This is my response to Ari Jaaksi's Blog: What´s with God and open source ?

To me, open source is about the SOURCE. It is about sharing your source code with others under fair terms. You give and take. You benefit from the work of others and they benefit from the work of yours. And the rules are the same for individuals, corporate, and academia. And that´s all.

That's exactly the difference between Free Software / Open Source. While often used interchangable, both labels refer to different philosophies. Yes, Open Source is all about sharing source code, but Free Software goes beyond that. While Open Source generally leads to better code through free exchange of ideas, availability of source code and better software are only a means to an end for Free Software. And that's not all, open source is just a requirement for software freedom, and better software is one of the many gains.

You see, what's really important to the Free Software Community is freedom! That's more important and valuable than the availability and modifyability of source code or better software. So even if you only care about Open Source, remember what started the movement and keeps it going: Free Software!

To me, and many others, free software is about the FREEDOM.

I have repackaged the debian arm thttpd webserver for the 770. At this point it is completely functional, but the package lacks some of the niceties that I expect of finished packages. Such as a script to clean up orphan logs and pid files, or a script to create a link in the /etc/init.d directory or start automatically at reboot. I will get to that later.

At this point i am trying to figure out how to use this server standalone (ie when i am not internet connected). Opera keeps complaining about a lack of connection and doesn’t really seem comfortable displaying a webpage without an active connection.

To install the package do the following:

Install

1. Install the thttpd package
2. Open xterm, enter ’sudo gainroot’
3. enter ’su -’
4. enter ‘ln -s /var/lib/install/etc/init.d/thttpd /etc/init.d/thttpd’
5. enter ‘/etc/init.d/thttpd start’ to start the server.
6. the webserver is now serving on http://127.0.0.1:8000.

The configuration files are located at /var/lib/install/etc/thttpd. The server is running as user ‘user’ and is serving to all requests and hosts - which means your 770 is externally browsable. If you want to restrict access to local only, add a ‘host=127.0.0.1′ line to /var/lib/install/etc/thttpd/thttpd.conf.

Content is located at /var/lib/install/var/www and should be set to world readable.

For more information on the server go to http://www.acme.com/software/thttpd/

NOTE - This is not a maemo port. Just a repackage of the debian arm thttpd package located at packages.debian.org.
ubergEEk

Update - I have found a way to create a fake connection that doesnt turn on the wifi at http://maemo.org/maemowiki/DummyIAP. It appears to work and once validated it will become part of my installation script. thanks to Andrew Barr for the quick response on the lists.
PS - Like everything else on this blog, use at your own risk. Just because it worked for me, does not mean I assume responsibility for anything you do.

several sites (Slashdot, Engadget) are running stories about a new Nokia 770, I think this will just be a major software upgrade instead of a new device. The reasons for this are following: the current software doesn't support all hardware like the microphone which is obviously needed for any kind of VoIP application. VoIP or GoogleTalk is exactly the new feature that is mentioned by these sites. Also, the 770 is still pretty new and it wouldn't make sense to replace it already (making the 770 obsolete). The current 770 could do way better with just a software upgrade so this is most likely to happen. Anyway they defently work on a new device but this will not be released any time soon.

Recently I just bought my first condo and had the wonder experience of moving. I had to build our new furniture and the last thing on the list was my desk. It took me a week to finish up all the building. So I hooked up my wifi router to the dsl and just used the Nokia 770 for a week.

What did I miss? Not much, I spent most of my free time building so I couldn't even check my Nokia some days. One major problem I had is I needed to write a paper for my night class. I had no computer and the Nokia couldn't do that task since I didn't have a keyboard. I hooked up my fianc�'s computer and used that.

I updated my Netfilx titles, checked my bank account, and checked my email. That is mostly what I do on my computer at home out side of gaming. I do play a lot of computer games and that is another area where the Nokia 770 lacks. But I felt like I didn't miss much not having my desktop computer hooked up. Maybe there is a future for the Nokia 770.

I did some Nokia 770 hacking today and I needed socat for part of it so I packaged it for others to use. I also packaged aircrack-ng because kismet is still not really working on the 770. So far I only tested airodump and it seems to work, it nicely displays all networks and happily dumps packets. What do you want more?

As usual the packages are listed on the Maemo Application Catalog and on my Nokia770 page.