Re: [Petition] For Nokia to Open 100% of the Closed Components in Maemo 5/n900
 

Nokia just signed up to a partnership with Intel and Novell to do er let me think ... opensource MEEGO.

If you use an N900 then a large portion is already Open Source, the world hasn't stopped turning, the sky didn't fall in, continental drift kept drifting and you sir are already a guinea pig and Nokia is still making money.

So I'm curious, where is this big risk you perceive?

IBM has signed tier1 strategic partnerships with Novell (SuSE) and Redhat to deliver appliance based services based on Opensource platforms.

Even Google is now as near as makes no difference 100% opensource across the board, system delivery and internal users and they also make money.

Specious comments about no profit and huge risks using opensource are just wrong on their face as has been demonstrated many times already.

rgds

Re: [Petition] For Nokia to Open 100% of the Closed Components in Maemo 5/n900
 

Jesus Christ! Is it 100% open source as the OP suggested? No it isn't. There are closed parts and there are reasons for that.

Re: [Petition] For Nokia to Open 100% of the Closed Components in Maemo 5/n900
 

nosa101 STFU

Re: [Petition] For Nokia to Open 100% of the Closed Components in Maemo 5/n900
 

well, maybe they don't want to open some components just because their code is so bad - at least that's what i'm thinking after my recent discovery - which is BME reading register 0x3b from battery charger ( http://focus.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/bq24150.pdf ), and according to manual that register doesn't exist and only reason why it doesn't fail is because charger ignores higher 5 bits of address so 0x3b (0b00111011) becames 0x03 (0b00000011)

/usr/sbin/bme_RX-51
.text:000191B4 MOV R0, #0x3B ; ';'
.text:000191B8 BL I2C_ChargerReadWrapper
...
.text:00019188 I2C_ChargerReadWrapper
...
.text:00019190 BL I2C_ChargerRead
...
.text:000160A8 I2C_ChargerRead
.text:000160A8 STMFD SP!, {R4,R5,R11,LR}
.text:000160AC LDR R3, =file_descriptors
.text:000160B0 ADD R11, SP, #0xC
.text:000160B4 SUB SP, SP, #0x30
.text:000160B8 MOV R5, R1
.text:000160BC STRB R0, [R11,#i2c_smbus_data] ; bq24150 register
.text:000160C0 MOV R1, #0x720 ; request
.text:000160C4 LDR R0, [R3,#8] ; fd
.text:000160C8 SUB R2, R11, #-data_addr ; address to data
.text:000160CC MOV R3, #2
.text:000160D0 MOV R4, #1 ; read
.text:000160D4 STR R3, [R11,#var_14] ; ???
.text:000160D8 SUB R12, R11, #-var_3A
.text:000160DC STRB R4, [R11,#data_addr]
.text:000160E0 STR R12, [R11,#oldR4]
.text:000160E4 BL ioctl

Re: [Petition] For Nokia to Open 100% of the Closed Components in Maemo 5/n900
 

There are reasons but I bet none of them are due to potential risk in using opensource code.

They will most likely be due to closed license drivers for specific bits of hardware and Nokia has stated aim that Meego will move towards fully opensource effectively making your position untenable.

I suspect the closed elements will dwindle quite rapidly.

rgds

Re: [Petition] For Nokia to Open 100% of the Closed Components in Maemo 5/n900
 

Seriously?

I am not against Nokia opening their code but if they refuse to, I can understand why. There hasn't been any precedent set by a mobile device company to show that Open Source is the way. Even Android is not 100% open source. If there is no precedent, I can see why a Nokia manager would have reservations towards this move

Re: [Petition] For Nokia to Open 100% of the Closed Components in Maemo 5/n900
 

Drop the personal attacks, please.

Re: [Petition] For Nokia to Open 100% of the Closed Components in Maemo 5/n900
 

I don't really understand this closed source thing in old, non-active software. I mean what would any company will lose, if they release a couple lines of code. Is it really that important. I think only thing that will change is the open source community's respect to that company.

There's ID Software, a pure software company which gain their revenue mostly from the engine sales. And they released every single one of their engine's source in GPL license except the one they're actively developing that time. And because of that, we can play ID's games in many platforms(including N900). They'll release IDTech4's(Doom3 engine) license this year too. I guess we will see a Doom 3 port in N900 too after that.

