Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Ack.... yeah, that USB debacle certainly relates...

And I do agree it is an exceptional example. But then again, I've been heavily moderating the thread. Note without censorship of any kind. ;)

EDIT:

Actually there have been concrete statements from Nokia, starting off against the consumer (not what you were looking for I know) and very recently switching around 180 degrees to acknowledge the issue and confirm that it would be covered... so I don't understand that statement...

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Sure, and if that Wiki page has one solitary entry - Maemo6 made available for N900 - would that be considered a problem in terms of a "realistic expectation"?

After all, Maemo6 is just software that will - apparently - be running on pretty much the same hardware platform as the N900 (ie. OMAP3).

What technical reasons are there that would make the availability of Maemo6 on N900 an unreasonable expectation?

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Honestly, the noise doesn't bother me very much. The whole Internet is one seething mass of noise. That's what search engines are for!

There are got lots of fun, constructive things going on in these forums, from theming discussions such as making your lock screen look like a pac-man game or your IMs look like a conversation with speech bubbles to applications like fMMS, HDR pictures with the N900's camera, a new version of FlipClock, etc., etc....

As for the sudden noise levels in here:

If someone who had previously been reasonably healthy suddenly gets nasty, itchy red bumps all over his body, you don't take steel wool and try to rub the bumps off, or try to cover them up with make-up, or yell at them to get off of his body, you try to find out what is causing all of the red bumps.

Look for the cause, stop fighting the symptoms.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

And for that I (and others) thank you.

Nokia's statements have been getting better, but...
1) the "confirmation" of coverage was still vague
2) it was only posted on Nokia forums by an employee (who may not work for Nokia tomorrow, know what I mean)?

An official press release would go a long way, particularly with less vague language. I still don't know what will happen if my connector breaks in 366 days, most likely I am SOL due to (imho and yours) a design flaw.

Back to your regularly scheduled topic....

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

WARNING: DISINGENUOUS SELF RIGHTEOUS SPAM ALERT

Here are some threads that I think need more attention than this one:

Click

But please, continue. This is very entertaining. Actually helping to fix things is so boring, and we can all use a break.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

I`m a total noob with Linux, but I already fell totaly in love with my N900. I don`t blame Nokia for silence. R&D is a cruel biz because of competition and you have to be careful about what you say. I know that because I work in a similar business. I also don`t care if Meego will run on N900 or not. I`m happy with Maemo5 right now and I`m sure I won`t be forgotten. Support will be provided and if not by Nokia then at least community will help. If next device will be with more features hardware wise (and I´m sure it will) then I`ll be anyways tempted to buy it. I like innovation and that`s why I prefer Nokia over Apple.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Well, except for the "Maemo 6 isn't a thing anymore" one? :D

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

/me takes his nokia hat on:
We haven't been very forthcoming about the content being created for the next releases of maemo 5. I can assure you, there is a lot of great content being developed, and you should be able to get your hands on it soonish.

Roadmap page is a great idea in my opinion, the only issue being in it the dates, which we don't want to commit to. But I'm sure a roadmap can be built without such. I'll take the action of following that up.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Something like THAT is all I want from Nokia. I don't need dates necessarily (Target months/quarters would be nice, but not crucial).

1. It shows that Nokia wants to improve its relationship with its customers.
2. It shows someone is taking personal responsibility to work on #1.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

I understand that, but some idea of dates would certainly be useful. If you look at the way normal linux distributions do it as an example, many have target dates, but also targets for development. It's understood that if there are blocker bugs or incomplete features then the dates are allowed to slip.

This ties in with the undelayed bugfixes proposal, the (planned?) migration to a fully public bug tracker, and other moves to properly open development. If you can commit to releasing code when it's ready, and let people see how ready or not it is, dates suddenly become much less important.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Yaaaayyyyyy!

This is exactly what we need more stuff like this.

I uderstand what you mean by dates. I love the sound deadlines make as they go whooshing by!

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Useful maybe, but absolutely not essential.

IMHO your post - in the context of this thread - undermines the lesson I'd like Nokians to take from it: that partial information is better than no information.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

a decent voting system for apps in dev or proposed would be a good start. This forum is quite clunky and provides too many doors for members to open threads in various different places. Trying to maintain momentum in something gets lost by the next thread or big idea elsewhere.

Also having dialogue to nokia and key devs on here (without detracting from their good work actually developing apps and new releases) is a great idea and very welcomed. Maybe a daily/weekly diary from programme managers?

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Excellent suggestion, many thanks.

