In theory: Eclair on Galaxy

I seem to recall that not all of the drivers were included. (Which is fine, btw, from a legal standpoint: Android may be GPL'ed, but the hardware and its drivers aren't and don't need to be.)

Maybe the question is, does Android 2.0 require multi-touch hardware, or can it be made to run on a simple touch screen?

 

I doubt it requires multitouch. Although galaxy does have multitouch, the driver is broken and it doesn't send events for the few first fingers. There was an extensive blog post about this somewhere.

 

Are there any hardware requirements that the Galaxy doesn't have?

 

You mean, besides "must be made by a manufacturer other than Samsung"?
I'm pretty sure there aren't, no.

 

that's a software requirement

 

Eclair kernel is 2.6.29 I think

 

Actually the kernel does contain non-GPL drivers. Funny thing is, they included them in the source release. Already reported that on gpl-violations.org

I think the problem is there are various userspace components for which source is not available (BSD Licensed). These components are linked against 1.5 stuff and probably need both modifications for 1.6/2.0 and need to be relinked.

 

Russ, tnx for that. I hope that would trigger some manager in Samsung to employ more people in r&d.

 

I don't think much can be done as far as their Linux development teams in the long or short term. Looking at the contents of my Samsung TV and the accompanying source release shows more of the same. A whole lot of NIH and working against the grain in addition to GPL violations (haven't gotten around to fully investigating that, so far I've noticed that the shipped busybox and the source release busybox are not the same version). I'm surprised that the phone doesn't somehow utilize Samsung's proprietary RFS filesystem.

I'd be nice if they would hire a GPL compliance officer.