maemo.org - Talk - View Single Post - MeeGo a whole new Linux ballgame

	danramos	2010-06-02 , 21:16
	Posts: 4,672 \| Thanked: 5,455 times \| Joined on Jul 2008 @ Springfield, MA, USA	#89

Originally Posted by qgil

Reading you it looks as if Nokia would be an enemy of openness of sorts. Yet...

What commercial handsets can you find in a shop more open than the Maemo devices?

How many companies can you list contributing more open source code and features? (Maemo/MeeGo + Symbian + Qt)

What commercial mobile platforms can you list with a more open setting and approach than the platforms where Nokia is involved? (MeeGo, Symbian)

Nokia is not perfect in terms of free software development but at least is trying hard investing a huge load of resources and publishing a huge load of new code available for anybody. Show us concrete alternatives that are succeeding commercially with a more open approach and we will seriously consider them (if we are not doing it already).

OpenMoko is a more open handset, as handsets go--MUCH better support all throughout the hardware and software environment. Google's Android has potential but Google's been miserly about drivers and architecture openness--well, HEY! How about that.. that's EXACTLY the point I was making about Nokia! Sure--Nokia contributes a bunch, but if you close the drivers and architecture all around the open bits, you might as well call it a CLOSED operating system and stop pretending you're promoting open-source. Enemy of openness, maybe not--but you're not as friendly as many others and it's disingenuous to pretend to be. There may be a genuine interest in it at Nokia, but there isn't any real tangible evidence of it compared to other distributions and platforms. CERTAINLY not, if you want to count in the netbooks--which are, on the whole, much more open-source friendly with their drivers and hardware. I don't think it's asking a lot to open up drivers and architecture. It's what helped computers and the Internet to boom in their golden eras.

What companies are contributing more to open-source? Are you kidding me? Clearly: Red Hat, Novel, IBM, Intel, Oracle, SGI, should I go on? Nokia only finally shows up at 0.6%, between Marvell and Simtec. That's not to say it's insignificant, but it is to point out that you shouldn't brag. (ref: http://www.linuxfoundation.org/node/4463)

By the by, if it helps.. there IS someone who'll help you if you're genuinely interested in resolving our hardware driver complaints:
http://www.linuxdriverproject.org/foswiki/bin/view

Just saying. I appreciate the contributions that ARE being made, but the defensive attitude is unwelcomed. We're consumers, hobbyists and developers out here. Customers are happy to be sheep--but you have to provide customers with a positive experience to earn that kind of brand faithfulness. We will (and it appears, a lot already have) cling to the next brand that bothers to listen and make our lives more pleasant. The constant nagging for openness doesn't just cease because you're contributing AROUND the closed portions. Those closed portions are creating frustrations for many people who would have otherwise been happy to do the work for Nokia to provide that positive experience the customers are expecting.

Originally Posted by Texrat

If you're going to refer to Ari Jaaksi's infamous quote, it had a larger scope than that. He was referring to a closed (ironically) mindset that keeps Linux from being a greater success, and that was the reluctance to at least meet business halfway and understand profit drivers instead of vilifying them as something inherently evil.

Ultimately neither Nokia nor any other company can operate for free. Nokia has decided, wisely IMO, that there's no longer enough value to be found in being an operating system provider. So they will focus on their technological (and hopefully, service) advantages as those profit drivers. If every aspect of hardware is opened, and that hardware becomes commoditized, where does Nokia derive revenue in this space?

Let's see how Pandora fares and then cast stones at Nokia if they are successful.

disclaimer: I would personally love to see mobile computers ultimately commoditized to the point that PCs are. I build all of my PCs.

And I was referring to his statements as a corporate intention to stay away from OGG despite customers demanding it. It had much less to do with whether anyone loves or hates DRM and more to do with a supposedly OPEN-SOURCE device being denied the openness of architecture and the incredible accusations around patents as a reason for not even writing an implementation for customers. I can't see how Pandora has anything to do with either of these issues when the whole point is to promote inclusiveness, rather than the exclusive nature of the closed architecture.

Originally Posted by qgil

gerbick, I'm comparing Nokia with the companies you compare Nokia all the time and with the products available in the shops where you can find Nokia products. If you don't like this comparison please propose another one.

About BME closed, did you go and ask at meego-dev as I proposed to you few days ago when you came with the same point in this forum?

About the MeeGo architecture, http://meego.com/developers/meego-architecture shares a lot with Maemo, with Moblin and with other distros. Yet is a stack that it's not Maemo' it's not Moblin, it's not Fedora/openSuSE/Ubuntu/Debian. If you understand a bit about Linux platforms you will see that it's a quite unique and innovative stack having to solve certain problems other distros don't attempt to solve.

And sure, there are plenty of companies and even more individuals and also non-profits contributing LOTS of code and more. I'm not dismissing any of them! I'm just defending that Nokia is one of these organizations, actually contributing a lot. And again, if you go and ask Linux and free desktop developers and maintainers you will see that all in all Nokia gets better than worse feedback about what we do and how we do it.

About the lessons learned, I think in every Maemo iteration there were improvements but there was a structural ceiling barring more significant progress. This is one of the reasons why MeeGo was created, and Nokia is applying the remaining reasons there.

PS: the more you discuss about the MeeGo project the more it makes sense to do it at http://forum.meego.com

Will ANY of this address the PROBLEM of closed drivers, architecture and applications? It would be INFINITELY useful to have a hardware manufacturer sell us a device that a community can create multiple OS's and distributions onto. I THOUGHT that's what the Internet Tablets were, when they were advertised with an open-source OS and Nokia touting the openness of the Maemo operating system.

Originally Posted by ZogG

Probably he was answering partly to me to. I think it's useless to send us to meego forum, as now we are talikng about nokia meego and maemo, and it touches some aspects of maemo community as well. And as gerbick, i don't see any straight answer or fact, i just see the reflecting answers. As well i would like to here how can people really can be involved in maemo development, and when i talking not about applications, i'm talking about bug fixes(as some code is closed or i had personally met the problem when bug was refused to open as it was mark as fixed, but it's still there), what are the point of bug reports if they are not comming straight and we don't really know if they are fixed, as well i would like to know how community can get the roadmap of development, there are a lot of question people asking at forum everyday and as i saw Nokia if gives answers - it's only to certain questions they want and even than no 100% info.

Is it me, or does this redirection promote fragmentation and make it too easy, intentional or not, to dismiss arguments in said fragmentation? I think we're generally discussing Nokia and Maemo with relation to Meego (ie: game changing)... not so much about Meego itself.

Originally Posted by SD69

Read this, it might help:

http://www.nokia.com/NOKIA_COM_1/Tec...hite_paper.pdf

MeeGo OS will be more or less open, but the MeeGo devices that Nokia sells will have differentiating UI, apps and services.

It's the "or less" part that greatly disturbs me. The differentiating indicates to me that this won't be running on truly open hardware and will consist of some closed portions of the OS--more of the same history with Nokia, effectively.

GAH... this was a long post. I need a drink.

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