maemo.org - Talk - What's in a name?

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What's in a name?

Quote:

The maemo.org logo contest that is going on — like others, I received four email messages about it — got me thinking: How do you express the ideas of a community in a name and in a logo?

Actually, I mean both "the idea of a community" and "the ideas" of that community when I think about this. It's easier when the name helps bind you together — I belong to a group called FAMCAM - Families with Cambodian Children and you can tell immediately who wants to belong to this group and why.

Maemo is a made-up word and people encountering it form the meaning by what they learn from the encounter. Well, it's good that a branding process is going on since what exactly Maemo represented hasn't always been so clear — the OS on the Nokia Internet Tablets, the development kit enabling software for NITs to be developed on a desktop, a Linux distro that had a Hildon UI overlay to make things run smoothly on a NIT, the software side of the Nokia effort, the open-source side of the NITS, the collective effort spurred by Nokia but encompassing individual FOSS developers — something somewhere in this is what has been meant by "Maemo" over this time.

Now, "Maemo with a capital M" is being identified as an "open source software platform for mobile devices. Developed by Nokia in collaboration with the Maemo community and some of the best open source upstream projects." The Maemo platform is distinguished from the Maemo SDK and is manifested in numbered Maemo releases. Maemo Software refers not to applications compatible with Maemo but instead to the team at Nokia that's responsible for developing the platform, SDK and some of those apps. And the other apps for Maemo? Well, they come from the Maemo community, of course. And if ever there are going to be any "devices running Maemo" other than those released by Nokia, then the line between Nokia's supportive actions and the community will need to be clearly demarcated.

And that demarcation is in process now. The logo contest for maemo.org is one step in separating Nokia's own use of Maemo from others'. Now maemo.org will be an expression of the community and not of the Nokia team. Or something like that.

Hence my logo design:

http://www.internettablettalk.com/wp...sperberg_6.png

Maemo.org isn't a company and even the "dot org" is an honorific rather than recognition that a real organization has existed. But as a community, it represents the group of people who all contribute toward the same goal. So in my interpretation of the maemo.org logo, you don't get machined results or perfect alignment. Yet it's precisely this non-automaton, non-corporate approach that is the essence of Linux and the FOSS movement and which accounts for its vibrancy.

You can see other expressions of the maemo.org community as a logo at the contest submissions page at wiki.maemo.org.

Read the full article.

Re: What's in a name?

I'm submitting a few logos as well, but will wait until the last week. :D

Re: What's in a name?

I like your logo, but...

I wonder how you can capture the fact that maemo.org has some very talented developers in it, giving free applications both to the "community" and to a large, international corporation that is only very slowly moving towards giving to the "community" in the same way. Yes, OK, they're doing more than most big corporations, but really, it seems like all the best apps on the tablets have come from the community, not from the organization that sells the hardware and hosts the files in their repositories. Even the good apps are built on the shoulders of other open source projects, and more often than not, the final product on the tablet seems closed, secretive, and not very interoperable. A perfect example is the browser. It is a Maemo wrapper around the Firefox engine. Try running it in any window manager other than Maemo's version of matchbox window manager, and it just will not work. Or try to get the camera and mic working with any standard Linux app that works with every other webcam and mic. You'll be in for hours of weeping and gnashing of teeth.

just a note: your "g" looks like a "q".

EDIT: Hm, that turned into quite a rant.

Re: What's in a name?

Quote:

Originally Posted by qole (Post 193685)

it seems like all the best apps on the tablets have come from the community, not from the organization that sells the hardware and hosts the files in their repositories.

And what is wrong with that? One organization puts in place a platform and the minimum set of features to make it useful to end users. Third parties develop additional applications for it with different levels of quality and success.

This isn't a special platform development story, isn't it. However, it starts becoming kinda special when these third parties collaborate in an open community. And this is the role plaid by the maemo.org name.

Btw, an interesting exercise would be to make that list with all the best apps and see what is the role of Nokia as a community player, in terms of people working at/for Nokia developing on Maemo for fun, projects supported directly or indirectly with Nokia funds... You make a bright separation between Nokia and the community, but the facts probably tell otherwise.

