Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

meego being open source does not mean, that every part of their kernel has to be oss as well.
iirc, neither moblin nor meego force producers to open all of their systems -- if hw vendors decide to use meego, they still can provide closed drivers/extensions (as nokia, no doubt, will continue to do).

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

If you read all the links on this thread you will get a better understanding of what is in store for the N900 and as it has been pointed out to me there is talk from Nokia themselves of 1.3 update so the very fact there is to be a 1.2 update seems inevitable, the problem is Nokia are somewhat a closed shop and give out very little which in turn because of there slow slow attitude to updates and giving out information gets everyone guessing and obviously worried.
As i understand this, the Maemo software is open source but some of the drivers for the N900 are not open, it has also been pointed out by noobmonkey that Meego is a long way off yet and will be open source, ok all very confusing to say the least but one thing for sure you can rest in peace that the N900 will NOT become redundant and that development will take place no matter what on the N900 whatever OS it ends up on. I do feel however that somewhere along the line all drivers for the N900 should all become open source.
The big question is WHEN so we just all have to be patient and wait.
One thing can be sure is go over everything Nokia said about the N900 from the beggining of marketing and cross reference that with future developments, Nokia can not back down from there own words but people do have this way of mis-interpreting things and thats why everything gets all messed up. I will no way sell my N900 because i do see it as being a first of its kind in any event.

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

when i purchased the n900, it was not for maemo/meego, but with the prospect of getting a fully working debian on the device.

maemo itself is far from that (plus it has deliberately cut off us from using debian's plethora of packages, taking up unnecessarily many resources in recompiling, porting, ... already fully working and well tested packages) and meego will be even further away, limiting reuse of existing apps even more (a policy, i totally fail to understand, since the huge number of apps already there easily would overshadow even apple's store).

my hopes rest entirely on the openess of the drivers and thus independence from a single company's fancies.

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

Install Easy Debian.

You'd find the desktop UI of most 'standard' software is pretty hard to use on a 3.5" screen. Gotta have a finger-friendly UI. So that's of somewhat limited value. Apple couldn't simply populate the App Store with Mac OS-X apps.

Things are not that simple. Not all the hardware drivers are under Nokia's control to release as open source. Texas Instruments and others must be convinced to release drivers or open source alternatives must be reverse-engineered. Certain other hardware-related software, for instance for battery charging, has not been open-sourced by Nokia because of the obvious possibility of damage to batteries and/or devices due to improper implementation by outside programmers.

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

If this post is read properly from Crashdamage he has a very valid point here.... Ok lets presume all drivers are open source, it would only take one bad driver written to destroy the N900, furthermore just what can any individual do with a complete openely written source code of the N900 ???? what possible use would it be to them unless they are an absolute expert knowing every single component used on the pcb of the N900, that is near on impossible for a single person as it takes a whole team to implement safe drivers for the whole pcb to function properly and as he states : for instance for battery charging, has not been open-sourced by Nokia because of the obvious possibility of damage to batteries and/or devices due to improper implementation by outside programmers , problem here is people are thinking way too forward and forgetting that the N900 IS a completely new design of a mobile and personally i think Nokia are somewhat brave to allow the openess it has done ( ok a point to Nokia ) all i can say is patience is a virtue and given time progress WILL be prevelant. I personally think it will not be long now before the N900 advances leaps and bounds.

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

yup i pretty much agree entirely ;)

If you searched for threads like these there will probably be 20+ lurking about....

People just need to realize a few facts...
Nokia do not give out dates, and they rarely say their future plans... When they do ... unfortunatley people alter and change these to mean what they want to mean :D

So for example - Meego is being released, can either mean "A working version of Meego will be released, or released soon etc..." or "Maemo is no more, Meego will be the best, screw maemo, Meego rocks" - well you get my Gyst ;)

A few of the more experienced members here will hopefully explain things never work that way ;)

Meego go announced a few months ago, and a development version (basically terminal) is available. Tekojo said that Version 1.1 will be out in September (i think?) - i'm pretty sure this will not be a device/end user ready system - but i hope to stand corrected :D

Back to the main question.......
This is a very clever Open Source community.... and many of systems have been ported onto the device. So i'd suggest that a lot is possible with the N900. And future upgrades will be the same as any other device, hardware dependent probably :)

I'm pretty sure that as more information from the correct sources appear, the people in the know will let the forum know :D - as they usually do, when they know ;)

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

Heh... all discussions about the future of N900 all leads back to the question: "When will (next_firmware) be released?"

Generally electronic consumer goods companies don't give out dates unless:

a). They're trying to rally their troops for a new product launch.
b). They're trying to qualm the mass when a certain brown element has hit a spinning air moving apparatus.

Firmware updates.. packaging changes.. minor hard/software revisions... are all usually done without any announcements. It usually only matters to those who have made the purchase anyway, so it doesn't generate any positive marketing effect.... and if the release date slips (as all IT-development projects usually do) it will reflect badly on them. What's the advantage?

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

invalid.
invalid.

missing my point entirely.

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

firstly: have a look at the history of linux and maybe the openmoko project.
secondly: what you describe is basically totalitarism -- someone tells you, that you are not fit to make decisions, that you are not fit to understand advanced information and if, by bad luck, you were, you still would be not able to use it correctly, and that he knows what is best for you (and everybody else), under all circumstances.

if i am willing to take the risk of "one bad driver" (or more), then that is _my_ decision.
if your argument were valid, there would be no linux today.

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

i don't think the topic of this very thread was the question about "the next version of firmware" -- but it is true that annoyingly fast almost every thread seems to turn that way. there seem to be a few terms triggering pavlovian conditioning, regardless of the topic ...