Thread: What is the future for the n900 from now? meego or no updates or nothing?
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2010-08-06 , 19:55
Posts: 1,671 | Thanked: 11,478 times | Joined on Jun 2008 @ Warsaw, Poland
#206
Originally Posted by fatalsaint View Post
Yes. I was really put off on Day 1 and I think the grudge has sort of distanced me more than I had originally intended.

I really did want to delve into MeeGo and really start into something big.. but when I looked at the massive difference in functionality between the intel dev platform, vs the nokia dev platform.. it really struck a nerve. I guess I just haven't moved over that hump just yet.
Random fact: there's 12 packages that don't build for ARM in MeeGo Trunk (fails to compile). We've started patching those and most are trivial build errors. So from a build perspective, we're not much different. On image building side (mic2 support) ARM is a equal member as well now.

Here's my question. It's simply bad business (IMHO) to put money into a project that you get nothing back from. Nokia is not going to be pushing MeeGo on the N900.. they are not going to be selling "more" N900's promising MeeGo on the N900.. they are not doing anything to get any new userbase to the platform. This to me, implies clearly, that they consider the N900 to be over. So why would they continue to expend resources to it?
Short story: because it gets a strong ARM offering in MeeGo which is useful for many various reasons, such as platform adaptation. Who'd want to adapt a platform where the ARM reference device works like crap?

I know that a dev platform has to work and function in order to properly develop on it, but it doesn't have to be polished or bugfixed.
Case: Why are we implementing power saving in our N900 kernel when there's no real benefit to developers in this?

Fact: Because we're making a complete hardware adaptation, not a 'developer only' one. A hardware adaptation has to be full to be stable or not be worth anything. Rest of OS, that's another thing.

This, among the other reasons I've stated, is why I believe there are so many people feeling abandoned, and refer to the N900 as a dead platform.
I don't try to convince people they're not abandoned, I've given up on that here.

Nokia leaves the platform MeeGo will be that much more difficult, or suddenly need to be made illegal, to port any of the newer community builds or future MeeGo versions because the "blobs", as you call them, can no longer be obtained from Nokia.
Agreed, this might be a problem, but let's see how we can solve this in a sane manner. To be honest, it should be entirely possible to keep this going. Even at what, 2 man hours a month to check the lights are still on and things are building and getting exported as redistributable bits at repo.meego.com.

Think we're overestimating those few blob's importance. And as I've repeatedly said, I'd like to get rid of them if I could. But as daperl once said:

Isn't the message from x86 Linux distributions clear:

You're only as good as your supported drivers, proprietary or otherwise.
So, we have them to give a proper user experience. I'm hoping to get them to a redistributable license.
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