In all fairness, probably nothing short of an Openmoko Neo would satisfy him; he's a "core" community member for Openmoko (appearing regularly on the planet.Openmoko feeds), and is driven by the need for freedom in all electronics.
I can't say I blame him though; I bought a Neo myself purely because it's the only freedoms-oriented, commercially-available smart phone that comes out of the box with the ability to flash system images over USB, and will run just about anything that can boot on an ARM processor.
When you believe deeply in free and open source software and hardware, anything that restricts your freedoms is just unacceptable.
That's why I haven't purchased a G1 myself, even though I already have service through T-Mobile: it's not an open hardware platform, and you can't do whatever you want to it; you're stuck in Google's sandbox, and you can only play with the toys they put in the box next to you.
Yet on my FreeRunner, I have the choice between many different distributions of Linux, including Android, and everything is open source and at my finger tips. I can write system programs in C, Python, Perl, Ruby, Java, or whatever someone can manage to get compiled. And I don't need anyone to tell me that my system image is "acceptable", or what system devices I can and cannot access.
it wasn't yet capable to do things like make phone calls
This is overstated, but close to the truth.
I care about technological freedom and openness, and I'm willing to endure some early-adopter pain in order to get it. So I tried the Freerunner a few months ago.
Unfortunately, the device I received had no practical use as a day-to-day phone. And, yes, I tried many different software images. The Qtopia image came the closest to providing something usable, but still never came close to the functionality or usability of my 3+ year old Motorola RAZR. I ended up returning the phone, minus a 20% restocking fee. Ouch.
I support Openmoko. I hope they succeed. I will continue to monitor their progress, and may buy their next device. But I wanted to warn those looking at purchasing the current Freerunner to set your expectations appropriately. In my opinion, this is not yet a phone that can serve as your everyday communication device; it is rather a cool prototype that freedom-loving mobile hackers may enjoy experimenting with while keeping some other device on hand for everyday use.
I can't say I blame him though; I bought a Neo myself purely because it's the only freedoms-oriented, commercially-available smart phone that comes out of the box with the ability to flash system images over USB, and will run just about anything that can boot on an ARM processor.
When you believe deeply in free and open source software and hardware, anything that restricts your freedoms is just unacceptable.
That's why I haven't purchased a G1 myself, even though I already have service through T-Mobile: it's not an open hardware platform, and you can't do whatever you want to it; you're stuck in Google's sandbox, and you can only play with the toys they put in the box next to you.
Yet on my FreeRunner, I have the choice between many different distributions of Linux, including Android, and everything is open source and at my finger tips. I can write system programs in C, Python, Perl, Ruby, Java, or whatever someone can manage to get compiled. And I don't need anyone to tell me that my system image is "acceptable", or what system devices I can and cannot access.
That's freedom.