The Cordia Tab project has hit a major roadblock and it seems we are stuck.

I’ve spent a few months searching for a tablet device manufacturer in Shenzhen, willing to release the source of the Linux kernel used on the device. Finally the manufacturer of the Dreambook W7 tablet agreed to provide the source. So I got sample devices and started experimenting. I got MeeGo 1.1 to run successfully even using the binary kernel the Android runs on. So I decided to go public with the Cordia Tab project and get interested people around, waiting for the kernel source.

September 13th the news hit, that the manufacturer won’t release the kernel source and they are basically blackmailing us to either order a copious amount of the devices upfront or pay a few thousands USD “ransom” that will be returned after ordering even more tablets. Conditions impossible to meet for a community project with virtually no funding.

Searching for other manufacturers brought the same result as my previous attempts – every single manufacturer doesn’t care a button for GPL conditions and keeps the modified Linux kernel secret. Little wonder, as even giants like Dell fail to comply.

We cannot use the binary kernel provided for the Android build, as it lacks crucial features like devtmpfs and cgroups support. More importantly it locks us from any future upgrades – we need to be able to forward-port features to newer kernels.

Well… I will keep looking for the hardware, but for a moment I just got back to working on Cordia HD software, waiting to see what the future would come up with.