Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

Amen to that. Then again, it was probably considered not closed source enough by Saint Jaaksi.

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

No they're not. What they're trying to do, is highjack the OSS community for their own CSS needs and their profits. Screw 'em sideways with a clotheshanger...

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

Who said free software must not be used to make profits?

It's not free as in "free beer", you know....

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

I have no problem with making profit from software (although I am strongly opposed to the IP laws we have today, but that's another story). I am opposed to sneakily making profit from a community that is based on sharing.

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

Making profit from free software is way better than making profit from proprietary software. I don't see your point. Nokia's profit doesn't prevent anybody from sharing. Quite on the contrary: The money they invest (from their profits) help a lot of the community projects becoming even better.

Again, it's simply wrong to assume that everything that's free (or "open source" or whatever you call it) must not be used in a commercial context. Having the big companies use free software is a victory for the free software movement, not a defeat.

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

Yes, but we need to look at each case seperately.

I saw the presentation of the new WiFi driver and this makes some points about why this driver now exists, what the problems were to open source it, what drove the development, and so on.

For OGG, probably Nokia lawyers are saying "don't touch that with a 10 pole foot". This is where maemo.org and Extras repository kick in. I do wonder what Nokia's view about Dirac is (recently achieved 1.0 status).

This is a reference to the DSP, right? There is a Garage project for OGG Vorbis.

..and finally we'll be able to use a newer kernel with all kind of neat features and fixes. I'm looking forward to CFS, PowerTOP, LatencyTOP, and so forth.

I believe the questions each individual has to ponder about: are these contributions good enough or is the learning curve good enough? Do I trust Nokia? Or will I instead opt for a Pandora? Do I wish wait for the 'N900'? Will I buy both Pandora and 'N900' (unlikely for most potential customers)? Do I need the new features of the 'N900'? Which ones? Are they worth it?

(Maybe there are more or better questions to ask. I'm not feeling inspired. :))

The Trolltech acquisition makes a lot more sense in this light. Proprietary vendors will be able to deliver for Maemo, and it will run on platforms running Maemo no matter if its a NIT or NOT (No, Other Tablet). And Nokia gets their fair share.

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

:confused: not? You must be blind. Have you heard about several announcements made during the Maemo Summit?

Maybe you should get an official FSFE troll badge... ;)

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

I hope so. I'd say "amen" to that mindset wherever it's coming from. It's not about hating closed-source altogether.. it's about giving the customer (me) what we (I) want. An open device, environment and tools to play with and develop and to promote open competition in general (closed or not). The device and the operating system should never be closed. The software I buy can be open or closed but shouldn't restrict my fair use rights. That's all I'm asking for. Seems that we'd had that before and lost it more and more as companies became more 'creative' and 'capable' of coming up with DRM and closing off tinkering interests.

Yow.. okay. I'm not sure I'd go that far. I'm pretty happy that Nokia's delivered a pretty spiffy openISH architecture and that they've done SOME work to open inroads. I just feel that there's certainly cause for remaining suspicious of their intentions given some things they've said and done.

People will pay for good work--whether it's a package software or donation or just support. I've donated to a few open source projects I particularly liked (in the maemo world, omweather and gpodder in particular) and my employer has purchased Collabnet licenses for support of Subversion.. an open-source and free (as in freedom AND beer) software. Free software certainly CAN and DOES make money--but it needs to be of good quality and maintained and the developers need to be willing to communicate with their community and/or customers. It's as I'd said earlier.. it's about COMPETITION in the market.. free software generally is just a MUCH better caliber of product (source code and binaries, open for vetting and enhancing) for a MUCH better price (free! or relatively cheap if you're not a developer or geek). In our company, we certainly TRUST the open-source product more than the closed for the obvious advantage of being.. OPEN SOURCE. :)

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

Anyway Karel is now indelibly stamped, as he was mentioned by name and in writing during one of the presentations in Berlin, so it's not as if he can pretend innocence now...

