Steve, see http://www.openmoko.com/ for an open phone--hardware and software--and without any preference for Google apps. (The only non-open parts cannot legally be made open.)

Why is no one complaining about this ?!! How many ads are you dodging on your cellie now ?! NONE, that's how many. And how many will you clicking through when Google, the King of Ads, gets its hooks into your phone ? I need to hear more screaming about this !

Behind the marketing spin of many phones described as running linux is that it is far from open. There may be proprietary device drivers, locked flashing, restricted applications and often insufficient information to rebuild the kernel. Flagrant GPL violation is all too common. Oh and hardware specs NDAed to hell an back.

If this time it is really open it would be a huge step forward.

I sincerely hope that this suddenly can run on my PPC6700 out of the box. If it runs on th Mogul, as i've heard, it could/should install on mine. I'd be happy to have the Sprint PPC6700 binary install just waiting on sprint .com for an update fee. The hardware is nice, but winmobile runs it like a dog. I could actually use an SSH and database command access on the road, as crazy as that sounds. We have an export command where I could actually run a query as an export to XML document or spreadsheet and simply pipe it to an email with the attachment. Yes, that would be very powerful on the go. Right now, the ssh i have on windows mobile isn't the best.

<Talking of which what exactly is Intel doing in the Open Handset Alliance? Last time we looked, Intel had sold its handset business to Marvell. So perhaps, Intel is in there for another reason entirely. Like trying to influence the Alliance towards incorporating Wimax into the Alliance's specs.>

Say hi to menlow/Mooretown

Linux based mobile. Is a full blown Linux flavor for the PC in the future? Goonix here we come.

The obvious answer is that Google expects SDK groupies to hack the iPhone and install Google's software on it.

This will either cause Apple to move up the date of their own SDK release, or Jobs will throw a chair, a la Ballmer (Steve, meet...oh, yes, I see you two have met.)

If Google and the Open "whatever" Alliance is doing what I think...they have been working on this for a while (we all know) but intend to avoid the iPhone fiasco and have a bunch of repositories out there ready for the new handset once it launches. I would equate it to loading Ubuntu and have all the Linux SW out there to choose from....