Re: Letter to Nokia.
 

And Nokia has never announced that they would stop supporting Maemo 5. Please, do not misinterpret the announcements -- Maemo 6 might be in the works, but Maemo 5 is very certainly still being worked on. I don't see Nokia stopping that in the near future, and neither should anyone else. Nokia are responsible, they know that if they have a few million devices (I actually have no idea what the sales of the N900 are), and there are major issues to be fixed, they will be.

No, and I'm sorry to see you being that wrong.

The bugzilla will never be empty. That is what prioritisation is for. The urgent bugs or enhancements get fixed, and if we have we look at the less urgent things. That's how the software industry has always worked, and that's how it most likely will always work. The customer requests new features (and there are tons of new feature requests in Bugzilla, even if they aren't marked as such) and then begins a contractual tango between customer and vendor.

I could (if you had the clearance) show you dozens of contracts where this happens at this very moment. Governments, banks, telecom companies -- and those are just our customers. They raise issues, they try to make us modify things, but they all come to realise, at some point, that the money they spent on the contract isn't going to be enough to pay for our developers anymore, and thus they prioritise massively, to only get the major 2 or 3 items fixed.

The thing works, it isn't broken (except for Guber, but then again there is nothing on this planet that could make him happy). Some things need fixing, sure, but the Bugzilla will NEVER be empty.

Do you even know, on average, how many issues get reported per day, and how many get fixed?

Well, initially this was a long reply, but I was getting kind of off-topic, so I'm going to summarize.

a) Harmattan might or might not be OK for N900. Might be slow, lose some app base, whatnot. I have no idea what it would be like exactly, but it's a major version change and we all know what guarantees major versions bring. As a result, I feel fixes and improvements should be brought to M5 as well as M6. Shouldn't be all that hard, if codebase is derived it's not impossible, especially UI improvements and stuff like searching in lists, filtering history and whatnot.

I see you're optimistic, and sure hope you are right about the M5. Maybe this will be different, I've had some poor experiences.

b) I know bugzilla will never be empty, I'm a coder myself, and approaching my second decade as one. What I mean was Bugzilla as it is now (or when M5 was released) should be empty. That is, fix stuff that should be there in a phone, bring the phone app to S60 standards, bring multimedia to the level where it handles 30GB of data, etc

And yes, I do scan bugzilla periodically and I saw the list of bugs and the list of fixed bugs, I and assume more are internal. I never said they aren't DOING it, on the contrary, I'm impressed this far. I'm just worried about it slowing too much after M6 is out.

I don't understand what you completely disagree with. My choice of examples, XP and 7? I picked a well supported OS while a much newer is being actively developed.

On a relatively unrelated note, the free upgrade wasn't from the goodness of their heart, it was because announcing 7 while Vista stinked meant that embedded systems sales as well as OEM licenses would slump because people would hold out for W7. So basically what they did is allow Vista temporarily so people would keep buying. it wasn't free upgrade, it was pre-ordering. You still paid for W7, only you got it way after.

Re: Letter to Nokia.
 

I would just like to straightforwardly say that Maemo history is much more relevant here than Symbian history.

Nokia 770: OS2006, OS2007HE, OS2008HE
Nokia N800: OS2007, OS2008.
Nokia N810: OS2008.

Look at the track history. All devices were supported in one way or another all the way up to OS2008, with firmware updates increasing as time went on.
Previous NITs could not run Maemo 5 due to drastic hardware improvements.
Hence the Mer project's re-stated goal.

If we were to continue Nokia's "release schedule,"

N900: Maemo 5, Maemo 6, MeeGo-Community
N910: Maemo 6, etc.

Again, this is even more speculation, but even Nokia would not be stupid enough to drop a device not even a year after it was announced. (Announced 09/2009, Maemo 6's FUDded release: late Q2 2010)

Oh, and did anyone notice the demos in extras-devel? ;)

EDIT: To prevent any more flames of dissent from forming, my position (and post) in this argument is NEUTRAL, and I will not be returning to this thread. If you're still unhappy, then go help with Mer.

Re: Letter to Nokia.
 

well this is my 2 cents.

the iphone 2G, 3G, 3Gs, 4G and Ipad will all be running 4.0 when it comes out.

the iphone 2G came it in juneish 2007.