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

WOOT! Congrats, Karel! :)

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

Wha--?? WTF!!??

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

I don't understand what you are saying here. The SIM technology is merely an authentication tool and was part of the early GSM specifications and is widely available at little to no cost. (This is to be contrasted with the CableCard authentication technology in CATV systems which is so extremely proprietary that you can't get a graphics card with CableCard input even for a standard Wintel PC and even if you are willing to pay a hefty royalty.) It is the cellular carriers who leverage SIM and similar technology to lock in customers to their network. Are you confusing open source with open access?

Yes, this is a necessary part of the cellular ecosystem which Nokia probably wishes away more than you or I (and certainly costs them more lost profits than you or I) but as a non-emotional corporate entity accepts as a commercial reality. Secondly, if you don't like SIM lock and similar UE-network lock-ins, I believe this is a reason to support Nokia rather than shun them. In the US, they have far and away the largest amount of non-subsidized device sales revenue (excluding pre-paid phones) and have been pushing non-carrier distribution networks. They have opened stand alone stores and pushed their non-subsidized N-series based primarily on competitive product superiority. No similar effort like this by Samsung or Motorola or SE and even Apple accepted a carrier lock-in. Some lower tier device OEMs (who have no hope of independently gaining market share) shamelessly suck at the carrier teat. The NIT and its support for SIP and VoIP is noteworthy as an attempted end around the cellular carrier toll booth.

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

And it is easily cracked (unlocked). In my country it is legal to unlock 1 year after purchase of the device.

I was trying to play the devil's advocate here. Apparently failed. For sophisticated arguments you have to wait for Karel, or read Dan's arguments & links, or...

No, I'm not, although I can see the overlapping ideology between being against a vendor lock-in and being against proprietary software or proprietary standards.

Personally, I hate proprietary standards the most because these provide a basis for proprietary software and vendor lock-in.

There are some valid concerns regarding scalibility though.

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

Your "SIM lock" argument didn't fail for lack of sophistication, it failed because it's wrong. Getting legal unlocked GSM phones is almost trivial. Nokia doesn't need to "change this overnight", it's already a done thing.

As I said in another thread, I have 3 Nokia GSM phones. Only 1 of them was purchased from a carrier, with lock and contract. The other two are unlocked and have no contract (and one of those is the one I actually use).

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

I think I just heard the mother of all bells being rung. :D

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

Yup. I bear witness :-)

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

To answer the q of the thread title, I think the OPP type with a rollup screen is what I view as a competitor for my $$, unless they can come up with a voice recognizing, 3D holographic projecting, telephonic watch that also does realtime teletransport.
However I think the unLinuxed masses, using dirty windows will go with the mobile phone type.

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

The idealogies behind vendor lock-in and proprietary software are quite different. Vendor lock-in is per se anti-competitive. This may make your head explode but it is possible to have open source DRM (research PGP encryption technology)

Your scalability link is off the mark too. HSDPA and HSUPA are part of the cellular carrier network.

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

Nowhere did I state they're the same. I said they are related to each other. Lets take MS Office as example. Ignoring the debacles about their new 'open format' imagine the previous versions (2000, 2003, etcetera). This is an example of proprietary software using a proprietary, closed standard, creating a vendor lock-in. If the file format (the standard) was open, others could have implemented it (potentially, open source) therefore reducing and/or mitigating the vendor lock-in, and allowing an alternative to the proprietary software. Converesy, had MS Office been open source, but the file format unspecified, one could still implement an alternative reading the source code therefore reducing and/or mitigrating a (potential) vendor lock-in.

Bright folks at Sun have proved they understand this vital aspect. Unfortunately, many didn't...

No, it doesn't work. It either works the way PGP is intended to, or one person who wishes to shares their key providing all people read access to the content. Every key can be cracked just like every lock can be picked. And in the case of software, its usually a piece of cake.

