After switching to Mac and then purchasing the N800, I have become aware for the "Open Source" movement. My initial observations and experience gave me a feeling of hope and euphoria. This quickly faded as more and more I came across half written projects, started but not finished projects, projects that seemed to be only written for developers, basically bad applications. While I am no fan of Microsoft, I have to agree that the "Open Source" communities that I see are a hodge-podge of hopes and promises with little or no substance behind it. Yes, my Mac uses FREE BSD but the commercial version was produced by Apple in a controlled environment with the goal of developing a commercial working product that people would pay for. It also appears that many in the "Open Source" community seem to have an anti-establishment mentality where making a buck off of a good product is bad. If someone were to come up with a great sycning application for the N800, I would gladly pay for it. GAIM is not bad and I would consider paying for it as well if it had a bit better functionality. All in all I can appreciate much of the work done in the community but it seems to have no structure or no real zeal to finish things. I guess, I am old school in that I believe in finishing what you start.

sapporobaby is this (N800) the first and only linux/open-source
you have tried if so I would say try others (SuSe, Ubuntu, Gentoo etc) then make another observation. I am also a Mac/Linux user and I would have to say N800's applications is not a good example of polish applications for linux.

By the way I read today that Dell is looking at loading Linux on their desktops and laptops.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,12...x/article.html

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/g...=us&l=en&s=gen

sapporobaby:

I think in many ways you are correct. But then, from what I hear, Vista isn't a finished product either.

There are great open source projects out there ... Zimbra, Asterisk, Zenoss, SugarCRM ... you'll notice that my list is of server applications.

The Linux desktop is still comparatively immature, and for every one great project there are a hundred crap ones, although it gets better every day.

The open source model can work, but for products like the IT, only when people see it as a genuine tool, rather than a toy. Which makes it a bit of a chicken/egg situation of couse ...

Mike.

Great input Mike and Heavyt. My point was not to flame but to point the short comings in the OS community. It is as if a great many ideas start then the developers get bored and move on to something else, leaving gaping holes in what they started. The Maemo project forums and repositories are a disaster. Only those that were there from the start can really navigate their way through. I had a few friends test my theory by doing a few searches for things. They gave up after 10 mins of abbreviated statements, cryptic notes that only the poster and maybe someone else might understand. Hopefully it will get better, but as it is now, the common user would be discouraged.

For a product that's been around for only 16 months it's probably understandable that some applications are half finished, rough around the edges etc. The Maemo community is still quite small, and some of the more well publicised open source projects you are now familiar with on other platforms have multiple developers per project - in contrast, most Maemo projects are one man bands. This isn't a criticism of Maemo, just an observation to explain why some projects are taking longer to finish. Also, since these projects are staffed by single developers it's not unexpected that some projects come to a halt when the developer goes to college, gets married, has children, goes to prison etc.

It's very unstructured development because nobody is forcing or paying people to develop/port applications to the Maemo platform - people get involved for fun or to solve a problem they are personally experiencing. When the fun is over, or the problem is solved, they move on - it doesn't necessarily mean the project is as complete as you would like, but you can always take the code and finish it as you see fit.

The Maemo open source community is still quite immature, hence some of the problems you have outlined, and as such these problems should not come as any great surprise.

Will the situation improve in future? I've no idea, but in time hopefully more developers will get behind the platform and more projects will take on multiple developers so that there is no single point of failure.

.......Amen!

Certainly I have found it impossible to find coherent documentation on how Maemo Mapper should be used, but my N800 has practically replaced my Dell laptop for a lot of browsing, so it is overall pretty damn cool, it seems to me. I hope it lives up to even more of its promise.

As a designer/developer for many years, here's what I've noticed: if a project isn't originated and run in a well-defined, well-managed environment with common goals/incentives it's very likely to flounder. The best incentive is, of course, money.

A good example for me is the gaming mapmaking/modding community. Most of the custom environment map models I've seen for games are crap (specifically the custom edition of Halo for the PC). Too often you get several immature hacks with possibly great creative skills but poor management and teaming skills "collaborating" on a disaster. I see easily 25 poor to mediocre game maps for every good one. As an experiment, I tried a true open source approach to a game map, even posting aspects of my project that most others kept secret, but discovered very quickly that the approach was doomed; one common cause (in lieu of money) that keeps a map team on target and producing a good map is secrecy and the ability to bestow testing rights on a chosen few, creating a cult of sorts. My true open source projecy was supposed to be based more on altruistic goals and apparently that takes the type of team members I was unable to assemble.

That's one example of open source hell, but it applies to every discipline.

That is not to say, however, that all OS projects fail. As I said, the successes are just few and far between in my own experience. Specific to the tablet developer community, there are some earnest hack jobs and some true gems along with various other flavors, and I remain optimistic that Nokia's guidance and firm development foundation will *eventually* bear more fruit. IMO we just need more solid developer teams and fewer "cowboy" efforts... no offense to the cowboys.

This is not to say that there are good, hell, even great developers out there but for the most part they are not seen. If you take a look at the Maemo (I keep coming back to this as this is the only one I know of), you see no cohesiveness. Just a project here or there. Half finished, or in a state that only developer can wade through and use. The N800 will live or die based on useable applications that the common man can use. This is an expensive device that up to now has pretty much limited usability. There should be (here come the flames) some sort of criteria to post your applications to Maemo. It should not just be a wild west free for all enviroment because I for one (speaking only for myself here), do not see any really useful applications. If Open Source is such a godsend to the computing world, why is there no sync applications, why no reliable GAIM type applications. It seems that Maemo exists as an applications dumping ground with little hope of resurrection.

As one poster stated, people get married, divorced, go to jail, etc.... If this is the case then pull the developers app and trash it. Why leave it to take up space and sit in the application grave yard that Maemo is quickly becoming. Also, why not hae a section (maybe I missed it) for 2005, 2006, 2007 and multi-year applications instead of a "post it all and hope it works on your N800" section. I have read in this very forum that users thought they had an app that works only to be told "Oh, wow, you must have the wrong library or the incorrect this or that". Why does it have to be this way. A little self policing would be in order here. If the apps are old, remove them. It can not be that hard.

Even though I'm a long time linux user (~10 years), I tend to agree with the OP. On my home PC I started by building my own linux, later migrated to SUSE, and now use Gentoo. If I don't touch the configuration for a few months after the initial install and then try to upgrade a media player (or some other app), lo and behold: can't upgrade just one package because the whole system is out of date! I'm not convinced that using Ubuntu or something would solve my linux woes. It's simply a pain in the butt to keep a linux system up to date (although it's rock solid if you're happy with the versions of the apps you initially installed.) Everything is in a constant state of change and something is always broken.

I find it's much the same with the N770/N800. I'm afraid to use it for any real useful purpose because I know most if not all of the existing apps are basically beta versions, but worse yet, the OS itself is basically an alpha version. A new OS with more whizz bang features (and hopefully some bug fixes) will be out every 6 months, so why even bother installing apps or entering data? All I use it for is Gizmo calls overseas, because that's the only app that I need to reinstall and it seems to be fairly reliable (although it's buggy as well.)

So I'm beginning to see why one would want something like a Mac for a computer and why something like an iPhone will some day make a lot of sense. At least you can trust Apple to produce something that "just works" and not pull the rug out from under your feet all the time.

Yes, the open source model works to an extent and there are some great apps out there, but the platform you run them on has to be stable before the apps will do you any good.