Re: [maemo-developers] RE: Nokia 770 sources...
Michael Wiktowy wrote: IANAL but it is my understanding that most countries have RFI laws that do not allow RF chip manufacturers to allow their users to modify their chips to switch to licensed bands or use an amount of power that brings it into a licenseable realm. It is not just the case of the law saying that a user can't operate in certain realms ... the user can't even be allowed to *possibly* operate in certain realms. So if an embedded chip is flexible enough, the manufacturers nerf it with a binary blob. If that would be the case, HW vendors should put the transmission power restrictions in the hardware. a binary blob doesn't prevent modification, it's security via obscurity. And since this blob is often just arm instructions, it's not particularly good obfuscation either. This is only slightly more effective than actually releasing the C code, if the code uses all the HW registers via hex values and other undocumented magic numbers, instead of using #define:d values[1] to actually describe what the driver does. More likely manufacturers feel that there is valuable IP in their blobs and would prefer not to give it around to everyone for free, especially in a highly competitive market like wlan chipsets are. Riku [1] It can be argued that such form is actually not the preferred form of modification required by GPL. ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RE: Nokia 770 sources...
ext Marius Gedminas wrote: On Tue, Aug 29, 2006 at 04:50:47PM +0100, Hugh Warrington wrote: Andrew Flegg wrote: On 8/29/06, Devesh Kothari [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ext Christian Pernegger wrote: - setting up the developent environment was a bitch Could you please send me why ? - Setting up ScratchBox ??? - Downloading, extracting maemo x.x rootstrap ? - Setting up UI environment like Xnest/Xephyr? - Setting up CPU_Transparency stuff ??? (need for advanced stuff) ??? I am asking you, so we improve it. It was just a long and labourious process. The `installer' script made it trivial the second time I did it, so much so I wonder why this isn't advertised more as a recommended and supported way of installing? Quite a lot of the community - does not really want to give away control to a installer script which ask for root password. - Also as pointed out, it also does not work well for software installed outside the control of the package management system Now my approach has been not to make installation very specific to debian, so that people can at the most part install scratchbox on their distribution of choice (non-debian too), and then inside SB they after installing the debian devkit and the maemo rootstrap, get a sandboxed debian environment. I didn't find copy-pasting ten or twenty lines of clear instructions into a terminal window very taxing. In fact, as cross-compilation goes, setting up and working within the recommended maemo environment is a breeze. People have different expectations. I have come to expect one line of instructions: apt-get install package-name, and that's it. I do not like to run shell script that install software. Package management systems are there for a reason. It is good that I can apt-get install scratchbox into my Ubuntu laptop. Figuring out *which* packages to install was a bit trickier (scratchbox-core scratchbox-devkit-debian scratchbox-libs scratchbox-toolchain-cs2005q3.2-glibc-i386 scratchbox-toolchain-cs2005q3.2-glibc-arm). Would it be possible to prepare a Debian package that * depends on all the necessary scratchbox packages * asks via debconf for a list of users that you want to add to the sbox group and create scratchbox user accounts * automates the scratchbox target creation and configuration (rootstrap, .bash_profile, etc.), maybe from the same postinst script, maybe from a separate shell script. * includes the start-maemo-xephyr shell script. * ships with a shell script that sets up scratchbox when you run it for the first time (adduser $USERNAME sbox I think atleast that makes a lot of sense and would greatly improve atleast the developers on debian system installation and getting started experience a lot better. I will put it on my to-do list to explore. ? The main question seems to be: can I tell /scratchbox/login to run some command (say, a shell script that calls the necessary sequence of sbox-config commands)? I think that sould be possible I think the best user experience is one command for installation (apt-get install maemo-scratchbox) one command to start Xnest (maemo-xephyr?) one command to start an i386 shell (maemo-386-shell) one command to start an armel shell (maemo-armel-shell) No extra configuration required. I agree Hm... looks like a worthy project for a weekend. A VMWare virtual appliance with scratchbox preconfigured would also be nice, I suppose, although personally I'm not interested in it. What would be really interesting is to have VMWare appliance to run the whole maemo development enviornment native and not inside yet another sandbox (SB) Devesh Marius Gedminas -- The last good thing written in C was Franz Schubert's Symphony #9. -- Erwin Dietrich ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RE: Nokia 770 sources...
On 8/31/06, Riku Voipio [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: More likely manufacturers feel that there is valuable IP in their blobsand would prefer not to give it around to everyone for free, especiallyin a highly competitive market like wlan chipsets are. I suspect that that is the case with the video driver binary blob people. With wlan chipsets working to output a standard signal, it is likely less the case. My impression is that wlan chipsets are nearly commodities at this point. However, I don't work in the field so don't know for sure. However, getting a straight answer as to the real reason out of a company's legal department after it has been filtered through their marketing and communications department is uummm ... challenging. :]Sometimes even people internal to the company can't get anything sensible. ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RE: Nokia 770 sources...
