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I really think it's time that blackberry makes BBOS10 available as open source and promote for other smart phones companies to use it and get support and small licensing fees on it.
I think if they have done that long time ago they would have received attraction from many smart phone companies.
What do you guys think?
RIP BBOS10
Posted via the CrackBerry App for Android
It's already been tried, licensing that is. With no traction from direct sales, why would a third party want to license something that hasn't sold?
As for open source, there's likely enough third party and proprietary software and source code that there really wouldn't be much to offer the open source community once it was removed. Even HP had to strip out a good deal of code when they took the open source route with WebOS.
Posted via CB10
It won't make BB10 any more attractive to licensing.
As for third party developers, they can't do jack with open sourced BB10, since it's uninstallable without BlackBerry's signing keys.
I think QNX is a poor foundation for a phone. I suspect some other engineers would agree.
But leaving that aside, if they open the OS, how would someone who wants to start playing install their build on a device?
Well if it was truly open source then you just either compile the boot loader from the appropriate QNX hardware support package, or leave out the cryptographic secured boot, probably both. Or use your own keys. Wouldn't work on BB10 devices, but why would you need that? Wouldn't you want to run it on newer hardware?
That would make it a nice toy, but if you are going to start playing around with an OS on phone hardware why wouldn't you use one with a history of many open source projects that already compile on it.
LeapSTR100-2/10.3.2.2876
Right, but what newer hardware does BB10 run on? It would be somewhat hard for a potential contributor to get started, right?
I suppose since we a discussing something that we know won't happen we could imagine BlackBerry releasing their keys or signing third party compiled versions of the OS, and ignore the security implications to existing users who depend on the current root of trust. That probably would be grounds for legal action and would affect organisations with the resources to pursue it.
As for newer hardware, anything for which QNX already provides support, or that someone is willing to build a support package for. That is, after all, how QNX gets on new hardware like infotainment, systems now. This would require building drivers, but since this would be an open source project someone would do that for free. At least that is in the same likelihood ball park as BlackBerry releasing either the full source code or their keys. Probably more likely in fact.
LeapSTR100-2/10.3.2.2876
Well, it would be enough to open source top level components - Cascades, telephony related middleware, UX and then it should be possible to use Android or Linux as base for it.
Posted via CB10
I think it's the best smartphone OS ever developed. Unfortunately it just didn't get the sales needed to get the developers attracted to develop apps which caused the OS to fail. I believe it's a lost battle now and making it open source is not going to help revive it.
Unless they are taking advantage of being on QNX and using features not available in Linux.
LeapSTR100-2/10.3.2.2876
It has been talked about before. It will never be open sourced. There is too much IT property to give away. They would also spend too much time and money to package it up. They also don't have any vision and rather destroy it than to make any use of it.
Actually I disagree. QNX is a good foundation for a phone. BB10 has been much more stable than any other phone I have tried and recovers very well in the case of any issues. It recovers before you even notice a problem.
Why not a true open source project like the Fedora Project was to red Hat Linux?
Compare the history of Red Hat with RIM/ BlackBerry. There is your answer.
LeapSTR100-2/10.3.2.2876