[gamegurl]

Saw this today and couldn't agree more with decentralize.today.

BB10 OPEN SOURCE?
It is no secret that we at decentralize.today love BlackBerry and BB10. However, we believe BlackBerry have made a big mistake by moving from BB10 to Android. All of our crew have used iOS and Android before, but once you use BB10 you know how a good operating system should be done! I guarantee that anyone who has 24 hours with a BB10 device will confirm that it is second to none.**I�d like to reach out to my BBM friends who work in a high position at BlackBerry. Ditch Android and go back to your roots! Privacy and security come first, and with these factors come profits!

So here is my proposal. Make BB10 open source and let the community take over its development and improvements. You wouldn�t just get the hardcore BlackBerry fans, but you would receive a heck of a lot of privacy-orientated developers. You will save costs on employees at your end, and continue to get support from existing BlackBerry users. I guarantee this would also improve the BlackBerry World apps, as people would start to work on more of them for BB10.

I know this is a lot to take in for a centralized company, but it might be an opportunity where you could continuously roll out great devices, perhaps allowing a dual boot or ditching Android altogether. Guys, Android apps are working on BB10, and the operating system is way better than Android. You can get market share by being different, by being secure and private and could focus on WatchDox or BES12. Let the community take over a product that you are ditching. You guys have nothing to lose, but a lot to gain. Offering an open source phone will make headlines, and in headlines BlackBerry has always been bad. No offense, but if BlackBerry would actually learn how to get the word out, it would never have been in a red ink situation to start with.

-http:/ /decentralize.today/2016/02/12/bb10-open-source/

I think people should band together and petition to be open source and could code our own stuff.

Posted via CB10

[paulwallace1234]

Open sourcing a operating system which you claim to be the most secure would be suicide.

You keep it closed source so people don't know where to look for exploits, that's the whole point
Posted via CB10

[Dunt Dunt Dunt]

Been discussed a number of times.

BlackBerry isn't in the open source business.

Heck CrackBerry tried to make their app open source and that didn't really work out all that well. Make the whole OS open source would be a nightmare for something that complex. We aren't talking about a few MB of code for a router here.

Never mind the security issues of an "open" OS, and how that might affect existing customers.

[thurask]

Where to start?

First, part of BB10's security is how locked-down it is. Nobody can get root access, or load modified OS versions, or anything like that unless they are BlackBerry. Loading this new OS onto the phone would require BlackBerry to either maintain ultimate control over the project and maintain their release infrastructure, open up only parts of BB10 to public access, or divulge their signing keys. The third is right out. Given how reticent BlackBerry is with their future software (keep in mind, enterprise betas for new BB10 releases all were NDA'd up the wazoo), the first would be unattractive to any developer who cares about licensing, ownership, openness or things like that. The second would boil down to Cascades and the userland apps, which aren't terribly attractive things to maintain; admittedly, I would like to see Cascades transition to Qt5, but that would require a glutton for punishment to do it gratis.

Second, QNX is still chugging along, and to open source all of BB10 would require open sourcing QNX as well. I'm not sure they're willing to go whole hog on something like this. Alternatively, BlackBerry can open source just the user-facing stuff, but again, there's no way to do anything meaningful with it without the ability to load it to the phone.

Third, "Android apps are working on BB10" needs a big fat asterisk on it. Unless you can get 100% compatibility, including Google Play Services (i.e. not in ten thousand years), the statement should read "Some Android apps are working on BB10 if you are willing to spend some time to set things up, and even then they may not work due to the older API level/lack of certain services/etc". The average consumer is too impatient/dim-witted/what have you to bother with setting things up, when they can just get a phone that works out of the box. And still, even if they can get Cobalt's Play Store/Snap/whatever set up, the app is not guaranteed to work. Your company uses Google Drive for Work? Too bad.

Fourth, open source is generally plagued with long term maintenance issues, so for BlackBerry to wash its hands of BB10 and offload it onto the few, the crazy few, the band of lunatics would mean that carriers and enterprise customers would have to deal with the amorphous mass of open source developers instead of an actual company. Would these developers be expected to talk to agencies like the FCC, Department of Defense, etc to get their new OS certified for release/government use? To compare, enterprise Linux is the domain of players like Red Hat, Canonical and Novell, all of which are actual companies that offer long term support; the underlying components may be open source, but RHEL/Ubuntu/SUSE are all steered and regulated by for-profit companies. Again, BlackBerry can still maintain control over the final product instead of wholly dumping it on some volunteers, but that brings us back to the first point.