On Wed, 2006-08-30 at 11:47 -0400, John B. Holmblad wrote: Andrew, regarding your comment on support for Kimset I would add that with the proliferation of so-called Municipal WIFI networks here in the U.S., it behooves Nokia to make the M770 attractive/useful not only to software developers (the arguable lack of such attractiveness seems to be the underlying theme of this thread started with righteous indignation by ) but also to end users, I know this isn't Nokia's fault (blame Conexant for refusing to talk to the Prism54 people) but if the WLAN driver wasn't binary-only this wouldn't be an issue. Monitor mode is a standard feature of Linux WLAN drivers and IMHO it should work properly. Hopefully someday the islsm/FreeMAC/whatever work will be done and the cx3110x driver can be banished. in the U.S. at least as, increasingly, our cities, towns, and villages are bathed in an Internet connected 802.11 ether. Nokia has a great opportunity to benefit from this trend, but so far, has done a poor job of marketing the N770 in the U.S. for reasons that are not at all clear to me. And soon enough there will be competing Internet Tablet products based on Windows Mobile 5.0 that will, I believe, be priced well below the $US 350.00 price point that Nokia has set for the N770. I am certainly not a mainstream consumer electronics shopper, but I have absolutely no interest in any PDA or handheld gadget running Windows Mobile. I fail to understand why there are so _many_ of them when there are relatively few actual choices to be made--Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc. is about the only differentiating factor these days. Yes, the 770 is expensive but well worth it in my opinion, even if it is just to break out of Windows CE clone-world. Related to this question of how to make a product based on the LInux operating system successful in the broader consumer market, Eric Raymond, at the US Linuxworld conference, warned his audience that unless Linux purist/developers are willing to, in effect, get off the dry rock of principle, and allow binary drivers (i.e. closed source) as part of the package/distro, then such products will fail in the marketplace. Here is the url to an article in the Register that summarizes his comments http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/17/eric_raymond_linux_compromise/ From what I can tell, it seems that Nokia, with respect to the 770, is aligning itself with Eric Raymond's thinking, that is, to allow parts of the distro to be closed source, by withholding parts of the Nokia source code for competitive or other reasons. Disallowing or not tolerating binary drivers is not a matter of principle that can simply be dropped. It is a matter of keeping Linux as the high quality platform it is--i.e. allowing anyone who is capable to fix bugs in drivers. Relying on vendors to do this, as you have to with binary-only drivers, is a sure way to get burned--just ask anyone who has had to deal with BSODs in Windows. Greg Kroah-Hartman is probably the main kernel hacker who has led the charge against binary drivers and has a very pragmatic and practical position against them. He wrote, for example, the StableApiNonsense.txt file that can be found in the kernel distribution's Documentation/ directory explaining why you (e.g. the prospective binary-only or out-of-tree driver vendor) want your driver in the mainline kernel and don't even know it. Despite the concerns I mentioned in my earlier post on this thread, I am sure Nokia's lawyers have squared the corners of their compliance with the LInux software licensing regime while keeping parts of the software closed source. In that case Nokia should be doing as much as possible (as Microsoft does for example) to make it drop dead simple for software developers to add value to the base product by having a software development environment that is compelling in terms of ease of use. In my opinion, many people on this list are frustrated by the very fact that Nokia is treating them as application developers and by and large denying people the opportunity to hack on the 770 internals and the included applications. That is not the expectation that some had when they purchased their 770 (myself included). Nokia has to decide if it wants to court application developers, in the sense that Microsoft does, or an open-source community that wants hackability. The Microsoft route does have pitfalls, because making things too easy, e.g. Visual Basic, just leads to the proliferation of poorly written commercial software, making your platform look bad in the process. I get the sense that that the lack of this ease of use for developers is really the root cause of the anger that is so obvious in the tone of Allesandro's original post. In this case, shooting the (angry) messenger, as some on this list seem to want to do, will not make Nokia's problem go away, and failing to address the concern he raises will eventually serve to
Re: [maemo-developers] RE: Nokia 770 sources...
2006/8/30, Andrew Barr [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Wed, 2006-08-30 at 11:47 -0400, John B. Holmblad wrote: Andrew, regarding your comment on support for Kimset I would add that with the proliferation of so-called Municipal WIFI networks here in the U.S., it behooves Nokia to make the M770 attractive/useful not only to software developers (the arguable lack of such attractiveness seems to be the underlying theme of this thread started with righteous indignation by ) but also to end users, I know this isn't Nokia's fault (blame Conexant for refusing to talk to the Prism54 people) but if the WLAN driver wasn't binary-only this wouldn't be an issue. Monitor mode is a standard feature of Linux WLAN drivers and IMHO it should work properly. Hopefully someday the islsm/FreeMAC/whatever work will be done and the cx3110x driver can be banished. Forgive me if I'm ignorant, but do you mean this one: https://garage.maemo.org/projects/cx3110x/ License: GNU General Public License (GPL) doesn't sound too binary, even though GPL tends to be a bit black-and-white in it's license compatibility regulation... ;) -- Kalle Vahlman, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Powered by http://movial.fi Interesting stuff at http://syslog.movial.fi ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RE: Nokia 770 sources...
On 8/30/06, Kalle Vahlman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2006/8/30, Andrew Barr [EMAIL PROTECTED]:Forgive me if I'm ignorant, but do you mean this one: https://garage.maemo.org/projects/cx3110x/It would be good if that page was really alive.-Paulo Pires ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RE: Nokia 770 sources...
On Wed, 2006-08-30 at 19:47 +0300, Kalle Vahlman wrote: Forgive me if I'm ignorant, but do you mean this one: https://garage.maemo.org/projects/cx3110x/ License: GNU General Public License (GPL) doesn't sound too binary, even though GPL tends to be a bit black-and-white in it's license compatibility regulation... ;) AFAICT the license is at least partially incorrect. Look in the Subversion repo and you'll see that it's one of those source-wrapper-around-a-binary-blob style drivers. -- Andrew Barr | http://www.oakcourt.dyndns.org/~andrew/ Buzzword detected (core dumped) -- seen on linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RE: Nokia 770 sources...