Just knowing, for instance, that the OMAP3 optimised version of Flash Player 10.1 is planned for Maemo5 would be great news and shouldn't be considered a secret as most of the competition (apart from the Cuppertino bandits) already appear to have it pencilled in for their platforms.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Thank you for your post. Most of us really believe strongly in Maemo, trust you guys at the keyboards and appreciate very much what you did in the last year for the N900. It's just that Nokia's (visible) output dried up considerably over the last months since the release of the N900 (guess everybody had to catch up on holidays finally :-), with PR1.1 being just a "cosmetic" release for many (even if the devs here appreciate the finetuning of the framework etc.)

Nobody reasonable expects any date commitment, but why can't Nokia announce a feature roadmap like other software houses do? Quarterly estimates would more than suffice. And explain why some perhaps expected things won't show up (technical, economical, marketing reasons).

A purely hypothetical (but IMHO not entirely unreasonable) roadmap might just look like:

• Q4'09/Q1'10 (Winter): PR 1.1 Stability, critical fixes
• Q1/Q2 '10 (Spring): PR 1.2 Ovi Maps 2.0 (offline search, map loader compatible), QT 4.6, Ovi Store open for commercial apps. Google Sync compatibility. Flash 10.1 hardware-accelerated. Front-facing cam enabled for all possible protocols . Camera app with HDR mode. Assign custom ringtones to contacts. MediaPlayer with Equalizer and vastly improved playlist editor.
• Q2/Q3 '10 (Summer): PR 1.3 Ovi Maps 4.0 (voice navigation, based on QT 4.6, feature equivalent to Symbian). Full portrait mode for major Nokia Apps. MMS. Open sourcing of selected Nokia Apps under a slightly restricting licence to protect IP.
• Q3/Q4 '10 (Autumn) : PR 2.0 MeeGo for N900 (Paid upgrade @ 10 EUR)
• Q4'10/Q1'11 (Winter): PR 2.1 Stability, critical fixes.
• ...

(Again: just an example)

Such a roadmap would be a great marketing help against FUD, as it would show the extent of Nokia's commitment and assure potential buyers of the "long-term" potential of the platform. You want people to keep buying N900 until the next device comes, or not? So the buzz must be kept alive, and this can only be done by releasing head-turning updates, therefore each release MUST feature at least 1-2 "supersexy" features (the bold items on my hypothetical roadmap are such examples)

Last but not least, the roadmap might also be useful when closing bugs in the maemo bugzilla, as we might more clearly see an indication when to expect a fix released.

(BTW: I will PM you on how to coordinate my Wiicontrol fixes :-)

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Yes it would also keep N900 doubters if they knew what was in the pipeline. I have considered very carefully last weekend whether to change the N900 for something else as I cannot see whats coming officially and for some aspects is there any light at the end of the tunnel.
Came to the conclusion that actually it does most things very well and nothing else provides the functionality in quite the same way I want.
However having an in 'progress' and an agreed 'to do' list would be a great asset.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

So, could the community please stop giving the N900 a bad public image and get back to developing/testing/bugfixing instead, as no one else is, and even if they were we have no outlet for their software anyway. (Oh yes, so sorry, a working Ovi store is coming isn't it).

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

good post, hopefully nokia's plans are similar to make this nice peice of kit to the best mobile device of 2010!

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

I certainly hope it didn't, and it wasn't intended to. I entirely endorse the idea that something is better than nothing, and I thoroughly support konttori's proposal.

The community is not doing that. If the lack of communication from Nokia is giving the device a bad image then the fault is with Nokia's lack of communication, it is not with the community's talking about it. We don't make things better by hiding problem if it's real.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

yeah, sorry Ewan. I'm totally with you actually, was just referring to Qgill's post about removing FUD and "bad talk" from the community forums.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

What can we realistically expect from Nokia....

That is a good question, realistically the product has been launched, received well by the target audience but in the end it will never be considered an "everymans" phone. So realistically besides minor updates nothing more should be expected of Nokia (this would be a mistake though).

Nokia has aligned itself with Intel which is a very smart move on both parties since Nokia would like to secure the latest and greatest hardware for its devices and Intel needs a mobile vendor to truly brake into the mobile market. That being said they have chosen a somewhat non-committal agreement with each other since instead of saying we will produce X device together they decide to create a platform from which they can produce products together or indeed separately. I am not saying they are not committed to the project but ultimately even if they don't produce a device in collaboration the software produced would be very useful for both parties. This could turn out to be very important for Nokia since although Intel chips are x86, therefore compatible with a large swath of software, ARM has been the platform of choice due to its high efficiency and its clever licensing to various companies (Samsung, TI, Qualcom) and a number of variations on the standard chip design (Snapdragon, Hummingbird). Still I can't see Intel just giving up on this lucrative sector, can you? In the end this is a smart business move but maybe not such a smart community move. This is akin to releasing a product and a day later having a press release stating its obsolete and a new one will be out within six months (Oh it has happened in the computer industry before). Still thinking this way would be missing the point. They did not come out saying we have developed a new phone but a new OS that is open to all and controlled by a community. Should they support the N900 with a MeeGo firware for it? That would be nice but ultimately unnecessary as long as, most bug fixes have been made and we are not left out in the cold with new software.

