Verizon made a big splash in 2007 by talking up its plans to open its network to third-party developers. "Any application, any device" was the mantra.
Several months later, however, more questions than answers remain as to just how open Verizon plans to be, and what it's going to charge for the privilege of openness, as BusinessWeek has highlighted.
Among the biggest concerns: Verizon did not divulge any details of the pricing plans customers would be offered to use such devices. Nor did it publish any specifications to help software developers create applications for the network. In fact, the company distributed materials to attendees online, stressing that the company "will not approve, test, or service third-party applications that customers load onto their Open Development Devices."
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BusyBox has been busy. With the help of the Software Freedom Law Center, it recently sued Verizon for infringing the GNU General Public License (GPL). This marks a distinct shift in strategy for Eben Moglen, the SFLC's counsel, as Pamela at Groklaw notes:
Remember how Eben Moglen used to say that negotiations were the best solution years ago, because the GPL was new and funds were limited? And then when he went to the Software Freedom Law Center he said he'd be in a position to do more? I think he told us the truth.
For the record, I like the conciliatory approach. As a lawyer by training, I heartily dislike the use of the law as a club. Occasionally it is needful to right wrongs against the otherwise weak and defenseless, but I'm not sure this is the case with BusyBox. I don't remember Erik Anderson (primary developer behind BusyBox) being particularly litigious when we worked together at Lineo back in 2000, but something seems to have changed.
Maybe he got fed up with people free-riding on open-source software, using it without abiding by its license terms. This certainly seems to be the case with Eben, who let loose on Tim O'Reilly at last year's OSCON for not being enough of a friend to free software.
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If nothing else, the threat of Google appears to have pushed Verizon into opening up its network to any device and any software, as the Wall Street Journal reports. The wireless industry has long thrown around the canard that it had to restrict access to protect its networks, but Verizon's move casts this policy into doubt and paves the way for the mobile Internet to become as big as the desktop Internet.
Of course, we still have the problem created by having different network standards in the US (CDMA, which Verizon uses, versus GSM, which AT&T uses, for example), but it's a great start:
The notion of openness in the U.S. is complicated by the country's disparate wireless networks. In Europe, cellphones roam seamlessly from network to network because all of them run under the same standard....
Verizon Wireless...said it will publish early next year technical standards for the development community, which are necessary for designing software, applications and devices that can run on its network. The carrier said that any device that meets the minimum technical standards will be activated on the network. It hopes to have new devices and applications available to customers by the end of next year.
This is a great start. Welcome to the open(ing) world, Verizon!
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