MeeGo's Community Woes
 

Interesting read: http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7929

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

This guy makes some good points, but I feel like he is taking one or two negative experiences and applying it to the Meego community as a whole. That being said, downstream cooperation is key to Meego's future and I hope that things improve in that area.

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

nice reading, unfortunately it doesn't look so good at the moment ;)

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

I wouldn't hold my breath for MeeGo.

Another year before it hits market (october the soonest); with all the bugs and (lack) of support.

Add another one or two more years for it to become 'competitive' (ie: to build up 3rd party support and libraries to have 'similar' offerings as the competitors).

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

Actually to get terms right:

Upstream = components that MeeGo use
Downstream = others who use MeeGo as a whole or components

Most of downstream would be people who take the MeeGo platform and build a product (either commercial or open source) using it (productization).

Then there's a subset which is people taking MeeGo components and packaging it into their own distribution. Example could be people taking Hildon components and packaging it up in Debian.

On that article, see my post about MeeGo compliance, to put the discussion mentioned there a bit in perspective.

It boggles my mind that people assume they can use trademarks without permission and then be pissed when the owners say 'no.'. Read about trademarks on wikipedia to get some kind of impression of how difficult a trademark can be to handle right and why a 'no' is needed at times.

Greg KH's comment is weird in many ways. He was questioning every single patch and I've seen Arjan (from Intel kernel maintainer) question the patch submitters himself about if things were upstream or not - so it's not like it's not taken seriously.

The article writer calling it a MeeGo deriative really shows the point of why it was needed to say no, though: What Smeegol is, is OpenSUSE core + MeeGo Netbook UX. MeeGo applications wouldn't work on there. MeeGo deriative would mean well, it would run MeeGo applications and still be MeeGo. In my other post about compliance I show even OpenSUSE has similar policies that is touted as anti-community in the article.

A comparison can be: Debian + skin that looks like Android, called Dandroide. Could be confused with Android, for sure. And how do you think users feel when they discover their Android apps don't work with it? :)

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

About the Moblin and Maemo merge. There is one thing developers forget and that is that Maemo was doomed anyway cause of Gtk/Hildon quickhacks in favor of Qt on "nokia handsets".

Some developers forget this and would probadly whine anyway.

But what I not understand is why gtk+ is in the meegocore compliance specs when it is abandoned :-S I mean why is those librarys "a must to be meego compatible" when theyr dished in favour of QT. Atleast ithose libs is not used in handset edition if I am correct!?

I could understand if it was in the some kind of meego netbook editon until the UI is rewritted in qtquick but not in meego core?

But I must agree Meego has alot of problems atm. and many thinks need too get improved. I am following the mailinglists and reading the wiki and sometimes I think we will not see any Meego handset until late 2011 there is so many issues left...

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

There's a good reason :) Qt has a mode that uses GTK+ theme engine in order to as look good (or in my personal opinion, as ugly) under GTK+ environments as GTK+ apps such as the netbook UX. That causes a dependancy to gtk+.

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

And Android continues its march to assimilate nearly all form factors that Meego is going after (regardless of whether Google is actively planning on it).

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

Here wee go agaimn about Android.

But fact is that Meego atleast has alot better development framework already in place. And with help of QtQuick it seems getting MUCH simpler writing different UI layers depending on formfactor.

Android/Iphone was first done for mobile formfactors only. Then it is "hacked" to get it work on Tablets also...

QtQuick+Meego is working for all formfactors from scratch in case of QtQuick it also works on desktop computers. And I can surely say QtQuick is damn cool technology :-)

Meego+QtQuick will compete with Android in the future.

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

I fully agree with Meego taking a tough stance on compliance/trademarking. If any old distro is allowed to use the Meego name, then the experience will be inconsistent and flawed from a UX perspective. For Meego to build its brand, every measure needs to be taken to make sure quality products make it to market (and soon).

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

From the article:

"Apparently Nokia is also having problems with its traditional developer base as well — the devs are tired of waiting for devices and the OS to be done, already. This is not a slow-moving market."