But what I find the most confusing is this statement: "Ditch Android and go back to your roots! Privacy and security come first, and with these factors come profits!"

If that was the case, explain the past five years.

[JulesDB]

I am convinced that a lot of BlackBerry 's value is in BlackBerry10 and they don't want to ditch it but they are forced to abandon it for a while.

As an OS it represents hundreds of patents and thousands of coding hours...

Posted via CB10

[Kryngle]

Real talk, BlackBerry 10 is one of the best, if not the best OS out there to date. If BlackBerry actually put all that "Priv Money" into BB10 and actually get their marketing right, they would probably make some noise in the mobile world. It's funny, cause it was just last week I had confronted a fellow coworker about jumping from his Samsung Android based device to a Z30. He use to diss BlackBerry 10 all day everyday and now he's a fan. It's the Best OS out here in my opinion. Even though nobody asked.

Posted via CB10

[Dunt Dunt Dunt]

Real talk, BlackBerry 10 is one of the best, if not the best OS out there to date. If BlackBerry actually put all that "Priv Money" into BB10 and actually get their marketing right, they would probably make some noise in the mobile world. It's funny, cause it was just last week I had confronted a fellow coworker about jumping from his Samsung Android based device to a Z30. He use to diss BlackBerry 10 all day everyday and now he's a fan. It's the Best OS out here in my opinion. Even though nobody asked.

Posted via CB10

No amount of money or marketing could correct the fundamental problem that BB10 has.... lack of developer support.

[Richard Buckley]

No amount of money or marketing could correct the fundamental problem that BB10 has.... lack of developer support.

This is an old argument. It goes back to the infighting in RIM at the time th iPhone came out. Should they pursue the consumer, BYOD and consumerized enterprise sales. The problem with this is that their core competency and the primary goal of BBOS and BB10 is high security. The consumer and BYOD space clearly values using the latest application over security and believe that frequently patching security problems as they are found and reported is enough. The high security space will never accept that because they understand that only some of security problems that are found are ever reported. So to be properly secure an operating system has to be designed from the ground up to avoid the security issues that plague Android and to be resistant against security faults in applications. This resistance makes development of applications in the rapidity changing environment we have in consumer space difficult. Until you have actually worked in this space it is difficult to appreciate how restrictive it can actually be. But if you read the requirements for various levels of Trusted Computing Bases.

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[conite]

The consumer and BYOD space clearly values using the latest application over security and believe that frequently patching security problems as they are found and reported is enough. The high security space will never accept that because they understand that only some of security problems that are found are ever reported. So to be properly secure an operating system has to be designed from the ground up

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(Aside: There are degrees of "frequent patching" that may mean the difference for a lot of companies. Priv and Nexus devices enjoy the high end of this spectrum - with the added hardening of the Priv that can push it even higher.)

But your point is well taken at the present time, as the Priv does not enjoy the same ground up advantages of BB10 - and nor does Knox or BlackPhone for that matter.

The trouble comes where, as Chen stated, the ultra secure market is too small to make this option viable.

So what is the answer for this tiny market? Do they ultimately accept the "almost-there" hardware of hardened-Android and Apple, or do they pay through the nose to keep BB10 alive. I see no indication that they have any desire to do the latter.

[Dunt Dunt Dunt]

This is an old argument. It goes back to the infighting in RIM at the time th iPhone came out. Should they pursue the consumer, BYOD and consumerized enterprise sales. The problem with this is that their core competency and the primary goal of BBOS and BB10 is high security. The consumer and BYOD space clearly values using the latest application over security and believe that frequently patching security problems as they are found and reported is enough. The high security space will never accept that because they understand that only some of security problems that are found are ever reported. So to be properly secure an operating system has to be designed from the ground up to avoid the security issues that plague Android and to be resistant against security faults in applications. This resistance makes development of applications in the rapidity changing environment we have in consumer space difficult. Until you have actually worked in this space it is difficult to appreciate how restrictive it can actually be. But if you read the requirements for various levels of Trusted Computing Bases.

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Too be honest... I've kinda taught that maybe there should have been two versions of BB10. One the ultra secure, the other more consumer friendly... but they waited too long, and in general developers are not interested in some "start-up" OS with no userbase. And the "ultra secure" market is just too small to support the kind of development that a standalone OS requires. Because you look at all the alphabet agencies in the US government that have moved to iPhones... it's the apps that drove the FBI, ICE and many others that you would "think" would place security above all else, to chose Apple. So in the end are we talking about a stable userbase of 5 or 6 million or a smaller base of only 2 million - many of which might also soon choose apps over security?