I still hate the iphone, but they r killing nokia in the high end market. think about how many iphones u see. the New OS new device thing was ok in the old days but not anymore. if your a 2G owner you are still missing features from the 3Gs. but if you cant efford to upgrade you are still supported till you do. Nokias way is to forget about you which has to change. think about it as a normal consumer.

Re: Letter to Nokia.
 

Is that even an option? Or are you illustrating the lack of support contracts and options? I, for one, wouldn't mind paying a reasonable fee if I were to rely on this product for a long time and wanted major upgrades to be available... but it's not like we can fall on a competitor to do this for us for a fee like Red Hat or Canonical. Can we? Does anybody know whether they can be supported by the community in some way to help develop support for older Nokia tablets and/or to improve Nokia's current N900 phone? I expect that many of these Linux companies are much more experienced at writing good, solid code than Nokia has been so far. Just curious to know whether it's even an option to donate to pay for someone to write open-source code for these devices, given some of the closed-source and other legal roadblocks at the Nokia or hardware end.

And for a long time we were often met with 'fixed in fremantle' or WONFIXes for even some of the most mundane, easiest things to fix. This does not instill confidence, no. I've recommended against the Nokia tablets and N900 for all the people I know who wanted portable awesomeness to do actual work. I can't, in good conscience. I hope I can be swayed someday but my experiences from the N800 were that I love the hardware but dreaded the company and it's virtually non-existent communications and support.

Oh well.

Re: Letter to Nokia.
 

Well.....here is another few cents and a different point of view. First there are arguments about comparisons to windows and versions of XP vs the move to Vista etc. But we are talking about a device...not the purchase of software. If i buy a PC i expect it to run a new OS released or 12 months aftter i bought the computer. However i may not get the software free.....but I do believe my device should be capable of running the software and if i choose to run the software i expect that support should be available.

Now for Nokia and the n900.
Simply put, whatever policy Nokia adopts must be profitable. When people buy a device, support is factored into the price. The support bundied into the price is for one (1) os. For handling new OS versions, there are 3 possibilities.

1. Leave the original OS as the supported version. If you want support, go back to the original version. This doesn't stop the new version being available....just not supported.

2. Make the new version the only supported version. If you want support you must upgrade to the new version first. This is a problem if some people could have a reason to resist the move.

3. Charge those who do move to the supported new version in order to recover the additional costs of supporting a fragmented user base.

Really....they are the only 3 options from an economic perspective. Nokia have traditionally chosen option #1, and for phones and even smart phones, it makes sense. Patches are treated as option #2.
However for a major release with the n900, i suggest they should offer #3. A supported upgrade attracting a price in an open source world still allows those not seeking any support to get the upgrade for free. So free if no support is needed, but for those who wish to get any support a fee.

Re: Letter to Nokia.
 

sooo right

Re: Letter to Nokia.
 

You are correct about the options but not your text.

You are trying to compare a linux dist with windows. The big differens with windows and linux is that linux is free and open source. Windows you pay for. Thus this is not a workable and neither logical explanaition for a linux dist. In the linux world you try to make the kernel to work with as much devices as possible. I.e i can run Ubuntu on both my Pentium 1 and my dual core.

so the option 1 is good. The extra functions a new device will give is actually just another module for the kernel. The new OS:s should work on the old devices just as good.

Re: Letter to Nokia.
 

It is just i did not make my point clear enough. With linux as well as windows if you want support (beyond forums like this), then you pay,

Meego is open source and the community will provide a distro for the n900. That much is certain. The only question is if Nokia will support this distro- meaning customer support and service centres need to be aware of any differences. Supporting two OS versions raises the support cost. This is the cost I am discussing.

Without support from Nokia if you run the new OS and your phone breaks, service wont touch it unless you reload the original OS. As I said, being open source, the code will be available to all who wish to find it. The question of cost relates to support. I hope what i said makes more sense given the extra explanation, Think Redhat vs Centos

Re: Letter to Nokia.
 

I don't have time to read through every post in this thread, but did you compile that letter and send to Nokia yet?
If not, what's the holdup? (assuming there is at least some additional content you were looking to obtain in the 12pages that make up this thread)