Personally I am reserving judgement until I see some actual hardware running MeeGo rather than this illusive vesper of an idea.

Still the experience with the N900 has been frustrating at times but ultimately very rewarding.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Great :-) We all seem to be in violent agreement here.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Isn't some sort of public roadmap a necessity for MeeGo anyway? I mean the fact that Nokia and Intel at least seem to be very interested about getting other hardware manufacturers on board for MeeGo. They can't really achieve that by being as secretive/economic about revealing future as Nokia has been about Maemo before. It's not just about one manufacturer anymore.

I would expect something similar to how Symbian Foundation reveals it's future plans. Nokia still dominates SF development, but can't really expect Samsung and Sony Ericsson to stay with Symbian without decent roadmap to guide other interested parties.

(That's just my very uneducated opinion/guess)

http://media.share.ovi.com/m1/s/1808...e9ad299b1c.jpg

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

There are official plans and there are tentative plans. They haven't been communicated, but they exist.

It doesn't exist as for today. Still, you can check Bugzilla resolutions to have a glimpse of what is coming.

It is actually a common practice in the sector that Nokia operates not to make official announcements disclosing all plans about a released product.

Exactly.

We can summarize the information available from Nokia and others can help adding the unofficial but technically accurate information or views.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

That very much depends if you think you're in the mobile phone sector, or the community supported open source OS sector.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

I never said that. My intention starting this thread is to keep a sane discussion leading to somewhere new.

Still, not disclosing plans about a released product is a usual practice in the industry. Some people are saying 'I feel abandoned by your silence and I will go get a [conpetitor device]'. Still, do you know more about the [competitor] future plans? Has [competitor] made any official announcement about the future of their products in the market?

Hypothesis: without Maemo Summit, MeeGo announcement, Bugzilla and Brainstorm, probably the N900 FUD would be minimal at this point, even if the Nokia internals were doing exactly the same work they are doing today. Do you think this has a point? Nokia is frequently recalled to learn to deal with open development, but maybe users, bloggers etc might learn a thing or two as well.

URLs are welcome, specially from commercial competitors.

About 'technical problems', you could consider one the fact that most 'feared' users suffer FUD around "Harmattan", "MeeGo", "Qt", etc when they actually have little idea of the technical implications of all this. And we end up with people thinking that they need MeeGo in order to get Ovi Maps with free navigation. Or wondering why Ovi Maps with free navigation could be offered in nn existing Nokia devices (Symbian based) the day of the announcement while the N900 still hasn't got it.

The lack of technical clarity becomes more than a technical problem at the end.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

So why don't you promise Ovi Maps with free navigation on N900 if you want to aleviate the fear that without Harmattan, N900 won't get Ovi Maps with free navigation?

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Who is the "you" in that question, Matan? Surely not Quim.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

No joke. No one gives Apple or HTC endless streams of what we get here over lack of discussion regarding future software. They are continually dead silent on how older devices are to be treated. I've never seen so many people panic and spread FUD about a product's future like they have here. Granted, some of them are long time users who are extrapolating past behavior by Nokia, so it's not -all- unfounded, just most.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

N900 hardware, "Official support", upgrading kernel drivers, Ovi Maps, Flash, Nokia apps, industry certifications... most of this discussion is about commercial topics, even when they sit on top of open source code. If device products and software development would be free as in beer and as in speech nobody would be here discussing.

If it would be a "community supported open source OS" discussion then 'MeeGo community support' would be enough but for what I'm reading that is not the case for everybody.

Setting pure OSS expectations on Maemo/N900 ignoring the business aspects Nokia has to deal with (e.g. giving away interesting information to competitors) is probably not a good business.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

I thought there was some sort of agreement here on the necessity of official sources for this to work ?

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

This discussion appears to have led to a fair degree of consensus that what is required is more openness from Nokia. If you want to solve the 'FUD' problem, that's your solution.

