Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Today, I have something to be enthusiastic about. And I am.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Valtteri's (valhalla) clarification:
"N900 is a natural tool for Nokia to drive MeeGo support for our designs and for the ARM CPU architecture in general. We want to have baseline HW that is powerful, easily available for anyone and form-factor stuff so that one HW works for most platform and application development needs.
That said, please do not take this yet as a commitment to fully productise MeeGo on N900. I am quite confident that we will end up having a really good developer distro for N900 already but committing to stabilise a consumer-grade MeeGo 1.0 (first half this year) for N900 is another story. That is a product business decision beyond my scope. Also, we do not yet know about MeeGo 1 release content. I am not yet sure if I would be personally ready to let my Maemo5 go for the first MeeGo release in my daily N900 use. Let's see"

http://meego.com/community/blogs/val...one#comment-76

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Good post by valtteri. I'm happy to see that. Somewhat related update on the roadmap, I still haven't received green light from marketing to publish it. :(

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Thanks for the heads up, we all appreciate what you have done and said. Looking forward to the pr 1.2 :D

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Still, thank you for putting a roadmap together and working to try to make it public. I appreciate your efforts and hope they will be successful.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

I know it's generally bad form to post 'Me too' comments, but I'm going to do it anyway; I think we've still got a way to go on getting Nokia to take a more open attitude, but it's really good to know that there are people in the company making efforts to push things in the right direction.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

I have got some questions to complete the wiki page. Maybe you guys could point me the a post where it has already been covered or answer said questions themselves.

Question 1 : (Directed to Qgil) Is it possible for you to address anything related to the future of Maemo.org at the moment. (I believe it is a no ?). Example :

What happens to those who run Maemo branded forums? To those who are currently members of the Maemo council? What happens to those who work on the Maemo infrastructure and code base - there already exists a MeeGo code base and infrastructure.

Question 2 : Something that is recurring in the forum is : "Maemo/N900 is only 3 months old and already Nokia is announcing a new OS". Perhaps it would be good to give people some perspective on software development. I was thinking maybe to include in the wiki the development time frame of Maemo 5.

Let's say for, example sake, that Nokia announced Fremantle and then X months later they shown the first development board (Beagle Board ?) and finally Y months later customers could purchase the N900. I think it would give an idea to people where "approximately" we are in the development of Harmattan/N9XX.

Question 3 : Will My Favorite Maemo 5 GTK+ Application run on MeeGo 1 ?

Partial answer is : The MeeGo architecture includes GTK+ (Maemo 5 API) for application compatibility. This is not the same as as officially supported. It needs more meat, in my opinion.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Ok After much reading I think the top 3 "hot-topic" brought by the community are :

1) The N900 as untapped potential.

That include all the "Nokia is doing nothing about it", "I feel abandonned by Nokia", "Meego is a mean to unleash this potential", "I want Ovi Maps", "I want MMS", "I bought the N900 thinking Nokia would do something about the front-facing camera (or far that matter any other hardware related issue)", "iPhone can but N900 can't", etc ...

2) Misconceptions on software development.

That include : "Why announcing MeeGo now, the N900 is only 3 months old", "Why can't Nokia promise MeeGo on the N900", etc...

3) Communication with the community is deficient. and Misconceptions on the cellphone industry.

I included both together because I believe that it all depends on your point of view. From the community perspective Nokia silence could be interpreted as poor communication, but from Nokia side it is the only practical (business wise) solution.

So I would like to know what you guys would suggest to include in the wiki on each of these points. Please don't discuss about a specific point but have a more general view.

I hope it make sense my eyes/head hurt after reading so many post.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Actually Urho's email sits in my mailbox and I'm currently the bottleneck. Why? Some obscure marketing blocking? No, I simply didn't have the time to deal with it yesterday. MeeGo bootstrapping and Harmattan alpha SDK release are taking most of my time these days and then a lot of my extra time is going to this forum trying to clarify FUD related questions and try to shed some light around instant negative/pessimistic reactions.

