RE: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help?

2006-10-21 Thread Murray Cumming
I'm not seeing any significant improvement to this situation, and
Nokia's developers seem no less busy. So I'm still wasting time chasing
incredibly minor patches.

I still think a dedicated empowered community liason would fix this.

As ever, I'm not complaining so much as trying to suggest how to make
things perfect.

On Wed, 2006-04-19 at 20:42 +0300, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Hi Murray,
 
  The Maemo community is alive, but not thriving as much as it 
  could. This
  is because the Nokia developers are so busy and are often unable to
  respond to the simplest of requests for changes or information, and
  often unable to even acknowledge that contributions have been 
  accepted.
  It's OK to be busy, so this isn't a personal attack on those 
  developers.
  It's a suggestion for how to take the weight off them.
 
 Yes, the Maemo community could be more thriving, and insufficiently
 open development is a key limitation.
 Developers are busy working on the next release and don't have as much
 time as they would wish to interact with the community.
 Things will not always be like this, but at the moment that is the focus
 we have. There are many ways to disappoint, slow developer community
 development is one of them, but there's also the product.
 
 However, as Tommi pointed out, an equality important factor here is that
 our product development processes and infrastructure are not yet fully
 adapted to open platform development. Developing consumer electronics
 products takes a lot more than platform software development. So those
 processes take time to change. They touch a countless number of aspects
 that constrain how development can be done, and often for good reasons,
 even though from the outside one cannot see why.
 To open up development in order to be more able to make good use of
 the community's help, we are changing the way we do many things. As
 Marius pointed out, a lot is actually happening there. It takes substantial
 energy and time to make it happen. Some of this results in things you can see
 (e.g.: bugzilla) but even more in things you cannot see, as it's about
 fixing internal obstacles and bottlenecks and preparing the ground.
 Things are moving, slowly but surely.
 
  I think Nokia needs to assign a dedicated community liaison, full time
  or part time, while still demanding that all developers are involved
  with the community as much as possible. This person would maintain the
  web site, and help the community to maintain it by extracting
  information from Nokia. This person would also do simple patch and bug
  triage and apply obvious changes without bothering the developers with
  trivial stuff.
  
  It must be politically acceptable for this person to be under less
  pressure than a regular developer. If the community liaison 
  ever has no
  problems to solve then that's good.
  
  If you need a more traditional job title, you could squeeze these
  responsibilities into Documentation or Q  A.
  
  Nokia will get a lot of the advantages of open source if they don't do
  this, and the community will survive if they don't do this, 
  but I think
  the extra salary would be a good investment to get even more valuable
  advantages.
 
 All of these tasks are important. Many of them are being done to the
 extent possible by their available time by a number of hard working
 people who (too modestly) hide under [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 They are more constrained by the current process and infrastructure
 limitations than anybody else.
 But it's the developers that are not involved enough. That's also
 slowly improving.
 
 Having a full-time community liason is one option, and athought provoking
 suggestion to be taken seriously. It's not the only option however.
 
 Definitely we could use more people.
 You'll notice we are hiring, we currently have a couple of positions
 open in nokia.com/careers, and we'll have more.
 http://careers.nokia.com/nokia/hr/recrsyst.nsf/WB2RR/C33176FEA7866248C22571380056A811?OpenDocumentLang=Global
 
 http://careers.nokia.com/nokia/hr/recrsyst.nsf/WB2RR/8A7C8A276B3D1F63C22570B3002683DB?OpenDocumentLang=Global
 
 Best regards,
 Carlos
-- 
Murray Cumming
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com

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Re: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help?

2006-10-21 Thread Koen Kooi
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Murray Cumming schreef:
 I'm not seeing any significant improvement to this situation, and
 Nokia's developers seem no less busy. So I'm still wasting time chasing
 incredibly minor patches.
 
 I still think a dedicated empowered community liason would fix this.

A liason that actively comminucates, instead of passively. Things like herring 
are a great
initiative, but if it's only mentioned on IRC after some questioning it will 
never be of
great value to non-developers.

regards,

Koen
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Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (Darwin)

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Re: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help?

2006-10-21 Thread Carlos Guerreiro

ext Murray Cumming wrote:

I'm not seeing any significant improvement to this situation, and
Nokia's developers seem no less busy. So I'm still wasting time chasing
incredibly minor patches.

I still think a dedicated empowered community liason would fix this.
  
Murray, you have suggested this before and we have taken notice. At some 
point
that would most probably improve things and it might very well happen. 
However, at
this point our difficulties mainly stem from internal development 
processes that are
not well good at enabling community platform development. We are working 
hard
to adjust them but this is something that is difficult to do within the 
constraints of
product development and internal infrastructure. It takes time. Please 
be patient,

things are improving at many levels.

As ever, I'm not complaining so much as trying to suggest how to make
things perfect.
  

Your suggestions and help are as always welcome and motivating.

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Re: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help?

2006-10-21 Thread Carlos Guerreiro

ext Koen Kooi wrote:

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Murray Cumming schreef:
  

I'm not seeing any significant improvement to this situation, and
Nokia's developers seem no less busy. So I'm still wasting time chasing
incredibly minor patches.

I still think a dedicated empowered community liason would fix this.



A liason that actively comminucates, instead of passively. Things like herring 
are a great
initiative, but if it's only mentioned on IRC after some questioning it will 
never be of
great value to non-developers.
  

Hi Koen,

Herring will be announced soon during the next few days, once the 
repository is minimally ready. Please be patient.
For those who cannot absolutely wait  here's a few words about herring, 
which you can find on http://sardine.garage.maemo.org/about.html



 Herring

Sardine will always contain the latest component versions. However, in 
order to make releases it is necessary to feature freeze the software 
and concentrate on polishing, bug-fixing and otherwise stabilizing the 
code. Doing this without stopping forward development requires branching 
off the code. This is done in the revision control system, component by 
component as it becomes necessary. When components start branching in 
the revision control system the Sardine distro branches as well: a 
separate stabilization distro is created.


The current stabilization HAF distro is Herring. _Please note that the 
Herring is still under construction but should be available very soon_


We are preparing the herring repository here:

   * deb http://repository.maemo.org herring main non-free

However, I wouldn't encourage anybody to try it out just yet, it's just 
not ready.


Br,
Carlos

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Re: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help?

