14 October 2009, 17:42

Still no source code for the European Palm Pre

Palm Pre - Now arriving in the UK
Source: Palm From this week, Palm's Pre smartphone is being made available in the UK and Germany. Telefonica subsidiary O2 is selling the device both on and off contract. The Pre runs Linux and, as well as a version of the 2.6 kernel spruced up by Palm with a raft of patches, includes all the usual suspects, such as BusyBox and the Gstreamer framework for playing audio and video with an ALSA back end.

Following the US launch, Palm dragged its feet over publishing the source code for the software used - although publication is required by the GPL. According to Harald Welte, co-founder of the GPL Violations Project, Palm looks to be repeating the trick with the European version of the device. As Welte says, it is not currently possible to download WebOS 1.1.2 and the upgrade to 1.1.3, the operating system versions used on the device, from opensource.palm.com.

Welte has stated that he has instructed his lawyer to demand that Palm publish the source code immediately. Should this fail to occur, the open source advocate plans to bring legal proceedings against O2 as the device's German distributor.