I dont get why some people is not get it! I mean alot of SDK in meego is also working on N900 from scratch!

We have QtQuick/Qt/QtComponents directly in Maemo5 we can develop apps working both for Symbian/Maemo and Meego using QT.

So start develop instead of whine IMHO.

Releasing some halfdone Meego hardware now would just kill Meegoproject.

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

Do you get what the writer was talking about in that particular passage?

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

Yes he was whinning like alot of the OSS community is doing and doesnt understand that sometime we have to compromise if we want companys working with openess.

Also alot of the whining is old. Those who had read the meego compliance specs and the stuff about trademark should understand that this rules are there to not make Meego being as fragmented as in the case of Android.

However I could agree with some of his statements. There need to be better communication to the oss developers.

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

same with your signature :D

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

You have to get Meego devices out first before you get the developers interested in working on them. Granted QTQuick allows developers to write a computer application and bring it over to Meego. There are still alot of companies interested in Meego, I'm just wondering how long they'll stick around as Android continues to grow. The longer they give Android to grow, the bigger the battle Meego will have to face.

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

Why does people use the word 'Bricking' for everything from 'contacts not syncing' to 'usb socket snapped'
IMO N900 is unbrickable in any case!

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

Maybe MeeGo is actually quite completed and devices are being made as we speak. Nokia and Intel perhaps want to release MeeGo when its fully completed and ready to compete against the big boys.

Imagine, Intel releases a netbook (like Google did with the CR-48) at the same time;
Nokia releases a smartphone (as good as the iPhone 4 and EPIC 4G's),
at the same time MeeGo releases its sources (FINAL, non beta).

I feel like if this was done in September 2010,
then the devices got updates and were improved and source was improved,
then newer netbooks (ASUS, Acer etc), new MeeGo smartphones (Nokia etc), and Tegra2 tablets were delivered in December.
The holiday season would mean MeeGo would have a healthy start, probably get the jump on WP7, WebOS and RIM.
All it would need is continual improvements without fragmentation, some time to bake, then it could've been the top 3 choice;
after iOS and Android.

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

The funny thing is that MeeGo seems to be running better on the Archos 5 tablet

Compared to MeeGo on the N900 it's highly embarrassing for Nokia.

There are still problems with charging the battery via the wall charger under MeeGo on the N900 and performance issues with the video driver is also a problem.

It just seems Nokia's lack of will to get MeeGo working properly on the N900 is stifling the project.

After all this time there are still issues charging the N900 and you still cannot make phone calls under MeeGo. These should have been priorities and Nokia should have ensured basic stuff like this was quickly working.

Its a shame because there are many developers working hard as they can to get MeeGo ready but are hamstrung by Nokia's "closed-mind, closed source" attitude.

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

Uhm. Wall charger got fixed yesterday, SGX fix is coming in kernel during this week and you can make phone calls just fine already in 1.1. We're even working on proper audio routing policy atm.

Do I really need to pull out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWtML...layer_embedded all the time?

Archos port is basically Handset UX on top of GLES drivers and that's it.

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

Is there a "N900 MeeGo Status" page listing what's working and not working with MeeGo?

Or something like a "Milestone Page" showing what is completed and still outstanding?

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

We have weekly status meetings from sometime in December. Highly technical, but read for instance:

http://trac.tspre.org/meetbot/meego-...-16-08.00.html (view full logs for all detail)

http://trac.tspre.org/meetbot/meego-...-05-08.00.html (view full logs for all detail)

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

I have to admit I am mightily tempted by the Asus Slider + Android Honeycomb (a video of it just appeared at Engadget).

Come on, Nokia, thow us a bone!!

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

Meego loses its attraction to me. I've been using N900 for a year, and almost nothing improved.

I'm thrilled to Android too, probably will get one android phone once the dual core platform is out.

Maemo is good but dying, Meego is in the mist and don't know where going.....:(

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

I guess you missed the fact that MeeGo, not Android, is the challenger here.

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

sometimes I read some Android forums too and I can garantie that android people also crying about "nothing improved". But it is just rubish saying nothing has improved on n900 because alot has improved!

