maemo.org - Talk - Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?

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Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?

Quote:

Originally Posted by dneary (Post 717375)

Now, as an application developer, in July 2009, just as Fremantle is ramping up to get out the door and wow people on a Maemo phone, you've been told that your existing application will require porting, and that the platform you're porting to will be obsoleted by the following version. Qt 4.5 had some hacks to get it working on Maemo with qt4-hildon, but Qt 4.6 is the first fully supported version of standard Qt for Maemo, and it only came out last month on Maemo 5 with PR 1.2.

So what do you do between July 2009 and May 2010? Do you migrate your application to Fremantle? Try to re-develop it in Qt (or write a new app in Qt)?

Now, while I agree with the sentiment, there is a little hole here wrt to the Maemo Qt schedule, and a pretty pivotal one - the end of 2009. The single most important announcement for me on the Maemo summit (Oct 09) was the 2010Q1 official Fremantle support for Qt4.6 (that was the coup-de-grace), followed by actual Qt4.6 packages in extras-devel in starting with Nov 09, with a planned release Mar 09. Thus, if there was any dilemma about the future, for me it was July-Oct 09 (which were not that critical as the N900 wasn't out yet), after that, the juggernaut was already moving and there was no way back.

IMHO the two mistakes with the transition were

not being decisive enough to follow through the choice. There was a lot of mixed signals on the list 'if-you-code-for-today' and 'if-you-think-about-the-future', 'can-qt-do-this', 'does-widget-X-exist-in-Qt'... in retrospect (while I feel for people invested in GTK+/Hildon - and even have such stuff in Extras myself), Qt should have been driven much harder - the delay did not make it easier for Hildon people but did cause slight FUD wrt to how 'serious' the Qt future is, slowing down adoption.
the other, orbital size mistake was tying Qt4.6 release with PR1.2. That single thing cost the platform literally 3 months of delay for no good reason.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?

Quote:

Originally Posted by danramos (Post 717719)

100% open-source would be a good start. A device DESIGNED around open-source (instead of forcing a square peg in a round hole) would go leaps and bounds toward that.

Whenever you feel drowsy and suggest such an absurd idea to Nokia, just look at http://bit.ly/9fZvTu. It'll wake you right up again.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?

Quote:

Originally Posted by qwerty12 (Post 717734)

Whenever you feel drowsy and suggest such an absurd idea to Nokia, just look at http://bit.ly/9fZvTu. It'll wake you right up again.

Oh the irony.. bugs.maemo.org is unavailable.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?

Quote:

Originally Posted by danramos (Post 717753)

Oh the irony.. bugs.maemo.org is unavailable.

Huh. It's working from here.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Texrat (Post 717681)

I'm at a loss as to where that came from. Something I said?

No way dude...

I'm hoping to see if some of the energy being spent here can be directed toward things we do have control over. That's all. No dis. :cool:

As a result I often add additional on topic content to my replies to specific questions asked in a thread.

And wiith that, to Dan's recent comment...

Quote:

Originally Posted by danramos (Post 717719)

100% open-source would be a good start. A device DESIGNED around open-source (instead of forcing a square peg in a round hole) would go leaps and bounds toward that.

That ^ there goes to the heart of the matter doesn't it?

I'm thinking that when Maemo was first proposed within Nokia many in Nokia's uberclass didn't know what to think and that many of the "closed" components are not a result of specific design rather more along the lines of "Well, this is the way we always did it.".

I also imagine that many of the original coders were borrowed from other in house closed projects and after a specific time or a tasks completion, went back to those projects.

If this is the case then there pro'ly isn't a whole lot of policy continuity with regard to coded Maemo components and there may not even be accurate and easy to come by historical records available .

What ever the case, this again is water that has already passed under our bridge. Right now energy might be better spent retrieving as much Maemo information that we can from Nokia and asking someone as persistent as Texrat to undertake this task for us.

As it stands now, the only one I see that is paddling upstream in order to try and salvage some of this flotsam is qwerty12. I can only offer encouragement and help if his motives are what I think they are. :)

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?

Quote:

Originally Posted by YoDude (Post 717771)

I wholeheartedly endorse this message.

However, it also begs the question of whether we in the open-source community really should be bothering with this platform if what we WANT is an actual, honest and open platform.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sjgadsby (Post 717755)

Huh. It's working from here.

It was down for a bit.. but it's back up now. (I checked from another network and it was down for a short time.)

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?

Quote:

Originally Posted by qwerty12 (Post 717734)

Whenever you feel drowsy and suggest such an absurd idea to Nokia, just look at http://bit.ly/9fZvTu. It'll wake you right up again.

I read a few of those and had to stop, for all the blood-boiling it caused. It's bad enough that they sold me a device based on open-source and then pull this garbage.. but I can't even have the option of installing a lightweight version of Diablo on myN800 or even REMOVING some of those components to free up space for an actual open-source equivalent. Thanks for re-opening those wounds for me. >.<

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?

Man, I'm betting the Maemo Devices guys REALLY hate me now for that blog post... :eek:

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Texrat (Post 717827)

Man, I'm betting the Maemo Devices guys REALLY hate me now for that blog post... :eek:

If they do then their anger is misplaced. If anything, they should aim it up the chain at the people who are causing such horrible disconnects and failures.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?

Quote:

Originally Posted by wmarone (Post 717836)

If they do then their anger is misplaced. If anything, they should aim it up the chain at the people who are causing such horrible disconnects and failures.

No kidding. I don't blame anybody, even in the company, for all this crap except the decision-making personnel of the company that decided that "community supported" means leaving locked-up bits in there and hiding information then saying, "GOOD LUCK!" as they stuff your dollars into their underwear and drive off into other affairs.