Talk on FSO + Openmoko at shaastra \'08

1. Free your phone
Shaastra 2008 – IIT Madras
Sudharshan 'Sup3rkiddo' S

2. Agenda
● Software development in mobile phones
● Freesmartphone.org framework
● FSO and freedesktop.org
● D-Bus primer (a gooey chocolate)
● Framework daemon components
● Code walkthrough, zhone
● A bit about Openmoko

3. Mobile Software Development
● Variety of software stacks
– Symbian
– Windows CE/Mobile
– EZX
– Android
– J2ME
– And a lot more

4. Mobile Software development
● Variety of hardware capabilities
– Camera
– GPS
– Music player
– Touch screen
– USB
– Accelerometers
– And many more

5. The problem
● We solve the problem with hardware
abstraction layers
– Neod for Openmoko
– Ohm for Maemo
– Zaurusd for OpenZaurus
– Machined for GPE

6. ..all doing the same damn thing

7. Wouldn't it be nice if...

8. What is freesmartphone.org?
“freesmartphone.org is a collaboration platform
for opensource and open discussion software
projects working on interoperability and shared
technology for Linux-based Smartphones”
--
http://wiki.freesmartphone.org

9. Design goals
● Be platform agnostic, doesn't matter where you are
running the code
● Be language agnostic as well. If it has Dbus bindings you
are home.
● Be simple and small. Example, HAL vs. Device subsystem
of the FSO framework
● Integrate tightly with the hardware for performance
● Lastly, “re-use existing technologies, but not overdo it”

10. Why re-invent something that freedesktop.org is
already doing?
● FDO focuses on interoperability and standards between
different Desktop Environments, ex: KDE, Gnome, XFCE
● FSO focuses on interoperability between entire software
platforms for Smartphones and similar devices
● (Well, we still use Dbus and thats from FDO)
● As, the name implies freedesktop.org is for Desktops.
And Desktops != Mobile phones

11. D-Bus Primer
● One of the coolest things to have happened in the
FOSS world.
● Inter-process Communication for mortals

12. D-Bus in one line
Expose an object with an interface on a System
or Session Bus

13. D-Bus in FSO framework
● Use system bus. So only one instance of the code will run.
● Example. GetCapacity method from
org.freesmartphone.Device.PowerSupply interface running
on org.freesmartphone.odeviced system bus

14. How it all comes together, a quick demonstration

15. Zhone, walkthrough
Because APIs
without a consumer
suck. A code
walkthrough of
zhone (Zen Phone)

16. Links and Resources
● http://www.freesmartphone.org
● http://git.freesmartphone.org ← code
● http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/OpenmokoFramewor
● http://dbus.freedesktop.org/
● http://www.sudharsh.wordpress.com

17. Yay, Thanks
This talk wouldn't have been possible without the
hackers at Openmoko and other FOSS
contributors. Cheers!