So yes, dealing with FUD might take a lot of time (those of you involved in the threads know very well). This time is taken from the time you would concentrate on productive stuff. This is one mathematical reason why adding more FUD doesn't really help getting more things done sooner for the current and future Maemo/MeeGo community.

I like Mandor's approach because is useful. Any minute put in the wiki page he started saves plenty of minutes to all of us. Thank you again! I'll address your questions as soon as I hit the office.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

I have been in an out of this thread as it has developed. Please forgive me if my question shows some ignorance of what has previously been discussed. Is the following statement accurate given what you all now know at this time?

Thank you.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

I was wondering if there is going to be another device from nokia with maemo 5?

Larger screen? More tabletized?

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Another maemo 5 device this late seems like commercial suicide.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Why not.... I am sure the next meego device from nokia is going to be atleast 6 months away. Why release another hardware with a different form factor and maemo 5 with all the updates to the os to fix major bugs?

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

From our point of view MeeGo is the new maemo and therefore meego.com will be at some point the new home of this community. We are working on it (your participation is welcome at the meego-community mailing list).

(By the way, meego.org was taken and insanely expensive. If someone buys it for the MeeGo project we will use it immediately.)

Said that, the destiny of maemo.org depends on the Maemo community (yes, you). In the meantime we keep funding the hosting and nobody is thinking of unpluggin servers or taking radical measures to stop anything here.

About the council, ask the current candidates. :) Nokia has nothing to say about this. The community created the council and the community is the one deciding what to do now and in the MeeGo context. fwiw we supported Jaffa's idea of an elected body representing 'the community' towards Nokia and somehow we think the core concept might make sense at MeeGo as well. Said that, the MeeGo project is fundamentally different since it is aimed to be an open project participated by individuals and organizations. The purpose of a Council for MeeGo needs to re-evaluated.

We keep funding the maemo.org pro development team, reviewing contracts every 6 months as we have been doing since we started 'liberating' these *master roles. Note that the maemo.org development team decide their priorities and tasks through a public process, so it is also up to them process to decide where to invest their time. Now they are finding their counterparts in the Moblin project and the Linux Foundation, and we all will need to find the place for all of us (Nokians included e.g. Tero and myself). Giving roles implies giving admin rights on tools and servers, all this is based on trust and this takes a bit of time, as sysadmins know.


Welcome to open source and open development. Actually the Maemo team and now MeeGo are just putting some toes of one foot in the open pool, so get used to this. Public roadmaps will tell you about features you currently don't have in your device, there will be always something apparently cooler making you think if you are buying your product in the right time.

"Harmattan" with Qt officially supported were announced in June 2008. Harmattan based on Qt and the cross-platform strategy with Symbian were announced in July 2009. In the Maemo Summit (still before sales start) we gave more details about Harmattan, Qt, the changes and the transition path. This forum, Planet Maemo and the tech media have been reporting about this horizon of changes that was coming.

MeeGo is a culmination of that, but in terms of technical changes affecting N900 users or Maemo 5 application developers it doesn't bring much that wasn't already in the pipeline (Qt and Web Runtime API, with its consequences).

But really, all this is good news. Like any structural change it gives some short term noise, insecurity and hassle but I'm sure it will pay off. Maemo 5 is great and the Fremantle team keeps working in updates. But if Maemo 5 and its linear evolution would be the only plan of Nokia, then I believe that N900 would have reasons to worry about the future.

By the way, the basics of the Fremantle game (except Telephony) were mostly announced in the Maemo Summit 2008 and the first release (totally targeted to hardcore developers) went out in December 2008 (with the announcement of lack of support for OMAP2 devices = N810 and N800). That also created a hassle in the community, but if we wouldn't have made those steps at that time then you wouldn't have got the Maemo 5 you are enjoying. There was plenty of signal-no-noise feedback got during the Fremantle unstable phase that helped improving the stable releases you are using. We are taking the same open approach with Harmattan and even deeper (thanks to http://maemo.gitorious.org and MeeGo). Don't feel part of a problem because already now you are part of a solution.

Up to the GTK+ and Hildon maintainers in the first place. They are the first ones to decide whether it's worth the effort of aligning the GTK+ approaches of Moblin and Maemo, get the Hildon libraries running on top, try or try not to work on adapted bindings to give to GTK+/Hildon apps a MeeGo native look&feel...