2006/8/30, Andrew Barr [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Wed, 2006-08-30 at 19:47 +0300, Kalle Vahlman wrote: Forgive me if I'm ignorant, but do you mean this one: https://garage.maemo.org/projects/cx3110x/ License: GNU General Public License (GPL) doesn't sound too binary, even though GPL tends to be a bit black-and-white in it's license compatibility regulation... ;) AFAICT the license is at least partially incorrect. And so I am fooled to be ignorant :/ Look in the Subversion repo and you'll see that it's one of those source-wrapper-around-a-binary-blob style drivers. Hmm, I've always been under the impression that any kind of combination of binary-only and GPL code would be in violation... IANAL of course. -- Kalle Vahlman, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Powered by http://movial.fi Interesting stuff at http://syslog.movial.fi ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RE: Nokia 770 sources...
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Kalle Vahlman schreef: Hmm, I've always been under the impression that any kind of combination of binary-only and GPL code would be in violation... IANAL of course. Slightly a different issue, but a nice read anyway: http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/ols_2006_keynote.html closed source kernel modules are unethical regards, Koen -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (Darwin) iD8DBQFE9cnGMkyGM64RGpERApQIAKCSBPxJkcuhGUClj2k1lwfgHQPIVwCdHJ/f YJb/wto/FZHSDPML2vMohrI= =jowI -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RE: Nokia 770 sources...
On 8/30/06, Koen Kooi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-Hash: SHA1Kalle Vahlman schreef: Hmm, I've always been under the impression that any kind of combination of binary-only and GPL code would be in violation... IANAL of course.Slightly a different issue, but a nice read anyway:http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/ols_2006_keynote.htmlclosed source kernel modules are unethical regards,KoenUnfortunately, I don't think the waters are all that clear in this situation.IANAL but it is my understanding that most countries have RFI laws that do not allow RF chip manufacturers to allow their users to modify their chips to switch to licensed bands or use an amount of power that brings it into a licenseable realm. It is not just the case of the law saying that a user can't operate in certain realms ... the user can't even be allowed to *possibly* operate in certain realms. So if an embedded chip is flexible enough, the manufacturers nerf it with a binary blob. So you are damned if you do and damned if you don't. Open up everything to comply with the GPL and violate RF Spectrum laws in some countries. Wrap a binary blob to satisfy RF regulators and you run a fowl of the GPL. Both these demands are put in place for good reasons. However, they are mutually incompatible. The courts will have to sort out which takes precedence but it would be my guess that the RFI law would as violating it could threaten lives (broadcasting in aircraft radio navigation bands, scrambling police frequencies, etc.) where as violating the GPL would be rarely life-threatening. The way that some manufacturers get around the problem is to nerf things at the hardware level. If the chip can't do it at that level, no amount of software/firmware hacking will get around that and they are free to open up all the specs to the hardware. I think where the conflict really occurs is when the manufacturer software-nerfs the chip too much and cuts out some vital access that programmers/users want. Then they refuse to put in the legal/development time and resources to change their firmware to relax things a bit because they would then have to seek approval from the regulatory body yet again. Nasty vicious circle :[ ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RE: Nokia 770 sources...
On Wed, 2006-08-30 at 15:56 -0400, Michael Wiktowy wrote: Unfortunately, I don't think the waters are all that clear in this situation. No, unfortunately they're not. IANAL but it is my understanding that most countries have RFI laws that do not allow RF chip manufacturers to allow their users to modify their chips to switch to licensed bands or use an amount of power that brings it into a licenseable realm. It is not just the case of the law saying that a user can't operate in certain realms ... the user can't even be allowed to *possibly* operate in certain realms. So if an embedded chip is flexible enough, the manufacturers nerf it with a binary blob. The legal reasoning has been debated extensively on LKML and elsewhere multiple times, but I think it's worth pointing out that not everyone buys the regulation argument. That the regulations require withholding source code is, as I understand it, the prevailing interpretation among corporate attorneys rather than language in any particular regulation. Do a search at lkml.org for the recent ipw3945 discussions for details. In all reality the world's communications regulation agencies need to address the issue of open source code and software radios with updated regulations, and in the very least WLAN vendors will no longer have an excuse to hide behind, should that be what they are doing--I suspect at least some of them are. -- Andrew Barr | http://www.oakcourt.dyndns.org/~andrew/ Buzzword detected (core dumped) -- seen on linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RE: Nokia 770 sources...
On Mon, 2006-08-28 at 22:56 +0200, ext Christian Pernegger wrote: I am just telling some truths that others should know. I'm with you insofar as - setting up the developent environment was a bitch [zap] A lot of people, me included, don't have a clue about cross-compiling or embedded development. Yes, I think this is one of the reasons why. The fact that the environment uses its own gtk (while a lot of stuff is being pushed upstream) - this forces you to use a chroot environment. While scratchbox does a lot of things for you to make things less nasty, it's a whole new thing to learn for the most of us. And it's far from trivial anyway. But please, while you criticize nokia remember a lot of us are just as much a part of the community as you are. It's been said earlier too - look at Sardine, and see how things are being worked on. Perhaps slower than you wish, but I also wish it happened faster. There's just a LOT of stuff that has dependencies on how the daily progress happens, and stuff does not change overnight for that reason. :-( //Tuomas -- A: No Q: Should i quote this on the top? ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
RE: [maemo-developers] RE: Nokia 770 sources...
