Openness: Maemo vs Android
 

http://mirror2image.wordpress.com/20...mo-vs-android/

Thoughts?

Re: Openness: Maemo vs Android
 

Whoever wrote that deserves an award.

Re: Openness: Maemo vs Android
 

Well yeah kind of no brainer :D
Answer to this will be seen in 1-2 years

Re: Openness: Maemo vs Android
 

The question is, What award do you have in mind?

If you (or anyone) is/are suggesting the above post deserves an award for helping educate the community about important issues, I agree with you.

But in no way do I care about an award for pointing out Nokia's "bad habits". Nokia, like any company, has shortcomings. But Nokia is the only company that has been willing to offer the consumer a phone/pocket computer device with official root access! (No need to jailbreak and take all those risks.) Nokia is the only company that backs up their vision of openness by actually delivering a product that embodies the ideals. (Read the link above for full details.)

I feel that it is up to us to shape our future. Stop playing victim. We are not simply victims of Nokia's past mistakes. This is especially true now that Maemo/N900 are out. We have an open platform right now -- some of us have it in our hands. The way we use and support this platform will do a lot of determine Nokia's future direction with it. None of us need to be captive, powerless consumers now that Nokia has taken the initiative to empower us. We can take this opportunity and run with it.

We can do that through our purchase decisions. We can do it in the way we educate others about what to expect from the N900 and how to use it. Those of us who can afford it can donate to the community. (We could donate devices or money or something else.) Many of us can do development work. Others can be evangelists. Some of us can be critics too, but it needs to be constructive criticism. (If you have a problem, state it clearly and state what your desired solution would be. Then ask for help and offer what is needed to get people motivated to provide that help.)

Purchasing an N900 can be a statement about one's sophisticated understanding of personal freedoms in the technology age. Or it can be a much more shallow statement.

If you own (or will soon purchase) an N900, think about what your role will be. Will you be one who doesn't understand the opportunities available to us and who therefore risks letting them slip away? Or will you be one who is an ambassador of open source?

Re: Openness: Maemo vs Android
 

I used to have a need to carry device that reflects my philosophies on software control. Then I grew up.

The people I work on would prefer I have access to Epocrates rather than to show my personal philosophies on technology with my choice of device.

So if anybody thinks this platform means a damn in the world - make it useful to people in their daily tasks. Otherwise it is useful only to open-source chest-thumper nerds.

Re: Openness: Maemo vs Android
 

So your first reaction to people who enjoy the platform for its openness is to insult them? That's a great way to start a discussion.

Re: Openness: Maemo vs Android
 

It's your choice to work for those people.

Somehow, using open source as my primary platform for almost everything I do for work - for the last 20 years - has been pretty good for my career.

For me, having an open source phone is a smart choice. It means I'll be able to make the phone do things which are useful to me.

A closed phone doesn't offer that. The iPhone was shiny, but I couldn't see the point in getting one. Don't see how I'd find it useful - most of the apps I want to run are open source. Especially the productivity apps - which is sort of the point of a device like this, isn't it?

Re: Openness: Maemo vs Android
 

The N900 is not an "open source phone".
You probably mean the phone's operating system is open source.

Or even better: You want to mean that Maemo is Free Software. As " open source " doesn't necessarily mean you are free to redistribute any changes to it as you like. Seriously, you've been an OSS developer for 20 years: and make basic mistakes like this and :

"I'll be able to make the phone do things which are useful to me"

Even a Wintel is not open source, but still it's sort of an open development platform, as anyone can write and publish software for it and make the computer do what is useful to people.

Re: Openness: Maemo vs Android
 

Correct. I'm not so anal as to feel I have to avoid shorthand like "open source phone" for "phone with open source operating system" in a thread where everyone should know what is meant already.

I mean Open Source as defined, without being anal about it, by the Open Source Initiative, not as in "you get some source code" Microsoft style. Again, it should be obvious to everyone here what is mean by open source in the context of Maemo. And that's the same thing in practice as Free Software, even though the philosophy behind them differs.

If pushed on philosophy I'm more aligned with Free Software, but I use the term Open Source because it's more widely familiar and less prone to misinterpretation by those who don't already know better.

You made the mistake of over-interpreting sloppy language.

Are you seriously suggesting I can get a useful Wintel phone?!

