Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

Despite some minor mistakes Brockmeier's article is a recommended read.

Meego's top-down corporate hierarchy (in order to protect corporate hardware secrets I presume) basically stifles interest by the average non-corporate contributor. Major architectural decisions were made not on the basis of independent engineering decisions but by some Nokia/Intel managers who aren't in touch with the reality (and interest) on the ground.

I have full sympathy for the developers who've bet their and their little companies' future on MeeGo and its Qt core, but that sympathy doesn't void the misgivings experienced by the main OSS community.

It's 2011 and we've still only got a half-baked Meego OS and no proper fully supported hardware to run it on. No "reference device" (x86???) nor nothing by third parties. Meanwhile elsewhere... TDNBW.

I may be just another disillusioned former Nokia/Maemo fan, but it's getting late in the game (amazing when you consider Nokia's humongous but wasted headstart) and the MeeGo project just feels like like a half-hearted bad advertisement for a "potentially relatively proper" full OSS/Linux OS in the mobile space.

Fear not, there _will_ be a proper Linux heart beating underneath various mobile devices in good time, but I'm afraid it/they will only be related to the current Nokia/Intel/Meego or Canonical's Ubuntu. Qt might still be at the centre of it so the wishful developers shouldn't panic yet if they have enough funds to survive the initial MeeGo phase.

I always found it most peculiar though that Nokia partnered with the x86-obsessed Intel in the mobile space when it's all (obviously) happening on ARM hardware. A successful ecosystem _requires_ a host of hardware and software backers, but here were have no interest in delivering support for current state-of-the-art hardware simply because neither Nokia nor Intel are able to bring them to market. Meego simply revolves around Nokia's and Intel's projected hardware plans and meanwhile everything around it withers.

What's the purpose of a "community" if they're expected to idly (but excitedly!) hang around and, snap, one distant future date suddenly start developing, porting, organizing and rallying behind some single over-priced gadget by Nokia (or an x86-based one by the other project owner) which will then be half-assedly be supported for 12 months at most with minor updates before being abandoned for reasons of profit margin.

Woes? I'm beyond relying on Nokia (or Intel) to actually respect the OSS community. Useful parts of Meego will eventually percolate down across the real OSS community where stuff works according to users and developers interests rather than on a corporate whim.

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

Errr... Nokia n900? Aava Mobile?

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

While I agree on almost everything, I just want to say that not having an open development process (a common criticism of MeeGo) doesn't seem to be affecting the traction of Android.

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

Android is a poor comparison. Remember Android was practically a completed platform when Google bought it whereas Meego is being built from the ground up.

And honestly, how much more open can the development process for Meego be (at least from a transparency standpoint)? The info is all there if you know where to look for it.

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

No surprise there. Android is already a proven mainstream success with a robust app ecosystem.

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

I rather liked the article and have very little by the way of criticism. Although there's much I wasn't involved in and don't have personal knowledge about, the main gist of the article is appropriate and correct and I can at least attest to witnessing the soul-draining, confidence-killing discommunication and disgraceful dismissal of the community that Nokia seems to actually pride itself on.


How is it "hacked" to work on tablets? I'm genuinely interested to know what the difference between a tablet and any mobile handset really is. For that matter, what qualified the 770/N8x0's to be called Internet Tablets? I would argue that there wasn't anything done to Android to make it work on tablet devices any more than work was done to get Windows to run on both desktop PC's and tower form factor PC's. The guts in the tablets are pretty much the same as the handsets, only with a bigger screen.

Oh God, I loved BeOS. I had r4 and r5 as well. :) I had great hopes for Haiku, but I don't see it ever coming to full fruition. I hadn't even thought about it, but you're absolutely right to bring that operating system up as a parallel to the Maemo/MeeGo history in many ways.

Yes! I agree! Let's all forget that Maemo ever happened. Amen! :rolleyes:

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

You would have to ask Stskeeps, but I really don't see much similarity at all between the Meego Handset OS and Maemo/Moblin. It seems to me that it was more or less built from scratch.

Edit: on second thought, maybe it is better to repress some memories :p

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

"You can look but don't touch!"

Think input and decisions. We see the results of a pre-determined process.

I've contributed my efforts to a few of projects which were focused on fulfilling an unfulfilled community need like a laser. I'm not keen on simply volunteering nor "evangelizing" for a business objective to help some company reach their sales targets.

And yes, I was an early adopter and someone who used to think that Nokia would stand by their customers and their community. I still feel that many of the salaried individuals are decent and even aware of their collective's shortcomings but somewhat surprisingly (considering it's Finland with their flat hierarchies) the managerial train of thought is too far removed from the trenches.

Intel can afford Meego to fail completely and they'll still collect their x86 tax from 85% of humanity. Nokia OTOH seems to rely on Symbian on what can best be described as mid-range commodity hardware. Brockmeier's point was simply that Nokia has lost the support (which tends to be mutual) of the community. They can finish/ship Meego one day, but there's simply that much less active support building and porting apps to make that platform viable.

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

I thought the idea was to take the best parts from both and mash them up into one giant underlying OS with several different UI's. Not to mention that the Handset OS will likely have little bearing on the first offering from Nokia, which will be based on Harmattan, which has been in development for some time (which is all being done behind closed doors).

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

It can't really be built "from scratch", at least--I would hope not. It would mean that we would be YEARS away, again, from a consumer product. THAT would also be a good reason for many people to abandon this whole project. Why would you try to re-invent the wheel here?