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Editorial Dru Lavigne, Thomas Kunz, François Lefebvre Open is the New Closed: How the Mobile Industry uses Open Source to Further Commercial Agendas Andreas Constantinou Establishing and Engaging an Active Open Source Ecosystem with the BeagleBoard Jason Kridner Low Cost Cellular Networks with OpenBTS David Burgess CRC Mobile Broadcasting F/LOSS Projects François Lefebvre Experiences From the OSSIE Open Source Software Defined Radio Project Carl B. Dietrich, Jeffrey H. Reed, Stephen H. Edwards, Frank E. Kragh The Open Source Mobile Cloud: Delivering Next-Gen Mobile Apps and Systems Hal Steger The State of Free Software in Mobile Devices Startups Bradley M. Kuhn Recent Reports Upcoming Events March Contribute 2010 March 2010 Editorial Dru Lavigne, Thomas Kunz, and François Lefebvre discuss the 3 editorial theme of Mobile. Open is the New Closed: How the Mobile Industry uses Open Source to Further Commercial Agendas Andreas Constantinou, Research Director at VisionMobile, PUBLISHER: examines the many forms that governance models can take and 5 The Open Source how they are used in the mobile industry to tightly control the Business Resource is a roadmap and application of open source projects. monthly publication of the Talent First Network. Establishing and Engaging an Active Open Source Ecosystem with Archives are available at the BeagleBoard the website: Jason Kridner, open platforms principal architect at Texas 9 http://www.osbr.ca Instruments Inc., introduces the BeagleBoard open source community. EDITOR: Low Cost Cellular Networks with OpenBTS Dru Lavigne David Burgess, Co-Founder of The OpenBTS Project, describes 14 [email protected] how an open source release may have saved the project. CRC Mobile Broadcasting F/LOSS Projects ISSN: François Lefebvre, lead for CRC's Mobile Multimedia 1913-6102 Broadcasting team, presents CRC’s attempt to increase 17 collaboration and innovation in the field of mobile broadcasting ADVISORY BOARD: Experiences From the OSSIE Open Source Software Defined Tony Bailetti Radio Project Leslie Hawthorn Carl B. Dietrich, et al, describe a university-based open source Chris Hobbs Software Defined Radio project based on the U.S. Department of 22 Rikki Kite Defense’s Software Communications Architecture. Thomas Kunz Michael Weiss The Open Source Mobile Cloud: Delivering Next-Gen Mobile Apps and Systems Hal Steger, Vice President of Marketing at Funambol, inc., 27 © 2007 - 2010 discusses trends that are driving the adoption of the mobile cloud Talent First Network and the role of open source. The State of Free Software in Mobile Devices Bradley M. Kuhn, Policy Analyst and Technology Director at the Software Freedom Law Center, discusses the current penetration 32 of F/LOSS in mobile devices. Recent Reports 37 Upcoming Events 39 Contribute 42 Editorial "Today's modern handset represents a Open source software and hardware has 'melting pot' of communications and mul- become an accepted way of developing timedia technologies." new and interesting applications in many R. Wietfeldt, Texas Instruments information and communication techno- logy domains: operating systems, data- Mobile is the editorial theme for this is- bases, Web infrastructure, and sue of the OSBR. This month's authors applications. It's not surprising that with provide an overview of how open source the increasing popularity of mobile hand- fits into the world of handheld mobile held devices, users and researchers have devices, discussing everything from the explored the power of open approaches hardware to the software applications to providing innovative new applications running on the device. Their discussion is and services in this domain. However, un- not limited to mobile phones as they like personal computers and the Internet, cover other aspects of the complete mo- mobile handsets were tightly controlled bile system, including transmitters and re- by mobile network operators (MNOs) ceivers. It is our hope that their insights who developed a vertical ecosystem by in- prompt you to think about open source tegrating the communication infrastruc- the next time you reach for your mobile ture, the handheld device hardware, and device. often the applications installed on those devices. The software and protocols run- As always, we encourage readers to share ning the mobile communications infra- articles of interest with their colleagues, structure and devices are often and to provide their comments either on- standardized by membership-only bod- line or directly to the authors. ies, where large MNOs and manufacturers have a predominant influence. These The editorial theme for the upcoming players invest significant financial re- April issue of the OSBR is Cloud Services sources into shaping the industry