Re: What's in a name?

Quote:

Originally Posted by qgil

This isn't a special platform development story, isn't it. However, it starts becoming kinda special when these third parties collaborate in an open community. And this is the role plaid by the maemo.org name.

This is exactly what I like from the maemo.org community.
Nokia is part of it.

I usually never take extreme positions.
I am in favor of open source, but not against commercial applications (if the commercial companies play fair).
I am in favor of commercial applications, but not against open source ones.

I see quality in both of them.
I demand from both of them what can be reasonably demanded.
I might not pretend from an open source, free application a particular feature or even a bug fix, but I might pretend it from a commercial one I paid for.
And examples go on like that.

In Maemo.org there's no real bright line. We all play together on a common platform.
I can choose to develop on it only for the fun of it.
I can choose to develop on it for fun and decide to make money out of it.
I can choose to develop on it just to make money out of it.
Nokia is providing me all the tools I need. The decision is up to me.

What differentiate it from other platforms is that all the tools that Nokia gave me, are free.
On the iPhone I would have to pay even if I choose to make my application free.
On Symbian and Windows Mobile is the same.
The tools to develop are not free (AFAIK).
That's understandable even if I do not agree with it. Those platform are targeted at a completely different kind of community.
Fair.

What I'd like to see in the logo is this collaboration.
I has to look as an open source/free logo. You look at it and you think about openness and freedom.
I hope the chosen one will make this .. clear.

Update: jussi logo, for example, reflects what I've said about collaboration. There is a line, not bright, but is there. We all collaborate. I like it.

Re: What's in a name?

Quote:

Originally Posted by qole (Post 193685)

just a note: your "g" looks like a "q".

To quote qgil, "And what is wrong with that?"

But, in truth, I don't think the client (in this case the Maemo community) has to accept every quirk the designer suggests. While not advocating design by committee, I say there's nothing wrong with tweaking the winning design to account for the real world.

The "g" in the handlettered font could be changed if clarity/readability were really threatened (as it might be if used in all the tabs and titles).

Re: What's in a name?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Reggie (Post 193675)

I'm submitting a few logos as well, but will wait until the last week. :D

When you want to win an auction, you "snipe" — put in your bid at the last-possible moment to prevent anyone outbidding you. But is that the right strategy for this kind of contest?

As much as the prize is improbably grand — a trip to Berlin?! — l say we put our ideas (verbal and visual) into play now, so as to inspire the best design possible. If someone can build on your notion and create a better logo, well ... isn't a postcard from Berlin from the winner better than winning?

C'mon, Reggie. Show us your ideas now. :-)

Roger

PS: I like baksiidaa's solution so that the horizontal display and the vertical display both work without changing a thing.

And isn't that Share TechMono in GarethLWalt's design? I really like that font but I couldn't make it work in the logo the way he did!

Re: What's in a name?

Quote:

Originally Posted by qgil (Post 193752)

Btw, an interesting exercise would be to make that list with all the best apps and see what is the role of Nokia as a community player, in terms of people working at/for Nokia developing on Maemo for fun, projects supported directly or indirectly with Nokia funds... You make a bright separation between Nokia and the community, but the facts probably tell otherwise.

A few must-have, third-party apps come to mind immediately:

Maemo Mapper
MPlayer
MH Shot Tool
Numpty Physics
Personal Menu
Quiver Image Viewer
Maemopad+
VNC Viewer
Disk Usage
Evince
mYTube
Advanced Brightness Settings applet
Large Statusbar Clock
Leafpad

I wish Nokia would hire the guys making / hildonizing these apps. Perhaps Nokia could follow Google's lead and have some paid freeform time where developers can work on interesting, personal tablet-related projects...

Re: What's in a name?

Quote:

Originally Posted by qole (Post 193861)

I ask this again, what is this fetish people have with Nokia-produced GUI applications? The result of this just seems to be UI-spec encumbered impossible-to-get-fixed junk.

Leave the diverse user-space experience to the community, who isn't encumbered by stupid corporate nonsense. Let Nokia put together the platform which all of this is built upon.