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GeneralAntilles's Avatar
GeneralAntilles is offline GeneralAntilles
2008-05-31 , 13:03
Posts: 5,478 | Thanked: 5,222 times | Joined on Jan 2006 @ St. Petersburg, FL
#11
Originally Posted by benny1967 View Post
(In fact, I still wonder why they're closed at all and simply don't trust the whole thing too much.)
In Canola's case, largely for similar reasons to maemo (though I really don't see the commercial reasoning). It was a managerial decision entirely beyond the developers (and one which the developers, as with maemo, attempted to fight).

I'm not sure if you meant the 'unequal players' bit to apply to Canola, but that's at least one case where their contributed code far outweighs the size and significance of their closed code.
Last edited by GeneralAntilles; 2008-12-11 at 09:36.
 
krisse's Avatar
krisse is offline krisse
2008-05-31 , 13:05
Posts: 1,540 | Thanked: 1,045 times | Joined on Feb 2007
#12
Originally Posted by Mythic View Post
Yup, I agree it frightens casual users away. But I do not believe it is due to overly technical content but poor organization of things and "cheap", unelegant design.
Believe me, it's the technical content! :-)

It doesn't matter what layout you use, phrases like "A-GPS support on the N8x0 is coming with Diablo" and "GTK+/GNOME technologies" will scare casual users away.

Casual users have no reason to visit maemo.org, it has absolutely no content they could possibly want except perhaps some of the applications in the download section. The downloads can be syndicated though and placed on a site more suited to casual users.



I think it is not right to turn possible community members away by creating too big gap between a page "for dummies" like tableteer and ubergeek maemo.org.
Who is turning anyone away? Casual users can use Tableteer if they want, and then go on to use Maemo.org if they become more confident with their tablet knowledge.

But most casual users will stay casual users forever. They don't want to know more about the tablets, they just want them to work.

Most casual tablet users will NEVER want to get involved with software development.

How many games console owners know what a library is? How many music player owners know what "codec" means? How many PC owners know what a registry is?

Some do, but the majority don't know and don't want to know either. That's why the official websites for such devices don't mention technical development stuff at all, they just talk about topics that end users would want to know about.


If you take itTalk for example, it is a place where both newbies and developers can coexist peacefully. And both sides of community win on this cooperation.
Where are these newbies? I check the newbie board every day and very few of them turn up. They must exist, but they very rarely post.

How many people are on ITT who don't know what "xterm" or "closed source" or "ogg" means?

The kind of mainstream casual users that the tablets need to survive are generally not using ITT, this site is almost entirely made up of hardcore users. That's not a criticism of ITT or Reggie, he's trying his best to cater for new users, but it's very difficult when there's no proper official user site to drive casual users to places like ITT.

Even on the Newbie forum, most of the posts are stuff like this:

I have been successful in installing xterm, openssh and then "ssh-ing" over to the 770 from my laptop using putty... but only as root. How can I use ssh to connect to my 770 as the default user. Is the default username "user". I see that as the only entry in /home.

That's clearly not anything like a casual user's question, yet the original poster decided it was suitable for the newbie forum.

I don't have anything against hardcore users, it's just we need the casual users as well if the tablets are ever going to be a financially viable product for their manufacturer.
Last edited by krisse; 2008-05-31 at 13:33.
 
Mythic
2008-05-31 , 16:55
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#13
Originally Posted by krisse View Post
Casual users have no reason to visit maemo.org, it has absolutely no content they could possibly want except perhaps some of the applications in the download section. The downloads can be syndicated though and placed on a site more suited to casual users.
Well, doh. I am saying that maemo.org is missing content for casual users, so of course they have no reason to visit maemo.org now. In my original post, I also mentioned they should probably be little bit experienced users (I called it "educated" users for a sudden lack of inspiration), who want to do more things than tablets provide by default.

In your world a causal user is somebody, who wants to just surf and write an email and use skype exactly as configure. In my world it is somebody, who would like to also install addblock, or who is interested to use another IM than google talk. Or they heard from a friend that they can attach a slash disk and they wonder how.

Originally Posted by krisse View Post
Who is turning anyone away? Casual users can use Tableteer if they want, and then go on to use Maemo.org if they become more confident with their tablet knowledge.
You are I have search google for tableteer and the nokia url redirects to os2008 user site, which is close to useless. It provides some links, but it does not provide so many answers.

On the other hand, maemo.org is too complicated at its current look and it does not create a feeling of welcoming community. Do I have to understand all these to use maemo mapper? So even, if I get confident with my tablet, I do not have anywhere to go to search for new inspiration.

