 and 1.0.2, which is quite a lot.
we learned, that the iphone is a simple arrangement of familiar hardware components runing a unix-like open source operating system (BSD/Darwin) compiled for the ARM architecture. This specific source code can even be downloaded from apple's own website. we learned how certain frameworks run and what they do and we have even got something which could be called a SDK (still in a verry raw state though). we have the components that make this unix device a phone, that know how to handle gsm traffic and communicate between the gsm-chip and the system.

if you look at the ipodlinux project. now THAT was hard work. here, that's a completely different storry since apple allready did the hard work for us. no porting no nada. the iphone runs bsd/darwin the moment you power it up.

so my idea is why not concentrating our forces on first building a decent GUI and second begin to develop apps, noone will have to be affraid of if thei'r gonna brick my phone next time apple makes an update. and most important: NO ONE CANT TELL US WHAT WE MAY AND WHAT WE MAY NOT do with our electronic device.

so i say lets thank apple for this trully heavenly piece of hardware, but show them that it still us who decide what we want and what dont (get bombarded by starbucksadds) to be doing with our iphone.

Totally agree. I haven't got the tech knowledge to participate, but I'd def support it.

Please keep in mind hacking an existing OS into doing what you want and creating a completely new OS are two fundamentally different things. Doing what the community has already done is childs play compared to replacing the whole OS with similar functionality.

Or what can be done is what the HTC/Windows Mobile 6 community does, using different firmwares they "cook" a new bundle with different firmware/apps.

I was part of that community, as a user/beta tester for some firmwares, and the cooked ones were faaaar better than stock.

My 2 cents

Originally Posted by peu

Or what can be done is what the HTC/Windows Mobile 6 community does, using different firmwares they "cook" a new bundle with different firmware/apps.

I was part of that community, as a user/beta tester for some firmwares, and the cooked ones were faaaar better than stock.

My 2 cents

Guys, you seem to forget one very important thing: WM6 and OSX are NOT Open Source, meaning that Microsoft and Apple can sue our asses big time.
If you don't care, you either are dumb, a billionaire or living on a deserted island far far away from the civilized world. Meaning: Microsoft has been very patient and quiet about the homecooked WM6 stuff but sooner or later, they'll have to act, mostly because of their hardware partners. Same with Apple, Apple won't sit still if the community just takes the iPhone firmware and plays around with it.

As a last reminder don't forget that there is a new reverse engineering/hacking law in effect in the European community which makes it very easy for companies to sue people if they tamper their softwares/firmwares.

Programming a COMPLETELY free OS for the iPhone would take years until something useful would be available. Look at the OpenMoko project or other projects in the past.

Also don't forget another thing: a lot of people bought the iPhone for the fact that you can put iTunes music, TV shows and movies on it. ME for example. My primary phone is still a Nokia E90.

In my opinion, Apple has to offer a third party software API sooner or later, the pressure will increase more and more. The question will be only if Apple charges programmers for certifying their applications or not. Nokia did a very stupid thing with the S60 3rd applications, one reason why a lot of them aren't officially certified but still safe. Apple HAS to be involved in any further development, any independent approach based on community work only will end up in desaster, especially if Apple decides to sue certain people or to go after certain websites.

Originally Posted by 997TT

Look at the OpenMoko project or other projects in the past.

Why NOT look at the OpenMoko project? That could be a wonderful starting spot.

Originally Posted by Fuzzlet

Why NOT look at the OpenMoko project? That could be a wonderful starting spot.

agree. would rather like to see openmoko OS running on my iphone than on their hardware.

in fact i just looked up on their wiki page and they even already support arm based devices.

http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Supported_Hardware

how long till someone installs it on the iphone?

Originally Posted by Polo

in fact i just looked up on their wiki page and they even already support arm based devices.

http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Supported_Hardware

how long till someone installs it on the iphone?

Well...theory has always been sweet...

hey dev team, why don't you give it a try installing openmoko and look how well it performs. i mean...nothing to loose here...