Re: Why should I develop for the N800?
 

Johnx, I think you had it right the first time.

gnexus shows up with a self-admitted rant and decides, even though it is basically the same thing everyone else is saying in other threads, that his rant is worthy of a new thread... and as his first post here too!

Welcome to the forums gnexus. Great entrance.

Re: Why should I develop for the N800?
 

Thanks! :D

Of course I expected a few comments of these types. Admittedly a rant is not the best way to introduce yourself.

On the other hand (OTOH - I won't use anymore acronyms, apologies to those who don't know them) I basically came here because after spending quite a few hours getting scratchbox set up and then finding the Nokia site basically dead in the water, I was, you may say, a slight bit peeved. Nokia is a 143.64 Billion dollar company (current market capitalization). Since there's not really that many Nxxx devices out there, and the files are very small, I was thinking how in the world can they operate a site or server, or a company, in this type of manner. . .

That gets me really sad and dejected, since I really love my N800 and think it is one of the most significant pieces of technology to come along in quite a while. So I came here because I know Nokia devs come here also. I was hoping that maybe they would help to explain the situation and comfort my soul. I knew I'd be preaching to the choir. That was the point.

I realized before posting there had been complaints about the Nokia site. Those were from users, NOT developers. There is a VERY serious stiuation going on here if the developers cannot get the files they need. In the real linux world, and not in Nokia land, this would be akin to something like kernel.org being down.

Re: Why should I develop for the N800?
 

I'm also going to respond to a couple of other things:

mulder wrote:
Please explain to me how I can make cash when: 1) Any software I write will necessarily use GPL code and thus be freely available for others, such as Nokia, to integrate into their code and thus to use my intellectual property without compensation. 2) You need an XM/Sirius reciever to make the app work.

johnx wrote:
Well I did a traceroute that says otherwise. According to the traceroute there is no Akamai (let's be serious here, if they were using Akamai there certainly wouldn't be a bandwidth problem) and they are using a Qwest connection to a server somewhere in or around Los Angeles. More than likely the Quest connection is a single T1, or possibly some type of fractional T1 or SDSL connection.

Anyway, what get the impression of is that the Nxx series is simply a side project to gauge the viability of Linux to replace Symbian on Nokia's mainstream devices. A side benefit to Nokia is the ability for them to mine any GPL code submitted by Nxx developers and integrate it into their own code which they use to sell their devices. I don't see why I should develop for the Nxx just to find that later on Nokia has used my code without compensation to sell their devices and add to their billion dollar balance sheet. This especially true when they won't even support their own SDK with a proper server. That just makes me feel like I'm being used and abused and wasting my time with this. While I like coding for Linux I am now seriously questioning Nokia's intentions with this project.

Re: Why should I develop for the N800?
 

Dude. Cynicism is understandable, but if you're looking for a pure open source sort of endeavor, would you expect it to come from a for-profit enterprise?

You acknowledge Nokia's success as if it were a bad thing. That success enabled a side project like the tablets in the first place. Who else is doing this now? Yes, Intel has a burgeoning competitive effort, but... cha-ching! They're in it for the lettuce too.

Would that we lived in an altruistic Star Trek-like utopia where money is considered a quaint affectation of primitive cultures. We're not there yet. Even an "open source" friendly device takes capital to produce. And here we are.

Re: Why should I develop for the N800?
 

Why develop for the tablets? That's a silly question.

Fun as hell ;)

"The most important design issue... is the fact that Linux is supposed to be fun..."

Re: Why should I develop for the N800?
 

Because its fun!!:D

Re: Why should I develop for the N800?
 

From my traceroutes, it looks like tablets-dev.nokia.com is using Akamai, but maemo is not.

When the first N810 firmware leaked, I hit about 10 different Akamai IPs to see if any of them would cough it up faster, but none of them would.

Re: Why should I develop for the N800?
 

which crucial libaries are GPLed? I assumed most were LGPL or equivalent.

the virtue of GPLed code is that everyone can mine the code and everyone has to give back their improvements if they choose to redistribute it. if the maemo ecosystem is successful then there is no practical reason other hardware and software vendors couldn't take advantage of it as well. for nokia to benefit from your contribution they actually have to add value themselves.

The philosophy of the GPL is to allow you to sell your software expertise as a service but not your software as a commodity. If you want to do the latter then don't release code under the GPL or depend on GPLed code. if you don't want to share "Your IP" then don't write open source code at all.

Re: Why should I develop for the N800?
 

libc6 is LGPL, gtk+ is LGPL, libhildon is LGPL. I could keep digging through the copyrights in my doc directory in the SDK, but I think I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader. ;) Anyways, Skype, Rhapsody, and Gizmo all seem to be closed sourced apps integrated fairly tightly into Hildon/Maemo, so I think you'd be fine. You could publish your software under a "no redistribution, no commercial use" license. Doesn't Creative Commons have something like that?

And it's not like Nokia isn't playing fair with GPLed software. They actually have a pretty good record for contributing things back to the community (work on bluez, the whole hildon libs).

Also,
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Anyways, these sound like issues you should take up with Nokia. At least you'll have a chance of getting the attention of someone in a position to do something about all this...

-John

Re: Why should I develop for the N800?
 

I think a better question (for this thread) would be are they any mirrors for the SDK or is there a way to download all of the SDK files and install them?

To be honest, I can empathize with what gnexus is saying (to a point). I've been trying for almost a week trying to get a development environment up and running (work and family limits my time). I keep getting gateway time out errors and files that don't completely download which causes the whole process to abort. Also, I suspect that the INSTALL.txt file for chinook is not entirely correct.

From the looks of the other threads, I think I should consider myself lucky for being able to get my 800 upgraded and up and running with the applications that I had with OS2007 (on the night that OS2008 was released).

Needless to say, it is frustrating because one of the main reasons that I bought the 800 was so that I can hack.