Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

I would like to make some discussion this thread. This will be some summary from some posts too. And I really ask hard working people on this project - please excuse me, please don't blame me.

We have N900 delayed many times. We know, that it won't have such things like MMS (at least during first days) or it will need enabling BT to listen FM Radio. Some people are afraid, that screen won't be protected against scratching...generally we know about more and more disadvantages of this product. And other companies are creating/announcing new and new models in this time.

My question is: company has got experiences from many previous models. MMS - few years, the same creating "mobile computers" (yes, it was used by marketing since N95 or earlier with Communicators). Company has got a lot of money. And my main question: why should we believe that everything will be OK ? That maemo will be continued ?

Nokia showed many times, that isn't interested in helping Open Source developers (yes, many times we tried to get some help in creating Gnokii/Gammu and nothing, since Series 40 3.0 there is even problem with SMS in filesystem). No real SyncML engine (at least I don't know about any).

Many times we had problems with first firmware versions, earlier (before BB5) there were problems with expensive frashing too.

What has changed, that N900 got green light ? And why is so long delayed ? Problems in creating hardware ? Why - I believe, that many company specialists have experiences in creating really similar devices for Symbian for example.

What about other things - for example, will be N900 protected with simlocks ?

I see one possibility: N900 is created by small group of enthusiasts and they don't have too big budget and too big help from other departments. Please correct me, if I'm wrong...but even, when device will be in shops, it will need a lot of work. And of course 3rd party people (like me) will have to do it for free....

I really don't know, what to think about it in this moment.

And I really would like to see something in Nokia's products like in old 5110/3310 (yeah, full netmonitor for example :)) or in 6310i. For now I see promises and big price.

Of course, nobody will force me to buy/not buy this device. Maybe it will be better to forget about it ?

My question: excluding brand, what could convince me to connect my future with this system ?

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

If you don't believe in the promise of the N900 and future plans, and you aren't interested for the sake of adventure, and you don't think that you will learn anything worth knowing by getting and working with one --

I don't see why you should join your future with this system.

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

Ok I have seen to many of these posts.

My answers

DONT BUY THE GODDAMN PHONE AND **** OFF.

Christ yet another whiny prick looking for someone to hold their hand as they pour out their little angst against the world

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

I once answered my own question.

Takes all the fun out of it.

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

Your post, marcinw, could make sense iff you have put some work into Maemo development -- what specifically did you work on?

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

uhm well. the most exact answer i can give is: the calendar is pretty good for what i've seen. so.. good future-management. If that is even a term. if it's not, i just created it.

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

I think you need to look at is as more than a device/gadget. As smartphones become more powerful, they become more than a communication tool, they become a piece of who we are. While it isn't perfect, and doesn't do all that we expect it should, we need to look at it like Nokia is providing us a house, and we have to gather our resources from our family (community) and make it a home.

I know it's not perfect, but I contribute my time and effort, because I want it to be the best it can, and I want to show it off. I don't know why but I have a "relationship" with this phone that goes beyond having a cool device. And being able to say that I somehow helped even in the slightest bit to make it better for others feels great.

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

A good thing to know both the advantages as well as the disadvantages of a product you're going to buy. It will have disadvantages like any product has. Those who believe the product they're going to buy is flawless and perfect are living in a pink cloud akin to falling in love.

Yeah, and none of them is a viable alternative for me.

Why not? Everything Will Be Okay In The End. If It's Not Okay, It's Not The End. :D

:confused: you think Harmattan which is Maemo 6.0 won't happen? You think the 5 step plan is bullocks? If Maemo would discontinue the whole department would close. People would be fired. Some would be transfered. Do you see that happening? Read on...

Yes, but Nokia also shows they are interested. They have contributed source code, including some closed source such as drivers. They bought TrollTech for example, and are investing in Qt for both Maemo and Symbian. They sponsor Maemo related events. They're developing a product for profit. Its a big sum of + and -. If N900 would turn out to be a complete fail, maybe Maemo would come to an end. But as it is, it seems to create quite some attraction, and not only from open source or Linux enthusiasts. Entirely the point of step 4/5!

My E71 uses SyncML?

