Friday, December 12, 2008

Android on the iPhone?

The world of open source does not stop to amaze me... Last week I found out someone ported Linux to the iPhone. The project is called OpeniBoot and they have pretty much all the basics working.


Why would anyone port Linux on the iPhone? Well, that is too much too ask ;-) But it is a fun exercise anyway... And it is the same as asking why would you port Unix to the Intel PC in the first place. Because it is open source. Because it is open. Because the source is available. Because it spurs innovation. Look what actually happened to the PC world and where Linux is today.

The next step, I guess, is porting Android to the iPhone. I know it is an insane thought, but why not? It is going to be the most supported Mobile Linux distribution, with developers building apps on it. If I had to choose one Linux distro for the iPhone, it would be Android for sure.

Who would actually put Android on an iPhone? Geeks. Not Apple for sure. Not Apple distributors. This is not the PC world. A single device manufacturer controls the device, there are no clones... End users are geeks and only geeks.

So, it is just for fun. And the quest for openness. That is what amazes me more than anything else.

The end result? The iPhone OS becoming open source. It will happen. It will happen. Give us just more time and more fun, and it will happen. Geeks and market forces working together...