Your competitors may not be who you think they are. Speaking for myself, the alternative to getting an N900 with Maemo was not an alternative smartphone, it was a netbook or tablet with a different Linux OS on. There is very, very much more openness around the development plans of the Redhat sponsored Fedora (for example) that there is around Maemo/Meego. If my next upgrade is going to be Nokia hardware, then I'm going to need some more openness about the software that I will be able to run on it, otherwise I'll likely be going back to commodity kit and properly open OSes.

I really don't think that's the case. you can't say things like this without people expecting some follow-through. You said:
Keeping a secret internal bugtracker, secret internal source repos, and secret plans doesn't look like the behaviour of someone that trusts us, or understands what 'Software Freedom Lovers' have come to expect.

Such as?

And who's fault do you think that is? Give us some actual information, and then we'll have more of an idea of what you're planning. Sure, you're right that the fear is born of ignorance, but that ignorance is brought about by deliberate secrecy, and there's nothing that anyone other than Nokia can do to fix that.

Quite. So lets have some more clarity.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Bless you. But, it's starting to irritate me, for one. Too many threads getting highjacked, too many semi-rational rants, too many misunderstandings, too little constructive dialog. I understand my some want to rant against Nokia, and they have a right. But does it have to be so difficult for anyone in the community who wants to have a constructive conversation? Can people rant without making it such a pain for the rest of us?

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

I think Nokia communicates with the community more than the average practice in this industry. Then again 'the community' doesn't mean every Talk thread where someone throws a question to Nokia.


That was the intention of http://wiki.maemo.org/Task:Maemo_roadmap/Fremantle and http://wiki.maemo.org/Task:Maemo_roadmap/Harmattan . I haven't worked much on these pages lately and it's been some months since the automatic lists of resolved bugs are broken.

In the MeeGo context the communication will be easier since OSS / commercial and platform / product will be better separated.

In the meantime, any tips are welcome to improve the communication with the community AND the perception of the communication with the community.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

I think a higher degree of engagement with the community council would be a great start. ;)

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

I think you're wrong. Take the example of Intel's approach to graphics card drivers, for example. As a rule, by the time a new chipset hits retail they have free drivers already published, already in distributions. That may give some information away to their competitors, but it gives confidence to their customers, and that sells more hardware. Nokia are fundamentally in a similar position; the lack of software support and openness in its development is putting people off buying the hardware - you're already seeing that in posts to this forum. It's also putting off 3rd party potential developers (both free and proprietary) because they have no confidence in the future of the platform, and that itself will make the hardware less attractive even to end users that don't care about these things directly.

Fundamentally, you clearly think you've got a 'FUD' problem, otherwise you wouldn't have started this thread. I think you can solve it by, as I said before, allaying people's fears, clearing up the uncertainties, and removing the doubt. You may not want to do that, but if you don't, I think you're going to have to learn to live with the 'FUD', because I don't see any other way of getting rid of it.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

I kind of feel bad for quoting this sentence, because I agree with most the things in your OP and your answers to follow up posts.

Still, I think asking for quotes from commercial competitors is somewhat besides the point. Nokia, and espesicially Maemo marketing, has made "opennes" and community approach a big, if not the biggest, selling point for Maemo. We don't get TV commercials about games or fart-apps on Maemo, but we do get viral marketing with cybernetic-penguins and open source eveangelism. From your commercial competitors, like Apple or Palm, I don't expect anything beyond usual closed source & commercial communication (i.e need-to-know-basis). I expect more from Nokia's Maemo efforts and that is based mostly on the way Maemo marketing sells Maemo platform.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

I would just like the Fremantle bugs fixed, but because Nokia have a known tendency to change OS strategy within months of releasing a new OS and not considering device backward compatibility (why would they - they only want to sell hardware) the bugs in the now "old" (yet still current) OS never get the care and attention they need in order to be fixed.

This is understandable, as there are limited resources to fix these legacy issues, but it would be more acceptable if there was any possibility of obtaining the new OS that may contain fixes for the bugs I and others have identified or been affected by.

In short, I don't want Maemo6/Harmattan on the N900 for any other reason than I predict most bugs raised against Fremantle will just end up WONTFIX, or "Fixed in Maemo6/Harmattan", which is essentially the same thing to an N900 owner right now.

The reduced activity in b.m.o over the last couple of months is fairly obvious, why that is though I'm not sure - I'd like think it's everyone beavering away on Fremantle bugs but somehow I doubt it.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Different class of customers though! You can't directly compare graphics cards with end products like mobile computers. Upstream commercial customers might well reward a more open company-- consumers really don't care in general. iPhone success proves it.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Texrat has a slide. I've seen it: We're all partying in a martini glass or something. Lightning strikes, and then Texrat's wearing a cape I think.