Re: [Petition] For Nokia to Open 100% of the Closed Components in Maemo 5/n900
 

This goes a bit off-topic, but it's still probably important to note.

The MeeGo project itself actually is (or should be, as far as I'm aware -- if it's not, you should probably raise it on meego-dev) fully open source.

People can take the core MeeGo distribution and put closed elements into it, as has been done for the partially closed N900 adaptation (to provide BME, accelerated graphics, etc) - but that is not the core distribution, that's an individual hardware adaptation.

(Also worth noting that there is a fully open adaptation for the n900 which doesn't include these closed components, but has reduced functionality as a result).

Stskeeps: if I'm wrong, please correct me on the above. :)

Re: [Petition] For Nokia to Open 100% of the Closed Components in Maemo 5/n900
 

Just because Nokia has made a (shitty) decision doesn't make it a right one.
Couldn't give two shits about MeeGo. Even if the N900 gets MeeGo (in whatever form), it'll still be an OS laden with closed source components, thanks to Nokia.

Please... that's a joke. All the discussions re. requests are stagnant.
Hell, the one request I made to change the licensing of a component with its source already available in an open source program (I know; I was surprised too) has produced nothing.

Do I even need to mention the amount of WONTFIXES here?

Have some personalised replies, then.

• Modest: Don't use it for its main ability. Tho I must admit that it does make a brilliant email notifier.
• RSS Reader: Don't use it. I think mant prefer FeedingIt over the stock reader.
• Games: Don't play 'em.
• PDF Reader: Its XPDF engine is outdated as ****, and I don't ever recall seeing the patches that were uploaded for Diablo's version ever making it in Fremantle. One incentive lost. (jott's rotation support is a brilliant example of this. Silence for God knows how many months and then a FIXEDINFREMANTLE message)
• X-Terminal: Yes, I have hacked on it in the past. The X Terminal team did listen to some requests, however, so I can't criticise there.
• Hildon Desktop: Ah yes, a package which depends on closed source components. But to answer the question: No, not me. But Matan has and I don't believe I've seen his patches in PR 1.2, despite asking on -developers how he could do so.

Right, how do we know it takes that long? I mean, Nokia aren't exactly masters of communication (yes, the irony is not beyond me) - the licensing queue shows that.
And Nokia always seem to go the closed source route first. Take fmtx-middleware. A new component, introduced in Fremantle. You'd have hoped that Mer - which Nokia was obviously aware of - would've enlighted them somewhat. Why was it produced being closed source in the first place? It's bloody ironic due to Nokia contributing an open source driver for the transmitter to the kernel.

The community have modified some open source components; I named a couple above. There's more, however, like mafw-gst-subtitles-renderer, based on mafw-gst-renderer.

Oh, mafw-gst-subtitles-renderer was born out of a Brainstorm. Half of those requests can't be fulfilled as they have to be done in one of Nokia's closed components. I'm sure someone would be happy to do it if Nokia didn't close source many of their stuff. I mean, Nokia don't give a **** about what's in Brainstorm - how many requests from Brainstorm have been fixed by a Nokia employee?

The Queue shows why that doesn't work.

Nope. I'm after Diablo's components. Things like BME I'll never have a ****'s chance of understanding - that's a given - but other things that Nokia keep closed (to add insult, the headers aren't even available in nokia-binaries), like libconnui, sure.

Easier said than done. Easier said than done.

Anyway, amongst all this arguing, Nokia aren't gonna be changing their ways. I doubt I'll be going down anytime soon.

Re: [Petition] For Nokia to Open 100% of the Closed Components in Maemo 5/n900
 

So that people don't get the wrong impression, let's also point out that the community SSU for the N8x0's has been hampered by the refusal to open closed components

Components kept closed

Re: [Petition] For Nokia to Open 100% of the Closed Components in Maemo 5/n900
 

Don't shoot the messenger though. My role in the licensing change requests is to prioritize so it can be put into the internal machinery by a Nokia employee. That it seems to be a black hole to some is not my fault. No matter how much I kick and scream, there's going to be someone putting a thumbs up or down internally. And sometimes this can take ages. I'm frustrated by it too.

What I -do- know is that there's actively going work into open sourcing bits for MeeGo on N900. Including the phone stack. Limiting the blobs eases everyone's work.

