Archive for the ‘Android’ Category

HTC’s GPL (non-)compliance

Saturday, April 3rd, 2010

Well, Linux is not just free as in beer, but also free as in speech. As I wanted to dig a little deeper into HTC’s modifications applied to the Desire’s Linux kernel I did, what I am entitled to as per the GPLv2 the Desire’s Linux kernel is licensed under: I requested the source code via HTC’s support as the “HTC Developer Center” at http://developer.htc.com/, which usually hosts the Linux kernel source code drops for their Android phones, does not mention the Desire yet:

Dear HTC support,

I would hereby like to request the Linux Kernel source code for my HTC Desire phone according to section 3 of the GNU General Public License v2 under which the Linux kernel the Desire is based on is licensed. A download URL will be fine.

Thanks,
Thilo

The answer I received was somewhat unexpected, but I will leave the judgment up to the reader:

Dear Thilo-Alexander

Thank you for your enquiry about linux.

Sorry we don’t support Linux, even though linux and android have similarities they’re not made for eachother. But here is the link for our kernals http://developer.htc.com/, happy Easter!

Best regards,

xxxx x
HTC Tech Support
www.htc.com
Tel: +44 8458900xxx

Better luck next time… I replied through their ticketing system insisting on a source code copy (along with a short educational section about the true origins of the Android platform ;-) ). Let’s see what their next reply will look like…

Hash It! – Stop overloading your brain with passwords

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

As a happy long-term user of the Password Hasher extension for Mozilla Firefox I got used to being able to use different secure passwords per web site without having to take the burden of remembering them all.

When I recently bought an Android-based smartphone I was missing most of that convenience while surfing the Internet from my smartphone as Password Hasher was not available natively on that platform.

Hash It!, an application for the Android platform I developed, is there to bridge this gap: It eases using unique passwords per web site without overloading your brain by generating site-specific passwords derived from a secret master key. It maintains compatibility with the Password Hasher Firefox extension.

Hash It! is free (as in speech) open source software released under the GPLv3 with the source code being available on GitHub.

Further details on how to download it to your mobile phone are available at: http://android.ginkel.com/

Enjoy!

Transferring Text Messages (SMS) from Nokia to Android

Friday, December 25th, 2009

Around a month ago I replaced my old Nokia 6300 cell phone with the Android-based Motorola Milestone (aka. Motorola Droid). While I could easily transfer all contacts by adding them to my GMail contacts list the text messages (aka. SMS) were stuck on the old phone without any official way to transfer them to the Milestone. Fortunately, there is a solution using Gammu, some Perl scripting and the Android SMS Backup & Restore application. (more…)