Originally Posted by krisse View Post
But most casual users will stay casual users forever. They don't want to know more about the tablets, they just want them to work.
I agree that most users will remain casual foever. However, "just want them to work", is highly subjective. For some it may mean the exact content of tableterr, for some it may mean gpe and abiword and gnumeric. Even if they are going to call it tablet word and tablet excel.

Originally Posted by krisse View Post
Most casual tablet users will NEVER want to get involved with software development.
Nope. That's why we should have a site that is not only about development.

Originally Posted by krisse View Post
Where are these newbies? I check the newbie board every day and very few of them turn up. They must exist, but they very rarely post.
I would say that questions like "where is pim" or "my tablet does not want to boot" appear fairly often.

In my opinion, the maemo community should embrace even users who do not want to be developers. These people do important work to, they evangelize tablets and make more users interested into nokia tablets.
 

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Mythic
2008-05-31 , 17:22
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#14
Originally Posted by benny1967 View Post
being successful doesn't justify being closed.
In the same way, open does not justify being good.

Originally Posted by benny1967 View Post
i dont see the point of offering the infrastructure of a platform like maemo.org to those who could well do without.
Maybe the fact, they want to be part of maemo means they want to be part of community. As GeneralAttila pointed out, sometimes the closeness/openness is beyond the reach of people who feel like a part of community.

Originally Posted by benny1967 View Post
maemo.org isn't all for free. it eats resources. someone pays for it.
Yup, Nokia pays bills for maemo.org, NOT the community.

Originally Posted by benny1967 View Post
i don't see why we should be offering this infrastructure to the closed projects. they chose not to be part of the community, they chose to play their own game, so why offer them free beer at the party?
One more time, now with a better example, thanks: it is not WE, it is NOKIA who offers the beer at a party. They are just nice to ask if they can invite those businessmen to the party also. More people more fun :-) But you do not have to like everybody at a party.
You do not have to talk to them, if you do not want to. But I do not think, we should disallow people to talk to each other. Anyway since when the community decided, that closed software is evil.

Originally Posted by benny1967 View Post
If there were two projects on maemo.org, skype and some new open voip client, I wouldn't want skype to take away one minute of time any community member invests in feedback/bug reports/... from the other, competing, free project.
Who are you, that you feel like deciding what community members should do or not do? Helping skype can mean, that more casual users are happy, the more tablets are sold and nokia has money to pay the bills for maemo.org Or you preffer, an alternative voip client, which you have nowhere to run because nokia has decided to close maemo.org as non profitable?

I strongly believe, that without nokias or other corporate support will maemo stagnate.
 

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qgil's Avatar
qgil is offline qgil
2008-05-31 , 19:58
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#15
Please don't limit your thoughts to the reality of maemo.org today: a site targeted to developers and driven by Nokia. This is why in my blog post the question "Who makes the maemo community" comes in the context of the 100 Days + 2010 Agenda brainstorm.

maemo.org is shifting to a community driven space. How much and how deep depends probably more on you than on Nokia alone. For this reason it is probably the community who will have anyway the initiative to decide what is the target audience wished for maemo.org.

Talking about "casual users" is not very helpful. What about starting with "casual contributors", leaving out of the main scope those only willing to enjoy the device they bought and not interested in any kind of community dynamics.

Also don't worry about the typical commercial projects: they deal with Forum Nokia, an organization whose main purpose is to support commercial developers.

When suggesting the idea of not limiting maemo.org to open source I was thinking more of stating clearly what is a reality today: maemo.org is currently not restricted to open source developers or projects. The platform itself is not 100% open source. Therefore "open source development for Internet Tablets" is not an accurate slogan even today. Besides, all the regular Linux distros have non-free / restricted / multiverse repos anyway, so what's the big deal? Open source should be still a core driver, since (when well executed) it is the Grand Prix of collaboration, and collaboration is proposed as a main driver of maemo.org.

maemo is attracting more and more developers with a non open source development background, mainly coming from Windows, S60 or other mobile platforms. Some (many?) of them are learning and seeing the advantages of the open approach after some time here. Leaving the door really open in this young and innovative platform might serve better the free software agenda at the end...
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Texrat's Avatar
Texrat is offline Texrat
2008-05-31 , 20:17
Posts: 11,700 | Thanked: 10,045 times | Joined on Jun 2006 @ North Texas, USA
#16
Originally Posted by krisse View Post
Maemo.org should not be aimed at casual users at all, because it frightens casual users away. We have to keep casual users away from maemo.org, that site should only really be seen by those interested in software development.
I disagree.

The challenge, IMO, is not to keep casual users out, but to find out how maemo.org might better attract and embrace them.

Partitioning a site into a few different segments is valid I believe.

