Both Motorola and Motodev will be present at Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona from 15-18 February 2010.

• Motorola will be at Stand 8A28 and Stand 8A51
• Mototodev does sponsor an App Planet Fast Track presentation on February 15, 2010

If you want a free pass to Mobile World Congress you can get it from Motodev.

The MWC 2010 is a perfect opportunity to get in contact with Motorola and raise the Milestone bootloader issues in the tech oriented blog and news sphere.

Primary Goals

• Make Motorola aware that locking up the Milestone boot process with a secret digital signature is a real problem.
• Make Motorola aware that this decision will lead to a lot of lost or alienated customers without gaining any additional ones.
• Make Motorola aware that hiding and not communicating the Milestone bootloader lock up does severely alienate their customers who thought that they were buying an open device.
• Make Motorola aware that their canned responses to date only leads to even more upset customers.
• Make Motorola aware that all their responses to date are invalidated by the simple fact that the almost identical Motorola Droid doesn't have a locked up boot loader.

Secondary Goals

• Inform bloggers and journalist about the Motorola Milestone boot loader lock up
• Inform potential buyers about the Motorola Milestone boot loader lock up, enabling them to make a sound decision about buying or not buying a Motorola Milestone phone.

• If you attend the MWC 2010 please take some time to raise the issue with Motorola.
• If you know somebody who will go to MWC 2010 please ask him or her kindly to help us with the issue.
• If you know some blogger or journalist that will likely report about MWC 2010 please inform them about this campaign.
• If you are a blogger or journalist yourself, please report about the Milestone lock up.
• If you use Twitter please tweet about the campaign using the hash tag #freeandroid and #mwc10
• If you use Facebook please make your voice heard at Motorola Europe or Motorala Latin America and join the Free Motorola Milestone group
• If you poses any other super cow powers please use them too.
• Join the discussion at the AllDroid forum

Digital signatures and bootloader are somewhat esoteric issues and even Motorola tech support seems to have problems understanding what all the fuss is about. So here is a short and hopefully not too technical summary about the current situation.

• The Motorola Milestone like any other devices uses a small bootloader which has the primary purpose to start the Linux Kernel which will take full control of the device from that point on.
• Linux is Open Source and Motorola publishes the Linux Kernel source code which is used for the Milestone in full compliance with the GPL.
• On any other Android device including the almost identical Motorola Droid it is possible to modify the Linux code and run the modified code on your Android device.
• For whatever reason and without telling anybody Motorola decided to depart from this approach and started to deploy a technique which is generally known as Tivoization
• Tivoization means that each and every Linux file on the Milestone is protected with a secret digital signature that is only known to Motorola itself - effectively preventing any modification to the Milestone Linux system by anyone but Motorola.
• Motorola may or may not be breaking license agreements by doing so¹⁾. But what currently is deeply upsetting a lot of Milestone customers is that Motorola advertises the Milestone as an open device without limits and compromises. With openness being a major factor for a lot of customers for choosing the Milestone over other phones. Recognizing that they effectively ended up with a totally closed device currently is a very rude awakening for a lot Motorola Milestone customers.

Motorola seems to be utterly surprised from the uproar they have created and till now has only come up with very short and inconclusive answers.

• Motodev comments about kernel signatures
• Motodev comments about developer phones
• Motorola Europe Facebook comments about Custom ROMs+
• Another reaction from a Motorola employee, seems as if the DROID will be the only free Motophone

In summary, Motorola Europe tells customers that they either should get a developer phone from a competitor or join the Motorola developer program, and reasons that the boot loader lock up because people otherwise “may void the warranty on a consumer device or violate the copyright on the applications”.

Motodev forum moderators argue that the lockup is made “to safeguard the content of the phones user” and refer to a “developer phone” of unknown origin. They then use their own posts as a pretext to prevent any further discussion because “this topic is in regards to a proprietary device”.

This totally ignores the fact that currently Motorola doesn't offer any Milestone development phones, that the same reasons strangely don't apply to the almost identical Motorola Droid and that the customers they want to protect from all evil seem to be much better informed about the Milestone restrictions than Motorola themselves.

From the newest reactions we can estimate, that Motorola will not release another phone with an unlocked bootloader as the DROIDs.

• EuroDroid - Angry European MILESTONE users launch Facebook TERROR ATTACK on Motorola!
• EuroDroid - Motorola MILESTONE users now ANGRY about lack of open bootloader access * [[http://www.eurodroid.com/2010/02/motorola-milestone-hate-campaign-hits-amazon/ | EuroDroid - Motorola MILESTONE hate campaign hits Amazon!
• Groklaw News Pick - Motorala, Please Free the Android!
• SemiAccurate - Motorola locks down Android

If you think that the goals should be different, have some issues with the writeup or have any additional ideas feel free to modify this page!