Why Open Source Phones Still Fail

“The ultimate hacker phone, the Nokia N900 is the truest
expression of Linux—the OS and the philosophy—that
you’ll find on mobile this year. It’s a great niche gadget. But the
idea that free, open-source solutions will sweep the mobile world
is just as doomed in the U.S. as the idea of popular, open-source
desktop PCs—in this case, because mobile networks don’t
welcome the unexpected, and they don’t welcome geeks.

“The joy of the open-source world is the joy of the unexpected.
Nothing really goes according to plan, because there isn’t one
plan; there are a lot of plans. Creativity bubbles up from the
grass roots. Many projects fail, but some become very disruptive.
Wireless network planners hate the unexpected. They hate
disruptive. They didn’t expect how much iPhone users would surf the
Web, and look where that’s gotten them.”

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