Re: Should MeeGo developers continue to publish info on this forum for maemo users (wrt Nokia device support)?
 

Yes, seriously, seriously. (Was there a reason to say that twice?) If that 5% is a key component, then it doesn't matter how open the rest of it is.

Take the Motorola series with the locked boot loader. If the entire source tree minus the loader were opened tomorrow, you still couldn't make a viable image to boot on those devices because you can't do that without that last little 0.1% of code. Sure, maybe you could find an exploit and hack in to start replacing bits. But then we wouldn't call that "open", would we? If we do, why would we not call the iPhone open, since we can do the same thing there?

I think you need to re-think why you, personally, are insulted by that.

For the rest, please don't put words in my mouth. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying when comparing two systems that are almost identical in which parts are closed vs open (in this case Maemo and MeeGo CE for N900, which is the only part of MeeGo we've been talking about in this thread), it makes little difference if one is marginally more open.

In fact, I referenced several times that I personally would call them both "open", while groups like Fedora would not. (Fedora takes a hard line of 100% open, no exceptions.) My beef was with another member claiming that MeeGo was "more open" than Maemo, which I said was a moot point in this particular case. But then you didn't actually read the thread, or you'd have seen that.

MeeGo's also not a very functional system, last I saw, without closed components. When this discussion was happening, MeeGo didn't even have it's own GUI. It was "left to the implementer" that was picking up MeeGo as a "base". Does it at least have a desktop now? It can't be that speedy with a frame buffer driver. Can the "open" version make a call, or connect to wifi, or do anything useful? I know the binary blob version can, I'm talking about the fully open version you speak of here.

Sure you can; It's called Debian. :rolleyes: MeeGo CE is based on MeeGo, just like Maemo is based on Debian. If you boot "just the open parts", you'll get just about the same functionality... not much. But then nobody is going to boot just the open parts for more than development, or to say they did it. And nobody is going to be able to implement the completely closed GSM driver modules in either as open source any time soon without breaking an NDA.

If you want a device that has no wifi, no gsm, no sensors, no bluetooth, no battery control, no gps, and a basic frame buffer for graphics, please do boot "OpenMeeGo". All of those (and more) rely on blobs, and can be easily outmoded and rendered crippled, broken, or worse if/when MeeGo 2.0 changes those interfaces. Most people didn't pay for all that hardware just to have it sit idle. Most won't want to lose all of that for this wonderful "platform" that will see 0 future ARM based processors after the N9. (Where's the MeeGo ARM app store again?)

So, again in my view, it's a moot point to say one is "more open", when it relies on almost the exact same set of binary blobs to do anything at all functional.

Yeah.. because there's not a list of them in the paragraph above, or in several other posts I've made in this thread (that you clearly didn't read) or people working on those closed bits making lists. Nope, not a clue as to what's closed in MeeGo.

That's one difference between you and I; I don't look to control others. I say what I mean and that's that. If others like what I say, or don't, that's their prerogative. I never claimed to be the end-all source of information, nor would I want to be. I just say what I understand, and usually wind up explaining why I take the view that I do. If others find utility in that, good for them. If you disagree with that view, good for you.

But to claim I don't know what I'm talking about, when I've referenced where my information is coming from, and not referencing any sources yourself? (Where did that "40%" estimate come from for Maemo openness?) Or saying that I'm somehow insulting you by having a different point of view? Or to claim that someones view is unintelligent just because it doesn't agree with your particular view? All I can say to that is:

Re: Should MeeGo developers continue to publish info on this forum for maemo users (wrt Nokia device support)?
 

This is a schoolbook example of "The Internet Effect".

It all starts out pretty innocently with a poll about something that is totally unrelated to an old conflict/disagreement (since the poll was about giving information about development progress, not about the specifics of Maemo/MeeGo development) but quickly turns into a rehash match with the usual misunderstandings you can expect from "The Internet Effect".

To me, this can all be summed up by:

Devoted developer 1: We get picked on, why is that?
Community member: Because you don't manage information well.
Devoted developer 1: But, MeeGo is that good. To me at least, on my device, with my use-cases. Ordinary users just don't get it, and I'm not caring about them anyway. They pick on me.
Community member: ...

A wild flurry of "open", "not open" and "governance" erupts where examples from history are presented to add to a sidenote-type discussion of the actual definition of "governance" and how it relates to MeeGo development.

Devoted developer 2: You know nothing, man. You weren't there, man. I've seen things you wouldn't believe. Man.
Community member: I wrote the code in the machines that made your birth possible. Boy.

Yet another wild flurry erupts but this time revolving around percentages (real or imagined) and reiterations of previous points together with ad hominem attacks, passive aggressiveness and general "What if"s that add pretty much nothing.

All the while, the admins circle this shirk-fest as vultures, swooping in to manage the ebb and flow of meta discussions about who can say what about certain elements.

I won't even vote. I did read every post in the thread, though. And I enjoyed some of them very much.

Re: Should MeeGo developers continue to publish info on this forum for maemo users (wrt Nokia device support)?
 

All true. And even being aware of it isn't a fix, as it's so easy to get caught up in it...