[Richard Buckley]

Too be honest... I've kinda taught that maybe there should have been two versions of BB10. One the ultra secure, the other more consumer friendly... but they waited too long, and in general developers are not interested in some "start-up" OS with no userbase. And the "ultra secure" market is just too small to support the kind of development that a standalone OS requires. Because you look at all the alphabet agencies in the US government that have moved to iPhones... it's the apps that drove the FBI, ICE and many others that you would "think" would place security above all else, to chose Apple. So in the end are we talking about a stable userbase of 5 or 6 million or a smaller base of only 2 million - many of which might also soon choose apps over security?

Strange. Just last year the FBI deployed 30,000 Androids and the applications that were driving them were mostly "crowd sourced" in house. Now you say they went iPhone.

http://federalnewsradio.com/technolo...field-offices/

But you have to be careful of relying too much on what the press reports about these agencies. If you read the article you will notice that the Androids were only on the unclassified network. There are far fewer details about the secret and top secret networks.

I have seen some reports of iPads being used for briefing notes in other places, but those had been very heavily modified to the point that they are not much more than e readers that can only be written to.

The point is that few people really know what is used on highly secure networks or how many devices that amounts to.



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[Troy Tiscareno]

The point is that few people really know what is used on highly secure networks or how many devices that amounts to.

True, but common sense will tell you that only a tiny percentage of the FBI or any given agency (with the possible exception of NSA) is authorized to be using the "secured" network at all. It simply isn't necessary for most of the work that they do. Which gets us back to the problem that there aren't enough users using enough devices to pay for the kind of development a product like BB10 needs. Sure, they could make an "ultra-secure" stripped-down version of BB10 that just does messaging/email/phone calls (this is more-or-less what SecuSmart does), but that phone would be of zero interest to anyone here - nor would it really be a "smartphone."

[Richard Buckley]

The problem with "common sense" estimations is that they are very often wrong. And the point is you don't need a stripped down version of BB10 any more than they needed a stripped down version of BBOS. Both products were of interest to some people here, and still are. But that isn't really the point. One part of the question is: is there enough interest in high security deployments of BB10 for BlackBerry to keep the OS going at least at that level. We already know that there isn't enough consumer interest to keep the OS going at that level of commitment. I think there is. The other part is can BlackBerry make or encourage enough changes to Android to make the Priv or subsequent devices acceptable in that space. I think there is no way in the time frame that people are giving as the expected official EOL for BB10.

So lets wait and see.

[DonHB]

...in general developers are not interested in some "start-up" OS with no userbase.

Well, QNX Systems chose a third party developer tool for QNX apps. Why did BlackBerry abandon this approach with BB10? The developer tools are forks, incompatible with the tools they are based on. Cascades is not Qt 4.8 and Webworks is not Cordova. Worse they didn't fork what they should have to make the Android runtime conform to the BB10 UX. So, QNX development tools transitioned from a fairly non-proprietary solution into a proprietary one in BB10, losing a major distinction from competing mobile platforms.

[Richard Buckley]

Well, QNX Systems chose a third party developer tool for QNX apps. Why did BlackBerry abandon this approach with BB10? The developer tools are forks, incompatible with the tools they are based on. Cascades is not Qt 4.8 and Webworks is not Cordova. Worse they didn't fork what they should have to make the Android runtime conform to the BB10 UX. So, QNX development tools transitioned from a fairly non-proprietary solution into a proprietary one in BB10, losing a major distinction from competing mobile platforms.

Right on, except I would differentiate QNX development tools, the original Momentics, from its poor cousin the Momentics IDE for BB10.

Cascades is a product of TAT, which while visually stunning is, as you say, a fork of Qt, not really Qt at all. I'm glad at least one other person here recognises that and what it means for long term BB10 evolution.

I'm not as experienced with Cordova and Webworks, but that came from Tiny Hippos, unless I'm very much mistaken. http://m.crackberry.com/rim-acquires...velopment-team

Looking back it seems that once RIM (BlackBerry) decided to go after the consumer and BYOD markets they set out to buy the development capability and trust that their acquisitions had the knowledge and expertise to do things right in a sustainable way. That wasn't the only mistake they made but it was a critical error.

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[Bla1ze]

Where to start?

