Help NielDK develop for Sailfish (Jolla Tablet & phone)
 

NielDK user & developer is asking the community help him develop for Jolla Tablet & phone (Sailfish OS) by contributing with funds via Indiegogo.
His tweets :
https://twitter.com/nieldk/status/535136717008044033
https://twitter.com/nieldk/status/535086350580862977
https://twitter.com/nieldk/status/535331891436879872
https://twitter.com/nieldk/status/535719143170134016

His software contributions in OpenRepos.net (Sailfish & MeeGo Harmattan).

His projects in Mer OBS.

PS: I'm not affiliated with NielDK, but just interested to boost the developer community around Mer/Sailfish.

Re: Help NielDK develop for Sailfish (Jolla Tablet & phone)
 

It would have been great if he could actually post an exact list of hardware and software he needs. Just a thought.

Re: Help NielDK develop for Sailfish (Jolla Tablet & phone)
 

I thought exactly the same. Not suspecting he wouldn't need it for buying the hardware, just curious :)

Re: Help NielDK develop for Sailfish (Jolla Tablet & phone)
 

Sorry for being sceptical about this:

1. Afaik NielDK has a decent job, and wages in Denmark are not that bad.
I can have sympathy for guys like CepiPerez, who's stuff got stolen and lost his job. People like him and Coderus actually create new software and therefore additional value to make a device differ from others.

2. I don't understand the need for "development devices, software and hardware"
As NielDK mainly compiles/packages other persons (command line) software, that could be done on a simple PC with free SDK/emulator software.

3. And a bit more unrelated: the constant goodbye's, whether it is for bootloaders, batteries or council issues. He urgently insisted on removing his TMO account, only to create a new account within weeks.

But in the end: of course everybody is free to donate money to whomever he wants.

Re: Help NielDK develop for Sailfish (Jolla Tablet & phone)
 

Please, don't go personal. We don't know the real financial state of Jolla and we contributed to the Jolla Tablet. Does NielDK need to open his personal life (job, financial situation, etc) ? No.

Porting & packaging Linux softwares to Mer & Sailfish take a lot of time. I also do it in Mer OBS. Some projects take many hours or even days to port from OpenSuse, etc, due to different or missing dependencies in Mer / Sailfish OS. Some upstream versions don't compile in Mer OBS, so it is needed to use older versions, etc. Calculate how much costs 1 hour from a programmer and you will see that many softwares ported to Mer & Sailfish costed a lot from the people who packaged them.

Testing Mer & Sailfish is better done with real devices. I for example installed Sailfish on my 2nd Nokia N9, on my Nexus 4 (bought to try Ubuntu Touch & Sailfish) and on my Jolla smartphone. I've bought a 2nd Jolla smartphone just to test softwares and OTH hardware ideas. I've also bought Jolla Tablet mainly to help me test Sailfish softwares adapted to tablet screen. So, it costs a lot of money to have Sailfish devices to properly test (performance, compatibility, landscape screen mode, etc) softwares, CLI ou GUI ones.

PS.: I'm not asking any funds for me.

Last but not least, if you think porting, compiling and packaging softwares is a piece of cake, so try to contribute, e.g., packaging Fortran (gfortran) to Mer & Sailfish OS.

I think community should motivate people. Even more developers that work for free. NielDK case.

Re: Help NielDK develop for Sailfish (Jolla Tablet & phone)
 

Well , someone who is compilling stuff is a packager/maintainer not a developer. Just my opinion.

Re: Help NielDK develop for Sailfish (Jolla Tablet & phone)
 

I think the majority of packagers & maintainers (for Mer, Sailfish, MeeGo Harmattan, Maemo 4 & 5, Debian, Open Suse, etc) are also developers.

Many softwares from, e.g., OpenSuse, Debian, Ubuntu, need modifications to compile and package for Mer & Sailfish, MeeGo Harmattan, etc. All of them need modifications at least in files .spec, control, rules, etc. Some of them modifications in shell, Python, C/C++ source code, i.e., to modify you need to understand it, so you need to be a developer in multiple programming languages.

Re: Help NielDK develop for Sailfish (Jolla Tablet & phone)
 

Mer & Sailfish OS need more packagers & maintainers. There are softwares/projects with more than 100,000 lines of source-code, with many dependencies, that aren't ported yet.

If the Mer/Sailfish OS want more softwares, the developers (which many are also packagers & maintainers) need to be motivated.

Porting & packaging is not an easy task. For example, from my experience :
- in 10/02/2013 I've ported & packaged NumPy 1.7.0 one day after its upstream release. I've taken some hours to port, compile, package and test it on MeeGo Haramttan. But the Mac OS maintainers took one week to port & package NumPy 1.7.0 to Mac OS !
- SciPy for MeeGo Harmattan was the hardest project I've ported & packaged until now. I've spent in January 2013 some days trying to port, compile & package, without success. Then in September 2014, after 3-4 days of full dedication, I've finally got it and some (build) dependencies.

So it is not easy at all to port, compile and package softwares.

If somebody doesn't agree, let's take TeXLive, gFortran, Octave, R, Maxima, Haskell, etc, and package them for Sailfish. :p

Re: Help NielDK develop for Sailfish (Jolla Tablet & phone)
 

I absolutely agree.

And there's one more thing we should not forget - when you have enough software ported, then many developers can take advantage of it and create great software.

There are countless times when I just gave up an idea of an app/feature, because I just (after many tries) couldn't port a utility I wanted to take advantage of.

Re: Help NielDK develop for Sailfish (Jolla Tablet & phone)
 

Hello All.
I will try to answer all question.

1. I dont at the moment have a development PC. What I have done, is done from my workplace using merproject to test and build.
2 Many of you know my financial situation. I had to let go of almost all my 'gears' to get rid of debt. I have left 2 N9, 1 N900 and 1 Jolla that is slowly dying. Of those, 1 N9 and 1 N900 will be given away for coding competition.
3 Yes, I have a decent job, thanks God. Otherwise, me and my children would already be on the streets :(
4 If you dont think of packaging as a developer task. Well, perhaps, you are fine to believe so. I believe the tasks involved in packaging have already been explained here by others. It is your opinion, but quite honestly, if you clain that, I dont think you have even tried.
5 I want to create a flashable image, to restore the device. This is definately a task for the fainthearted. I will almost 100% brick devices while trying (almost already did), so I will need at least two devices. Prefferable more,
6 I 'left' Council, eV board etc because I, and others, where accused of being 'power hungry'. By erasing my old account, and creating a new. I have no karma, and cant be voted back in. I have no power!
7 This is completely vulentarely. I am not trying to force you.

Last. There are MANY developers who will benefit from support (donations) and they are ALL needed to make a good lovable device. NOT just me.

I ask you to consider this.

I started this campain to bring attention. It is getting attention. Good! and already more is following my idea, which shows me there is a need for developers to get donations.

So, if you appreciate the work done. Please do show so. To me, coderus, or other of your favorite developers.

(coderus campain: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/s...eloper-support)