* two big upgrades
* Qt has been upgraded
* QtQuick support to make it easy for developers write apps for both symbian and Maemo/Meego
* Engineers at nokia has give us kernel updates too make it possible for other developers to test meego on n900, even if they knows they dont make money give us unofficial meego support.

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

All great. But nothing physical, nor actual shown... the best tools don't exactly instill faith in most geeks.

I remember when BeOS had 64-bit journaling and the best media file system on top of a kernel based OS, a terminal, native C++ compiling. Hell, I bought r4 and r5 - and still run it via VMWare.

And yet... it died.

Nokia needs to show something. Qt isn't going to do much more than tell me that I can develop for it. Doesn't tell me that stuff has been developed that will keep my attention on that platform. Or that many vendors, and I don't mean the release once never update variety (read: Skype, Real, and whomever has done so on Maemo 4 and Maemo 5 by releasing once and never updating or expanding their offerings... that app was paid for, once and they never came back - think about it)

I'm not truly convinced and I need plain, hard, awesome looking everything. Samsung came out with a 4.5 Super AMOLED, 1.2ghz Hummingbird w/ 1gb phone and a 8mp back camera. That's impressive hardware.

Google showed off Android 3.0 for tablets... and it alongside the QNX based Playbook by RIM looks impressive.

And all I've seen so far... Qt got updated or something is coming. MeeGo 1.2 is coming in April - 1.1 was not really all that impressive. And no vendor announcements - I don't mean the impressive OEM announcements - and I'm... not really excited about MeeGo.

Sure... it's open. It's coming. But it's gonna take a long friggin' time for it to attract attention from more than just the diehard Nokia or Linux fan. And with Nokia's inability to commit to one iteration of Maemo past 13 months of official support (less with Maemo 5) then honestly my patience and enthusiasm have hit new lows for MeeGo.

And I'm darn willing to bet I'm not the only person thinking like that. And I'm quite sure some folks will continue to carry the torch for MeeGo; but it's gonna take a demo of damn near biblical proportions for me to gather any excitement.

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

what excitement for n900 meego ?

there is more posts updates and activity in the n900 nitdroid threads then in the entire n900 meego/hman forum

yea the nitdroid port is still incomplete and done by a small team and the is unofficial - yet somehow there is more enthusiasm for it then meego

something is wrong and needs to be fixed

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

I'm sure there's a wiki link that will supposedly remedy that lack of post updates and/or excitement.

Re: MeeGo's Community Woes
 

I for one agree with you, I'm happy and even mildly excited to see that there is still a Linux distro for handsets and internet tablets and that it will eventually, probably, become the standard platform. I like this, it's cool, but it's not something that affects me in any real way right now.

The fact Meego is still not day-to-day usable on the only platform I have, the N900 (well it wasn't when I last looked before Christmas, it may be now, I'll have to test again) means that I have no real involvement in (and therefore excitement about) what's happening.

Yes I know I could get involved doing platform development and bugfixing stuff, but looking at the #meego-arm meetings, it seems to me that there are lots of people who are paid to do platform development there, so my sticking my oar in and distracting them asking what I could do with a paltry hobbyist 1h/day seems pointless.

Meego application development is another option, and I do this anyway for Maemo (and it should apparently be reasonably easy to port over with the new SDK, etc.) Working on the Meego reference apps seems rather pointless as the next Nokia handset will use its own UI so we are led to believe (and replace those reference apps), so unless we have some hardware on which we wish to just run the reference implementation of Meego, this would be wasted time.

Now yes, the N900 is such a platform, but it is getting rather long in the tooth, there is some pretty impressive hardware out there these days - bigger screens, faster processors, twin core processors, more RAM, etc., and it would be nice to have some of this new stuff to play with (running Linux of course).

So I'm personally just waiting for some new hardware that looks suitable (big screen, hw kb, camera, compass, gps, etc.) and will run Meego, then I'll get more enthused actually using it and being able to develop for it (and feeling that the work I do will have some sort of lifetime on the device in question.)

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?