maemo.org - Talk - View Single Post - Jolla Tablet Refunds (latest developments)

	Copernicus	2015-12-01 , 15:44
	Posts: 1,986 \| Thanked: 7,698 times \| Joined on Dec 2010 @ Dayton, Ohio	#2381

Originally Posted by MartinK

Yes, as long as the thing to fix is in the open source component, which often is not the case.

All of Mer / Nemo is an open source component, isn't it?

Also there is a serious overall lack of documentation in the Mer/Nemo/Sailfish land and random parts being closed does not really help with tracking down issues as you basically stumble on black boxes left and right.

What random parts of Mer / Nemo are closed? And why would Mer / Nemo (again, 100% open source) have a serious overall lack of documentation? Shouldn't being open-source have fixed that by now?

The other difference is that Sailfish OS is a quite complete and overall working system while Nemo is basically a bunch of middleware (the same Sailfish OS makes use off) but without most of the actual user facing bits (all system level GUI elements, core apps) + some minor stuff salvaged from the MeeGo era.

Yes! Being 100% open-source, Nemo is missing a lot of stuff that you need. Not being 100% open-source, Sailfish has that stuff. Man, having closed-source parts really hurt Sailfish in this case, didn't it...

Actually I think we would get significant amount of contributions as there would finally be something that is both in usable shape and fully open source.

Yes, absolutely! After spending millions of dollars, Jolla has built quite a nice UI on top of Mer. The problem is, those millions of dollars were not charity money. Maybe the investors will be willing to just throw away those millions of dollars and walk away, but I kind of doubt it.

It is much easier & much more motivating to fix & improve something you and others can actually use day-to-day rather than hacking on something for years without visible results.

Great. So, you're saying that open-source contributions can really only work at the tail end of a project, for (say) maintenance and small incremental work. Hurrah for open-source!