[snip]

You went way deeper than I could even bother. I was just gonna settle for 'it'll never happen and even if it did, there would be nothing left as they'd strip everything useful out of it and claim it was all proprietary software' See: webOS / Open webOS

[matthewkuhl]

Open sourcing a operating system which you claim to be the most secure would be suicide.

You keep it closed source so people don't know where to look for exploits, that's the whole point
Posted via CB10

100% this.

[IndianTiwari]

Open sourcing a operating system which you claim to be the most secure would be suicide.

You keep it closed source so people don't know where to look for exploits, that's the whole point
Posted via CB10

Agreed 100 % . It will open a big pandora box .

[lactose]

If I were left with no BB10 option, I would be interested if there was another OS that tried to mimic BB10, gestures, hub, etc. Such has been done with Windows NT (ReactOS). Not a huge success, but not dead. One difference is that on the PC, for many, the unix / Linux way of doing things just seems better. On the phone, of all the OSes I use, I prefer BB10. (I'm running for cover now)

[David Tyler]

Privacy and security come first, ... Make BB10 open source and let the community take over its development and improvements.

Those two don't usually go together...


Passport SE: All the snooty prestige of a device with a precious metal in the name at less than half the price!

[DonHB]

Right on, except I would differentiate QNX development tools, the original Momentics, from its poor cousin the Momentics IDE for BB10.
...
Looking back it seems that once RIM (BlackBerry) decided to go after the consumer and BYOD markets they set out to buy the development capability and trust that their acquisitions had the knowledge and expertise to do things right in a sustainable way. That wasn't the only mistake they made but it was a critical error.

Well, I would suggest BBRY keep the UI/UX and QNX and come with a different development methodology. Perhaps, if they are going to fork QNX they should be ambitious and come up with a 21st century API and open it up to third parties. That is replace Qt, for which I don't understand the enthusiasm, in the marketplace with something modern. This should be designed to target cross platform, but let others implement for other platforms. Perhaps, partner with a third party for Android. They can differentiate their OS by adding security on top of Transparent Distributed Processing which, if truly transparent, would allow the 21st century API to remain compatible with other platforms and would be an interesting approach to IoT.

.02

[Richard Buckley]

Well, I would suggest BBRY keep the UI/UX and QNX and come with a different development methodology. Perhaps, if they are going to fork QNX they should be ambitious and come up with a 21st century API and open it up to third parties. That is replace Qt, for which I don't understand the enthusiasm, in the marketplace with something modern. This should be designed to target cross platform, but let others implement for other platforms. Perhaps, partner with a third party for Android. They can differentiate their OS by adding security on top of Transparent Distributed Processing which, if truly transparent, would allow the 21st century API to remain compatible with other platforms and would be an interesting approach to IoT.

.02

I can't see why they would fork QNX, doesn't make any sense at all.

There are many QNX installations that use Qt as the UI and work very well. One of the benefits of using a true implementation of Qt is that you can write once then compile for Android, iOS and Windows Phone. If BlackBerry had not fallen for Cascades and had implemented a UI based on True Qt it would have been a lot easier for developers to justify making a BB10 application.

Qt already has all the features you claim to want, modern, open, cross platform, and it is well supported.



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[DonHB]

Actually, I think POSIX compatibility in QNX is holding it back. POSIX should be a compatibility layer on top of something new that properly models security as needed today. Maybe role based.

As far as forking Qt, Copperspice seems an interesting replacement using modern C++ and removing the preprocessing inherent in Qt. Curious if it can use what Qt 4.8 remains in Cascades.

[Nikola Stojic]

The best thing is to sell the OS to other phone company and to do cross licensing regarding the parts of the OS that are still needed as the core of BB10 is QNX.

[Richard Buckley]

Actually, I think POSIX compatibility in QNX is holding it back. POSIX should be a compatibility layer on top of something new that properly models security as needed today. Maybe role based.

As far as forking Qt, Copperspice seems an interesting replacement using modern C++ and removing the preprocessing inherent in Qt. Curious if it can use what Qt 4.8 remains in Cascades.

POSIX is an interface specification. No reason it needs to be on top of anything new or secure. It simply states how the application layer may interface with the OS. I would be interested in why you think POSIX compliance would hold anything back, especially QNX given its level of success.

Copperspice seems to be another attempt like Cascades to make something like Qt that isn't Qt but is hopefully better than Qt. And it isn't a complete solution yet. Might be worth looking at when it is done.

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