I never understood why this wasn't incentive to continue the project, though, as it seems most Linux/BSD systems are the result of understanding how to maximize old technology. When they announced this project, I initially foresaw people forking Ubuntu Phone/Touch into a (subjectively) "better" system, one geared towards specific interests and goals, rather than "Android: Ubuntu Edition"...alas.
The project
is being continued by volunteers. But I guess the reason why there is no massive forking of the project is that it works on but a few phone models, which are out of production I might add, and there are many other AOSP based custom ROMs that are more popular and can use android apps.
Remember also that when people began using Linux on PC's, in the early days they had to make sacrifices. For example, maybe WiFi wad only proprietary, so they used an Ethernet card, or changed hardware parts to get it to work. It was still usable for some purpose, say a server. Also, on PC's much of the hardware initialization was done by OS independent BIOS chips.
This is not the case on phones, people are not willing to sacrifice the phone modem or GPS on a phone. Such a phone is no longer usable. Linux form arm has existed and could be used to boot on phones from the start. But that's about it, so what are you going to do with it? Also, these are SOC's. If you don't like the nonfree WIfI module, you can't just switch to another more FOSS friendly networking method or device.
The only way it can work is by having a special hardware platform for just that purpose. I believe that is what they are trying to get off the ground here.
pawRoot wrote:I would say Linux userbase is mostly people who don't want to spend money on software or "overpriced" hardware.
I don't see many people willing to buy such product for a high price with low quality hardware (comparing to companies like Samsung).
So yes, it might be successful project as long as successful for you means selling product to a very small group of people?
Yet they managed to get two million dollars for this already...
Also, with all likelyhood, if they manage to get the project off the ground, then future iterations will be less expensive.
Interestingly a lot of activity has been going on in the etnaviv (free gpu) project lately.