Closed Source Components in Maemo 5

Several outdated pages may cause confusion about which components are closed on the N900, and I am hoping to write a more informative summary based on prerelease documentation. The parts vary from the worrying to the humorous - for some reason they even include a pulseaudio plugin that polices the volume.

The way I see it, there are three levels of closed source:

1. Safe to Ignore
2. Annoying
3. Problematic

Safe to Ignore

These components aren't available under a free license, but are harmless to the future viability of the platform.

First, there's the obvious: trademark-related items. Themes, fonts, icons and sounds are not released to the community by Nokia. This is entirely understandable, and the free software community has no shortage of any of them.

Second, there's the cellular service daemon (not so obvious). Why should we not care about this crucial binary that's required for accessing radios? Because Nokia is doing so for us. They've started writing a GPL-licensed replacement in cooperation with Intel. Unfortunately, if you need a Free solution right now, you'll have to move this into category 3.

Finally, there's "startup wizard", "restore factory settings" and "clear user data framework". None of these are relevant to any modified OS.



Annoying

These are proprietary apps and libraries that ship with the device, but don't affect the availability of alternatives. It would be nice if they were Free, but we're not forced to use them.

A big one here is the whole location framework, plus the libcityinfo database. There are Free alternatives like Maemo Mapper, but that still means losing Ovi integration for other kinds of location services, which may become a compelling feature in the future. It would be nice if there were Free software that could interface with Ovi. Even from Nokia's viewpoint, that shouldn't prevent us from paying for the data itself. (2009-11-13: Gypsy daemon in location framework is in free.)

Strangely enough I can't conclusively determine whether the Mozilla-based browser will have a proprietary UI or not. On two separate pages from 2008, it is promised that it will be converted to FOSS by Maemo 5, but installing it in the latest SDK still pulls in several packages from the repository nokia-binaries, including tablet-browser-ui. On the other hand, this document categorizes the package tablet-browser-interface as "OSS Nokia", and this diagram agrees. I suspect we'll have to wait until the device ships to see what's actually on it (but don't worry, there's also Tear if you want to be sure).

The browser isn't the only component that used to be closed, but is moving towards FOSS at an uncertain pace. The page from above also says the following about the Device State Management Entity: "The component has been redesigned and the sensitive functionality has moved to mce, allowing to distribute dsme (soon) with an open license together with related tools and plugins" (2009-11-13: DSME is in free).

Outside of Maemo, there's the Nokia Loader (NoLo) and flash utility. If you can live with a motherboard that doesn't use Coreboot (LinuxBIOS), you can presumably live with these. Additionally, there's a closed binary for flashing the device from inside the OS (softupd).

Other apps that seem to be closed include calendar (2009-11-13: calendar-backend is LGPL), messaging, address book, backup and the UI of the media player (2009-11-13). The sharing library and bundled plugins (for posting things on Flickr etc.) are also closed, but you can still write your own plugins.

There are also closed libraries for:

• single sign on
• device information (sysinfod)
• synchronization (iphbd)
• profile handling (profiled)
• media app playback state synchronization (libplayback)
• pulseaudio plugins for audio processing etc. (PEP, EAP and AEP)
• certificate management (certman)
• interface for monitoring network time notifications (clockd and libtime)
• event logging for real time communications (2009-11-13: rtcom-eventlogger is in free)
• Funambol support (2009-11-13: feature diagram may be outdated. Can't find more info.)
  
• wbxml converter (xml2wbxml)
• some proprietary addition to Telepathy's Mission Control.

Problematic

You've already guessed what's first on this list: 3D graphics acceleration. The N900 uses the PowerVR SGX GPU, so don't expect official Free drivers any time soon. There does seem to be 2D support, though.

This is disappointing, but expected, as the situation isn't much better on the desktop side. Users of Intel's integrated graphics have long been the exception, but I'm not sure x86 hardware can help Linux from a marketing viewpoint, since that would also bring Windows binary compatibility to phones.