:confused: no comprendos.

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

OK, now I just need to know; what kind of presentation was that? "a Sample of the Kind of Customer We Do Not Want"?

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

Hint : it was in the first "track 2" session after lunch on Saturday :)

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

I do not know what that means...

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

Embedded Webapps, it seems.

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

Actually, you are the holy grail of potential customers. The mantra is, "Win Karel, win the world!"





:p

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

Well, Android might still turn out to be the competing device platform, but T-Mobile's Android offering isn't going to be competitive with anyone. Right now, I think I'm waiting to see what the next android device will be. Especially with rumors of non-phone devices out there, as well.

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

It did also include the word "Pandora", though :)

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

You're making the assumption that everything at the summit was Nokia preaching to the community.

Wrong. So far wrong to be laughable!

It was a community summit, paid for by Nokia. There were a mix of talks from Nokia employees about the upcoming changes to the Maemo platform and many more contributions from the community showing their work to each other.

The reference to you was that writing little web apps on the tablet, and running them in Python gives you - as a developer and user - freedom to move to one device to another, taking your apps with you. The example being from Psion devices -> Maemo devices -> Pandora -> Beagleboard -> desktop -> ...

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

Thanks for summing it up neatly Andrew. I should have handed you the slides, then we wouldn't have run overtime :-)

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

Good talk, very interesting :-)

May become even more viable with faster start-up time of the browser in the future and other Prsim-based technologies.

Would be cool to have some kind of iUI library for Maemo to make web apps which look more like polished "real" apps; like iUI did for the iPhone web apps.

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

Think what you like, we kept hoping you'd appear and claim your badge:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3206/...f88b272f0f.jpg

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

Hmmm...

Wait, no Newton?

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

What, you missed Steve's announcement that OpenDoc is coming back, and it and WebKit will be used to build a new CyberDog for multiple platforms, including the Newton? It's all coming around again!

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

HA ! Excellent ! :-)

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

Your fault. You were supposed to be in the audience and pick the bait...

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

Thanks :o

hey, didn't know this one, it's real neat !
Generally iPhone-specific web apps work well on the tablets too...

I've a feeling the next upcoming "crack" will be devoted to see how iUI fits in with web2py :-)

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

Can someone tell me what the availability schedule is going to be on these Pandoras? How many will be available in November? Are they all claimed already? When will the next batch be ready? How many in that one? Are they claimed yet? .... etc, etc.

I'm interested in Pandora, too, but there's so much... vapour... in the air around that project, it's hard to see what's actually going on...

I would buy a BeagleBoard, too, if I could hook stuff up to it (video, usb, usb keyboard, usb lan & usb wifi, etc, etc) and it would work. Your pics on Flickr don't terribly encouraging yet...

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

Well, A. I'm incompetent (and can't beat USBNet into working) and B. I'm incompetent (and can't seem to get it to use an x-loader off the SD card after I hosed the one on NAND).

Life will be a lot easier for you with working USBNet. ;)

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

bottom line: pandora's ugly.

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

Pre-orders start September 30th. If you want to be notified, sign up for the newsletter on openpandora.org

The devices will ship in November. There are 3000 in this first run. A second (likely larger) run will be manufactured in early 2009.

The GP32 and GP2X sold a combined 75,000+ units, and they'd certainly like to surpass those figures with the Pandora.

Re: Which device type is the real competitor?
 

Just an idea.... if I'd get either a Pandora (I never heard of this outside internettablettalk.com, so I do assume it's a virtual entity created inside this forum, but who knows... :D ) or a beagleboard... and if after November 2008 first alpha releases of Maemo 5 become available.... would it be possible to have these Alphas run on Pandora/Beagleboard? (I understand Nokia confirmed this for BB, but still... I mean... it would be cool to have the image+flasher+howto combination so that you could just download a single file, flash it and stare at the beautiful background before it crashes.)