2006-10-21 Thread koos vriezen

2006/10/21, Carlos Guerreiro [EMAIL PROTECTED]:

ext Murray Cumming wrote:
 I'm not seeing any significant improvement to this situation, and
 Nokia's developers seem no less busy. So I'm still wasting time chasing
 incredibly minor patches.

 I still think a dedicated empowered community liason would fix this.

Murray, you have suggested this before and we have taken notice. At some
point
that would most probably improve things and it might very well happen.
However, at
this point our difficulties mainly stem from internal development
processes that are
not well good at enabling community platform development.


I don't fully agree with this, Nokia isn't doing so bad IMO. First the
$99 campaign was a smart move to start up a community. The maemo.org
and garage are great infrastructures for developers. Scratchbox simply
rocks IMHO. And @nokia.com is often one of the answering ones on this
list.


We are working hard
to adjust them but this is something that is difficult to do within the
constraints of
product development and internal infrastructure. It takes time. Please
be patient,
things are improving at many levels.
 As ever, I'm not complaining so much as trying to suggest how to make
 things perfect.

Your suggestions and help are as always welcome and motivating.


May I humbly suggest that not only the haf is important, but also the
community applications may need some more attention. New releases from
Nokia almost looks like calling processEvents() on the community, apps
update/improve suddenly faster. Someone that pushes the community
other ways may do this also.

Koos
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Re: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help?

2006-10-21 Thread Carlos Guerreiro

ext koos vriezen wrote:

2006/10/21, Carlos Guerreiro [EMAIL PROTECTED]:

ext Murray Cumming wrote:
 I'm not seeing any significant improvement to this situation, and
 Nokia's developers seem no less busy. So I'm still wasting time 
chasing

 incredibly minor patches.

 I still think a dedicated empowered community liason would fix this.

Murray, you have suggested this before and we have taken notice. At some
point
that would most probably improve things and it might very well happen.
However, at
this point our difficulties mainly stem from internal development
processes that are
not well good at enabling community platform development.


I don't fully agree with this, Nokia isn't doing so bad IMO. First the
$99 campaign was a smart move to start up a community. The maemo.org
and garage are great infrastructures for developers. Scratchbox simply
rocks IMHO. And @nokia.com is often one of the answering ones on this
list.
Certainly. All of this is great infrastructure for _application_ 
developers.
That's the original focus of Maemo, to provide a good platform for 
_application_

development on the 770.

My understanding of Murray's frustration is that it is mainly about the 
difficulty of
doing  _platform_ development, meaning contributing to Maemo itself, not 
simply

building  on top of Maemo.
It is hardly surprising that community platform development has been so 
difficult
given that was not originally a goal for Maemo. Sure, the platform is 
open, the source code
is available and we've tried to enable tinkering with it as much as 
possible since having an
open platform helps and encourages application development and hey, 
contributions to the

platform wouldn't hurt.
But we (Nokia) didn't prepare ourselves or Maemo for developing Maemo 
itself openly with
the community, In terms of infrastructure, processes and even mindset. 
That's why Murray

and others find it so hard to contribute.

Recently we have selected the HAF as the playground for experimenting 
with community
platform development. Why the HAF? Mostly because it contains many of 
the open-source
components originated by Nokia (e.g.: maemo-af-desktop). Those are the 
ones that would benefit
the most from attracting a community of developers. So it's the HAF 
software and the HAF

team that are the primary focus of process and infrastructure adjustments.


May I humbly suggest that not only the haf is important, but also the
community applications may need some more attention. New releases from
Nokia almost looks like calling processEvents() on the community, apps
update/improve suddenly faster. Someone that pushes the community
other ways may do this also.


That's true, point taken.

Br,
Carlos

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RE: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help? I'm not complaining

2006-05-12 Thread Devesh.Kothari


 -Original Message-
 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Behalf Of ext Dave Neuer
 Sent: 12 May, 2006 00:02
 To: Kothari Devesh (Nokia-M/Tampere)
 Cc: maemo-developers@maemo.org
 Subject: Re: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help? I'm not
 complaining
 
 
 On 5/10/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
can you be more specific ???
  
   I can remove all software for which I cannot access and 
 re-publish the
   source code and all of the hardware capabilities (power 
 management,
   DSP and whatever other little doodads Nokia packed in 
 there) are still
   accessible; I can compile a kernel and a corresponding 
 initfs and root
   fs from source. Etc.
 
  Those are the goals but i have to admit we have not yet 
 reached there. We are
  working on most parts e.g you can compile your own kernel, 
 create your custom rootfs,
  remove stuff etc with package management. There are still 
 certain piecies which are
  either not in our direct control (e.g TI/DSP related 
 stuff), and some which we
  just cant give out (e.g battery related software).
 
 As far as the DSP stuff goes, if a developer has linux-dsp-tools,
 what's the issue? The actual code which implements the DSP tasks
 should be distributable under just about any license, no?

developers are free to use the linux-dsp-tool and write dsp tasks
(there have been some previous discussion on the mailing list about 
that)if they want to (and distribute it in a license terms they like), 
for us mostly the licensed codecs run as dsp tasks which
we cannot give out. sorry

 
  For us it is important to strive a balance at product 
 creation and at the same
  time persue the openness goal
 
 I certainly understand that being a software developer by profession
 myself. However, to some extent, the two goals are either at odds, or
 the second one is actually more important, to whit:

In my opinion, they are more complementary goals, like our desire towards
openess results in us thinking more about customizable, extendible and generally
better architecture which has clear points for openness and 
product differentiation. It also makes us think about enabling MOST developer
use cases to enable cooperation and working with communities as well
as engaging commercial ISV developers

 
 If Nokia has a product which is viable in the marketplace as it
 currently stands, it actually doesn't need the community and can do
 only what it has to do legally to comply with the licenses of the Free
 Software it ships. In which case pursuing openess is just a
 distraction and internal development effort focussed on that goal is
 probably wasted. This of course puts the community in a position where

Maemo and Nokia 770 is based on large majority or open software and 
has benifit from the open source, and that brings into us a sense to 
work together with the community as a constructive partner. To us open 
source and openness strategy is a long term investment and not a one time
opportunistic goal.
 
 it has little option but to reverse-engineer the parts that Nokia
 won't release and pursue whatever course makes the community's
 software usable and effective, even if it means forking.