Can we hope that Nokia could/would pressure an ARM SoC manufacturer to release a chip with Free 3D drivers? I don't know, but developers should at least try to pressure Nokia.

Nokia wants to guard its energy saving methods and prevent battery explosions (or so they say), so the Mode Control Entity and Battery Management Entity will probably remain closed. There's also a closed app that provides user interfaces such as battery indicators (System UI). Personally, I'd be happier if things like these were restricted to the device firmware, since they're useless on non-Nokia devices anyway. Hopefully Nokia will at least allow redistribution for the N900, but in any case a replacement project already exists.

One component that turned out to be more benign than it sounded, but still not nice, is the Internet Connectivity Daemon. Applications are supposed to ask it to start the most appropriate interface based on availability and preferences. This can easily be handled by a mobile-optimized version of something like NetworkManager, but the reason it's a problem is that the API will be different. Fortunately applications are supposed to access ICD through an LGPL library called libconic. If you're wondering how replacements will work in practice, you should probably ask the Mer project, a fork of Maemo.

Other hardware that is known to require proprietary binaries: FM Transmitter (FMTX middleware)

Surprisingly, Wifi appears to NOT require a proprietary driver. This is better than many laptops!


Updates to this Page

I am fully expecting to have made mistakes and omissions due to the simple fact that the N900 hasn't shipped at the time of writing. If you notice errors, please make a comment and I'll post updates here.

2009-11-13: Turns out even this diagram was partially outdated, so some components were mislabeled as closed. Also noted media player UI is closed. Thanks, talk.maemo.org.

Comparing Freedom on Maemo and Android

Software freedom is probably the main attraction of both Android and Maemo, but which one should we back as Free software users and developers?

There are several levels to practical software freedom. Even though a strict definition would only require an appropriate license be used, there are many more aspects we should care about. The most obvious one is root access for the end user. This comparison covers the four points I feel are most important:

1. User Access Rights
2. Cooperation and Interoperability
3. Presence of Closed Source Software
4. Freedom in Practice
   

User Access Rights

With mobile phones, control over your own device has never been something to take for granted. Many existing platforms do allow users to run their own software, but even then often at the mercy of security policies targeting malware. Further muddling things, the limited nature of traditional mobile operating systems made the usefulness of such access questionable. More powerful hardware has now made it possible to run Linux on mobile phones without sacrificing power consumption, and users should expect more.

Both Android and Maemo can claim that the core software is Free, but we are so far only discussing access rights. Unfortunately for Android, none of the vendors actually making devices seem to be concerned about granting any. While not as hard as jailbreaking an iPhone, users still have to go out of their way to get full access to the system.

Maemo, on the other hand, is developed directly by Nokia, which is going to ship its hardware with root access available out of the box. The only step users need to take is to install one package from the official repository to confirm they've read about the risks.

So if Android devices are easy to root, what's the problem here? There are several:

• Beginners aren't even going to consider doing it. Freedom shouldn't require expertise, and who are we to say that no novice has a legitimate need for root access, ever?
• Advanced users should not put up with having to hack their own device. Some may feel leet after doing so, but in reality they've accomplished nothing except paying for a crippled product. Users shouldn't have to fight the operating system, and lose vendor security updates in the process. An operating system that needs to be hacked is inferior in use even if users can regain their freedom.
• The market will be fragmented between hacked and unhacked devices. Users running hacked platforms can never be sure they'll be taken into account in future products and services.

Winner: Maemo on Nokia hardware.


Cooperation and Interoperability

We could write the most amazing text editor, but if it only ran under a Nintendo emulator, it would be virtually useless to anyone else. There is nothing inherently wrong with such an editor, but we're probably not going to get much cooperation going, and you might even question the motives of a developer advertising such a program. This is why simply licensing something under the GPL isn't always enough.

What cooperation means to each individual is best discussed elsewhere, but we can clearly see which platform is ahead of the other.