And a note to Quim: please consider Thanks! in this thread when analyzing input and feedback.
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Mythic
2008-06-01 , 06:02
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#17
Originally Posted by qgil View Post
Talking about "casual users" is not very helpful. What about starting with "casual contributors", leaving out of the main scope those only willing to enjoy the device they bought and not interested in any kind of community dynamics.
Last comment about casual users I believe that even this type of users will sooner or later start to look for something to make better use for their expansive gadget, although it might be just installation of new software. I have no statistic on that, but I would say that most tablets are owned by computer enthusiasts or educated people or whatever we want to call them (certainly my mother is a casual computer user, she would never consider spending money on something to enable her to surf on a bus stop) As much as I wish luck to Nokia with selling tablets, i do not think it will change in close future, maybe something for agenda 2015

When you start looking for new software, you very very likely end up on maemo.org as it has the greatest application catalog for tablets. And then I would re-pharse your comment about closed software developers: maybe they are not part of the community now, but they may get interested and in the end community wins. If we are friendly and easy to understand enough, we might get casual contributors.
 
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benny1967 is offline benny1967
2008-06-01 , 08:02
Posts: 3,790 | Thanked: 5,718 times | Joined on Mar 2006 @ Vienna, Austria
#18
Originally Posted by Mythic View Post
Yup, Nokia pays bills for maemo.org, NOT the community.
Oh! Now this is news. (Did you really think I didn't know?)
Originally Posted by Mythic View Post
Who are you, that you feel like deciding what community members should do or not do?
Right. Who am I to take part in this thread anyway, let alone not share your opinion?

I'm sorry but I don't feel like being treated like this. I'm sure you'll find new friends who will not mind.
 
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benny1967 is offline benny1967
2008-06-01 , 08:17
Posts: 3,790 | Thanked: 5,718 times | Joined on Mar 2006 @ Vienna, Austria
#19
Originally Posted by GeneralAntilles View Post
In Canola's case, largely for similar reasons to maemo (though I really don'r see the commercial reasoning). It was a managerial decision entirely beyond the developers (and one which the developers, as with maemo, attempted to fight).
In the end it's only management decisions. if the management decides tomorrow that canola should be ported to S60 and the maemo branch is dead, then that's it. That's what management means: making decisions. The intentions of developers sure are good (probably even apple's developers *g*), but they hardly count.
Originally Posted by GeneralAntilles View Post
I'm not sure if you meant the 'unequal players' bit to apply to Canola, but that's at least one case where their contributed code far outweighs the size and significance of their closed code.
Yes, the unequal players part would apply to canola as well from my point of view. I wasn't aware, though, that the project did contribute code - I thought it was completely closed, actually. Maybe it's not all black and white and canola is the grey in between. Still, having studied law (long ago ), I prefer to set up abstract rules in advance. The "grey" cases are to be decided afterwards.
Last edited by benny1967; 2008-06-01 at 09:51.
 
Mythic
2008-06-01 , 09:14
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#20
Originally Posted by benny1967 View Post
Oh! Now this is news. (Did you really think I didn't know?)
I am very much sure you had known, yet you made it sounding like somebody is going to eat from your pie. Which, *in my opinion*, is not the case.

Originally Posted by benny1967 View Post
Right. Who am I to take part in this thread anyway, let alone not share your opinion?

I'm sorry but I don't feel like being treated like this. I'm sure you'll find new friends who will not mind.
*sigh* I have not made any comment that you are not entitled to your opinion, regardless of being the same or completely different than mine. If I did I am deeply sorry. (I will blame my insufficient English skills ) I have thought that a point of a discussion is to see things from different points and angles. If we all agreed all the time, we do not need this thread at all, Quim just decides...

Yet, I did not like the comment of yours:

Originally Posted by benny1967 View Post
I wouldn't want skype to take away one minute of time any community member invests in feedback/bug reports/... from the other, competing, free project.
to me it means that the community members should not be allowed to do what ever they want to do with their free time. If they want to support only open software, be it. If they want to support Canola or Skype, be it. If they want to help one day open source projects and the other day closed project, be it. They are smart people to decide themselves, what they want to do. No project is able to take anything from them, they can only give to a project.

Having both open and closed projects means that I (or any casual contributor) can file two bugs on skype (which are important ones for me to get my work done) and when I already am in maemo bugzilla I can file a bug on maemo mapper. If I had to login first to Skype bugzilla (whatever they use) and then there and then there, all systems having different approach how to report an issue... I am going to stop after the second or third report. For me, maemo community should welcome all people, who wants to make maemo base platform and applications better. For you it may be different, keep your opinion and thanks for sharing.
Last edited by Mythic; 2008-06-01 at 09:22.
 
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