Dell's open source streak
Dell, responding to complaints from users and open source advocates, has released the modified Android code used on its Streak tablet PC.
When Dell first released the Streak it used a customised version of Google’s Android operating system. But, because Android contains numerous open source-licensed components, Dell came in for a lot of criticism for not releasing the changes it had made.
Companies modifying software code licensed under the free software General Public Licence (GPL) are required to release the changes that they make under similar licensing terms.
Dell said at the time that it would act on the complaints. Now the company has released the source code for all of its changes. The code includes the Linux kernel, the BlueZ Bluetooth stack, the WebKit browser and the JPEG library.
Earlier this week Dell community ambassador Lionel Menchaca wrote on the Direct2Dell blog: “We are committed to fulfilling all of our obligations when using open source code in our products. We are providing the source code to give developers access to Streak hardware, which is necessary for writing some types of Android apps for the Dell Streak. I understand this did not happen as quickly as some of you would have liked.
Moving forward, we’ll work to close that gap.”
The Dell Streak tablet PC was released internationally in June. The compact mobile device has a 5-inch display and Dell is positioning it to fill the gap between full tablet PCs such as the iPad and the smaller smartphone form.
The Streak is built on an ARM Qualcomm SnapDragon 8250 processor which runs at 1 GHz.
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