Freerunner's Future

hipboi

Dear Community,As some of you have heard, we had a layoff at Openmoko on Monday, May25th. First of all let me second the comments made here congratulatingthe Openmoko team on all that was accomplished. And let me add thateverything accomplished was only possible because of the amazingefforts of the community.Bringing the Neo products to market, first the 1973 and then theFreerunner, has been the most exceptional experience of our lives. Ican undeniably say that the most important thing we have learned overthese years is that the power of people bound by ideals, rather thancontracts, cannot be underestimated. These phones are your success. From simple things like group sales to complex undertakings likedeveloping and maintaining entire distributions, you made this happen.You always came through for us. As CEO, I have to determine the bestpath forward for our phone business. And after long discussions withmy key people and Board, we've decided that the best path foreword isto turn the future of the Freerunner over to the community.We've always said that the talent and creativity of those outside thecompany is superior to that inside the company. We have stuck to theseprinciples. We've have opened up more than any other phone, from anyother company, in the history of this industry. Every time we choseopenness over internal control, we have been rewarded.Former Openmoko employees have already started redesigning theFreerunner hardware (gta02-core) using only Free Software tools.Werner Almesberger, working with many others, has made great progress.Recently, we have released more information to accelerate theirefforts. In the coming weeks, all the design information will behanded over to the community along with all of openmoko.org (Wiki,GIT, Trac, Planet, ...). Openmoko Inc. then will act as the sponsor ofthis effort. We will continue to fund all necessary serverinfrastructure and support, in areas where corporate help is needed,future open phone development. (Parts of this process will requirelegal work - so I request your patience.)I am extremely excited about the idea of an entirely community-builtopen phone. Especially since, when the next design is complete, itwill have the benefits of everything uncovered since the Freerunnershipped last July. It will be buzz free, glamo free, and free of therecamping bug (#1024) - which I am happy to announce has been solvedthis past week. We promise to support these efforts with additionalresources such as components to build prototypes of the new design. Wewill help to empower you to build the open phone of our future.After all this, there is one last thing that Openmoko the company cando: we can enable the community to use the Openmoko brand andtrademark for these efforts. For us, the Openmoko brand is synonymouswith the people who built the products: Harald, Mickey, Werner,Raster, all of my coworkers in our Taiwan office, Sureda, Tuxbrain,Bearstech, and countless others. I personally want to give an extraspecial thanks to Steve Mosher who has taught me so much aboutmarketing, writing, and well...life. Without his guidance, this allwould have only been an idea in my notebook.I have asked Steve to lead an effort, over the next few weeks, togather input from the community on how best to implement thistransition. (He will follow up shortly on the community mailing list.)As always we can expect some negative comments, that comes with theterritory. But we believe a community that owns everything ofimportance, with regard to the Freerunner, will focus efforts andenergies on the future - not the past.Sales of the current FreeRunner (A7), will continue as before. We haveplenty more in stock. Now that the phone is freed, and its futureentrusted to the hands of the community, Openmoko Inc. will startanother effort on an altogether different type of device. We've sizedour company to go do that task. Please wish us the very best of luck!More details will follow in the coming months...Sincerely,Sean Moss-Pultz
               
               
               

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