I never did any serious Linux kernel work until now. I was busy enough with all my open source userland activities and there were already enough skilled people working on kernel things for the devices I own. After seeing how the OpenEZX project is progressing, I decided to buy a Motorola A780 and a Motorola E680 and to contribute to help getting this exciting project forward.
While Harald Welte, the project leader and main developer, is currently concentrating on getting the AP (Application Processor, responsible for everything non-GSM) and BP (Baseband Processor, responsible for the GSM stuff) interaction done, I thought I could help a bit with OpenEmbedded integration and "non-critical" stuff like drivers.
As expected, OpenEmbedded integration was a breeze -- we can now build Opie, GPE, and Enlightenment images for the phones and can boot them via SD or NFS-over-USB. Doing kernel work was much more tough for me -- although I have been doing low level programming in the old COMMODORE C64 and AMIGA days, doing sensible things with the Linux kernel has a steep learning curve. Anyway, once you get the hang of it, it's actually fun and a nice change from doing userland stuff.
My first results are available through the OpenEmbedded repository. I did kernel drivers for
Next things for me will be to find out why touchscreen and MMC are not quite behaving on the E680. After that I'm planning to take a shoot at camera drivers.