As with all open source projects and initiatives these are individual
choices :) The better option is to identify areas which are close, and then
come up with extendible architecture, so the nokia solution can coexist with 
a reference implementation (so its more worth while to work on stable interfaces
and reasonable standardization). This provides 2 advantages, first better 
architecture and second, points of differentiation for vendors 
(i.e there could be optimized battery and power management features, or better
DSP optimized multimedia)

 
 On the other hand, if Nokia is hoping that it can leverage the
 comminity to *create* the software that makes the device a compelling
 product for consumers, then it's in a bind; it must please the
 developer community *first,* so that we'll be motivated to do the
 lifting required to get the product to that point; speaking
 personally, my own enthusiasm for the device is directly tied to its
 openess, and my interest in contributing is entirely linked to this

As i mentioned earlier, every individual needs to make or find his/her
happiness and hence reason for contributions. I am sorry to hear
you werent, but that only helps us to keep improving :)
 
 (hence my not developing software for the various Windows-based
 tablets and handhelds or purchasing said devices).
 
 To put this in a slightly different perspective, compare it to the
 situation in desktop and server operating systems: it is widely
 accepted that it's the open source development process itself which
 makes Linux a stable server platform, so it's strongly in the
 self-interest of vendors shipping said hardware to support *the
 community* well. On the other hand, desktop users are used to crappy
 software and expect all the latest whizbang USB

Re: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help? I'm not complaining

2006-05-11 Thread Igor Stoppa
On Wed, 2006-05-10 at 14:45 -0500, ext Larry Battraw wrote:
 On 5/10/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
 
   -Original Message-
   From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
   Behalf Of ext Dave Neuer
   Sent: 04 May, 2006 23:39
   To: Kothari Devesh (Nokia-M/Tampere)
   Cc: maemo-developers@maemo.org
   Subject: Re: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help? I'm not
   complaining
   I can remove all software for which I cannot access and re-publish the
   source code and all of the hardware capabilities (power management,
   DSP and whatever other little doodads Nokia packed in there) are still
   accessible; I can compile a kernel and a corresponding initfs and root
   fs from source. Etc.
 
  Those are the goals but i have to admit we have not yet reached there. We 
  are
  working on most parts e.g you can compile your own kernel, create your 
  custom rootfs,
  remove stuff etc with package management. There are still certain piecies 
  which are
  either not in our direct control (e.g TI/DSP related stuff), and some which 
  we
  just cant give out (e.g battery related software).
 
   I'm curious-- when you say you can't give out the battery-related
 software are you referring to the power management system as it stands
 OR any of the details about how to talk to the battery control
 interface?  I can understand either one, as the power management is
 difficult/proprietary, and the battery interface might allow someone
 to overcharge or destroy the battery.  That being said, it would be
 nice to have an entry in /proc of the raw battery voltage and any
 additional available power info.
 
 Larry

Hi,
please note that the the vast majority of 770 power management stuff is
opened already, since it lives in kernelspace.

-- 
Cheers,
   Igor

Igor Stoppa (Nokia M - OSSO / Tampere)
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Re: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help? I'm not complaining

2006-05-11 Thread Dave Neuer

On 5/10/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

  can you be more specific ???

 I can remove all software for which I cannot access and re-publish the
 source code and all of the hardware capabilities (power management,
 DSP and whatever other little doodads Nokia packed in there) are still
 accessible; I can compile a kernel and a corresponding initfs and root
 fs from source. Etc.

Those are the goals but i have to admit we have not yet reached there. We are
working on most parts e.g you can compile your own kernel, create your custom 
rootfs,
remove stuff etc with package management. There are still certain piecies which 
are
either not in our direct control (e.g TI/DSP related stuff), and some which we
just cant give out (e.g battery related software).


As far as the DSP stuff goes, if a developer has linux-dsp-tools,
what's the issue? The actual code which implements the DSP tasks
should be distributable under just about any license, no?


For us it is important to strive a balance at product creation and at the same
time persue the openness goal


I certainly understand that being a software developer by profession
myself. However, to some extent, the two goals are either at odds, or
the second one is actually more important, to whit:

If Nokia has a product which is viable in the marketplace as it
currently stands, it actually doesn't need the community and can do
only what it has to do legally to comply with the licenses of the Free
Software it ships. In which case pursuing openess is just a
distraction and internal development effort focussed on that goal is
probably wasted. This of course puts the community in a position where
it has little option but to reverse-engineer the parts that Nokia
won't release and pursue whatever course makes the community's
software usable and effective, even if it means forking.

On the other hand, if Nokia is hoping that it can leverage the
comminity to *create* the software that makes the device a compelling
product for consumers, then it's in a bind; it must please the
developer community *first,* so that we'll be motivated to do the
lifting required to get the product to that point; speaking
personally, my own enthusiasm for the device is directly tied to its
openess, and my interest in contributing is entirely linked to this
(hence my not developing software for the various Windows-based
tablets and handhelds or purchasing said devices).

To put this in a slightly different perspective, compare it to the
situation in desktop and server operating systems: it is widely
accepted that it's the open source development process itself which
makes Linux a stable server platform, so it's strongly in the
self-interest of vendors shipping said hardware to support *the
community* well. On the other hand, desktop users are used to crappy
software and expect all the latest whizbang USB devices to work with
their machine out of the box; it's less clear why vendors selling
products in that market should care about fostering open-source
communities because their bottom-line depends on getting products to
market quickly with (perhaps poorly-functioning) device drivers for a
million devices they don't control.

I'm not sure which category Nokia finds itself in with the 770 (I'm
prepared to admit that I also may be creating a false dichotomy here,
but in order to be convinced I'd want to hear evidence); however, in
order for me to expend any effort on making the device a compelling
one, I need it to be compelling for me, and for me what makes any type
of computer or electronics device compelling is that I can run it
w/out using proprietary software. I don't mean to lecture here, but
that's what I believed I was getting myself into when I bought the
770.

Anyway, I of course appreciate you taking the time to respond and to
engage in the discussion, I seriously hope that it eventually becomes
moot due to the device living up to the openess promise (and sincerely
hope it doesn't become moot because it fails in the marketplace before
that happens).

Dave
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RE: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help? I'm not complaining

2006-05-10 Thread Devesh.Kothari


 -Original Message-
 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Behalf Of ext Dave Neuer
 Sent: 04 May, 2006 23:39
 To: Kothari Devesh (Nokia-M/Tampere)
 Cc: maemo-developers@maemo.org
 Subject: Re: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help? I'm not
 complaining
 
 
 On 5/3/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  
   Well, since you brought up truely open product and expectation
   management, what are Nokia's expectations about when the 
 770 will be
   a truely open product (i.e., I can run all free software 
 on the device
  
  Maemo 2.0 would take it closer, with real package 
 management. It is even today
  an open product, you can get root and install whatever you 
 want today :) but
  remember the hardware limitations of the device itself :)
 
   without losing any functionality)?
  can you be more specific ???
 
