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LG's Quantum, one of the first Windows Phone 7 devices.(Credit:Sarah Tew/CNET)
While Microsoft gave the team that created theWindows Phone 7 homebrew unlocker ChevronWP7 a very friendly "please stop doing this" several months ago, it's gone in a slightly different direction with the infamous hacker who cracked both Sony'sPlayStation 3 and Apple'siPhone wide open.
Earlier this week, hacker George Hotz, who is better known as "GeoHot" announced that he was beginning work on a jailbreak for Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 platform. Shortly thereafter, Brandon Watson--who runs developer platform product management for Microsoft, offered Hotz a Windows Phone over Twitter, saying "#geohot if you want to build cool stuff on #wp7, send me email and the team will give you a phone - let dev creativity flourish #wp7dev."
No word yet on if that offer's been taken up.
The move marks yet another occasion where Microsoft has publicly--instead of legally--dealt with a third-party that's sought to go around the boundaries the company has set up to protect its products. As with the previously mentioned ChevronWP7 tool, which was designed to let users install homebrew software on Windows Phones, Microsoft's Watson got in touch with the creators to get them to come to company's Redmond, Wash. headquarters to talk about bringing such functionality to the platform. In return, the ChevronWP7 team agreed to take their tool down.
There's also Kinect, Microsoft's hot-selling accessory for the Xbox 360, which tinkerers cracked open a few days after its release. In that case, Microsoft originally threatened the strong arm of the law, before relenting and admitting during a radio interview that the team was getting videos of "cool, neat, creative experiences" people had tinkered together, e-mailed to them on an hourly basis.
Besides the PS3, Hotz is famous for developing a number of jailbreaks for Apple's iOS devices, as well as a tool that would let iPhone users unlock the device for use on multiple phone carriers. Though last July, Hotz said he would be "retiring" from further iOS hackery, citing that people were taking his work too seriously and that it just been a hobby; even so, Hotz continued to put out beta releases of his "limera1n" iOS jailbreaking tool.
More recently, Hotz's involvements have centered around Sony's PS3. Hotz created a software tool that would let users re-enable the "other OS" option, which Sony had removed as part of a system firmware update. Sony, in turn, took legal action against Hotz, claiming that Hotz' jailbreak violates both the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Computer Fraud Abuse Act.
Last week Hotz appeared on G4TV's Attack of the Show to discuss Sony's restraining order against him, which was filed earlier this month. Hotz argued that while Sony was going after him because the company viewed his tool as an exploit that would allow game piracy, his tool had been designed only home brew applications. Assuming those are Hotz' intentions with Windows Phone 7 platform, we could see an alternative to Microsoft's Marketplace application akin to what ChevronWP7 first promised. The real question is whether Hotz will follow Microsoft's lead and play nice, or if he'll try to crack the company's newest smartphone platform wide open.
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