On tor, 2006-11-30 at 10:53 +0000, ext Andrew Flegg wrote: > On 11/30/06, David Weinehall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On tor, 2006-11-30 at 10:36 +0000, ext Andrew Flegg wrote: > > > > [snip] > > > > > If Maemo is to be an open and community participated effort, rather > > > than just an open source Nokia SDK[1], the leaders of the project > > > (i.e. Nokia) need to start informing the community of their plans for > > > the platform. > > > > When did Linus last announce the release date of the next kernel (and > > actually follow it)? Ohhh, but I guess you don't regard that as an open > > and community participated effort either. =) > > Touché, however I said "plans" not "release date" (although I did ask > about the release date as well). Plans involve other stuff related to > frameworks, component versions, capabilities etc.
OK, our release plans for the next maemo release: We will try to fix as many bugs as we can, updating the components to newer versions where feasible, and do so within the next 6 months. This is pretty much what we can tell you at this point. We cannot specify component versions, because we don't know that ourselves (bugs or performance issues might force us to up- or downgrade). As far as capabilities go (I assume you mean features rather than the security related kind), that's something we simply cannot divulge without top management decisions, since that would commit us to a direction we might have reason to deviate from. We can of course express expected directions of development though, and I suspect that Carlos will announce such things fairly soon. Oh, and we will release the alarm framework within the same time frame. That will have version 0.4.x. As for people asking whether forthcoming releases will be free or not: all our releases have been free (as in gratis) so far. I don't know of any plans to change this, and I suspect that our management realises that such a move could kill the platform. It wouldn't surprise me if Nokia some day started selling add-on software; I haven't heard of any such plans, but it would make sense (and I cannot see how that could be objectionable). If/when new hardware is released, the software released with that hardware might not necessarily work on older hardware, although the Maemo parts likely should be easy enough to back port (and the handy hacker might even manage do disassemble the software images for the new hardware and use some of the proprietary software from those on the 770). The reason is simple -- making new software images work on old hardware would mean that some hardware upgrades would simply never be feasible. And believe it or not, Nokia doesn't make any money from giving away software for free. It makes money from selling hardware. So if we cannot leave the option open for hardware upgrades now and then, we don't have a feasible business case at all. The Internet Tablet concept isn't as simple as an mp3-player, where the same features can be sold forever on and on with just a change of plastic covers and/or storage capacity. Now all of this should be fairly evident, and I'm sure that if you sit down and think for a while, you'll realise that a company like Nokia simply cannot commit to a five-year plan (or even one-year plan) for something like this. What if someone suddenly came up with an idea that would render the Internet Tablet concept totally dead in the water? What if someone launched this really cool and new cpu that required 1/10th of the current power consumption but required rewrites of the software? What if upstream development of some component we're using suddenly stops -- we cannot maintain everything ourselves. What if... If the 770 had been Nokia's only product, or at least one of our major products, we might have been able to make this kind of promises, since we would've had a far bigger workforce, and could have easily hired several hundred developers just to maintain the SDK (I'm pretty sure the Symbian SDK numbers are in that ballpark, though I'm not sure, since I've never worked in the Symbian division, nor ever developed for that platform). But face it, the Nokia 770 is a drop in the ocean. Nokia is the largest cellphone manufacturer in the world. But we're not even a blimp on the radar screen when it comes to handheld devices. And the market for cellphones is gigantic, the market for Internet Tablets is, so far, minuscule. Until this changes, any medium- and long-term platform commitments will, I suspect, remain impossible to make. Then again, all of this are my own ramblings (even though I'm posting them from my Nokia account), so apart from the commitment on releasing the alarm framework, you'll have to take it with a grain of salt. Regards: David _______________________________________________ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