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png

Re: Should MeeGo developers continue to publish info on this forum for maemo users (wrt Nokia device support)?
 

If the entire Motorola series source tree were to be opened tomorrow it would be a miracle, and if only the bootloader was left closed it would be RE'd in a weekend. And the codebase would quickly be used in other phones as well.

But still, you'd be there to say that it does not matter. It's no better good as 100% closed platform because there's still a single component that is closed, a bootloader.

Well, sorry. I still think it's stupid to see it your way.

No. I at least would call it "more open".

Oh, I thought I used the world "insulting". Sorry you confused it with "offensive". You know, there's a reason lawyers tend to use the quote "hateful, offensive, and insulting" -- and it's exactly because of nitpickers like the above webcomic author.

You have literally said:
and I have said:
And that quote of yours is the only reason I came to this thread.

Oh no, oh no, that's an even worse thing to say. _Marginally?_ Sigh

Do I really need to start? Do you even know what the closed components are in Meego for the N900? And in Maemo?

I have always called Maemo closed. I would never call Meego closed. I could argue whether Meego for the N900 is closed or not. You can make a bootable Meego for the N900 that charges and even makes phone calls. Note however that it might be illegal in many countries because AIUI without the closed PA blobs it lacks several features that are required in every GSM handset.

Fedora also does not take a hard line of 100% open, no exceptions. It allows closed source firmware. On Meego, this is considered a "closed" package and marked as such -- and the N900 requires a few such firmware packages. By gNewSense logic Fedora is a closed source distro. By my logic, as seen above, I could argue whether it is.

The particular case doesn't exist. The point is thus not moot. That's my main point.

Since you're now talking about Meego as a "base", I guess you're not talking about the N900 CE any more. For your information, Meego has always had several UIs to choose from release 1 and virtually since day 1. Meego CE for the N900, on the other side, hasn't.
I hope you will understand that has nothing to do with openness and closeness and is just because of concepts like software testing.

A "frame buffer driver" makes no sense. Virtually all devices use a "frame buffer driver", not to mention all mobile ones. I will guess you meant "without 3D acceleration".

It can boot. To a UI. Not the handset UX as that would be quite slow with a software 3D rasterizer, but you can if you want. I would personally call that "something useful". It can also connect to Wi-Fi. It can also browse the Web.

I failed to understand your point here. You're now trying to tell me that different GNU/Linux distributions all tend to share all of the opened enhancements and functionality and thus they all end alike? I'd say that's a good thing!

You've not really looked at the Meego mailing lists a lot lately, have you?

Either way, I'm here to publicly rebate your point that Meego being more open than Maemo is moot, not talking about Meego being useless. I wholeheartedly agree that Meego is less useful than Maemo on the N900 -- even with the closed blobs. But I fail to see how that means that it being more open is a "moot point" for its future-proof-ness.

*Sigh*. As said, you do not even know what components are closed.

Oh, FUD! Let's surprise you:
- Wi-Fi and BT only require closed firmware.
- The GSM stack is fully open.
- What is sensors? If you mean the accelerometer, no, it doesn't require anything closed.
- Battery control is mostly RE'd and alternatives to bme exist. No one has been truly interested in merging them in Meego yet.
- GPS is also mostly RE'd. Except for AGPS.
- 3D acceleration is not open and will never be opened. However, there's one provider that is keen on providing updated versions of these drivers PLUS the fact that we could potentially reuse Android drivers if the need ever came.

See how having LESS closed components is better? People CAN find alternatives or reimplement if you're talking about less than a dozen. They CANNOT if you're talking about hundreds.

Some unrelated yaddayadda I don't even disagree with. Btw the Meego on the N9 is not even Meego. But I do not see what this has to do with the point that MORE OPEN is not a moot point.

Yes, the exact same set. Go figure. As said, insulting.

Your list in the paragraph above was wrong. There's not a list in that URL you linked.
Please do a bit of googling and search for the actual list of packages. You can even download those and look inside. I am not even going to do it for you. When you do, will you please correct your posts?

You are here arguing, and you have for the past 15 threads too. So we are not that different.

You do not know what you're talking about. The 40% estimate is completely bogus. If you want a more realistic one, grab Stskeeps', which says that 57% of Fremantle is closed. But I guess you didn't know that.

Re: Should MeeGo developers continue to publish info on this forum for maemo users (wrt Nokia device support)?
 

In a hypothetical situation, where you have a full access to motorola source, you would still not be able to install your custom build firmware.

The reason is simple, boot loader makes sure it can run only firmware packaged by motorola. So there is no chance of forcing in (RE'd).

See the philosophical view on it (it was labeled as paranoid at the time it was created):
Trusted computing.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.html

Aside from this, here is the question to demonstrate openness of meego (or maemo):

Can you influence the meego design decisions and how?

Re: Should MeeGo developers continue to publish info on this forum for maemo users (wrt Nokia device support)?
 

I am fully aware of that (the N950 has this Aegis thing).

But, would you thus conclude that it doesn't matter at all? That you couldn't care less than Motorola went to the heights of opensourcing the rest of their platform? That the fact they did wouldn't be more useful to you?

