Why Openmoko will continue to not matter
25 August, 2008
After hearing the recent news that Openmoko, an open source mobile phone platform, can run an ARM port of Debian Linux, I was happy for about a split second. The lofty expectations of my momentary euphoria, namely that there would be a viable, currently availible, alternative to Android that could run some sort of Java and possibly Groovy, were quickly dashed by reality. This realization was brought on by the fact that Openmoko is plagued by the Linux trap1. There are currently four distributions2. That’s three too many.
Love it or hate it, part of the reason the iPhone has done so well is that it is a single platform to target. Windows was fine too, until the 25 versions of Vista. The term "year of Desktop Linux" stopped becoming a farcical statement went Linux became concrete for the neophyte started to mean Ubuntu Linux and not the ethereal consortium of distros each tailored to someone’s whim. In an already crowded mobile landscape, who in their right mind is going to develop for a platform with four different variants, each with their own possible quirks? What people need is the fallacy of choice, they would prefer that more than one option but not more than a handful. We already have the handful with iPhone, Android, Sybian, Windows Mobile and Palm, the market can't support another that has already split its internal market into 4 pieces.
1The number of choices causes confusion and limited adoption.
2Only two of them are official distributions.
