Have you seen the TEDtalk on the paradox of choice?

And I don't know many people (think users) that deviate from using either Windows Media Player or iTunes when their on windows.

I do not think the issue is criticizing developers, maemo.org or the open source concept.

The concept of Free developers, 'doing their own thing' favours diversity and creativity and does (and did for the Tablets) result in new opportunities. It is however essential that an overarching common mission and defined common objectives guide everybody involved including the 'free developers'. Everybody should work towards the same -useful- direction. In this case 'useful' should be related to the end-user, the consumer. Somebody has to buy the stuff !

It's of course up the free developers how they achieve the common objectives and goals.

Senior Members in this community (meaning the people influencing maemo.org and in or around the Nokia team) have done a great job in getting this all up and running (Maemo, ITT and more), supporting newbie’s, developing apps ( ...some media players are really great) etc. A lot has been achieved. But they should come together in what they are trying to achieve.


Some questions must be answered:

Who is in charge: Nokia or the Community ?
- Or to put it otherwise: Who are in the community?
- Please note: There is always somebody in charge in any community !
Are you trying to develop a Maemo OS, or just apps. Or: what ?
For which groups (customers) are your products to be developed ? Kids? Seniors? Office stuff ? Games ? Navigators ? Phones ? Shouldn’t there be some prioritization ?
What about control, maintenance, support of the products ? Please note: development is 20% and control / maintenance / support the other 80 % !

As a mission the Concept op the Walkaround Internet could be a nice start, I think. Should we focus on bringing together the smartphone and small notebook areas? Tablet functionality independent from transport medium (G3 / Wimax / HDSPA etc.), and independent from OS (Limo, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm). ??

I do understand that this all has to be answered in the Maemo Wiki brainstorm (2010 is more important thans the short term part !) and perhaps I should contribute. Time is a problem of course.

Abel.

There is always those that use winamp or a small group that swear to foobar2000. But yes, most go for the two big ones...

Maybe I'm just a paranoid ESR-style bazaar-boosting radical, but when people start talking about defining overarching common missions, I do get a little nervous; something about that makes me think of GNU. And HURD, which should be done any day now...

I'd rather tablet development didn't go down that path.

Bah, can't stand WMP; never really tried iTunes, but don't like what I've seen. I've used winamp classic and foobar2k, and they're both good; but I think a lot of people use the bloated trash that is winamp non-classic (whatever it is they call it).

Oh well, I guess it just shows we don't need a good media player to make 90% of endusers happy.

Yep, i have moved on from winamp to foobar2k when i want to listen to music in windows. But its Linux for me most of the time these days.

It would be good if Ari Jaaksi would post the text of his speech.

I think a few folks are extrapolating too much from those quotes.

I very much hope so. Still: The message always is what people understand, never what you originally said. Communications. And if ppl get it wrong (like the comments on zdnet suggest) then it's probably better for Ari to work on his communication skills rather than to say "you guys are extrapolating too much."

(especially in his position and during a period of time when half of the world and their tablets are suffering from lack-of-news-tension)

Me neither. I am thinkng of a very practical approach with a core from Nokia and add-ons from maemo. The fun stuff so to say. Does Palm do something like that ?

.... And misson statements should -in my view- be 1 sentence, objectives 3 or so paragraphs and goals max 10 lines. Total: 1 page or less

(By the way: ESR ?)

Abel.

One of the nice things about Open Source is the ability to take the code of an existing program and add/amend it. I would agree with the points mentioned above that there are too many media players. Having tried to get a stream working on half a dozen before finding one that worked for just that stream and then finding a Nokia Media coverted AVI would only play in another just seems wrong. The point mentioned above that PC's typically have a few media players may be true but most people stick with just the one and the IT is still showing itself as a tool for geeks and not for Joe Public when one needs different versions of the same idea to do things.

Just tweak the existing code and make it better guys. Stop reinventing the wheel!