this is really a big one (tread jack but sue me).

the SSU is a step up from the firmware "bombs" of earlier updates, but its still (imo) highly heavy handed.

and on top of that, nokia (again imo) is abusing the deb system with its single package system wide update "solution".

but then i guess if one want to be cynical one should have seen the writing on the wall back with the 770, as it didnt ship with a xterm, or for that matter a root account the user could access unless he had enabled r&d mode.

and i guess its the same pattern over at android or now webos. the linux part is just there to make rapid gains in hardware support and development tools, rather then starting from scratch yet again.

its not really there to embrace the open source ideals...

and yes, the problem is very much that we are in a limbo, a very big limbo.

thing is that while anything from the linux kernel to a main release of debian, open source works in a transparent, evolutionary kind of way.

if big changes are needed to be done in the kernel, people turn them into side projects that are allowed to mature alongside the existing system until it its feature parity and can be slotted in with no loss.

same with debian. things go in at the testing end, gets bumped to unstable, and finally reach stable.

but at any point, you as the user can accept to go with the new, rather then the old, and nobody will slap you silly for it.

but with the ssu you cant. its either all or nothing. you cant tell the app manager that you dont want the kernel updated as you have rolled your own. no you have to take the kernel or the ssu package wont go in, and therefor none of the other packages will go in either.

and its not really clear what the ssu will touch on, until its rolled out.

and lets take a pet monkey of mine, the wireless connection dialog.

during chinook you could put the thing into offline mode, hit refresh on the mail client and get a automatic connection to a saved wifi spot if you selected ok in a dialog popup.

with diablo that got broken. and it has stayed broken over some 3+ ssu (i have lost count). and now that nokia has focused on fremantle, and plan to go for a rewrite of that subsystem, the bug is either in limbo or "fixed in fremantle".

and as the diablo dialog is not open source, people are left with no chance of a fix, especially as they dont know if fremantle will be new hardware only, or not.

the only real saviour here is mer, but it seems hellbent on doing the maxium change rather the minimum change (ripping out and replacing nokia's closed bits).

all in all, both users, devs and anyone else is left like this:

to me, nokia needs to decide if they want to get into the open source boat, or stay on the closed source pier. right now they seem to hope they can evolve some very long legs by keeping one in each, with the boat sailing...