On Tue, 2006-08-29 at 01:00 +0200, ext Hartmut Henkel wrote: Just to add here: i have one of these Nokias with the broken LCD (vertical stripes). Actually i don't even believe that the LCD is broken, it looks like a wrong setting of the LCD (with the old HP pocket calculators you could tweak the contrast by pressing ON and +/-). I have replaced the screen component of one such striped one and it worked with the new screen, no software changes. That sounds to me like broken hardware rather than a software bug. //T -- A: No Q: Should i quote this on the top? ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RE: Nokia 770 sources...
On Aug 29, 2006, at 12:22, Kuosmanen Tuomas (Nokia-M/Helsinki) wrote: The fact that the environment uses its own gtk (while a lot of stuff is being pushed upstream) - this forces you to use a chroot environment. While scratchbox does a lot of things for you to make things less nasty, it's a whole new thing to learn for the most of us. And it's far from trivial anyway. Is GTK from Maemo expected to compile (for the host itself) on desktop Linux or Mac OS X? What about Hildon? How much work would be required for making Python development possible on any *nix style platform with an X server by compiling GTK and Hildon and their Python wrappers for the hosting architecture and installing them in a non-conventional directory prefix to prevent conflicts with the usual GTK installation? (BTW, it would be nice if the source download page documented the right svn incantations for pulling the source corresponding to the OS2006 release.) -- Henri Sivonen [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hsivonen.iki.fi/ ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RE: Nokia 770 sources...
ext Christian Pernegger wrote: I am just telling some truths that others should know. I'm with you insofar as - setting up the developent environment was a bitch Could you please send me why ? - Setting up ScratchBox ??? - Downloading, extracting maemo x.x rootstrap ? - Setting up UI environment like Xnest/Xephyr? - Setting up CPU_Transparency stuff ??? (need for advanced stuff) ??? I am asking you, so we improve it. - it still doesn't give you the same environment as a real 770 apparently In general scratchbox as already pointed out provides a chrooted environment, which is not the same as in device development. The armel rootstrap in SB should atleast provide the same compiled binaries etc as that on the device, so as to provide properly cross compiled binaries for the device. - C++ plus custom framework doesn't exactly lend itself to RAD, maybe a scripting language (python, ruby, whatever) or even Java would have been a better choice. A lot of people, me included, don't have a clue about cross-compiling or embedded development. I think the accepted fact is that development for different processor non-PC devices is different. Devesh C. ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RE: Nokia 770 sources...
On 8/29/06, Devesh Kothari [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ext Christian Pernegger wrote: I am just telling some truths that others should know. I'm with you insofar as - setting up the developent environment was a bitch Could you please send me why ? - Setting up ScratchBox ??? - Downloading, extracting maemo x.x rootstrap ? - Setting up UI environment like Xnest/Xephyr? - Setting up CPU_Transparency stuff ??? (need for advanced stuff) ??? I am asking you, so we improve it. It was just a long and labourious process. The `installer' script made it trivial the second time I did it, so much so I wonder why this isn't advertised more as a recommended and supported way of installing? HTH, Andrew -- Andrew Flegg -- mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.bleb.org/ ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RE: Nokia 770 sources...
ext Andrew Barr wrote: On Mon, 2006-08-28 at 18:47 -0300, Alessandro Ikeuchi wrote: ... While I certainly don't agree with the angry tone used, I have to say Maemo and the Nokia 770 have been disappointing in terms of openness. It seems to me that Nokia has opened just enough to get apps ported and/or written for the device, which in turn sells more devices, or at least that appears to be the plan. Nothing has come of recurring requests for information about the Bluetooth hardware (e.g. for headset support), Ogg Vorbis support, or Gstreamer/DSP multimedia internals in general. Some things that are missing from the Subversion repo don't even make sense, e.g. there is no hardware secrets or patents associated with them (at least as far as I know) The media player apps come to mind here. What I agree is that we need to strengthen the architecture documents BTW getting strarted with multimedia development doc was updated http://maemo.org/platform/docs/multimedia/getting_started.html (section Plugin development) which describes how to enable ogg-vorbis Maemo really isn't open in the sense that we're used to: like a traditional Linux distribution. It seems to be more of an SDK plus things that were required to be open, e.g. due to licensing terms. I think one of the reason for that could also be attributed that most general linux distributions are targetted to PC/laptop which have relatively well defines standardized hardware architecture. What we have tried to do with maemo is - provide a common development environment and tools for Nokia 770 and future devices (SB, rootstraps etc) - provide (as a priority) to enable application development - enable experimentation like ability to compile your own kernel, create your own rootfs and all the benifits that could be leveraged from a debian based component package management system Now what we are concentrating on, beside improving the above is to enable participation and contribution in stages to different parts of maemo, starting with HAF/Sardine which I hope would extend. The starting up and adoption barrier for sardine are being recognized, and we are now trying to make it easy to adopt and use sardine, without sacrificing the genral device usability. This would enable the patches or feature implementations by community to be made and tested on the latest svn codebase, so the component owners can integrate/accept/reject them. There has been excellent work done for enabling dual boot by Frantisek Dufka http://maemo.org/maemowiki/BootMenu which I hope would enable the experimentation atleast in the large area of HAF/sardine (comprising the majority of the middleware stack like gtk+, theming, desktop, tasknavigator, control panel, application installer etc) to happen on MMC based sardine rootfs Devesh This is unfortunate, because it creates a burden on the Nokia employees working on this project. They are the only ones who can add many requested features or fix bugs, so in many cases people complain to the mail list because they cannot take care of things themselves. You don't see patch mails on the maemo-* lists. That's to say nothing of ideas people have had but been unable to implement--trivial stuff that would improve the Maemo environment but may not have been discussed on the ML. To me, the open-source economy (or whatever) that makes some projects so great doesn't work here because the community is relegated in large part to the role of application developer. The best you can do to improve some parts of Maemo is suggest it and hope someone at Nokia takes it up. These are just my impressions from informal observation and occasional participation in this endeavor. If you think I'm way off base or crazy or something, please feel free to tell me or ignore me. -- Andrew Barr | http://www.oakcourt.dyndns.org/~andrew/ http://www.oakcourt.dyndns.org/%7Eandrew/ Buzzword detected (core dumped) -- seen on linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RE: Nokia 770 sources...