 I can remove all software for which I cannot access and re-publish the
 source code and all of the hardware capabilities (power management,
 DSP and whatever other little doodads Nokia packed in there) are still
 accessible; I can compile a kernel and a corresponding initfs and root
 fs from source. Etc.

Those are the goals but i have to admit we have not yet reached there. We are
working on most parts e.g you can compile your own kernel, create your custom 
rootfs,
remove stuff etc with package management. There are still certain piecies which 
are
either not in our direct control (e.g TI/DSP related stuff), and some which we
just cant give out (e.g battery related software).

The important thing i believe is still to work with (work around;) limitations, 
and strive towards abstraction and generic architecture which would enable to 
make maemo more extensible, adaptable and customizable for different hardware 
configuration (though for the moment we pretty much product driven and that 
takes the priority, BUT i firmly believe that community with its experience can 
really help on this front), remember Nokia 770 is NOT
a kind of reference platform :) for us

For us it is important to strive a balance at product creation and at the same
time persue the openness goal

Rome was not built in a day :)
cheers
Devesh

 
 Dave
 
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Re: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help? I'm not complaining

2006-05-10 Thread Larry Battraw

On 5/10/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:



 -Original Message-
 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Behalf Of ext Dave Neuer
 Sent: 04 May, 2006 23:39
 To: Kothari Devesh (Nokia-M/Tampere)
 Cc: maemo-developers@maemo.org
 Subject: Re: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help? I'm not
 complaining
 I can remove all software for which I cannot access and re-publish the
 source code and all of the hardware capabilities (power management,
 DSP and whatever other little doodads Nokia packed in there) are still
 accessible; I can compile a kernel and a corresponding initfs and root
 fs from source. Etc.

Those are the goals but i have to admit we have not yet reached there. We are
working on most parts e.g you can compile your own kernel, create your custom 
rootfs,
remove stuff etc with package management. There are still certain piecies which 
are
either not in our direct control (e.g TI/DSP related stuff), and some which we
just cant give out (e.g battery related software).


 I'm curious-- when you say you can't give out the battery-related
software are you referring to the power management system as it stands
OR any of the details about how to talk to the battery control
interface?  I can understand either one, as the power management is
difficult/proprietary, and the battery interface might allow someone
to overcharge or destroy the battery.  That being said, it would be
nice to have an entry in /proc of the raw battery voltage and any
additional available power info.

Larry
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Re: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help? I'm not complaining

2006-05-04 Thread Dave Neuer

On 5/3/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


 Well, since you brought up truely open product and expectation
 management, what are Nokia's expectations about when the 770 will be
 a truely open product (i.e., I can run all free software on the device

Maemo 2.0 would take it closer, with real package management. It is even today
an open product, you can get root and install whatever you want today :) but
remember the hardware limitations of the device itself :)

 without losing any functionality)?
can you be more specific ???


I can remove all software for which I cannot access and re-publish the
source code and all of the hardware capabilities (power management,
DSP and whatever other little doodads Nokia packed in there) are still
accessible; I can compile a kernel and a corresponding initfs and root
fs from source. Etc.

Dave
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Re: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help? I'm not complaining

2006-05-02 Thread Dave Neuer

On 4/20/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


no offense, it always look simpler from the other side. Developing and
bringing a product to market (in all my experience) is no simple task
combine that with new challenges working with open source, and OS communities,
new processes and at the same time building a truely open product.
I am not saying we havnt and we will not make mistakes (maybe we will),
but we are ready to listen and willing to learn.

And as i see right now, I am ready to take small baby steps and disappoint few
than going grand. There is a natural order of things, and lot what you suggested
would/may happen but lets take patience as a virtue.


As your rightly said, its about expectation management :)
cheers
Devesh


Well, since you brought up truely open product and expectation
management, what are Nokia's expectations about when the 770 will be
a truely open product (i.e., I can run all free software on the device
without losing any functionality)?

This has been the #1 reason why the device has mostly sat unused in my
house rather than constantly traveling with me and sucking up a lot of
my time. I honestly expected based on Nokia's (admittedly limited)
advanced advertising of the product that that would be the case
immediately, rather than at some unspecified point in the future.

Dave
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RE: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help? I'm not complaining

2006-05-02 Thread Devesh.Kothari


 -Original Message-
 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of ext Dave Neuer
 Sent: 02 May, 2006 21:07
 To: maemo-developers@maemo.org
 Subject: Re: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help? I'm not
 complaining
 
 
 On 4/20/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
  no offense, it always look simpler from the other side. 
 Developing and
  bringing a product to market (in all my experience) is no 
 simple task
  combine that with new challenges working with open source, 
 and OS communities,
  new processes and at the same time building a truely open product.
  I am not saying we havnt and we will not make mistakes 
 (maybe we will),
  but we are ready to listen and willing to learn.
 
  And as i see right now, I am ready to take small baby steps 
 and disappoint few
  than going grand. There is a natural order of things, and 
 lot what you suggested
  would/may happen but lets take patience as a virtue.
 
 
  As your rightly said, its about expectation management :)
  cheers
  Devesh
 
 Well, since you brought up truely open product and expectation
 management, what are Nokia's expectations about when the 770 will be
 a truely open product (i.e., I can run all free software on the device
Maemo 2.0 would take it closer, with real package management. It is even today
an open product, you can get root and install whatever you want today :) but
remember the hardware limitations of the device itself :)

 without losing any functionality)?
can you be more specific ???

Devesh

 
 This has been the #1 reason why the device has mostly sat unused in my
 house rather than constantly traveling with me and sucking up a lot of
 my time. I honestly expected based on Nokia's (admittedly limited)
 advanced advertising of the product that that would be the case
 immediately, rather than at some unspecified point in the future.
 
 Dave
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Re: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help? I'm not complaining

2006-04-20 Thread Weinehall David (Nokia-M/Tampere)
On ons, 2006-04-19 at 13:06 -0700, ext Shawn Gordon wrote:

[snip]

 faster because it is done, has been used, refined, debugged and 
 developed for for years, so other than device drivers in the kernel 
 it wouldn't have taken hardly any time at all to get it up and running.
 
 cheaper - I'm assuming cheaper based on what I know of the licensing 
 costs and the costs to hire a bunch of developers for years to 
 develop and support the software.  Nokia is not going to just rely on 
 the open source community for something that they depend on, they 
 will certainly have their own developers and these are going to be 
 far more expensive than simply paying a small per unit license cost 
 (I'm talking ones of dollars per unit).

