Although the Gamepark 32 is a relative open platform, there are two main components on it that are relatively proprietary: the BIOS (aka the Firmware) and the Smartmediacards. The former is not very important, except for concerns of people being legally capable of providing the Firmware for download so people can update their Firmware after the GP32 becomes no longer supported (and through a combination of Game Park splitting into two companies and the relatively high success of the GP2X, this has already effectively occurred) and the ability to patch the Firmware for various reasons (one has to look no further than the many sites offering Firmware including an amalgam of homebrew software and the official firmware for older version (as the pre-Euro version included a built-in MP3 player)).
Of much greater concern is the legality of accessing the Smartmedia card. For a time, Mirko's SDK apparently included rather questionable code for accessing the Smartmedia card. In the process of hoping to satisfy the wants of developers that Mirko release his SDK under a more open license (his original was restrictive on distributing modified versions), it was required to remove the questionable code leaving the situation where there is still no clearly legal way of reading data off the Smartmedia card. As a compromise, an archive format was included with the new GPLed SDK to allow for necessary files to be attached to one's program. Unfortunately, this isn't the sort of compromise that makes it readily possible for other people to use one's program to load various files stored on the Smartmedia card.
Because of this, my development for the GP32 has basically been halted. Perhaps in the future I will become interested again in development and try to clean-room reverse engineer writing to the Smartmedia card to adequately fill-in the available SDK. Until a time in which it's readily possible to read/write to the Smartmedia card, I'm unlikely to pursue development for this platform. To me, this is overall a very sad thing given the Gamepark 32's potential. It's also an understandable reason why many people have moved on to the GP2x.
Kuwanger.net - Sort of like stag beetles in tubes.