Approx one month. According to current data the product is delayed for a minimum of 9 days (assuming 31 October and 9 November) and a maximum of 61 days (assuming 1 October and 31 November). It has to be noted both are extremes (hence 'min' and 'max').

Hardware or software, we don't know. Officially due to 'feedback from 300+ developers'.

Why not? Who cares? Buy unbranded without simlock, or get the thing off when you're legally to do so.

Actually, they're hiring, and I'm pretty sure you can see an increase of employees in Maemo dept.

Ofcourse it needs some cornering of rough edges. In practice, any new device does. What defines a lot of work is up for debate. However, one of the reasons the product is delayed is to lower the initial complaints, the initial reception.

There are methods to get paid too, and if you don't like to work for free don't do it. However, many here contribute while not getting paid.

Clearly, you're much more negative about the product then me. I find your post one-sided not taking into account several important factors, partly unrealistic, and overly negative not taking into account positive factors. As topic starter you could have made a more balanced first post for starting a discussion, but you hardly mentioned any positive aspects, while most of what I wrote is pretty widely available information and known among the community. Although your post is also slightly informative such pertains to past and other Nokia departments, and does not take recent work of Maemo development team into account.

Because all the other options are worse. This platform has the most potency. A Linux kernel with embedded userland, POSIX compliant stack, X11, and GTK/Qt, and tons of other userspace compatible with either open standards, FRAND standards, or Linux standards.

And I'm not gonna say why competitors are worse. Because then it will become a compare thread. Which is OK to do, but we have tons of those. We also have tons of threads where people outline why N900 is best for them. You can read those and decide. Or make yet another. In the end, YMMV, you pick what is best for you.

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

That might have been a sensible question to ask in the era of the 770 internet tablet, or even with the N800 (less so with that one given Nokia added the "N" to its product name).

There was nothing to suggest that Nokia would continue with the 770. I found it a terrific device with nothing like it to be seen anywhere. But, companies like Nokia dip their toes in the water and are quite prepared to choose to drop something if it doesn't work out. Like the beautiful, but short-lived, series 90 device.

But, the 770 was followed by the N800 and the N810. Now by the N900, which has seen extensive work in the UI/UX and includes a phone which extends the functionality over the previous internet tablets.

The question to ask is - why would one think Maemo would not continue?

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

OP, If you already have the stance that you've taken, I would say don't buy at all simply because you seem to be a bit more closed-minded than even I am - and that's saying a lot.

I'm willing to let Nokia prove themselves to me; however they will have to do it on my terms - meaning I want to see the stuff that I've been patiently wanting in a platform for a while.

Will I get them all immediately? Nope. Will it happen before I'm likely going to lose my patience? Perhaps not. But to already question as deeply as you have and feel like you're part of a beta test... then pull back from a lot of other products as well.

I've been feeling like a beta tester for ages due to the nature from all things from OS to e-mail to (now) phone. Enjoy the ride or just sit back and decide when you want to jump in.

Up to you. Good luck on making up your own mind on your own terms. That's what I'm personally doing.

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

Everything, specially technology, is improvable.

Tech obsolescence is 90% a psychological issue. If it does what is supposed to do, then it doesn't matter if it was made in 1981 or in 2089.

Being in the bleeding edge means that the tech you use will have rough edges. Be glad that Nokia is at least open about them.

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

I'm worse than that. I want the n900 to become so great and renowned that I can be a smug git about it.

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

I don't see how you could work for free for _Nokia_.

They work for us, for some money, making a great hardware and some great software that attract FLOSS developers because they are mostly "open", and follow standards such as posix and some GNU/Linux culture...

As I understand, if you develop for maemo you are working for free for us maemo users! Or paid, maybe, depends on your case...

If you develop for GNU/Linux on the desktop, do you consider you are working for free for Intel, AMD, or maybe Nvidia, ati, dell, hp?... If you make FLOSS that runs on windows, are you working for free for Microsoft?

And if you sell a $3 app for the iPhone, do you consider you are working for free for Apple, or that you are "even"?

Regarding the platform continuing or not... All I can advise is sticking with open standards and tools as much as you can, and release your code if possible. That is the recipe for becoming platform independent, and so your "free work for Nokia" can become free work for many other companies and people, now and in the future. You never waste free software!