GTK+ and Clutter are maintained as official platform libraries in MeeGo but the API is not supported officially. This means that the APIs are there to be used but the project doesn't make any promise on maintenance, completeness, quality, API management across releases... This doesn't mean much if there is a good community maintenance. For example, Python has been never officially supported, and I bet the average user of a Python apps in Extras is not aware about the support status and probably not even aware whether the app is based on Python or not. That could be the case for GTK+/Hildon apps in MeeGo, but is really not up to the MeeGo project.

fwiw the Maemo team is in talks with the GNOME Foundation to bring more GTK+/Hildon apps to Maemo 5 and to help on the kick-off of the 'GTK+ community support'. We started the talks in the context of Harmattan and we are just continuing in the context of MeeGo. We hope to get something concrete to explain soon.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

I'm definitely waiting for the next Maemo/Meego device - preferably with a bigger screen, but this is a kind of question that you just won't get an answer from the forum. It's way too big a business secret to just go shouting about.

Meanwhile, go check out the LG GW990. It will run Meego. It's certainly a good alternative if Nokia can't come up with a bigger device by the time it's released.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

We never ever speculate about devices before they are launched. Not even at a D-Pad or stand level. ;)

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Hmm... Are you sure that's what people are saying, and not:

"We were expecting the next step to be the fifth of five steps on the way to a fully polished mass marketed Maemo. Instead it turns out the next step will be a first wobbly step on the long way to a fully polished MeeGo product, why? "

Now, I admit, MeeGo is a nice goal but somehow it feels like we're jumping from the Maemo beta to the MeeGo alpha build without having a proper RTM in between. And knowing this, some including me expect that Nokia will be focusing on adapting Harmattan towards the MeeGo frameset, which means breaking up and putting together stuff in new ways. They will simply have more to do than in a purely evolutionary update. The end result will probably be better. But they have to focus ahead and not on making things backportable. In the mean time, they will fix critical bugs on our current platform, but not add anything that doesn't fit into the MeeGo plan. So GTK+ applications will be EOLed while they rebuild the same applications in QT.

Now, the fact that they are going to develop these on the N900 platform is very positive for the more adventerous Maemo users. Very. But for those would only rely on officially supported firmware updates, IMO, there's a risk that the N900 will never be much better than it is today. For those who "consider it a phone", that means, not really all that good. =p For those who consider it a computer, it still means it has all the potential in the world, it might get an even cooler OS in a year or two.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Looking forward to this. Seems there are a lot of interesting apps there, including video editing, word processing, and many miscellaneous to explore such as keyanu.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

I think that if MeeGo will be still in alpha when the first device is launched Nokia and Intel would be committing commercial suicide and kill the project in its infancy.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

I dunno if it was discussed already but:

Will there be a development Fedora spin for developing with Qt+Qt Creator+Pyside(my interest)+SDK ? If so, Nokia will provide this or should be community driven?

I mean, everything integrated just out of box? Call me lazy but I like to have everything done for me so I wont waste tons of time setting up everything again, like I did in Ubuntu.

ps. we want ovi suite with n900 and linux support (at least me and my n900 do)

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Granted, I know less than zero about Symbian, but I thought the Symbian UI was written in Qt. If so, isn't it possible/likely that Harmattan/MeeGo could get full phone functionality out of the box?

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

If so, it could even be that Maemo 5 users could get some improved phone functionality through Qt 4.6, but that would be a stretch.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

1) The N900 as untapped potential.

See the wiki page, Nokia as still plan for the N900.

and

2) Misconceptions on software development.

See MeeGo blog, there is a MeeGo dev there that says he won't try to run MeeGo any time soon. Of course it takes time to build MeeGo, don't worry there is still plenty of good time to have with your N900.

Frankly, I think there is still room for improvement on the wiki page for those two points.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

i dont know about anybody else, but i am sick and tired of opening a thread to find it is yet another debate on whether the n900 will get meego...

There is a lot more to life than what os your mobile phone has...