Just using plain Qtopia wouldn't have been an option, just as using
plain GTK+ without Hildon wasn't an option; we had to use a UI that
looks somewhat like Nokia's earlier products, without forking too
wildly.  So the work effort would've been the same either way; the
difference being that Qtopia would've incurred the added penalties
of a licensing cost, C++, and of course the extra legal issues
surrounding the fact that Qtopia is GPL, not LGPL.  The Nokia legal
process is not a smoothly operating machine, it's more akin to
the Spanish inquisition...

[snip]

The world is only black and white if you filter out the greys
by deliberately ignoring to see some things and are not privy to
other things.


Regards: David
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RE: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help? I'm not complaining

2006-04-20 Thread Devesh.Kothari


 -Original Message-
 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of ext 
 Shawn Gordon
 Sent: 19 April, 2006 23:06
 To: maemo-developers@maemo.org
 Subject: Re: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help? I'm not
 complaining
 
 
 At 12:23 PM 4/19/2006, Philippe De Swert wrote:
 Hello Shawn,
 
 On Wed, 2006-04-19 at 11:59 -0700, Shawn Gordon wrote:
   I've already got Nils slamming me privately because I dared to
   mention Qtopia, but let me provide some perspective as a 
 company who
   was very successful with Qtopia and the Sharp Zaurus and 
 what Sharp
   and Trolltech did both right and wrong that Nokia could 
 learn from (I
   don't care if they use Qtopia at this stage, I just 
 honestly think it
   would have been faster and cheaper than going the route 
 they did, but
   I am not privy to the information that went in to making 
 that decision).
 
 Why would Qtopia be faster and cheaper?
 
 faster because it is done, has been used, refined, debugged and 
 developed for for years, so other than device drivers in the kernel 
 it wouldn't have taken hardly any time at all to get it up 
 and running.

no offense, it always look simpler from the other side. Developing and
bringing a product to market (in all my experience) is no simple task
combine that with new challenges working with open source, and OS communities,
new processes and at the same time building a truely open product. 
I am not saying we havnt and we will not make mistakes (maybe we will), 
but we are ready to listen and willing to learn.

And as i see right now, I am ready to take small baby steps and disappoint few
than going grand. There is a natural order of things, and lot what you suggested
would/may happen but lets take patience as a virtue. 


As your rightly said, its about expectation management :)
cheers
Devesh
 
 cheaper - I'm assuming cheaper based on what I know of the licensing 
 costs and the costs to hire a bunch of developers for years to 
 develop and support the software.  Nokia is not going to just rely on 
 the open source community for something that they depend on, they 
 will certainly have their own developers and these are going to be 
 far more expensive than simply paying a small per unit license cost 
 (I'm talking ones of dollars per unit).
 
 I am not trying to troll here
 but both have wide support in the Free Software community. 
 (However in
 the embedded space GTK might have an edge. GPE is atm better 
 supported
 and has more active developers than Opie for example. And I am not
 stating that because I happen to be involved with GPE, but 
 because both
 Opie and GPe are involved with familiar we know about each other
 projects and we even co-operate on certain parts.)
 
 Keep in mind that Opie is simply a fork of the GPL version of Qtopia, 
 so they get the advantage of all the things I spelled out above.
 
 
   Now by the time the Zaurus was commercially available, my company
   already had a dozen products running on it, maybe more, 
 and there was
   a big and healthy open source movement that was also producing
   software, I don't remember how many apps, but it was a good amount
   and grew very rapidly.
 
 Well Nokia might not have had applictions readily available 
 before the
 product was released. But I do remember porting an app in 
 the maemo SDK
 before the device was actually available
 
   What was done right:
  
   1.Sharp actually located about 50 companies and 
 individual developers
   2.They worked with Handango to create a web site where 
 commercial and
   3.Trolltech hired a liaison to work directly with the embedded
   community and keep the line of communication open.
 
 Ok. That indeed are valid points that could contribute to 
 success with
 an open project. However *again* I see no reason why 
 Qtopia would have
 been an advantage. In it's own right I believe the technical 
 choice GTK
 vs QT(opia) has nothing to do with the success of these 
 projects. As you
 point out political choices are much more important. Nokia 
 has supported
 Gnome and has hired professional companies to support them as can be
 seen in Ari Jaaksi's presentation from Boston see (slide 7):
 http://www.kotiposti.net/jaaksi/ME9_LinuxWorld_2006_AriJaaksi_.pdf .
 So the one thing they really need to do is having somebody 
 that can put
 time in co-ordinating the community and pass on all interesting
 developments to the people in Nokia who take the decisions. This last
 part has not yet been done. And if they manage to pick up the good
 things from the community it will become a killer product. So they
 definitely need to work on point 3. Apart from that the used toolkit
 point is completely moot. The 770 would probabely be as 
 good/bad as it
 is now regardless of GTK or QT.
 
 I'm not espousing the benefits of one technology over another here, 
 I'm simply making the point of how the business was and was not well 
 handled in my opinion.
 
 
 Regards,
 
 Philippe

RE: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help?]

2006-04-20 Thread Devesh.Kothari


 
 
  Original Message 
 Subject: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help?
 Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2006 13:14:13 +0200
 From: ext Murray Cumming [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 To: maemo-developers@maemo.org
 
 The Maemo community is alive, but not thriving as much as it 
 could. This
 is because the Nokia developers are so busy and are often unable to
 respond to the simplest of requests for changes or information, and
 often unable to even acknowledge that contributions have been 
 accepted.

I agree. but sometimes, I believe also community cannot be pushed 
too hard either, things just take time (simple example is if
something itches, you step in to solve :)

 It's OK to be busy, so this isn't a personal attack on those 
 developers.
 It's a suggestion for how to take the weight off them.
 
 I think Nokia needs to assign a dedicated community liaison, full time
 or part time, while still demanding that all developers are involved
 with the community as much as possible. This person would maintain the
 web site, and help the community to maintain it by extracting
 information from Nokia. This person would also do simple patch and bug
 triage and apply obvious changes without bothering the developers with
 trivial stuff.

