Re: Harmattan?
 

Man, I wish I had the energy to get into this discussion last night, but my tablets don't work well as a salsa partner :P

The mockup is a bit on the weak side in some respects, but follows what we've already seen from S60v5 in terms of some of the layout and button arrangement.

The idea that all data will be linked is nothing new, and is as much as what Palm is doing with the webOS, and Android is doing (but is allowing carrier control of those linkages). The key here will be if Maemo will stay something of a community-led effort, or if Nokia will shift the effort towards carriers, allowing communities such as this to tweak and do with how they need. And if you think about it, making the OS a battle ground for carriers and users is a pretty nasty strategy to play both sides of the fence for.

In terms of widgets that talk right into the OS, and then link over those links - nice idea. S60v3 could have done it; v5 should be doing it. Maemo should have been done this as well. Ironically enough, the Sony Mylo does this already - its just not as open as Maemo.

I like the idea, but the screenshot has me thinking that form factors are going ot be toyed with heavily. Something like dual and folding screens (Nokia Morph Concept, OLPC 2, etc.) being the driver for making the OS as transparent as possible, and at the same time as ready for the user as possible without as much intervention. Its going to cause Nokia to piss off some developers because there will need to be some tight rules around "best practices" for certain types of software.

Don't be surprised if the idea of not having a browser comes up ;) It just seems too plausable when you are dealing with linked data like this that a browser (in the traditional sense) is just not needed.

EDIT: Oh yea, I doubt that anyone from Nokia will talk in this thread; at least for the time being. There is way too much that could go wrong in terms of efforts towards M5 if Hamarratan is spoken off too soon - even in an unofficial capacity. If anything, let's just let the Nokia employees and stakeholders be for this one, and enjoy the fact that Maemo is getting some of the Silicon Valley attention that will be needed for M5's devices and Nokia's efforts in the more mainstream techie audiences.

EDIT #2: Any developers looking at making a suitable calendar app that does more than just tell events, should really take this screenshot and go to town.

Re: Harmattan?
 

Quim you listening...

Take out anything related to ad-supported, location based advertising.

Re: Harmattan?
 

Ad subsidy? No thanks! I have to deal with ads and banners on my computer all the time which I understand are needed to subsidize the hosting of the web site. But there's no way I want to give up bandwidth or processing power to get bombarded with ads on my mobile device to subsidize what exactly? The OS? The cost of the device? I see banners and billboards and here ads on the radio and TV and it's a little over the top. Not on my device!

Re: Harmattan?
 

If a particular phone was ad-supported, then it makes sense that the ad widgets would be proprietary and non-removable, because otherwise who would pay for the hardware? Advertisers aren't going to sign up to a widget that the user can remove, and without advertisers the hardware couldn't be ad-subsidised.

If people don't want an ad-subsidised phone they would buy the non-ad version instead.

But this really isn't worth worrying about at all for many reasons:

First of all, like I said before, leaked proposals usually don't happen. We know that from previous leaks which mostly came to nothing, or were greatly altered. I don't think we should be worrying now about something that might not (and might never) exist.

Secondly, even if there was an ad-subsidised device, it would be released alongside non-ad devices. You can watch an ad-subsidised programme on television, or you can watch it without adverts on DVD. It would probably be the same sort of choice but for hardware.

Thirdly, Q4 2010 is a very very very long time away. Given the current severe economic instability, it's virtually impossible to say whether ad-supported hardware would even be viable by then. The costs of hardware are relatively predictable, but the revenue from advertising is extremely unpredictable, so no one knows whether such an ad-supported plaform would actually pay for itself because no one knows what the ad market will be like in 1.5 years time. Even before the credit crunch the advertising market was going down the toilet, and there is no way that any company would make hard and fast plans about ad-supported hardware so far in advance, especially in the middle of a recession.

Fourthly, the whole point of OSS is that anyone can use the software as they see fit within the terms of the licence. If the licence allows them to add proprietary stuff on top of that (such as ad banners), then it's okay for them to do that. A lot of commercial websites use OSS content systems with proprietary banner code pasted on top of it, how would this be any different?

