It is going to be interesting to see what Archos official reaction is going to be to last month hacking of the 604 WiFi, 704 WiFi, 605 WiFi and 705 WiFi: http://forum.archosfans.com/viewforum.php?f=34

What if Archos let people run whatever they want on the ARM side of the product and still keep full unhacked control of the DSP side of the device? This way hackers cannot interfere with DRM, Macrovision, codecs and such since the ARM processor wouldn’t be powerful enough to run different codecs, and the platform might not make it possible to brake DRM, Macrovision, plugins and other secured systems of the device?

Just as with the PMA430, Archos offered an SDK to develop stuff that could use the ARM core of the Texas Instruments DSP chip, and never let developers really use the DSP chip which does all the multimedia stuff.

Then perhaps, the next step would be Archos enabling through an SDK access to DSP stuff, such as enabling VOIP, live video-broadcasting, video-conferencing, web radio, but always making sure they keep unhacked control over DRM, Macrovision, plugins/software patents, and that Archos doesn’t facilitate any type of piracy.

I guess all this might be hard to manage, but I guess also it would be best if Archos could tap all the brain power from the software development community, perhaps even providing a monetization opportunity for people who would like to add the integration of third party software on the device and turn the Archos 4th and especially 5th generation into partly open Linux machines while still combining that with full access to all the types of secured and legal multimedia stuff that they are specialized in.

Question is, can Archos provide that balance? Can Archos prove to its partners that an official SDK doesn’t disrupt any of its contents, technological agreements, secured processes nor patent and software licensing agreements?

Apple seems to want to release their SDK environment for the iPhone and iPod Touch soon, so to counter that, I guess Archos probably should consider supporting third party software and support it with some SDK. But all that depends if Archos is able to keep its proprietary features under control and that Archos can prove that none of it should bother or disrupt any of Archos current content/technology/distribution partnerships but instead strengthen all of them.

Continue this discussion in the forum: http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?t=11993

Bubu, who previously hacked of the PMA430, has just posted a snapshot of Qtopia running on the 605 WiFi:

thx to grond, sideways, _kb and other guys I’ve now a working qtopia env on the 605 wifi

will post a test image soon tomorrow or on friday…

we are there guys…

Posted by bubu at http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?p=66373#66373

User fiat hacked it in the forum: http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?t=11144

More information at: http://code.google.com/p/arcwelder/

Posted to Slashdot: http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/08/01/01/0131228.shtml

Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/31/arcwelder-gives-root-binary-executable-to-archos-605-and-705-p/

and Digg: http://digg.com/mods/Archos_605_wifi_hacked

Perhaps Archos reaction to this will be as Apple’s reaction to the iPhone hacks, to release a software development kit, which could possibly help speed up the release of more of the features of the firmware wishlist: http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?t=5046

As far as I understand it, this might still be far from usable in a way that third party developers could add many new features through this hack, and also Archos could close this hole in a next firmware update.