The Computer in My Pocket — which I intended mostly as a one-off blog-post — ended up having some legs. First, Carolina Flores Hine translated the essay into Spanish. More recently the FSF published a slightly patched-up version in the Fall 2009 bulletin, sent to all members, along with a bunch of more interesting writing by other free software folks. Certainly, there is growing recognition in our communities that phones are a critical battleground in the fight for software freedom.
More exciting for me though, my post elicited a bunch of comments from folks pointing to promising projects (Replicant was just one often cited example) making real progress toward freedom for all the computers in our pockets. I knew about most of them, but growing knowledge and excitement about problems and potential solutions was striking. There is an enormous amount to do, but there are reasons to believe that all is not lost.
I have a Droid. My keyboard app is AnySoftKeyboard, and I am already ripping into it thanks to its open source nature.
http://code.google.com/p/softkeyboard/issues/detail?id=178
..Still, I don’t have root. ..but I can live with that given free tethering and multitouch– but really, that’s not going to happen without some kicking and screaming it seems.