"We're talking with the big ones now," he said, but could not elaborate on which carriers, only saying "right now, no. It's all under NDA."

Only time will tell Australian consumers will get the option of buying a non-proprietary phone from their local Telstra or Optus reseller.

The OpenMoko release cycle will be divided into three "phases" which will repeat annually.

The first phase will be the developer preview in early February when free phones will be given to selected members of the developer community. The full source code to the OpenMoko Linux distribution will also become publicly available, and the openmoko.org Web site will go live.

In March the next phase will begin with the official developer launch and the Neo1973 will be sold worldwide directly from openmoko.com. In September, the third phase will be the mass market sale where the Neo1973 will be available in a retail stores and selected carriers around the world.