An ordinary computer does not enable me to do the things I want to do with Maemo. It is the fact that it's a phone, a phone-sized computer small enough to have on me at all times, and an openly programmable platform, which makes all the difference to my "useful".

Symbian's supposed to be open enough to write your own apps, but you know, I could never install any non-commercial software on the Symbian phones I've had because of DRM lockouts. iPhone is obviously out, and Android is a mixed bag which was just that little bit too closed for me.

Re: Openness: Maemo vs Android
 

To the point and something that should be copied and pasted whenever the fanboys gets out of hand.

Re: Openness: Maemo vs Android
 

Making a decision to compromise one's beliefs should not be the equated with "growing up". (I recognize that it often is, but that's rather sad.)

I remember when I refused to recycle and when I could have cared less whether the companies I purchased goods/service from had a poor environmental track record or a history of worker exploitation.

As the problems of ignoring the larger consequences of our actions have grown, we are being forced to consider that there are "external costs" to almost every purchasing decision we make.

Sure, it is often easier to ignore the longer term or broader consequences. But that doesn't make it smart to do so.

Closed source software has serious negative long term consequences. And choosing open source software currently requires more effort in a number of ways. So I agree that there are two ways to look at it. I'm just trying to let people know that making the decision in a short-sighted manner is not the only way to look at it. There is a bigger picture.

(I also recognize that day-to-day demands force some people to make decisions that ignore the longer term consequences -- and they cannot do otherwise, even if they wished. So I'm not saying everyone has to see this the way I do. Again, I just want to present an alternative view.)

Re: Openness: Maemo vs Android
 

How old are you?

The n900 has a very good web browser and Epocrates has a premium online product. Or did you mean some other Epocrates?

Granted, I'm an open-source chest-thumper nerd, but unfortunately I know too well how my computer illiterate friends and family work, and the n900 would be more than useful in their daily tasks.

Re: Openness: Maemo vs Android
 

I am an advocate and user of FOSS but not a programmer. However, other threads which discussed installing Android on Nokia phones or installing Maemo on non-Nokia phones made me question something.

If I Google 'maemo download source code' I get a series of links which seem to indicate that Maemo source code is not available. OTOH, 'android download source code' brings back a site (source.android.com) which seems to indicate that Android source code is available. What gives?

Re: Openness: Maemo vs Android
 

Google's indexing fails?

http://maemo.org/development/sources/
http://maemo.gitorious.org/
http://mxr.maemo.org/
http://repository.maemo.org/

Take your pick.

Re: Openness: Maemo vs Android
 

http://maemo.org/development/sources/
https://stage.maemo.org/svn/maemo/projects/haf
http://repository.maemo.org/pool/

Two clicks to find that info. All it means is your search phrase was poorly chosen for your intended goal.

Re: Openness: Maemo vs Android
 

That said, a sources.maemo.org does sound like a nice idea. Nokia's not been particularly good about keeping their open source stuff all in one place (although maemo.gitorious.org is fixing that, if slowly), and having a decent overview page would help people get what they need.

Re: Openness: Maemo vs Android
 

@JJX: Yeah you're right I was a bit though on ya.

Btw, what I dislike about Maemo is that Nokia is basically in control of both the OS (Maemo) and the hardware (N900's). Android is neither. Unlike Nokia, Google has handed over Android to the Open Handset Alliance where quite a few companies (at least in theory) have a say. Nokia still owns Maemo in the sense that is has not handed it over to some kind of foundation. And secondly, unlike Nokia, Google does not control the the hardware (phones) Android runs on. So Maemo is not free at this point because it's still in many ways tightly connected to Nokia.

Re: Openness: Maemo vs Android
 

Actually the search phrase was perfect and the first link was correct. It was the maemo.org phrasing on that link: "Many parts of Maemo are now being developed in the open on gitorious.org" that made it seem as if only various components of Maemo were "in the open".

Perhaps that could be clarified for those not already in the know.

Re: Openness: Maemo vs Android
 

Well, there are some components of Maemo which aren't open. Can't tell if you understood that.

Re: Openness: Maemo vs Android
 

it is interesting that owners of Android 2.0 devices cannot get root access...

Re: Openness: Maemo vs Android
 

http://maemo-beagle.garage.maemo.org/

Full schematics available for beagleboard.

Maybe maemo is tied too close to the given processor however. A good way to find out would be to port it to an x86 machine.