I was listening to Alec Saunders' Squawk Box podcast today when a bombshell was let loose - something that makes the news that Verizon Wireless chose LiMo over Google's Android make total sense: LiMo is arguably not open source.

Skip ahead to about the 21:30 mark on the 16 May 2008 Squawk Box podcast.

The major points:

• The only thing open about LiMo is that it runs on Linux and that the APIs are relatively open, but the APIs only allow very limited functionality.
• A fee of $400,000 a year is required to be able to contribute source code to the project.
• You can only use commercially-friendly open-source licenses in your code.

Sounds a bit like what people thought about Verizon Wireless: they say they want to be open, but really, they're not going to open up. This surprise any one?

Crossposted from The Mobile Technology Weblog