Re: My N900 concerns
 

I'm 23 in April, but I've been writing code since I was around 7, most of which was "public" (even if only for my few friends at the time), so I don't really think I'd fit in with the older generation. As I've matured, so have the projects and code I've worked on.

I do agree with you that most people want to get something out of it - in a lot of the cases I know of, what that is, is usually more experience, and something else they can point at as to having contributed on, so yes, you're right.

That's not all, though, there's usually an element of fun to it too. You can't pour hours of your time into something for months, or years, with no tangible return without having an attachment to it.

We're getting a bit OT, now, though. ;)

Re: My N900 concerns
 

Good point.
Personally, my Blackberry will be sticking around in any case.

I think with the advent of Qt allowing the same program to run on Maemo 5 and 6 as well as Symbian and possibly iPhone, it may not be so bad.

Re: My N900 concerns
 

But this gets to the core of SilverMountain's concern. What's to say that in the next year or two Nokia decides to create a new and different beast for its final step? Compatibility between Maemo versions has never seemed to be a concern of Nokia.

I can understand that apps written for Fremantle may not run on Diablo. But what a commercial developer is looking for is some assurance that apps written for Fremantle will run on Harmattan. If you compare it to other OSs, this seems to be the standard. My Palm TX running PalmOS 5 could also install and run most apps for PalmOS 4 and even 3. Win7 will happily run most apps for Win5 (XP) and provides an XP compatibility mode for those apps which have a problem with Win7.

Re: My N900 concerns
 

As the population of developers increases the range of things that are "cool" to someone increase. To have a stable development community you need a critical mass of developers interested in developing a range of different applications and people with different skills to work on them.

As I said above I think the N900 will be large enough to support such a community. It's the most open platform out there and it'll likely be able to support a lot of different programming languages.

Re: My N900 concerns
 

It's already announced that Qt will be there for Harmattan and is already around for Fremantle. I can't see that changing, especially as it allows the possibility of cross-development in Linux, Symbian as well as other possibilities (eg. iPhone).

If nothing else, Qt will be useful for all of the other platforms even if it's changed for Harmattan, which I really find unlikely.

Re: My N900 concerns
 

I totally agree with you. My biggest concern is that Maemo faces the same problems as Linux in general and I consider myself a hardcore Linux user (see www.osfight.de). I hope this is not going to happen, especially because Nokia backs Maemo up, at least for the core applications. When it comes to community progs, it is very likely that we are swamped with beta versions of very good programs. For that reason I already started a thread for having Android apps on Maemo, which is feasible, as Andriod is OpenSource and Canonical has already done most of the work. It would solve many problems like competing with the Iphone App store (biggest benefit), having stable versions of good programs and gives the OVI store more time to develop good OpenSource applications.

I am a student, love openness and try therefore to support Linux as much as I can now, as it is the future for all of us, believe it or not.

Re: My N900 concerns
 

But having Qt around or back/upward compatibility with Maemo 5 and 6 wont solve the problem of halfway finished apps. Theres nothing better about a pool with 10'000 apps 80% done than about a pool with 5'000 apps, 80% done...
The core problem I personally can make out in alot of open source projects or with using open source software are exactly those. Unless the size of one very specific project has so to say exceeded the critical mass, it wont ever be finished, unless driven by a "higher power". Examples of projects being of good quality having crossed the critical mass thingie: Debian, or GIMP. Being guided by a "higher power": Ubuntu, or Open Office. Many many very very VERY promising projects get abandoned halfway through, to many, unfortunately. Anyone still with me...? :rolleyes:

Re: My N900 concerns
 

I challenge you to name any software project that is 'finished'

Edit:
Just to expand on that slightly...I sort of see where you're coming from, but I think the argument you're using to support your position is flawed.

The open and therefore slightly anarchic nature of FOSS development mirrors the open and slightly anarchic nature of organic evolution - the series of mutations and evolutionary developments that led from the first mammals to us humans is still ongoing and will be so until the planet finally becomes incapable of supporting life as we know it. By no stretch of the imagination could organic evolution be described as 'finished'. It never will be. Computer software is just the same - there will always be something different just around the corner. If enough people find the 'something different' useful, they will keep using it, thus encouraging the author(s) to try to improve it further. If it turns out to be an evolutionary dead end, it will become extinct and another 'something different' will appear in its place. It's simply the nature of the process.

Re: My N900 concerns
 

What always strikes me about this argument, superficially attractive though it is, is the simple fact that I'm posting this from a complete operating system, including the boring bits, that's all given away for free.

You might not understand why free development works, but the fact remains - it does.

Re: My N900 concerns
 

I challenge anyone to find more than 1% of the software on the "App Store" either useful or feature complete. Fact is, the iPhone is considered a huge success but it has a huge collection of crapware and a piss poor interface to browse that software. Its great if you know exactly what you are looking for, otherwise its a royal PITA.

I love my iPod, but its sad that unless you know what you are looking for (app name) or something good is in the top 10 of that category the day you look, you wont find what you want. Why Apple think not being able to sort the list by rating, or having more categories (eg game genres), is perfectly acceptable I do not know.

So far quite a few apps I found via piracy then bought them. If I had not jailbroken my iPod I would never have found them and certainly not bought them, as I refuse to buy a game that might be crapware because few have proper trial versions to test.

As others have said, I would rather have a few hundred useful applications than thousands of useless ones. But that does still beg the question, will the N900 have the software you want?

One the biggest problems I find on open source is there software is there, but I never knew it was. Its greatest weakness is advertising. Only recently I realised how many games there really is for Linux these days, although granted a lot are limited due to long slow development.