Frankly, I'm tired of talk.maemo.org turning into a cesspool of negativity. I want to -do things-, not spend days on end arguing about things I can't change or should be defending choices made by Nokia. I'm not your punching bag for Nokia's faults.

Instead of punching me, how about you (not you qwerty12 specifically) tell me what I realistically can do to help you move things ahead?

Regarding that one request, I have bumped it recently to regain attention to the merge request. It's all there and waiting - but I can't do licensing changes legally. Not my job or my right to do.

Re: [Petition] For Nokia to Open 100% of the Closed Components in Maemo 5/n900
 

That URL doesn't give me any information on specific components you want relicensing, just meta discussion outside the queue.

Re: [Petition] For Nokia to Open 100% of the Closed Components in Maemo 5/n900
 

Adding some extra comments as qwerty12 is a guy I respect very much.

Agreed. This is one of the big problems in Maemo and has always been a problem. It is harder to open source than to push something out closed source. I'm not sure if their stance is changing regarding MeeGo, but in order to help things along, I hope they do.

And that there's some /dev/null's or processes that haven't worked. I -personally- don't like Brainstorm as it was originally slow (thanks to new servers, this is less bad), but it was utterly incomprehensible in terms of getting any sane input for things. And as with any process, since we as a community don't own the Maemo product, someone has to approve and make it happen internally. And it's not easy making things happen or turn around the ship. I've pointed this out before - that we aren't in charge of the ship.

This is really the problem. We have to fight from 43% open source.

My -professional- hope is that we'll have to work with a 100% open source platform, open reference apps, some but limited hardware adaptation blobs and some 'vendor specific' apps. The hill is less steep to push the stone of open sourcing up of in MeeGo. At least with MeeGo, it should be possible to see how the product is made so people get an understanding of the processes.

You know me well enough to know that I think some of the things are utter WTF's of why they're closed source. libcityinfo comes to mind. At least I've tried to help set up a process so we can solve these things sanely. I haven't set it up to be a /dev/null.

Re: [Petition] For Nokia to Open 100% of the Closed Components in Maemo 5/n900
 

bump.. I hate to see a post about iphone 4 get 200+ posts while more important discussions like this fall by the wayside. So realistically, how much improvement would we see in Meego? Would smaller fixes be pushed out more frequently or would it be more of the same?

It just kills me when there are clear issues and people with the willingness and knowledge to fix them but they can't due to bureaucratic hurdles (this applies to everything, not just software).

Re: [Petition] For Nokia to Open 100% of the Closed Components in Maemo 5/n900
 

geez, yeah that is sad. I guess this topic can't accomplish much, if some management at Nokia hasn't realized the mistake by now. What they need is some bad press or something that will lead to embarrassment and then perhaps a change of policy. Maybe if we get about 10k signatures we can get some press coverage? We should write a petition app and put it in the repository, lol.

Re: [Petition] For Nokia to Open 100% of the Closed Components in Maemo 5/n900
 

I do hope they open the components up, at least the drivers -_-

Re: [Petition] For Nokia to Open 100% of the Closed Components in Maemo 5/n900
 

Should change this petition to "Should nokia bring Flash 10 to n900"...

Hell...we should spam nokia with a **** load of petitions to make em understand all the **** they have been doing....

Re: [Petition] For Nokia to Open 100% of the Closed Components in Maemo 5/n900
 

yes, how we can continue with this, we need to put more pressure to nokia to give us the driver what more we can do to continue with this!!!

Re: [Petition] For Nokia to Open 100% of the Closed Components in Maemo 5/n900
 

it's useless, wouldn't work. if they would care they would support or at least answer questions.

Re: [Petition] For Nokia to Open 100% of the Closed Components in Maemo 5/n900
 

First let me make clear I agree with your general point.

Personally I don't use Modest, RSS, Marbles, Chess or Mahjong. PDF reader seems usable except when it fails to display a file entirely, and the X-terminal is quite good although a bit slow. Modest is just the wrong style of email reader for me.

What I personally have wanted to address were video playback, GPS handling (including straight up bugs in Ovi Maps) and annoyances in the Wifi connection setup.

Maybe it's just unlucky that the things which I want to poke at are the closed ones.

Re: [Petition] For Nokia to Open 100% of the Closed Components in Maemo 5/n900
 

I hope they'll release as much as possible when they're "done" with Maemo. I don't believe 100% is possible though (due to who knows what evil IP issues).