/me buys elephant gun

As someone who came to this community looking for help, take it from me, you can do it. I spent my time asking questions and learning, writing howto's to be helpful. I really love the title of this thread, it really embodies the community spirit that is found here at ITT. I have been truly lucky to be a part of this community, and I can't wait for fremantle and beyond.

Viva La Community!!

i've been here now for the last 12 months.

I have been working hard at learning everything I can about this platform and the people involved within it.
I speak to people about all sorts of subjects, things that I think about, things that I like, things that I'm good at and things that I'm bad at.

There are a lot of extremely intelligent people sitting around poking at these devices, each with their own skills and talents.
We have people great with documentation, who shine at presentation, some are good at hardware, others know how to fine tune a distro and make it purr!

Theres people writing graphics libraries and who excel at packaging and porting, theres app maintainers and managers and we have diplomats and engineers and in the middle of this we have normal joe bloggs users.

They are far too numerous to mention, but you can bet your *** I've spoken to and discussed improvements and modifications and future directions of development with most of you.

The one common thing we have is a desire to use our devices.

Most of us have paid good money for these things, and I've seen a lot of disappointed faces around at the outcome and comparisons with other models.

The money we have each spent is about the same as a console gaming system and we want to get the most out of it we can.

I'm sure a lot came here thinking the software ecosystem would be great - just look around at linux on the desktop, there's thousands of packages and people getting involved left right and centre!

The reality is that most of those ported packages simply do not work well on this device.

Whether its the form factor, or the app UI or the speed or just general difficulties, its rare to find a shining beacon of lasting amazement (webkit+numpty+any apps I dont know aside) to see ported apps struggle along pains me.

Don't get me wrong, its good and cool to see some mega monster application run on the device, but talking about startup times in the 10s of seconds and lag and all the other associated portage/display/ui problems takes the benefits away.

In the maemo wiki we have documentation and specs and best practices for numerous simple applications and tasks (we need more) which we thing will work.

I would like people from other linux communities to come to us for ideas, nokia innovated first and gave us a platform - its up to the maemo community to make the most of it.
They have told us what's to come and I for one cannot wait, it sounds amazing!

We should be old masters at touch devices now, we know how applications *should* work on them, we have had long enough to learn everything about them.

Apps which we can build specifically for maemo.

I want this whole platform to shine!

As my wife says, yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift, that's why its called the present!

Use it to the best of your ability, or at least try to have some fun!!

This is not about "Nokia willing to discuss about community". It's about me, a community member, willing to stir some discussion about how to manage gaps, overlaps and efficient collaboration among peers. If some people don't see that a Nokia employee can speak and act as a pure community member then they have to see more.

Also as a community member, I don't see what Nokia device roadmaps have to do at all with this. Those devices, the innovation they bring and their performance in the market might indeed influence the size and the aims of the community. But a community can be well or bad organized with any size and any aims. And I'm talking about the community we have today.


Thanks! Since I still want to keep this thread on topic, I will answer in the threads where those answers are more on-topic.

> (1) Reassure us (in concrete terms, not just with soothing words) that
> the death of the "Internet Tablet" label doesn't mean that the device
> will lose it's strength as the current best pocketable internet tablet.

Answered at New name for internet tablet.

> For example, knowing that the screen resolution, screen size and
> included browser are no worse than the current ones would be
> enough.

Answered at Maemo 5 Reveals its Features.


> (2) Reassure us (in concrete terms, not just with soothing words) that
> the "touch UI without a notion of 'focus'" won't degrade the usability
> of the device with existing Linux software that needs a focus. After all,
> it's a Linux device and we need existing Linux software to run well.

Please open a new thread sharing your concerns and giving examples of applications you fear that will be less usable with Maemo 5. Or don't worry before the Maemo 5 UI is released.

For what is worth, portability and alignment with mainstream Linux are high criteria in Maemo, as well as usability of the software running in the platform (but I reckong this might sound to you as soothing words).


