Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

(tukem responding to qole's post)
To that common place, #meego-arm on IRC/Freenode or meego-dev with prefix 'N900' in subject line is where the team does it's work at least. We also have weekly meetings on IRC.

If we're not acting open (some exceptions to closed binaries and big reveals at the moment..) in MeeGo N900 team, beat us and remind us - we want to be open.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

I am troubled by noticing which individuals that are worried about the future of Nokia Mobile Computing. These individuals are amongst the very core of who I consider the Maemo community leaders. Council members, long time advocates, forum moderators...

It's like when a football fan club turns against the club after a losing streak. I know most of these former enthusiasts only will turn pessimistic after thorough re-evaluation of the situation.

When these Maemo figureheads pause in public, that's the kind of stuff that tech blogs notice and ends up showing in stock price drops. Well, would be if Maemo was considered important for Nokia by investors, which I doubt.

I am in no position to tell qgil and Nokia if their strategy is failing or not, especially this early in the new MeeGo direction. But I can tell qgil that it doesn't appear as [many of] those who know the most about Maemo on the community side have much faith left in Maemo/MeeGo.

Should this not worry you? I don't mean keep you in this discussion worry you, I mean talk to the marketing guys worry you. If you can't convince GeneralAntilles that you're on the right track, if qwerty12 and qole is losing motivation... Then I would think it'd be in the best interest for Nokia to sell some of your ideas to them. I am sure you're doing lots of right things. Doesn't help if no one believes in them.

This community is added value. Without this community, I would have had serious regrets about getting the N900. But this community seems to be having a lack of faith crisis. Send in the priests!

Or am I reading too much from this all?

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

But that's what it all is. Childish. It's about commodity fetishism and artificially imposed desires and enjoyment. What about names like Yahoo or Google. This is babyspeak par excellance, and that's why it works, especially in our globalizing world. Ironically when dealing with huge dimensions you have to stick to the lowest common denominator, or else you will fail. Consider that "Meego" is easily pronouncable in the asian world, probably even worldwide.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

Well, since you've called me out...

Why am I feeling discontented, you ask? Simple: This is the second time Nokia have ****ed the community over in terms of updates.
The first being FiF and Fremantle WRT the N8x0. It could be truthfully argued that the N8X0s aren't powerful enough (God knows I have fun playing my videos on it) but the N900? The excuse is that it doesn't have a capacitative screen. Please. I'm sure I've made better excuses to my teachers about my homework.

Helmuth has provided a list of bugs Nokia WONTFIX (not at all or in Harmattan) and Nokia have said themselves that they won't provide MeeGo officially. The resolution of this report especially makes me laugh. A bug has been found in one of Nokia's open modules, a patch has been prepared but we have the FiH ****. Now, if I'm not wrong, the FiH resolution was slapped on the report before PR 1.2 was released. This wouldn't be so bad were it not for the fact that Nokia, once again, aren't providing it for the N900.
An update to the kernel (Nokia's build, at least) was provided with PR 1.2, n'est–ce pas?

Now, you see, Nokia won't fix bugs themselves or provide an update themselves. The reluctant side of me can agree with that; Nokia don't have all the time in the world but then not releasing the code to the community - the same community you're happy to use as an excuse for your update policy ("Oh, but the community will provide a version") - just reinforces my belief. Someone compared them to cowboy builders earlier. Except you can call another builder to fix a mess caused by the previous one. It's expensive and not appealing, sure, but you have the option. Nokia's closed source stuff? Well... some alternatives to some things exist but they're not guaranteed to work as well and for the others...

I will *****slap anybody one time who mentions the community build. Why should Nokia be praised for making the community do what they should? How will it differ to Nokia's offering on the next device? What's the guarantee that a MeeGo update won't break one of many Nokia's closed source components in the future?

From what I understand, some components will be opened. I've heard libcal will be one of them. Great for hackers... if you're using an N8x0. For the N900, it means **** all but providing a slightly more future-proof MeeGo. Look up sysinfod.
For the rest, Nokia have given their permission for special images to be hosted containing those components. Woohoo! Break out the party poppers, people.

No, I'm not interested in MeeGo's code. I want to see Fremantle's stuff. Why? Put it this way: My opinion of Qt mirrors Qt programmers' opinions of GTK.

tl;dr - Nokia WONTFIX many bugs and don't provide official updates to the next version of Maemo. After all this, they won't provide much of their closed source to the community, the same community that Nokia mention will be providing an update whenever similar topics arise due to their not being arsed.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

Well, I may have asked that... Or I may have asked if a content qwerty12 adds enough extra value to the Maemo/MeeGo ecosystem, that someone in Nokia - and probably not a developer - should take some time to contact GA, qole, texrat and qwerty12 and boost their faith. I don't believe it takes a complete conversion to only open source components or guarantees of full corporate support to legacy devices to win them back. I believe Nokia should let them vent, listen to the venting, and then say "we can't do that, but what do you think if..."

Seriously, the main problem with Maemo as I see it, was never hardware or not even software. Surely not the open/closed ratio that is better than any other comperative phone ecosystem and does AFAIK improve over time, too. It's the feeling that Nokia isn't doing what they should be doing and what they are doing doesn't feel like what they should be doing. People clearly feel cheated, left behind, cut out of the loop, forgotten. I believe words alone can in fact, clear a lot of air here. I brought up the football fan club because like that, it truly is a lovers quarrel.

But, you can only smooth over ruffled feathers so many times. It's better to say "sorry, but this is the best we can do" than to let down again.

Me, I haven't been around long enough to feel as let down as qwerty12. But unless someone has a good and honest sit down with him, he's leaving soon.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

Meh, I doubt my swearing-laden posts'll be missed. But it was going to happen anyway; I don't do Qt. :)

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

You have 4,606 thanks, more by the end of the day. You have the fourth highest karma. You bring essential software to the table. Maemo.org is better for having you around, my N810 and N900 is better for having you around.

If Nokia convinced you to hang around, maybe gave you a tour of the Qt facilities and sat you down with Qt staff 1), they could have won you over, I am certain. Nokia shouldn't do that unless they think you important.

But that's what I am saying. This discontent I am seeing here is coming from people that I consider important. And more than that, from people that usually work against discontent.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

...after my recent posts? :)

Nah, I wanted to like Qt but I just couldn't get my head around the way it does things. I personally think the team that brought Qt to Maemo have done a stellar job - most, if not all, applications look native - and I think Nokia did ultimately make the right decision. Even I can't deny the influx of new, proper (no, I do not consider myself to be one. My math skills are non-existent and I have no CS degree. Still, I find some solace in the fact that I've made programs to do things that others could not figure out how to do) developers that are using Qt.

Shame I could never figure it out and much prefer GTK. But I digress. The community has real, proper hackers such as javispedro (whom I admire very much).

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

Same here.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

Out of curiousity, if there was a plain-GTK implementation and a libhildon on top, in MeeGo, would you be more interested?