maemo.org - Talk - View Single Post - maemo.org changes now that we have m.n.c & FN

rcadden	2009-08-31 , 12:40
Posts: 472 \| Thanked: 107 times \| Joined on Apr 2007 @ Texas	#72

Originally Posted by GeneralAntilles

Maemo is Maemo is Maemo is Maemo. As a single word it's always capitalized and refers to the platform (OS and SDK). maemo.org is never capitalized and never appears without the .org. It is the meeting place of the Maemo Community and the brand that represents said community.

We also have Maemo Devices, which is the division in Nokia that works on Maemo and the hardware that runs it, and maemo.nokia.com, which is the recently launched user-oriented marketing site for Maemo.

Thanks for the clarification. Is this spelled out somewhere specifically, or is it an unwritten guide? (honest question, not trying to be snarky)

maemo.org - The meeting place of the Maemo Community. It is a site for engaged users, hobby developers and anybody interested in doing a little more with Maemo than might be immediately available or apparent out-of-the-box. This is where the interesting stuff happens.

maemo.nokia.com - The marketing site for normal users who are only interested in using Maemo and not much more. Clean, accessible, friendly.

Maemo @ Forum Nokia - The site for developers (primarily commercial developers), where the API and SDK documentation will eventually be moved and the support structures for Nokia's commercial development partners will exist.

So, what about the slightly-educated consumer? The guy, like me, who is used to smartphones, installing apps and whatnot, but doesn't necessarily want to 'get his hands dirty' with command line, root, and all that stuff? There's going to be ALOT of those, mostly Symbian converts who are tired of waiting for a blow-me-away experience on that side, and who love Nokia's hardware. These are the people that I intend to focus on in my site, but I am not interested in setting up my own forum, and thus I'm asking where I should direct them to continue the conversation or learn more. Nokia.Maemo.com is slightly sparse when it comes to discussions, but it seems this is more of a developer community.

To be honest, and this is one of the reasons *I* believe the open source community struggles with consumers, most of the folks who buy the N900 and whatever other Maemo 5+ devices will not be interested in developing for it, or filing bug reports. I realize that defeats the entire idealogy behind open source, but that's consumers. My honest question is how will *this* open source community deal with them?

********. It confirms that people do not have unlimited free time and do not have the resources at hand that large commercial companies do, and it confirms that sweeping dismissals like the one you've just made hold about as much water as a rusty bucket.

I'm not going to argue this point. I'm a consumer, and haven't the inkling of a developer. I've installed most of the applications currently available in the repositories, including some of the more....developer ones. While all are, without question, rock solid, stable, and all that, they are incredibly sparse when it comes to the interface. Even the awesome poker game - when you first boot it up, you have to know to press the submenu to start a game. Most consumers won't get that far, and yes, I realize how ignorant that makes them.

This is why the iPhone is so popular - the user interface makes it dead simple to use, which draws consumers. In *my* experience with Linux (both here at Maemo and with Ubuntu and a few other flavors on various laptops/netbooks), the community tends to offer a response of 'well, perhaps it's time you got a bit more educated, then.' While that might be a valid response, it's incredibly rude and off-putting to someone who is attempting to get acquainted with a new system, and it's quite unhelpful to the consumer mindset.

If you're interested in the consumer experience, rather than dismissing the whole community out-of-hand, why don't you step up and help out? You don't have to write code to help make software better for everybody.

I haven't dismissed the community entirely. I still have my N800, and I still use it, checking for new apps once a week or so, and exploring the various new ones. How would a *consumer* or even a prosumer get involved?

Excellent! Then here's my second one for you, that dig against MicroB is uninformed and inaccurate. MicroB is about as close to full Mozilla as you can get without shipping straight Firefox (which is undesirable no a resource-constrained mobile platform more a large variety of reasons).

From my experience with Maemo, Microb sucks. It is actually one of the reasons that I gave up on Maemo in the first place. For an OS that powers supposed 'INTERNET Tablets', it's awful. The last version of Opera that we had several OS' back was better by quite a bit. When I use the new one, I'll have the opportunity to change my experience. People have opinions, and we're free to express them.

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