Fifthly, it's not like Nokia is just sitting there doing nothing, sucking up all the work that other people are doing like some corporate vampire. The Maemo community includes Nokia, so far they've put a lot more resources into Maemo than they have taken out (it's not like the tablets sell in huge numbers). They've dished out hundreds of heavily subsidised tablets to developers, put full-time employees to work on Maemo and recruited more during a recession. There are even some Nokia employees who come onto Talk in their own spare time, and at least one ex-employee who comes to Talk despite not even working for the company any more. There are clearly passionate people working for Nokia's Maemo department, and Maemo wouldn't exist in its current form without Nokia's support (it wouldn't exist without the community's support either of course). Beyond just the legal licence terms, IMHO they have earned the moral right to use Maemo in conjunction with proprietary non-Maemo stuff if they want to, as long as they don't force proprietary stuff on people who don't want it.

I've criticised Nokia for a lot of things when writing on All About Symbian and elsewhere (especially some of their deceptive and restrictive licence terms for purchased content), but I think they've been pretty good to Maemo and stuck with it for years despite Maemo devices not selling too well. Nokia possibly wanting to use Maemo alongside proprietary software in commercial products doesn't negate the work they've done on the platform.

Re: Harmattan?
 

hmmm maybe I should sell ad space on liqbase :)

http://liqbase.net/liq.20090519_002913.lib.scr.png

nice zoomable spot in the bottom right :)

Re: Harmattan?
 

Not only this community, but Nokia has poured tons of money and time into open source projects like Linux (the kernel), Mozilla, BlueZ, DBus, GTK, and a dozen other FreeDesktop.org technologies. Maemo was not created with off-the-shelf parts. Nokia put an amazing amount of time into those parts to get them where they needed them and the whole open source community has reaped the benefits.

"Maemo Software" ;)

Make that: "Maemo wouldn't exist." Maemo is a Nokia product and without Nokia, Nokia products don't exist (saying it wouldn't exist in its current form without them is like saying Mac OS X wouldn't without Apple ;))<

Compared to what exactly? You keep making this assertion but I honestly don't think you're getting Maemo's position within Nokia's lineup. As far as I've been able to divine, the tablets are selling quite a bit better than Nokia planned (10x the initial estimate for the 770 from what I've heard) and Nokia's set to really begin pushing the platform with this generation. All this "aren't selling well" talk is silly both because it's highly subjective. Nokia's clearly happy, we're happing, so what's the problem?

(Been writting this post for the past four hours so appologies if it's a bit disjointed.)

Re: Harmattan?
 

GA, you do the long-compose posts too, hehehe...

Honestly, I can see Maemo being my phone/mobile OS in the near future. Even with Freemantle, I just don't really see much in the way of anything except webOS that excites me. Go figure, I'm becoming an OSS guy.

Where's texrat with his "hehehe" - isn't it time for one of those and a skillfully placed statement along the lines of "all the pieces for what Nokia is doing is already there."

These are exciting times :D

Re: Harmattan?
 

More like one of Qt experiments. Below screenshot was linked.

Although whole idea sounds (and looks) very, very similar to "social desktop" announced by KDE developers:

http://dot.kde.org/2009/05/01/social...-starts-arrive

I only wonder which way ideas are flowing KDE -> Qt/Nokia or the other way :)

Re: Harmattan?
 

At first when I saw statements like "ad widgets would not be user removable or customizable" I could not come to terms with one of the community profiting from using community developed FOSS as a billboard to sell products to others in the very same community.
Granted that one member may be responsible for creating the community in the first place.

Then I realized (while daydreaming during a work related meeting) that none of this has been verified yet. Even if it was all true and the intent is to distribute software to more people and and as a result promote safe systems that I feel comfortable using, why not?

After all, isn't that what Google did? ...and everyone knows that their ad content is not user removable or their web apps customizable. ;)

***

Still, I wish I found out via Nokia first. Perhaps these "leaks" should be made through this forum somehow. :p

Re: Harmattan?
 

Sorry, I only see two possibilities here:

Either this will be hacked or worked around. [See Apple]

or

This hardware will be so locked down that most of us wouldn't touch it with a ten foot (meter) pole. [See Archos]

Because of what I said above, this wouldn't be a different "version" of a device, this would be a completely different product. Regardless, it would most likely be from a company that I wouldn't be buying from.