Re: Open source vs confidential products
 

There once was this project, you may have heard of it, called Linux. They somehow figured out how to do this.

We have some massively successful OSS projects out there, with a process that is amazingly effective. It's like Nokia looked at all of them and said, "Not Invented Here" and completely avoided learning anything from them.

He's right though. Neither as a whole nor any remaining component bugs will be fixed. MicroB, for example, has had some annoying input bugs since the release of Diablo. And how do you enjoy Modest's rapid pace of development (HTML messages anyone)? For a NIT these are significant portions of the whole devices purpose of existence.

Re: Open source vs confidential products
 

all in all, designed by committee may be bad if its a government committee, but open source ones seems to get along, at least to some degree ;)

Re: Open source vs confidential products
 

There are open source projects and there are open source projects. I've seen projects where the core developers literally went out on a limb to help not only fellow developers, but users (yes, even n00bs), too. On the other side, I've seen projects that managed to sink to the level of death threats :confused: Maemo, for better of worse, is somewhere between the two IMHO. So, there is no universal recipe for open source. The fact that a development approach (within open source) worked for one group does not mean it will work (equally well) for another. It's a very biological thing, it has to find the right mix of people, management and resources for a particular project to function as a whole.

Re: Open source vs confidential products
 

Linux was not developed initially by a community, it was grown by one person.

There are very few projects that go from inception to completion in the hands of the greater community offering patches and tweaks.

Re: Open source vs confidential products
 

It's been often said that it's not possible to give info about the devices in advance and it does seem to be the name of the game with all vendors, but I think it might also help people tolerate the situation better if somebody explained in detail why it has to be that way and what would happen if hardware would also be developed more openly. I have the impression that one key factor is that the competitors would have more time to react to new products, but I suspect there are other reasons at play as well?

Re: Open source vs confidential products
 

Huh? Not the Linux I know... it started out by one person, but he put up sources immediately and as far as I can tell, accepted code since version 0.02. It was *managed* by one person, but I seriously doubt he could have done it all on his own.

See also: Debian.

Both of these examples throw the code and binaries wide open, but have some very focused controls at the *official* release point.

I have good hopes for Mer, though.

Re: Open source vs confidential products
 

snoo, he wrote the kernel himself before announcing it.

as noted here from his own posting:

the project seed was in place, what took off beyond that was the backing of the greater community.

https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/rhasan/linux/

Re: Open source vs confidential products
 

Let me insist that this is not a thread to discuss how well Nokia understands or developes open source. Please open a new thread if you want to discuss that. This thread is to discuss why Nokia keeps using regular 'closed' strategies for planning and marketing device products also for the Maemo platform.

I'll tell you the same I tell to myself: this is easy to say when it's not your money and you are not accountable of the losses if the strategy doesn't work.

How many Nokia shareholders are in this thread? How many are managing investments of many zeros in your jobs? A device program is a complex and expensive game, and marketing a device produced might be even more tricky - specially nowadays. If none of the big companies have tried and the smaller that try go the way they go... would *you* really be the the first top manager taking the decision. It would be interesting to see the posters of this very same thread in that situation.

Re: Open source vs confidential products
 

Yes, I can understand that. It is also understandable that no matter what some people will fill any silence with assumptions of Nokia's wrongdoing, blindness, deafness and what not. :)

Probably what is sometimes shocking is the combination of love for the known products (most of us like the Internet Tablets and this is why we are here) combined with a consistent mistrust and fatalism to whatever is unclear about the future. You know this is a progression and the steps done with the 3 previous devices can be reasonably called successful. Well, you can expect by default success with the next step - unless you have tangible reasons to fear otherwise.

As an example there was that guy saying that if nobody of Nokia had commented on [fatal rumor X] it meant that the rumour could be confirmed. Interesting conclusion. Why not taking it the other way around: since September 2008 we have announced some features that show a trend and a future. Most of the relevant changes (and definitely most of the changes relevant to developers) have been announced already. If we haven't said anything about [feature X] is perhaps because there aren't changes worth mentioning, or no changes at all.

Going back to the core topic of device announcements. As many of you are saying in several places, announcements are just one part of the game. Sales starts, price points, countries covered, quality of the first software release, timing and frequency of software updates... All these are ingredients that might end up being more important even if they don't take so much buzz as the new pictures and demos.

Re: Open source vs confidential products
 

It is nobody's interest to waste developers' time and actually anybody's time. This is actually why I'm suggesting to the posters of the stylus' discussion to stop the speculation and panic trend.

I have answered a couple of times in that thread that we are supporting stylus friendly apps like liqbase, OSM2Go or NumptyPhysics as Fremantle Stars. Does anybody think that we want to waste their time as well? Maybe in 100 posts somebody will need to recall the same again. :)