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Symbian UI is not written using QT. Even if it was, it would have still been a lot of work to get it to work on another operating system.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

That represent again why I think the N900 has still a long way to go before being "abandoned" by Nokia. MeeGo is not ready and the first MeeGo device is not ready.

Assuming Nokia/Intel are not trying to kill anything of course. Why would they do that ? But eh ! Who are we to tell them how to run a business ?

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Agreed: we are nobody of course. That's also why I quoted the dialogue between Cain and God earlier.;) Who is Cain to tell God what to do about the world?

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

qgil spotted posing as 'Andrew Howard'

http://talk.maemo.org/image.php?u=76...ine=1242253668
Andrew Howard

http://accastudent.newsweaver.co.uk/...-Howard-JA.jpg
qgil

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

I would think so. Also, I think there will be a lot of resentment if people start referring to the FAQ as an easy way to tell people to stfu.

And the misconsceptions of software development seems to be balancing on the other side now. I know exactly how much more expensive, delaying, it is to work towards a moved goal. I am a system developer. This is how I make my living. If I get tasks related to a new framework, it means less tasks for the existing one will be completed on time. That is how prioritizing works. On the other hand, increased resources for MeeGo means from an statistical point of view that MeeGo will be "better" than Maemo. If more developing hours from a bigger team garantees "better".

So for the long run, it is clearly better for the platform(s), and Nokia. But someone in the community need to port Qt to OS2008. :B

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

That was not my intention and I apologize. What I meant is that your question has been already answered and most probably, the answer can be found in the wiki page. As for the improvement you are most welcome to help. You can either tell me was exactly is your question (if you feel it has not been answered properly) so I can add it to the wiki or you can do it yourself.

How would you improve my previous post if you feel it is one sided ? When I edit the wiki, I am trying to keep a neutrel point of view. Maybe I have overlooked this point and I am ready to improve it.

There has been a discussion about the number of people working on Maemo and people working on MeeGo, the later "draining" resources away from the former. There is a post by Qgil covering this, unfortunately I can't find it now (help ?). If I remember correctly, his answer was along the line of :

- More people doesn't mean better nor faster.
- Yes the priority is MeeGo now.
- Nokia is big and can afford to support the two projects.

As for MeeGo being better, well who knows, have you seen it ? From what I understand it has good chance to be better because normaly that is how life is going; things improve by learning from past mistakes (devs have more experience if you prefere).

I hope it helps.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Actually, it might be another case of mistaken identity. I think I referred to this post by tomasj. I don't know if he works for Nokia or not.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

tomasj(Tomas Junnonen) does indeed work for Nokia

1. His Intro at T.M.O
http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...7&postcount=34

2. A brief about him
http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo_Summit_2...n_UI_framework


And the wiki still has a little way to go before its completely able to alleviate all fears, but is a much welcome steps towards it. :)

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Thanks for the feedback and for clearing tomasj identity. Do you have any suggestions to improve the wiki ? Perhaps some some open questions I have overlooked ?

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Don't have any suggestions to improve it further. As even though most of the questions seem to be there I think the wiki is still bound by the answers(official) we have at hand right now.

But even as of now its a great pacifier with all the relevant information in one place and I'm sure the rest of the missing pieces will come with time :)

Actually I'm waiting for this one thing to clear and go in the wiki cause this would be a huge help.
http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...&postcount=209

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

i didn't mean to say you were using the faq that way, just to say that it can be. i have seen some similar faq used like that other places. it's still good to have the faq, i appreciate the work.

as to my previous post, i don't really think it contains any questions, frequently asked or otherways :g

so no changes to the faq there. ending my comments in this thread now. ;)

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Kudos to Quim and Mandor!

http://tabulacrypticum.wordpress.com...ning-to-meego/

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

Wow ! I guess a little publicity for the wiki page won't hurt.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

That's my job. ;)

EDIT: hey Mandor, a suggestion-- include links to your projects, like the wiki page, in your signature here for broad exposure.

Re: Cleaning N900 FUD
 

fwiw 28 bugs fixed for the official platform and applications last week: http://www.octofish.net/bugjar/