Re: Should MeeGo developers continue to publish info on this forum for maemo users (wrt Nokia device support)?
 

@javispedro

So, to sum this up, when you say "open", you mean reverse engineered or source released by, in this case, Nokia?

And when you talk about openness of a system/OS/whatnot not being "a moot point", your main argument is how much easier it might make reverse engineering which might result in "open" components?

Finally, I assume the "openness" of MeeGo by itself, without any device, seen as a framework or something like that, is "pure open" with code that has either been developed from scratch or released without reverse engineering anything.

But as soon as MeeGo ends up on a device like the N900, this changes and depends on how many components have been reverse engineered (or where other vendors have stepped in with better/more open alternatives).

Clear distinctions of what is discussed would, hopefully, make it less likely to end up in discussions about something else. The "openness" of Fedora is irrelevant. The same goes for Ubuntu.

The "openness" of a platform like the N900 does matter when it comes to the effort needed to reverse engineer components (if your testament to this fact is to be taken at face value). This, then, has nothing to do with the "openness" of MeeGo, or Maemo for that matter. This is all about the effort needed to reverse engineer any component on any platform. I'm sure woody14619 can agree on this and you then have no reason to feel insulted since that's not what he's disagreeing with you about.

When it comes to the effort put into this (if you and your fellow developers have managed to, for example, pry open and reverse engineer the full GSM driver layer) I'm also sure that woody14619 agrees on a "Well done!" since that is the kind of effort he can appreciate, taking his experience into account.

So, less muddling of the water and w00t cookies for all!

Re: Should MeeGo developers continue to publish info on this forum for maemo users (wrt Nokia device support)?
 

I think you should explore what Richard Stallman says on this subject. There is more to openness than the plain old source code.

There are many more places where corporation can screw both developers and users. See the Big Picture.

Young people tend to call Richard different names with attributes such as "paranoid", but that does not eliminate the fact that he is sooner or later correct on all predictions (if that can be called a prediction).

BTW: What about AEGIS thingy? I've missed that.

Re: Should MeeGo developers continue to publish info on this forum for maemo users (wrt Nokia device support)?
 

You have to consider that:

- Maemo has many closed packages. This includes a lot of hardware drivers, hardware middleware, OS middleware (state management, power saving, etc.), virtually all user visible applications, the entire telephony stack, ...
If you use packages as your metric, you will find out that around 60% of Maemo is closed. My own completely made up estimation says this is about 40% of the system.

- Upstream Meego is 100% open; that means, everything is under a permissive, weak or strong, copyleft license.

- Meego for the N900 has a few closed packages. Around 25, and all of them are N900 hardware related. Meego has around 2000 packages total. Thus, using packages as metric, Meego for the N900 is 2% closed. Compare.

When asked which one is more "futureproof", the answer should be clear. If you ask me other questions, like, which one is most useful today, or which one has a more kickass logo, I might answer Maemo. But on Maemo, you're not going to add features to the Calendar application. The Meego Handset Calendar application might be so useless it might as well be non-existant, but, at least, if you want to add features to it, you can.

Even from the hardware point of view, which woody14619 seems to have a fixation with despite the fact that is not exactly one of the hardest parts to reimplement IMHO, things look more bright with Meego. Several reasons:
- Meego has less Nokia-specific interfaces and generally uses open, well-documented middleware. Examples: sensorfw, contextkit,ofono,connman instead of icd2,csd,etc. Therefore writing drivers for Meego is easier.
- Meego has had Nokia support for a little more. They have been listening to suggestions about how to make the closed components more future-proof. Also, updated, less buggy versions are used in Meego. Those will never work in Maemo because changing the smallest blob breaks the entire system. Meego is more open, more understood, more resilient.
If we ever find ourselves with the need to use Android GFX drivers for any reason, Meego will be the second OS to support them (the first one shall be obvious ;) ).
- Meego has some third-party support. There has even been a special nvidia build of tegra drivers for Meego.
- Some of the few binary blobs that remain have had open source implementations made/RE'd. Note that one of the reasons the open versions are not used is that they're still not up to par with the closed implementations. Despite what you seem to believe, MeegoCE folks do care about daily usage. They use their phones, you know. So if a blob from Nokia whose mission and interface are well-known does the job, well, the MeegoCE team uses it.

Now, some people including woody14619 have said in this thread that Meego efforts are wasted and one of the reasons he has put through is that "it is more open" is a moot point. I'm not here to argue whether the efforts are useful or not. I'm here the argue that "it is more open" is not a moot point. It makes Meego more customizable. It makes Meego more futureproof. Quite a lot of people seemingly want this.

Note that I do not use MeegoCE for the N900. But that's because I'm happy with that I have and I don't need upgrades -- I don't use the CSSU either.

Re: Should MeeGo developers continue to publish info on this forum for maemo users (wrt Nokia device support)?
 

Why won't Nokia and the community members just come straight out and say the one thing that's not been said so far... the future here is capped, the source will never be released, enjoy what you have for as long as it works... have a good day.

Simple. Clear. Seems to precisely what needs to be said.