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

The only problem with your post is that it unfortunately can be read as a continuation of what many people feel when reading these forums - that they cater to developers first and if you are not a developer you are not just as valuable to the community.

Testing; feedback, bug-reports etc are also essential pieces in driving a platform/application further. You may very well have meant to include such efforts as well but it could also be seen as 'what did you help code?' and I think it's important to re-enforce that 'developing' a platform goes beyond coding efforts.

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

Well, few more facts. 1999. We have NCDS instead of PC Suite. FBUS cables for phones are sold with software (yes, it wasn't available for free !). There is group of people, who started to provide alternative software for the Linux. Software was forked few times. Starting from some moment it can't provide some parts of support, because Nokia doesn't want to help. People worked for free and there wasn't nothing wrong in it. Really ! It was so big fun. A lot of community and so on.

2008 (or 2009). Really free phones (OpenMoko) are dying.

2009. We have a lot of noise about N900. There are some devices given for free people. There are some discounts proposed after controversial karma selection (yes, who is better - people with some experiences or people, who made buzz, correctly linked their profiles are received enough karma ?) - some of these people were thinking loud thinking on this forum, if they will use their coupon or not... Nokia has got a lot of money, but they can't prepare real SDK (with BT for example), they can't make MMS functionality, etc. etc. Main maemo.org is still not 100% logical (many people are lost) and secure (why do you write password in http ?). Nokia is more "open source friendly" and is giving some job places according to some people.

Excuse me, but I don't buy it. In my opinion nothing has changed. There is no real community (community, like we had in our projects) - after my post I received opinions in style "go out". Some people want good, but the truth is, that Nokia is playing with us...again. There are new job places, but only in Finland. How can these Finnish people understand, what think people in other countries and prepare revolution project ? No support for some thing (once again: MMS ?). Nokia lost engineers ?

No, they have seen, that other companies are making money on "open source friendly" image. They want to do the same with small cost - it's probably cheaper to make few events, give some devices and take results of work from some good people (than give jobs for many talented developers in various countries). Device will be as closed as possible. N900 won't have few key things too and that's why Nokia will force some of us to buy N1000....

Sorry, but I don't see real SMS/MMS interfaces and many things, which could allow me to say - Nokia is really "open source friendly" company.

Some of you pointed, that I haven't prepared software. Yes. I'm not maybe very, very talented man. But I wanted to make some import software and similar stuff (yes, I haven't seen anything like this and I'm not sure, if Nokia will give us similar stuff). But SDK doesn't allow me for simulate BT connection. And I don't want to make unnecessary buzz on forums too.

One more note - I could work 8h hours per day for Maemo, but I need to eat, pay for bills, etc. too. Currently it's not possible with Nokia behaviour.

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

Yes, yes, yes... We're breaking user records on a daily basis here, the community has been doing nothing but growing since 2005. Users are coming together for everything from QA to proofreading the manual to translating strings to writing their own apps... and yet, "there is no real community"?

Go out.

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

How many Open Source has you created ? What is their ranking on the freshmeat.net for example ?

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

Could we keep the e-penis measurements out of this thread? :)

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

one more note (to comment, which has been deleted by author): nobody could blame Nokia, if they will say for example: MMS won't be available on the beginning, but we will give help/implement it during 12 months.

currently it looks like - you device, your problem.

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

California and India belong to the vast finnish empire than spans three continents?

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

I deleted it as I felt it was slightly OT to go into specifics.

Either way, they have helped with the MMS part - I woke up the other day with the wappushd headersfile in my inbox, sent from a kind spirit @nokia.com. :)

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

OK, I have seen Finland only. How many offers are in the California/India ? 1, 2, 3, 10, 20, 100 ? And what about other countries ?

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

OK, good ! We need more news like this. But from the other hand: open-source friendly company will say officialy, that help, not help unofficialy.

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

Yes. Resistance is futile. You all will be whining in finnish soon :)

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

Nokia has 11 research centers, only 2 of these are in Finland. link.

Nokia does collaboration with 12 top universities, only 3 of these are in Finland link.

Nokia does business in over 150 countries. They localize products in over 180 languages. Are there any other high tech corporations who does that kind of localization, besides Microsoft? Name me other high tech corporation that open research center in countries like Kenya?

