Let me preface my comments below by saying that I wholeheartedly hope the OpenMoko project succeeds beyond it's wildest dreams. It's an awesome project.
> -- writing C/++ OpenMoko apps is very difficult to almost impossible. > BIG PROBLEM... I agree. When I look at the wiki page on how to develop a simple 'Hello World' application I get very concerned .. am I missing something? Why is this process so complex? Is there an easier way? If so, where is this posted? http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Application_Development_Crash_Course > As an interested onlooker I want OpenMoko to not > only survive but thrive, I am concerned that this project may > not be able to reach critical mass. Ok. Look at how far Linux on the desktop has come in reaching this goal. Despite all the efforts, it has constantly failed to penetrate the mass (consumer) market. It's not easy. That being said, it's not necessary to do this for OpenMoko to be considered a success - for instance, success could be an OEM-style model where individual development shops customize the device for various vertical applications/market segments and provide their customers with full-stack solutions. But even to reach this customer base, it's vital that it *performs reliably* and development is fairly straightforward. One major advantage that OpenMoko has over Linux-on-the-desktop is that many of the problems that plague the latter are not there - differences in hardware. The hardware is essentially set in stone (I hope). So why not use this advantage and come up with a development process that is, for lack of a better word, opinionated? Make it very very easy to develop on the standard hardware. Assume that the hardware will be there, and operate on that assumption. Let's not duplicate the build processes on Linux that require accounting for an infinite variety of processors, graphics devices, monitors, etc. > If what Turkay says about the OpenMoko development platform > is approximately correct, this project may be doomed. > How can we be this far down the road without enough > documentation that a larger group of developers can successfully > write C/C++ apps for OpenMoko? Not doomed :) > On the other hand, one might also say how can a mobile phone > project be this far along yet have issues with > fundamental requirements such as making and receiving calls? Yes, please! Again, make the development platform standard with the standard hardware and build a fully functioning core of a phone that a) works, b) makes assumptions that the standard hardware is present and doesn't need to account for corner-cases everywhere, and c) provides a standard kernel that allows access to all standard hardware in a consistent fashion. > One possible conclusion: developing a full-featured open source > mobile phone exceeds the scope of what a loosely > organized open source community can accomplish. I don't think so, but I do think that it's necessary to be more opinionated about the phone, it's capabilities, and the method of development. We don't need thousands of developers going off and developing 5 different windowing systems, 10 different APIs for making calls, and essentially duplicating efforts while creating mass confusion to end-user developers/consumers. _______________________________________________ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