along and the guest editor will be Mike Kavis. their vision to gain a competitive advant- Submissions are due by March 20--con- age. A current example is the ongoing tact the Editor if you are interested in a battle about the dominant radio access submission. technology for 4G cellular systems: LTE vs. Wimax. Dru Lavigne These trends have changed recently. Editor-in-Chief Companies such as Google, Nokia, or Openmoko and Industry Alliances such as the Open Handset Alliance are providing the core building blocks, both in hard- ware as well as software, of increasingly Dru Lavigne is a technical writer and IT open mobile devices. This issue of the consultant who has been active with open OSBR reviews the relevant trends in the source communities since the mid-1990s. open mobile platform space from a num- She writes regularly for BSD Magazine and ber of perspectives. As the articles in these is the author of the books BSD Hacks, The issue show, there is a lot of exciting ongo- Best of FreeBSD Basics, and the Definitive ing work that brings the power of open Guide to PC-BSD. source development to the mobile space. This trend is not just confined to the mo- bile devices as there are also efforts in the development of open mobile infrastruc- ture elements and whole systems. 3 Editorial Andreas Constantinou is the Research Director at Bradley M. Kuhn is the Policy Analyst and VisionMobile. His article discusses the importance Technology Director at the Software Freedom of governance models to understand the dynamics Law Center. He briefly reviews the history of of an open source product, constrasting it to the bet- free software in the mobile device space, fo- ter understood role of licences. Using the mobile in- cusing on both software and hardware. A re- dustry as an example, he demonstrates how view of the available alternatives to-date leads governance models can be used by open source him to conclude that users, while able to ac- sponsors to control the development of open source cess open code bases from major companies, products, and argues for more education and clarity are at the mercy of these companies. For a on governance models. number of reasons, true software freedom on mobile devices is, as yet, an elusive goal. Jason Kridner is the open platforms principal archi- tect at Texas Instruments Incorporated. His article Thomas Kunz, François Lefebvre discusses the challenges and successes in establish- Guest Editors ing a vibrant ecosystem around the BeagleBoard, a low-cost, fan-less single-board computer. The ef- Thomas Kunz received a double honours de- forts within this community have allowed the Beagle- gree in Computer Science and Business Admin- Board to become a versatile and powerful open istration and the Dr. Ing. degree in Computer embedded device. Science from the Technical University of Darmstadt. He is currently a Professor in Sys- David Burgess of the OpenBTS Project discusses the tems and Computer Engineering at Carleton project's experiences, which will probably become University. His research interests are primarily the first case of a free software GSM basestation in a in the area of wireless and mobile computing. public cellular network. The article focuses on the The main thrust is to facilitate the develop- challenges of the project, as well as the advantages ment of innovative next-generation mobile ap- of having followed the open source route. plications on resource-constraint, hand-held devices, exploring the required network archi- François Lefebvre leads the Mobile Multimedia tectures, network protocols, and middleware Broadcasting team at Communications Research layers. He authored or co-authored close to 150 Centre, Canada. His article surveys CRC’s attempt to technical papers, received a number of increase collaboration and innovation in the field of awards, and is involved in national and inter- mobile broadcasting by developing and offering national conferences and workshops. Dr. Kunz complete end-to-end free and open source software is a member of ACM and the IEEE Computer toolsets. Society. Carl B. Dietrich, Jeffrey H. Reed, Stephen H. Ed- François Lefebvre joined the Communications wards and Frank E. Kragh discuss OSSIE, a uni- Research Centre, Canada, in 1999 to lead its versity-based open source Software Defined Radio Mobile Multimedia Broadcasting team. Since project at Virginia Tech. OSSIE software has proven then, he has contributed to numerous national useful for rapid prototyping by industry as well as for and international standardization efforts and published research and education of hundreds of R&D projects. His recent work has focused on graduate and undergraduate students. In addition to creating and developing open software build- examples of OSSIE’s successes, the project’s chal- ing blocks