Title: Best Regards, Devesh, the following commentary from Andrew is somewhat disconcerting since it suggests that Nokia is somehow holding back on openness: "I have to say Maemo and the Nokia 770 have been disappointing in terms of openness" Assuming that his disappointment is warranted, what has held Nokia back in terms of "complete openness" in the context suggested by the above comment? Is there some commercial concern that, by being more "open", that Nokia will be somehow more vulnerable to competitors developing similar hardware that runs the same software platform as the N770? It is not even clear to me that it is legally possible under the terms of licensing for Linux based software to take the parts of Linux that one likes but to hold other parts back in order to retain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Best Regards, John Holmblad Acadia Secure Networks GSEC Gold, GCWN Gold, GGSC-0100, NSA-IAM, NSA-IEM (H) 703 620 0672 (M) 703 407 2278 (F) 703 620 5388 (O) 410 849 2376 (has voicemail to email) primary email address: [EMAIL PROTECTED] backup email address: [EMAIL PROTECTED] www page for texting: www.vtext.com/users/jholmblad text email address: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ext Andrew Barr wrote: On Mon, 2006-08-28 at 18:47 -0300, Alessandro Ikeuchi wrote: ... While I certainly don't agree with the angry tone used, I have to say Maemo and the Nokia 770 have been disappointing in terms of openness. It seems to me that Nokia has opened just enough to get apps ported and/or written for the device, which in turn sells more devices, or at least that appears to be the plan. Nothing has come of recurring requests for information about the Bluetooth hardware (e.g. for headset support), Ogg Vorbis support, or Gstreamer/DSP multimedia internals in general. Some things that are missing from the Subversion repo don't even make sense, e.g. there is no hardware secrets or patents associated with them (at least as far as I know) The media player apps come to mind here. What I agree is that we need to strengthen the architecture documents BTW getting strarted with multimedia development doc was updated http://maemo.org/platform/docs/multimedia/getting_started.html (section Plugin development) which describes how to enable ogg-vorbis Maemo really isn't open in the sense that we're used to: like a traditional Linux distribution. It seems to be more of an SDK plus things that were required to be open, e.g. due to licensing terms. I think one of the reason for that could also be attributed that most general linux distributions are targetted to PC/laptop which have relatively well defines standardized hardware architecture. What we have tried to do with maemo is - provide a common development environment and tools for Nokia 770 and future devices (SB, rootstraps etc) - provide (as a priority) to enable application development - enable experimentation like ability to compile your own kernel, create your own rootfs and all the benifits that could be leveraged from a debian based component package management system Now what we are concentrating on, beside improving the above is to enable participation and contribution in stages to different parts of maemo, starting with HAF/Sardine which I hope would extend. The starting up and adoption barrier for sardine are being recognized, and we are now trying to make it easy to adopt and use sardine, without sacrificing the genral device usability. This would enable the patches or feature implementations by community to be made and tested on the latest svn codebase, so the component owners can integrate/accept/reject them. There has been excellent work done for enabling dual boot by Frantisek Dufka http://maemo.org/maemowiki/BootMenu which I hope would enable the experimentation atleast in the large area of HAF/sardine (comprising the majority of the middleware stack like gtk+, theming, desktop, tasknavigator, control panel, application installer etc) to happen on MMC based sardine rootfs Devesh This is unfortunate, because it creates a burden on the Nokia employees working on this project. They are the only ones who can add many requested features or fix bugs, so in many cases people complain to the mail list because they cannot take care of things themselves. You don't see patch mails on the maemo-* lists. That's to say nothing of ideas people have had but been unable to implement--trivial stuff that would improve the Maemo environment but may not have been discussed on the ML. To me, the open-source economy (or whatever) that makes some projects so great doesn't work here because the "community" is relegated in large part to the role of application developer. The best you can do to improve some parts of Maemo is suggest it and hope someone at Nokia takes it up. These are just my impressions from informal observation and
Re: [maemo-developers] RE: Nokia 770 sources...