I rather turn this other way to identify clear problems today and expectations
e.g (here is my list), feel free to add

1. Responsive discussion on mailing list (this should decrease, as Maemo 
matures,
  and more things get documented) - so patience advised
   [Thing community can do for us] : Create a Wiki page with concrete How-To's 
needed. Remember so 
   many things are discussed on mailing dev list, which are asked again and 
again. Also it is easier
   to update things at one place, when things change
2. clear forums for feature/enhancements discussion
3. more transparency from Nokia about Maemo roadmap (with ability for community 
to be involved)
4. responsive bugzilla [this should now start to work :)
5. ability for community to be involved with bleeding edge Maemo, to contribue 
and experiment
   baby step 
[http://maemo.org/pipermail/maemo-developers/2006-April/003550.html]
6. ability for community to contribute and share Maemo applications
7. Clear process from each project (in Murrays case HAF) 
   - how they accept contributions (e.g access rights, patches, feature 
enhancements)


I still see a lot of value in Murrays proposal, and as Carlos pointed out :) 
there are hiring announcements :).

Devesh

 
 It must be politically acceptable for this person to be under less
 pressure than a regular developer. If the community liaison 
 ever has no
 problems to solve then that's good.
 
 If you need a more traditional job title, you could squeeze these
 responsibilities into Documentation or Q  A.
 
 Nokia will get a lot of the advantages of open source if they don't do
 this, and the community will survive if they don't do this, 
 but I think
 the extra salary would be a good investment to get even more valuable
 advantages.
 
 
 -- 
 Murray Cumming
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 www.murrayc.com
 www.openismus.com
 
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Re: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help? I'm not complaining

2006-04-20 Thread Lorn Potter

Weinehall David (Nokia-M/Tampere) wrote:
[snip]


Just using plain Qtopia wouldn't have been an option, just as using
plain GTK+ without Hildon wasn't an option; we had to use a UI that
looks somewhat like Nokia's earlier products, without forking too
wildly.  So the work effort would've been the same either way; the
difference being that Qtopia would've incurred the added penalties
of a licensing cost, C++, and of course the extra legal issues
surrounding the fact that Qtopia is GPL, not LGPL.  The Nokia legal


Correction. Qtopia is dual licensed, commercial and GPL. GPL of course 
has no licensing cost. The only legal difference of GPL and LGPL is 
that GPL insures derived sources remain open.




--
Lorn 'ljp' Potter
Trolltech Qtopia Community Manager
Opie Core Developer
http://qtopia.net
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Re: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help? I'm not complaining

2006-04-20 Thread Kalle Vahlman
On 4/20/06, Lorn Potter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Weinehall David (Nokia-M/Tampere) wrote:
 [snip]

  Just using plain Qtopia wouldn't have been an option, just as using
  plain GTK+ without Hildon wasn't an option; we had to use a UI that
  looks somewhat like Nokia's earlier products, without forking too
  wildly.  So the work effort would've been the same either way; the
  difference being that Qtopia would've incurred the added penalties
  of a licensing cost, C++, and of course the extra legal issues
  surrounding the fact that Qtopia is GPL, not LGPL.  The Nokia legal

 Correction. Qtopia is dual licensed, commercial and GPL. GPL of course
 has no licensing cost.

I remember seeing (but cannot confirm right now) a statement that some
modules were not allowed to be used on GPL when I compiled the
opensource version of Qtopia last night. So I guess to really have
that edge whith all the readily available thingies that were mentioned
one must pay the fee anyway?

 The only legal difference of GPL and LGPL is
 that GPL insures derived sources remain open.

No. Sources will always remain open with LGPL too. It's the combining
and linking with non-free (in fact, any) licensed work that LGPL
allows (and GPL doesn't).

--
Kalle Vahlman, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Powered by http://movial.fi
Interesting stuff at http://syslog.movial.fi
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Re: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help? I'm not complaining

2006-04-20 Thread Marius Vollmer
ext [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 And as i see right now, I am ready to take small baby steps [...]

First baby-step for you, Devesh: use a real mail program and not one
that corrupts your From: header... :-)

(From what I have heard, these annoying [EMAIL PROTECTED] addresses
are due to some Outlook or Exchange mis-feature that tries to clean
outgoing mail addresses.)

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Re: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help? I'm not complaining

2006-04-20 Thread Lorn Potter

Jussi Pakkanen wrote:

--- Lorn Potter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


Correction. Qtopia is dual licensed, commercial and
GPL. GPL of course 
has no licensing cost. The only legal difference
of GPL and LGPL is 
that GPL insures derived sources remain open.


There is also the problem of free software that is
GPL-incompatible (MAME etc). They can't link against
GPL libraries, nor will anyone buy a commercial
license for them. Which means you are pretty much screwed.


No, this just means that MAME is screwed.
MAME has it's own legal problems, so I really doubt any company would 
take the chance on delivering that on a device.



--
Lorn 'ljp' Potter
Trolltech Qtopia Community Manager
Opie Core Developer
http://qtopia.net
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Re: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help? I'm not complaining

2006-04-20 Thread Kalle Vahlman
On 4/20/06, Lorn Potter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Kalle Vahlman wrote:
  The only legal difference of GPL and LGPL is
  that GPL insures derived sources remain open.
 
  No. Sources will always remain open with LGPL too. It's the combining
  and linking with non-free (in fact, any) licensed work that LGPL
  allows (and GPL doesn't).

 Which means sources are not open (those that are non free that are
 allowed to link to LGPL), which was my point.

Sources _derived_ from LGPL code will be, which was the fault in your
statement. Sources _combined_ with LGPL need not be, naturally.

--
Kalle Vahlman, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Re: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help?

2006-04-19 Thread Marius Vollmer
ext Murray Cumming [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 The Maemo community is alive, but not thriving as much as it could. This
 is because the Nokia developers are so busy and are often unable to
 respond to the simplest of requests for changes or information, and
 often unable to even acknowledge that contributions have been accepted.

*Cough* Being one of the non-responsive Nokia developers, I agree
totally.  Things need to improve a lot on our side.  People here agree
with that, too, and good things are actually happening to lower the
'activation energy' that is needed to actually take the community
input in.  We are now starting to deal more seriously with bugs in the
maemo.org bugzilla, for example.

As far as I am concerned, it really helps to tell me again and again
what you want me to do, that helps me get my priorities right.  Don't
feel bad about it.

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Re: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help?