> (3) Tell us as something substantial about the form factor.
> Something like this would be enough: "There will be a device with a
> keyboard. There might also be a tablet, and might also be a device
> with a form factor not seen before. They will all be pocketable,
> although larger than a cellphone." And dammit, if there's not going
> to be a D-pad, just tell us will you, and let us get on with coping with
> it. Obviously all this stuff has already been decided. Can't you just let
> a junior staffer leak the concept video? It seemed to work well for the
> 5800.

Answered at What we do realistically see in the RX-51.


> If you started to stress all the stuff that Nokia knows and is
> coming, of course that would be something entirely different and
> quite wonderful.

Wonderful for who? As said, device announcements exist for a reason.

Ideas to improve the software roadmap are welcome, in a new thread. Specially anything concerning open source.

If you really want to discuss the idea of Nokia having open device roadmaps and plans please start a new thread. Be prepared to discuss about how the IT industry works and what economic model would you propose to make happy not only the developers but also the sales and the stakeholders that bring the money to fund the device programs you want to open.

This, sir, is known as ********. Sorry if I offended you, just stating a fact.

No offence taken. Which bit's the ********? Care to make an actual argument? ;-)

It doesn't really matter how other communities are faring, as it's our own we're concerned with here. So let's set aside the competitive aspect and look at it this way instead: Do you agree that the Maemo Community may not be living up to its full potential? and that it could be much more productive and cohesive?

I suspect you do, which is the point Jaffa's addressing. Knee-jerk reactions aside, what can we do to make things better?

I soooo wanted to stay out of this thread - because of where it evolved, not because of the original topic. But I'm weak...


See, I'm not really the center of the developers' community. I don't code. I file bugs every now end then, contributed to the Wiki (but rarely), even less often provide a translation or two.... I see myself as an 'informed consumer' more than anything else. So my role is more that of an observer.

What I see from my lookout is interesting:
I would have expected that Maemo attracts a lot of people who simply port existing applications and bring them to "Extras". Some of them would move on to write genuine new Maemo software. And then maybe one or two would fiddle with the platform itself, apply mysterious kernel patches that make the N800 fly, bring us KDE or Debian and allow me to boot from SD. Ratio 85:12:3, porters:authors:system gurus.
Accordingly, I would have expected this community to be full of discussions about Debian packaging, uploading to extras, full of coders trying to find translators and people to write the help text... All of this that never ever affects Nokia and the way Nokia handles the platform.

In fact, I would not only have expected that, I would have hoped for that. Software is what makes the world go round, and what's easier for a start than to port all the existing software so we have something to improve?

In reality, it seems to me (and again, I'm a consumer, an observer) that a majority of the developers here is fascinated by the platform itself and hacking it (in terms of getting the most out of it, pushing its boundaries). While this is really cool because it shows what can be done, there's this unanswered question of "if they can run KDE, why couldn't they provide an application that does gamma correction and red eye removal on my photos"? From a consumers' perspective, I'm still missing some very basic applications.

Why this post in this thread?

Because I think that a lot of the tension and negative feelings would magically disappear if we had the 85:12:3 ratio i described above. People who "only" port a simple painting application will not be affected by kernel rollouts via SSU. They also won't get frustrated because certain parts of the system are still not open. If confronted with a thread like this one, they might simply pick it up and try to better coordinate the way to share their knowledge or avoid doing the same work in parallel.

The point is: There's an amazing lack of such people in the Maemo world. It seems like Nokia attracted the brightest and most gifted guys who took the platform apart and put it together upside down. But something (and I have no idea what it is) prevents those with less knowledge, those who "only" (OMG, what am I saying here?) can port existing packages, to join in in large numbers.

The effect is that

• there's still a remarkable lack of software
• more important: everything related to the "developer-community" tends to pick up nasty anti-Nokia dynamics because in relation there's so many developers who are really affected by some of Nokia's failures.

I wonder how to attract those porters and coders who'd fill the gap and wouldn't bang their heads against Nokia's walls.

What organization is there in any of the "communities" mentioned, application writing needs no organization, since every application is almost completely independent of others. I think that IT has about the same amount of software, relative to the number of its users.

The organization of the community is needed in platform development, but that is irrelevant on the other platforms, since the "community" is not invited to be involved in that.