Andrew Flegg wrote: On 8/29/06, Devesh Kothari [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ext Christian Pernegger wrote: - setting up the developent environment was a bitch Could you please send me why ? - Setting up ScratchBox ??? - Downloading, extracting maemo x.x rootstrap ? - Setting up UI environment like Xnest/Xephyr? - Setting up CPU_Transparency stuff ??? (need for advanced stuff) ??? I am asking you, so we improve it. It was just a long and labourious process. The `installer' script made it trivial the second time I did it, so much so I wonder why this isn't advertised more as a recommended and supported way of installing? HTH, Andrew I didn't find copy-pasting ten or twenty lines of clear instructions into a terminal window very taxing. In fact, as cross-compilation goes, setting up and working within the recommended maemo environment is a breeze. Hugh ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RE: Nokia 770 sources...
Why was [setting up the developent environment difficult]? scratchbox is not an official Debian package, and as far as the rather intrusive directory structure goes, I can see why it isn't. It also needs i386 when my do your worst boxes are both amd64. All in all it was just long and error-prone. - Setting up UI environment like Xnest/Xephyr? Xephyr segfaulted left, right and center when I last tried it, but only after the first few events. Xnest worked. The chroot + rootstrap approch itself would be nice enough if the environment were exactly the same as a 770, that is including applications. At first I thought something was broken because it wasn't really possible to _do_ anything in the chrooted environent. So obviously we aren't supposed to enhance the provided apps ... hmm. The scratchbox environment has no audio output, no battery indicator, no simulated connectivity, ... it isn't much better than saying compile using these header files and cross-compile by changing your makefile in this way. I'll admit the last time I played with handheld development was on a Palm emulator, which felt much more complete - maemo is like flying blind. I think the accepted fact is that development for different processor non-PC devices is different. Yes, traditionally it is. But a RAD approach would get you more developers from the hobby end of the spectrum, while you'd have to completely open up the software (including applications, bootloader, etc ...) for professionals to donate their spare time. maemo just isn't fun to work with yet, but I'm sure you'll get there :) C. ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RE: Nokia 770 sources...
On 8/29/06, Hugh Warrington [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Andrew Flegg wrote: [Getting scratchbox running] It was just a long and labourious process. The `installer' script made it trivial the second time I did it, so much so I wonder why this isn't advertised more as a recommended and supported way of installing? I didn't find copy-pasting ten or twenty lines of clear instructions into a terminal window very taxing. In fact, as cross-compilation goes, setting up and working within the recommended maemo environment is a breeze. I didn't say it was hard, just not simple. Why should I need to spend time downloading this, installing that, copying this rootstrap etc? Surely you can't be arguing that despite the installer script existing, users should be confronted with a twenty step process to get the SDK up and running, when it could be just one? Cheers, Andrew -- Andrew Flegg -- mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.bleb.org/ ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RE: Nokia 770 sources...
On Tue, Aug 29, 2006 at 04:50:47PM +0100, Hugh Warrington wrote: Andrew Flegg wrote: On 8/29/06, Devesh Kothari [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ext Christian Pernegger wrote: - setting up the developent environment was a bitch Could you please send me why ? - Setting up ScratchBox ??? - Downloading, extracting maemo x.x rootstrap ? - Setting up UI environment like Xnest/Xephyr? - Setting up CPU_Transparency stuff ??? (need for advanced stuff) ??? I am asking you, so we improve it. It was just a long and labourious process. The `installer' script made it trivial the second time I did it, so much so I wonder why this isn't advertised more as a recommended and supported way of installing? I didn't find copy-pasting ten or twenty lines of clear instructions into a terminal window very taxing. In fact, as cross-compilation goes, setting up and working within the recommended maemo environment is a breeze. People have different expectations. I have come to expect one line of instructions: apt-get install package-name, and that's it. I do not like to run shell script that install software. Package management systems are there for a reason. It is good that I can apt-get install scratchbox into my Ubuntu laptop. Figuring out *which* packages to install was a bit trickier (scratchbox-core scratchbox-devkit-debian scratchbox-libs scratchbox-toolchain-cs2005q3.2-glibc-i386 scratchbox-toolchain-cs2005q3.2-glibc-arm). Would it be possible to prepare a Debian package that * depends on all the necessary scratchbox packages * asks via debconf for a list of users that you want to add to the sbox group and create scratchbox user accounts * automates the scratchbox target creation and configuration (rootstrap, .bash_profile, etc.), maybe from the same postinst script, maybe from a separate shell script. * includes the start-maemo-xephyr shell script. * ships with a shell script that sets up scratchbox when you run it for the first time (adduser $USERNAME sbox ? The main question seems to be: can I tell /scratchbox/login to run some command (say, a shell script that calls the necessary sequence of sbox-config commands)? I think the best user experience is one command for installation (apt-get install maemo-scratchbox) one command to start Xnest (maemo-xephyr?) one command to start an i386 shell (maemo-386-shell) one command to start an armel shell (maemo-armel-shell) No extra configuration required. Hm... looks like a worthy project for a weekend. A VMWare virtual appliance with scratchbox preconfigured would also be nice, I suppose, although personally I'm not interested in it. Marius Gedminas -- The last good thing written in C was Franz Schubert's Symphony #9. -- Erwin Dietrich signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RE: Nokia 770 sources...
