How open is the source code of android phones? I cannot think of a way that manufacturers ca开发者_如何学Cn close their drivers, because they have to conform to the GPLv2 as the License of the Linux kernel states. Or do they use write a large part in user space code, where they can choose their own licence?
The information I'm trying to get here is: How difficult is it to get a "cheap" smartphone (htc wildfire-s) and run Linux on top of it full featured. What I mean is every hardware feature is easily accesible without having to implement your own drivers and reverse engineer the device (assuming that the device is rooted).
HTC has the developers area:
http://htcdev.com/devcenter
The kernel sources for the HTC wildfire you can also download there:
http://htcdev.com/devcenter/downloads
Note that not all the functionality is included in the kernel. To add functionality to your system you also have to install basic programs like a shell.
The Android system image already contains all necesary programs to run your system and som Android stuff which is not needed for a Linux-only system.
As an alternative you can have a look in the android source and remove all the unwanted programs from your custom android build.
http://source.android.com/source/initializing.html
I think I found my answer at last. A lot of firmware of a lot of android phones is delivered binary only. Which makes it less open. If I want to run GNU/Linux on top of a stock phone I run in a lot of those issues. See Richard Stallmans article on how free android is: Is Android really free software?
There is also a project Replicant which tries to create a free (FSF definition of free) android based stack.
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