2006-04-19 Thread Jussi Kukkonen
Murray Cumming wrote:
 The Maemo community is alive, but not thriving as much as it could. This
 is because the Nokia developers are so busy and are often unable to
 respond to the simplest of requests for changes or information, and
 often unable to even acknowledge that contributions have been accepted.
 It's OK to be busy, so this isn't a personal attack on those developers.
 It's a suggestion for how to take the weight off them.
 
 I think Nokia needs to assign a dedicated community liaison, full time
 or part time, while still demanding that all developers are involved
 with the community as much as possible. 
...
 Nokia will get a lot of the advantages of open source if they don't do
 this, and the community will survive if they don't do this, but I think
 the extra salary would be a good investment to get even more valuable
 advantages.

Good suggestion, I second this. There are probably other solutions too.
Something that would go a long way is opening the development a little
more: I've been really trying to follow what's happening in maemo
development and have found it really difficult...
* None of the development discussions/meetings/decisions seem to happen
  in public
* The bugzilla doesn't seem to be actually used for bug tracking
* I still don't even know who works on what
The only way to follow anything seems to be maemo-commits.

It could of course be that I'm just slow -- it's a large project, and
I'm not that familiar with the components, after all. However, I have
succesfully gotten familiar with other large projects before. This time
I feel like I haven't progressed at all.

I understand that keeping design docs in the wiki or having development
discussions on public mailing lists or in IRC is more work and in some
cases impossible. I also understand that some employees might not want
to be 'in the public eye' and that some bugs need to be Nokia-only.
Still, doing things in private is going to keep everyone else in the
dark, and hinder community involvement... I fear one liaison won't help
that.


Best wishes to the developers -- don't burn yourselves on the release,
we'll need you after that too :)
-- 
Jussi Kukkonen
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Re: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help?

2006-04-19 Thread Ian

disse  -- Murray Cumming

originais - The Maemo community is alive, but not thriving as much as it could.
Perhaps there is some learning curve involved here. This has much to do with 
both language and
cultural differences I think. A lot of 770 work is done at INdT in Manaus and 
while this is
obviously good for the people/economy etc of Manaus it has difficulties too.
Perhaps the biggest one is the idea of instantaneous communications. The Amazon 
is like *big* so a
typical journey to the next town will take probably 2 days by boat.As such a 
couple of hours
either side of this do not make a lot of difference in the great scheme of 
things. Trying to
change this mindset is not easy as the Nokia guys running training sessions 
here can testify.
I am not making excuses for Nokia or taking a cheap shot at the Amazonhenses 
but just calling it
as I see it.

[]'s
Ian


-- 
.''`.
   : :'  :
   `. `'`
 `- Orgulhoso ser MetaRecicleiro

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Re: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help? I'm not complaining

2006-04-19 Thread Kasper Souren
The product is on the market for less than half a year. There are
already tens of usable free software applications ported or created.
That's pretty impressive for the first 'open product' of such a big
company. I'm not complaining. I'm a pretty satisfied customer _and_
developer myself.

Just a little thank you to all the Nokia folks who made this possible...
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Re: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help? I'm not complaining

2006-04-19 Thread Shawn Gordon
I've already got Nils slamming me privately because I dared to 
mention Qtopia, but let me provide some perspective as a company who 
was very successful with Qtopia and the Sharp Zaurus and what Sharp 
and Trolltech did both right and wrong that Nokia could learn from (I 
don't care if they use Qtopia at this stage, I just honestly think it 
would have been faster and cheaper than going the route they did, but 
I am not privy to the information that went in to making that decision).


Now by the time the Zaurus was commercially available, my company 
already had a dozen products running on it, maybe more, and there was 
a big and healthy open source movement that was also producing 
software, I don't remember how many apps, but it was a good amount 
and grew very rapidly.


What was done right:

Sharp actually located about 50 companies and individual developers 
(of which we were part) about 6 months before the release of the 
device, flew us all to San Jose, gave us a limo ride to the hotel, 
put us up with food and lodging, gave us a day seminar on the device 
and gave us devices.  They hired some people that were specifically 
meant to interface with the developers and actually were almost 
always available in IRC for immediate chat and feedback.


They worked with Handango to create a web site where commercial and 
free applications could be hosted.  I don't care for the site much, 
but at least it was a central repository that Sharp would point to.


Trolltech hired a liaison to work directly with the embedded 
community and keep the line of communication open.



What was not done right:

Sharp in Japan wouldn't trust Sharp Americas decisions and really 
pulled the rug out from under them.  One example was that while they 
got the device in places like Best Buy they never sent anyone out to 
the stores to educate the sales people, so consequently they steered 
people away from the device.


Sharp Americas support team kept getting gutted and the contact 
people in Japan kept changing till the point that you could no longer 
get information and it basically killed off any interaction between 
Sharp and the developers to the point that I was actually told by 
Sharp that they didn't want third party developers to do anything for 
the device.


Sharp Japan making major changes to the OS and backend engine without 
telling any of the 3rd party developers and we only found out after 
the devices were released and then documentation was thin or non-existent.


Confusing licensing - the Opie and OZ initiatives were really pushed 
by one of the people at Sharp US to try and commercialize his own 
embedded system, the problem was with the licensing because if you 
strictly followed the license, then a commercial application could 
not be legally sold for a device running Opie and OZ (I don't want to 
get mired in this again, I spent a lot of time working on this with 
lawyers at the time, and this was the end result).  It was confusing 
to the point that Trolltech couldn't even explain it.



Those are some bullet points of what we went through.  We still sell 
a good amount of software for the Zaurus and Archos every single day, 
even with these issues.  My point here is not advocacy for one 
windowing toolkit over another, it is to illustrate what works and 
doesn't work in this environment.  I'd be more than happy to have a 
really detailed conversation with Nokia on this and share more 
details of my experience.



At 10:51 AM 4/19/2006, Kasper Souren wrote:
The product is on the market for less than half a year. There are 
already tens of usable free software applications ported or created. 
That's pretty impressive for the first 'open product' of such a big 
company. I'm not complaining. I'm a pretty satisfied customer _and_ 
developer myself.


