Imcosys smartphone infos (and GPL questions)

[craigwatson]

Hi,
I was considering buying the imcosys phone (imcosys.com) (basically same features as A780, but without camera, and with sirfIII gps, skinplex NFC, and Wi-Fi, based on linux) That looked great for just 300€ (without tax) but well, i sent them an e-mail, and it turns out the gps comes without a map (buy them separately, I just know the price for the american one - 98€)... fair enough, I can live with that, but I mostly wanted to ask a couple of questions to any GPL experts here...this is what they answered

will you open the source of the kernel?
... - no; is not GPL

since it's linux based, how is it possible? don't they have to open the source?

And well that's about it I think... oh by the way the sdk on the site is only for partners.. not for opensource developers... (i asked too)

[tarwin]

well, if it's like our phones from what I understand the following is true:
the company has to honour gpl and share the source for the linux component
anything else that is the company's own creation doesn't have to be shared
motorola has the ezx between the user and the kernel, ezx is motorola's and apps can't run without it (though this isn't entirely true if you look at opie), therefore even if the kernel is shared it won't do a programmer much good
most likely imcosys has their own programming layered on top of linux like motorola does
(I know that's not very clear but it's what I have gathered from my time on this site)

also, why would you want to change, it looks bigger/bulkier than the a780 and the only real improvement seems to be wi-fi

[craigwatson]

ok thanks alol..
actually i was thinking of keeping my a780... I don't mind the size, and it has a sd slot (so 4gb capacity for ~100$), the wi-fi and (ok, it's not really any use, but it's fun) skinplex ^^ and well it looked less expensive at first...but I think i'll just give up and keep my money for the nintendo wii