Maemo is a stripped down Debian GNU/Linux that runs a mobile-optimized window manager on a standard X11 window server. What this means is that code can easily be shared with virtually any existing Unix-like Free operating system. As a concrete example, the Hildon toolkit Nokia developed for creating mobile-friendly applications has been adopted by Gnome and is used on Ubuntu Mobile Internet Device Edition.

Android runs on the Linux kernel, but applications are developed for a non-standard virtual machine. A native SDK has been released, but it's only designed to allow performance critical parts of VM apps to run native. In short, Android is nothing like what one would expect from a system using Linux as its kernel, and developers are in practice forced to use Java with non-standard bytecode. One might even suggest that Google has done this on purpose, in order to limit interoperability and push users towards its proprietary web services.

This is of great consequence even to users who understand none of it. Maemo can theoretically run any desktop Debian application. In practice, the UI must be adapted for mobile use, and packages must be modified to avoid the minimal N900 system partition, which exists on faster hardware than a larger partition. For developers, this is still a piece of cake compared to porting to Android, and users are free to install a chrooted full Debian subsystem to run desktop apps without modification (link goes to package description in previous Maemo version).

Going even further, Qt-based apps will also run on Symbian and Windows in addition to Unix-like operating systems.

Winner: Maemo


Presence of Closed Source Software

While it would be nice if everything were Free, users must often compromise to have a fully usable system. Video card drivers have been a historical sore spot. Intel was for a long time the only vendor that took Free drivers seriously, but its hardware was never targeted towards heavyweight gaming. As a result, many users chose to use proprietary drivers. This is unfortunately the case even with phones.

Both Android and Maemo include other closed components as well. This was recently highlighted when Google prevented CyanogenMod from distributing many apps for hacked devices. While reactions to the ban were overblown, this does reveal the problem of having closed components on otherwise Free systems.

On Android, the closed apps include GMail, maps, talk, etc. On Maemo, they include similar features. Neither is a large problem. In Nokia's case, the company has to do something to differentiate itself from competitors that might otherwise ship the OS without contributing any R&D money. Google is probably having trouble profiting at all, since it doesn't even make devices. Under such circumstances, closed source software can become attractive.

Winner: None, but neither is catastrophic. Much work is left lobbying for better graphics drivers, but there are plenty of Free email clients.


Freedom in Practice

The mobile phone market is further complicated by the fact that many users choose to buy their devices from network operators rather than device manufacturers. This is true especially in the US, where operators do their best to ensure that users have the least possible access rights. What will happen to Maemo and Android remains to be seen if this continues, but historically Nokia is the only major manufacturer to seriously try to push unlocked devices in the US (with little success).

As a glimmer of hope, T-Mobile has introduced its new "Even more" and "Even more plus" plans, one of which is $20/month cheaper than the other and doesn't come with a phone. Over 2 years time, the difference adds up to $480. Previously it has often been the case that US users have been forced to pay the same price whether they bought their phone separately or not. But will this be enough to entice the average user away from deals that claim the phone only costs $99?

Winner: Uncertain, but Nokia has demonstrated more willingness to side with the user.


Conclusion

Maemo isn't perfect, but still much ahead of Android. Development for Maemo has the potential to benefit existing Linux distributions, and many desktop apps will surely be interested in adding a mobile-optimized GUI as a compile time option. CLI applications will work without trouble, and experienced Linux users can easily connect to their desktop computers using SSH and X11. The Nokia N900 officially supports root access.

Android is an island of its own, and useful code sharing is largely limited to the kernel. Developers can't even always use the language of their choice. Android hardware manufacturers can't be trusted to allow users the freedoms the software would grant, let alone fight network operators.

Almost October

It's the 30th of September, one day before the Nokia N900 could theoretically ship. Most likely it won't be available until the end of the month, or even November. Either way, it's not far off anymore, so I can't complain.

Given that I don't have one so far, there's not much to write about yet, but I will say one thing: 2010 will be the year of Linux... in your pocket. The N900 will bring us unprecedented power in a phone, with previews showing a very promising device, coupled with an even more promising operating system. Here's one to read while we're all waiting.