Did Palm devices use freesoftware?

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Bubo
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Joined: 02/07/2017

I am still using a Palm device and I would like to know about its software.
For what I know Palm devices were the ancestors of cell phones.
They had many of the features of nowadays phones but lacked among other things the telephone capacity.

Magic Banana

I am a member!

I am a translator!

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Joined: 07/24/2010

Palm OS was a proprietary mobile operating system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_OS#OS_overview

andyprough
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Joined: 02/12/2015

I was able to hook my Palm up to a desktop phone by attaching a little widget to it. I think there might have been Palms that were sold with some sort of cellular module also.

Bubo
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Joined: 02/07/2017

@Magic Banana
&
@andyprough

Thank you for your comments.
You have provided me with two interesting starting points for the research I must do.

jxself
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Joined: 09/13/2010

This shows it's important to ask free software "for who." Because the same program can be free for one person and proprietary for another, depending on the details. It was likely free software *for Palm* because we can assume that they had the source code and the rights to change it and to share that if they wanted to. Was it free software *for us*? No.

eric23
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Joined: 06/30/2017

Are the Palm devices compatible with Open WebOS or webOS OSE? Is this operating system free, or a case of open source marketing missing freedom? Which version, if it's free? It was released as "open source" twice by two different companies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebOS

It uses the kernel Linux according to Extremetech article.

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/115577-open-webos-1-0-announced

https://www.webosose.org/