On 8/29/06, Devesh Kothari [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Now what we are concentrating on, beside improving the above is to enable participation and contribution in stages to different parts of maemo, starting with HAF/Sardine which I hope would extend. The starting up and adoption barrier for sardine are being recognized, and we are now trying to make it easy to adopt and use sardine, without sacrificing the genral device usability. This would enable the patches or feature implementations by community to be made and tested on the latest svn codebase, so the component owners can integrate/accept/reject them. There has been excellent work done for enabling dual boot by Frantisek Dufka http://maemo.org/maemowiki/BootMenu Sardine certainly looks like a step in the right direction in terms of integrating the community into the development process, kind of like Red Hat does with its Fedora Project. Nokia, like Red Hat, has a shipping product that it needs some degree of control over, but also an active community that has its own ideas and wishes. Hopefully Sardine will help make the Maemo project better and keep both Nokia and the Maemo community happy. Ideally, in the future there could be complete, unofficial product images (as Nokia calls them) that are created by the community, for example maybe one that incorporates only free software (in the GNU or OSI sense). Maybe something similar to Red Hat's derivative policy towards Fedora. That would be a particularly popular one among some, I would venture. Similar to OpenZaurus for the Sharp PDAs, but within the auspices of the Maemo community. Unaddressed so far, however, is the Bluetooth headset issue--more generally, hardware details that are necessary to create such a distribution. Headset support would be an extremely useful feature, one that I would like myself, but unfortunately no one outside Nokia (or TI or whoever made the Bluetooth chip) has the necessary details. This is an area where the current top-down structure of the Maemo project fails. You (the Nokia engineers) seem genuinely interested in listening to the community, I would be willing to bet that either adding the necessary support to the the Maemo kernel or providing documentation to interested parties would silence a longstanding gripe of some of us. (Just a personal gripe of mine: Proper monitor mode support in the WLAN driver so Kismet will run correctly. The Nokia 770 is by far the most perfect device to run Kismet on that I have ever seen--it's a shame it doesn't work right. :) ) ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RE: Nokia 770 sources...
On Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:16:15 -0400 Andrew Barr [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 8/29/06, Devesh Kothari [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [...] (Just a personal gripe of mine: Proper monitor mode support in the WLAN driver so Kismet will run correctly. ... and packet injection support for aireplay ;) Cheers -- Jaime Ruiz Frontera e-mail: jaime AT cauterized.net jabber: jaime AT zgzjabber.ath.cx sip : jaime AT ekiga.net pgpVfOKK6eZHD.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RE: Nokia 770 sources...
There is http://garage.maemo.org/projects/cx3110x/ for this particular case. But, unfortunately, nobody is answering in its forums and not even in this ML.Paulo Pires On 8/29/06, Jaime Ruiz Frontera [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:16:15 -0400Andrew Barr [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 8/29/06, Devesh Kothari [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:[...] (Just a personal gripe of mine: Proper monitor mode support in the WLAN driver so Kismet will run correctly and packet injection support for aireplay ;) Cheers--Jaime Ruiz Fronterae-mail: jaime AT cauterized.netjabber: jaime AT zgzjabber.ath.cxsip : jaime AT ekiga.net___maemo-developers mailing listmaemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: [maemo-developers] RE: Nokia 770 sources...
I am just telling some truths that others should know. I'm with you insofar as - setting up the developent environment was a bitch - it still doesn't give you the same environment as a real 770 apparently - C++ plus custom framework doesn't exactly lend itself to RAD, maybe a scripting language (python, ruby, whatever) or even Java would have been a better choice. A lot of people, me included, don't have a clue about cross-compiling or embedded development. C. ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
RE: [maemo-developers] RE: Nokia 770 sources...
Ok, lets kick the dog: - try to compile with SDK_PC, then with SDK_ARMEL, well, you'll never compile again in SDK_PC... - RAD?? Are you crazy??? Even the basic C API doesn't work at all... Unicode is a mistery for me after dozens of days searching... - the best feature of my Nokia is the console xTerminal... - Maemo docs are band-aid over a femural bleeding - the best apps ported to Nokia are console based or X based... Hildon based are tragic accidents. - Java doesn´t even fit in tiny 128mb... We should mount and use as root our 1gb sd cards and liberate the rest of the memory for RAM. When Linux from scratch fits for Nokia, bye bye OS2006... - Even for a normal user the basic programs that are blunded with OS2006 are too much buggy, the community ones are truly russian roulettes. - From 5 questions the developers list evolves more 6, all without answers (where I apply to be nokia employee? I just wanna a fast look in the sources to solve my dead keys problems, after that I quit) - I AM REALLY TIRED FROM PEOPLE SAYING ABOUT THE NEXT FEATURES WHEN EVEN THE NOWADAYS FEATURES DOESN'T WORK, C'MON PEOPLE, GET REAL, HELP US TO PRESSURE MAEMO TO REALLY AID PROGRAMMERS, BECAUSE PORT APPS TODAY IS A NIGHTMARE AND FRUSTRATING TASK. - DID YOU EVER SAW A LINUX DISTRIBUTION ASKS FOR SOME KIND OF SERIAL TO AUTHORIZE THE DOWNLOAD? I NEVER... BUY A WINDOWS XP MACHINE INSTEAD, IT LACKS FREEDOM AS MUCH AS OS2006, AND YOU WON'T WASTE YOUR TIME WITH SCRATCHBOX (very good name, I scratched a lot...) AND ROOTSTRAPS. -MAEMO WON'T DESERVE TIME OR ANY KIND OF EFFORTS FROM OPEN SOURCE COMMUNITY BECAUSE IT'S NOT OPEN, HARDLY A GOOD DEVELOPER COMMUNITY WILL EVOLVE AROUND