Ok, maybe they don't offer just the kind of jobs you want in just the country you want. Is that really must requirement for being "open"?

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

And that's completely irrelevant. You are complaining that there's no community here (which is already quite wrong) and then assuming community means just programmers when it's FAR from the case in ANY community.

Next time, instead of writing up your little rant... how about you put a little research into your claims beforehand, huh?

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

marcinw
sadly there is a price to Freedom, and its called participation. Mistakes will be made, but at least you can say you were there.

Mike C

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

Fact, that big company has got employes in some country, doesn't mean, that they work on Open Source projects. For example Nokia Poland - they seems to sell phones only.

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

To be fair, OpenMoko was the only phone with a fully FOSS stack. It died, however, because of the economic downturn coupled with an impossible to follow software stack and hardware whose wlan data capabilities were equal to phones from 10 years ago, along with mediocre at best battery life.

Of course not, sometimes a company's presence in a country is purely as a sales office. This says nothing about anything else they do.

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

You're missing an important detail here, there aren't N900s shipping yet, when they ship surely Nokia will release more documentation and more source code than the parts in the SDK.
They are helping even before that the device hits the streets, isn't it nice?

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

yes, there is not real community here like in some other Open Source projects at least in this moment.

It was interesting for me, if "zerojay" made some projects and what was/is their ranking. I wanted to estimate, what is his effort. I didn't say, that community means just programmers.

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

I don't really understand your point. Are you saying that Nokia should offer open source jobs in every country on the planet?

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

What makes you say that there is no community? It seems that there is quite a large one already, and it's growing because of the N900 release. Your "estimation" of his effort by demanding links to projects to see their ranking is poor at best, and outright false at worst.

Comparing the Maemo community to other communities is an invalid, irrelevant metric.

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

I started from proving, that Nokia's behaviours related to Open Source are similar than years ago. Somebody notified, that they are giving jobs related to it. I answered, that they're making it in Finland (and somebody added, that in India/California). Nothing more.

Conclusion (after this and other observations): they're not so "open source opened" like they (or some people) say.

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

FYI, zerojay was this [---| |---] close to being on the community council. He must be doing something..........

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

marcinw, do you have any idea how old the Maemo project actually is? How much Nokia struggled in the past to get things right - playing by the rules of an open community, aligning to upstream projects (Maemo isn't a universe of its own, it upstream, upstream and upstream) while still at the same time protecting the commercial interests of their stakeholders? My dear... All the stories and ups and downs we had since they announced the 770.

You know what? No, Nokia is not an open source project. It doesn't even claim to be one. And: Maemo is not something they do because they want to help the free software movement. They do it for business reasons. But: They've learned during the last years that if they want to be commercially successful with a product based on free software, you have to be part of a community, you have to play by the rules, you must earn the trust of other projects.

The community, OTOH, had to learn that some things don't change within a company like Nokia and you can't expect them to - I don't know - give up all their patents, never use DRM again and GPL the last piece of code they find in the vaults of their software archives.

There's 10.000 things about Nokia in general and Maemo in particular that I don't like too much... that drive me nuts, actually.
But I trust them when they say they're serious about being as open as they can. I trust them when they say they would like to be even more open and hope that they can be in the future. And I trust them when they say they're committed to openness.

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

There are many people registered and many people, who are writing a lot of posts. But we can see also, that in the time when the is lack of N900s and some developers are asking for them, some people with discounts are saying - we will maybe use our coupons, maybe not... Is this real community ? Sorry, I don't buy it.

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

I loved that one :)

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

And what does offering jobs "only" in Finland, California and India have to do with being open sourced?!? I dont see any connection at all.

Again, I don't understand what is the problem? Nokia has spread its R&D very internationally. It seems that yuo wouldn't be happy unless they offered just the kind of jobs you want in just the country you want. There are opportunities in 3 different continents. Offering them in every country in planet would be insanely expensive.

Re: Why should I believe Nokia ? Why should I work for Nokia for free ? ... again
 

Yes ! Generally we think similiary. They're not so "open source friendly" like they're say. What's what this thread is about...

And we differ in one thing: during 10 years they showed, that they're not committed to openness.