Just a little thank you to all the Nokia folks who made this possible...
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Regards,

Shawn Gordon
President
theKompany.com
www.thekompany.com
www.mindawn.com
949-713-3276


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Re: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help? I'm not complaining

2006-04-19 Thread Philippe De Swert
Hello Shawn,

On Wed, 2006-04-19 at 11:59 -0700, Shawn Gordon wrote:
 I've already got Nils slamming me privately because I dared to 
 mention Qtopia, but let me provide some perspective as a company who 
 was very successful with Qtopia and the Sharp Zaurus and what Sharp 
 and Trolltech did both right and wrong that Nokia could learn from (I 
 don't care if they use Qtopia at this stage, I just honestly think it 
 would have been faster and cheaper than going the route they did, but 
 I am not privy to the information that went in to making that decision).

Why would Qtopia be faster and cheaper? I am not trying to troll here
but both have wide support in the Free Software community. (However in
the embedded space GTK might have an edge. GPE is atm better supported
and has more active developers than Opie for example. And I am not
stating that because I happen to be involved with GPE, but because both
Opie and GPe are involved with familiar we know about each other
projects and we even co-operate on certain parts.)

 Now by the time the Zaurus was commercially available, my company 
 already had a dozen products running on it, maybe more, and there was 
 a big and healthy open source movement that was also producing 
 software, I don't remember how many apps, but it was a good amount 
 and grew very rapidly.

Well Nokia might not have had applictions readily available before the
product was released. But I do remember porting an app in the maemo SDK
before the device was actually available

 What was done right:
 
 1.Sharp actually located about 50 companies and individual developers 
 2.They worked with Handango to create a web site where commercial and 
 3.Trolltech hired a liaison to work directly with the embedded 
 community and keep the line of communication open.

Ok. That indeed are valid points that could contribute to success with
an open project. However *again* I see no reason why Qtopia would have
been an advantage. In it's own right I believe the technical choice GTK
vs QT(opia) has nothing to do with the success of these projects. As you
point out political choices are much more important. Nokia has supported
Gnome and has hired professional companies to support them as can be
seen in Ari Jaaksi's presentation from Boston see (slide 7):
http://www.kotiposti.net/jaaksi/ME9_LinuxWorld_2006_AriJaaksi_.pdf .
So the one thing they really need to do is having somebody that can put
time in co-ordinating the community and pass on all interesting
developments to the people in Nokia who take the decisions. This last
part has not yet been done. And if they manage to pick up the good
things from the community it will become a killer product. So they
definitely need to work on point 3. Apart from that the used toolkit
point is completely moot. The 770 would probabely be as good/bad as it
is now regardless of GTK or QT.

Regards,

Philippe

-- 
 
| Philippe De Swert   
|  
| GPE developer: http://gpe.handhelds.org
| Emdebian developer: http://www.emdebian.org  
|   
| Please do not send me documents in a closed
| format.(*.doc,*.xls,*.ppt)
| Use the open alternatives. (*.pdf,*.ps,*.html,*.txt)
| http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html  

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Re: [maemo-developers] Too busy to accept help? I'm not complaining

2006-04-19 Thread Shawn Gordon

At 12:23 PM 4/19/2006, Philippe De Swert wrote:

Hello Shawn,

On Wed, 2006-04-19 at 11:59 -0700, Shawn Gordon wrote:
 I've already got Nils slamming me privately because I dared to
 mention Qtopia, but let me provide some perspective as a company who
 was very successful with Qtopia and the Sharp Zaurus and what Sharp
 and Trolltech did both right and wrong that Nokia could learn from (I
 don't care if they use Qtopia at this stage, I just honestly think it
 would have been faster and cheaper than going the route they did, but
 I am not privy to the information that went in to making that decision).

Why would Qtopia be faster and cheaper?


faster because it is done, has been used, refined, debugged and 
developed for for years, so other than device drivers in the kernel 
it wouldn't have taken hardly any time at all to get it up and running.


cheaper - I'm assuming cheaper based on what I know of the licensing 
costs and the costs to hire a bunch of developers for years to 
develop and support the software.  Nokia is not going to just rely on 
the open source community for something that they depend on, they 
will certainly have their own developers and these are going to be 
far more expensive than simply paying a small per unit license cost 
(I'm talking ones of dollars per unit).



I am not trying to troll here
but both have wide support in the Free Software community. (However in
the embedded space GTK might have an edge. GPE is atm better supported
and has more active developers than Opie for example. And I am not
stating that because I happen to be involved with GPE, but because both
Opie and GPe are involved with familiar we know about each other
projects and we even co-operate on certain parts.)


Keep in mind that Opie is simply a fork of the GPL version of Qtopia, 
so they get the advantage of all the things I spelled out above.




 Now by the time the Zaurus was commercially available, my company
 already had a dozen products running on it, maybe more, and there was
 a big and healthy open source movement that was also producing
 software, I don't remember how many apps, but it was a good amount
 and grew very rapidly.

Well Nokia might not have had applictions readily available before the
product was released. But I do remember porting an app in the maemo SDK
before the device was actually available

 What was done right:

 1.Sharp actually located about 50 companies and individual developers
 2.They worked with Handango to create a web site where commercial and
 3.Trolltech hired a liaison to work directly with the embedded
 community and keep the line of communication open.

Ok. That indeed are valid points that could contribute to success with
an open project. However *again* I see no reason why Qtopia would have
been an advantage. In it's own right I believe the technical choice GTK
vs QT(opia) has nothing to do with the success of these projects. As you
point out political choices are much more important. Nokia has supported
Gnome and has hired professional companies to support them as can be
seen in Ari Jaaksi's presentation from Boston see (slide 7):
http://www.kotiposti.net/jaaksi/ME9_LinuxWorld_2006_AriJaaksi_.pdf .
So the one thing they really need to do is having somebody that can put
time in co-ordinating the community and pass on all interesting
developments to the people in Nokia who take the decisions. This last
part has not yet been done. And if they manage to pick up the good
things from the community it will become a killer product. So they
definitely need to work on point 3. Apart from that the used toolkit
point is completely moot. The 770 would probabely be as good/bad as it
is now regardless of GTK or QT.


I'm not espousing the benefits of one technology over another here, 
I'm simply making the point of how the business was and was not well 
handled in my opinion.




Regards,

Philippe

--

| Philippe De Swert
|
| GPE developer: http://gpe.handhelds.org
| Emdebian developer: http://www.emdebian.org
|
| Please do not send me documents in a closed
| format.(*.doc,*.xls,*.ppt)
| Use the open alternatives. (*.pdf,*.ps,*.html,*.txt)
| http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html



Regards,

Shawn Gordon
President
theKompany.com
www.thekompany.com
www.mindawn.com
949-713-3276


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