IT. REMEMBER THAT WHEN BUYING NOKIA 770, THIS MEANS (much) LESS APPS PORTS. Alessandro - Frustrated owner of a Nokia 770 since june/06, retired Maemo amateur developer (two weeks trying to understand where hildon and GTK works), and unsuccessful user that only wanted dead keys for bluetooth keyboard (ah, the stowaway bluetooth keyboard is just great, pays for each cent) -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Christian Pernegger Sent: segunda-feira, 28 de agosto de 2006 17:56 To: maemo-developers@maemo.org Cc: Shae Matijs Erisson Subject: Re: [maemo-developers] RE: Nokia 770 sources... I am just telling some truths that others should know. I'm with you insofar as - setting up the developent environment was a bitch - it still doesn't give you the same environment as a real 770 apparently - C++ plus custom framework doesn't exactly lend itself to RAD, maybe a scripting language (python, ruby, whatever) or even Java would have been a better choice. A lot of people, me included, don't have a clue about cross-compiling or embedded development. C. ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers Essa mensagem é destinada exclusivamente ao seu destinatário e pode conter informações confidenciais, protegidas por sigilo profissional ou cuja divulgação seja proibida por lei. O uso não autorizado de tais informações é proibido e está sujeito às penalidades cabíveis. This message is intended exclusively for its addressee and may contain information that is confidential and protected by a professional privilege or whose disclosure is prohibited by law. Unauthorized use of such information is prohibited and subject to applicable penalties. ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
RE: [maemo-developers] RE: Nokia 770 sources...
On Mon, 2006-08-28 at 18:47 -0300, Alessandro Ikeuchi wrote: ... While I certainly don't agree with the angry tone used, I have to say Maemo and the Nokia 770 have been disappointing in terms of openness. It seems to me that Nokia has opened just enough to get apps ported and/or written for the device, which in turn sells more devices, or at least that appears to be the plan. Nothing has come of recurring requests for information about the Bluetooth hardware (e.g. for headset support), Ogg Vorbis support, or Gstreamer/DSP multimedia internals in general. Some things that are missing from the Subversion repo don't even make sense, e.g. there is no hardware secrets or patents associated with them (at least as far as I know) The media player apps come to mind here. Maemo really isn't open in the sense that we're used to: like a traditional Linux distribution. It seems to be more of an SDK plus things that were required to be open, e.g. due to licensing terms. This is unfortunate, because it creates a burden on the Nokia employees working on this project. They are the only ones who can add many requested features or fix bugs, so in many cases people complain to the mail list because they cannot take care of things themselves. You don't see patch mails on the maemo-* lists. That's to say nothing of ideas people have had but been unable to implement--trivial stuff that would improve the Maemo environment but may not have been discussed on the ML. To me, the open-source economy (or whatever) that makes some projects so great doesn't work here because the community is relegated in large part to the role of application developer. The best you can do to improve some parts of Maemo is suggest it and hope someone at Nokia takes it up. These are just my impressions from informal observation and occasional participation in this endeavor. If you think I'm way off base or crazy or something, please feel free to tell me or ignore me. -- Andrew Barr | http://www.oakcourt.dyndns.org/~andrew/ Buzzword detected (core dumped) -- seen on linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
RE: [maemo-developers] RE: Nokia 770 sources...
On Mon, 2006-28-08 at 18:40 -0400, Andrew Barr wrote: On Mon, 2006-08-28 at 18:47 -0300, Alessandro Ikeuchi wrote: ... While I certainly don't agree with the angry tone used, I have to say Maemo and the Nokia 770 have been disappointing in terms of openness. It seems to me that Nokia has opened just enough to get apps ported and/or written for the device, which in turn sells more devices, or at least that appears to be the plan. Nothing has come of recurring requests for information about the Bluetooth hardware (e.g. for headset support), Ogg Vorbis support, or Gstreamer/DSP multimedia internals in general. Some things that are missing from the Subversion repo don't even make sense, e.g. there is no hardware secrets or patents associated with them (at least as far as I know) The media player apps come to mind here. I'm afraid I have to echo this. There has been nothing after repeated requests about Bluetooth headset support, Ogg Vorbis support etc. This is after all an Internet tablet. I believe Nokia could be a little more forthcoming with information that could do nothing but help them sell more product. It's a bit frustrating at best. ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
RE: [maemo-developers] RE: Nokia 770 sources...
On Mon, 28 Aug 2006, Andrew Barr wrote: This is unfortunate, because it creates a burden on the Nokia employees working on this project. They are the only ones who can add many requested features or fix bugs, so in many cases people complain to the mail list because they cannot take care of things themselves. Just to add here: i have one of these Nokias with the broken LCD (vertical stripes). Actually i don't even believe that the LCD is broken, it looks like a wrong setting of the LCD (with the old HP pocket calculators you could tweak the contrast by pressing ON and +/-). But for the Nokia there is no LCD hardware info available, no data sheet, and so the recommended solution is to send the many broken LCD gadgets in for repair. Costs lots of money. And maybe they are all broken indeed. But i would really be glad if it would be possible to understand the hardware and to tweak control registers of the LCD. All this stuff is closed-source, and i can't see a benefit for the Nokia engineers by this policy. Regards, Hartmut (electronics engineer) ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
