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ysss is offline ysss
2009-08-15 , 13:32
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#41
It's more about motivation\objective.

CMIIW, most open source developments start for the following reasons:
- Scratch their own (individual or collective) itch.
- Compete against commercial offerings that are deemed too: dominant, important, monopolistic or 'bad\evil'.

Whereas a commercial development are there to fill a certain users' needs (demand). They have to identify this for them to properly monetize it.

So this is what I meant by the prior 'user driven' comment.
 

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YoDude is offline YoDude
2009-08-15 , 14:02
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#42
EDIT: It took awhile for me to compose this post so forgive me if the quote has already been address or is no longer relevant..

Originally Posted by silvermountain View Post
Point is that there is a multitude of applications that are developed to 60-70%, being posted about and discussed and used by many. Then..nothing.

There is an another slew of applications that works well to 95% but with an annoying bug. Developer is gone.

Do I have to use them? No - but sometimes they are the only way to get an application for a particular purpose on the NIT.

Would I have preferred ONE application developed by company X and paid $25 bucks for it rather than four applications that ends up unfinished? Yes. Thing is I also love the community development spirit and to try out new applications - I just wish that there was a mechanism to ensure some level of continuity/contingency of community developed app. Sure open source but honestly that seems to be applicable in these situations in rather rare cases.

It just feels that it's a constant playground with players that gets bored and moves on - and a 'host' [Nokia] that is not willing to provide a) updates to the existing applications or b) new developments.

I'm a NIT user just like you. Granted only with close to 3 months of NIT experience and ZERO Unix experience before I came here. My views are just as valid and I would not be surprised if my frustration is shared by others like me.



No but I speak Swedish and lived in Helsinki for a year.


Sorry but I stopped reading your post after that as I don't think there is a common platform.
Wow! In one paragraph you, (imho) correctly assert the validity of your views but then end the post with the statement that implies if you don't agree with someone, you stop reading a post because their view is not valid.

***

It all comes down to expectations, fulfillment, and perceived value I suppose.

I was attracted to the hardware, simple as that. I have a company supplied phone that I had figured out how to BT tether to and have a home WiFi broadband connection.

5 years ago I thought Nokia meant just S40 phones in which I had no interest. I drank the J2ME kool-aid and thought Motorola had a lock on it. (boy was I wrong )
HP offered a handheld that had the H/W I needed so I bought an iPAQ 4250 and thought that I was good to go @ $400+.

Wrong!

It came with WinMo 2003 installed but no real web browser. That would be extra from a M/S pre-approved app store called Handango.

No way to easily launch apps from the home/today screen, again extra.

No way to view office docs without first converting them... extra.

No way to unload opened programs from memory... extra.

With the purchased browser, no way to tweak slow loading pages, no JAVA, no flash... extra, extra, extra.

Add a decent file manager, MP3 player, PDF viewer... extra, extra, extra.


After 9 months of use I had racked up another $300+ buying extras and was still not happy with it. I spent an additional $200 for a BT GPS receiver and TomTom navigation to run on it but the BT stack could not handle concurrent connections with my phone and the receiver very well. No worry though, that will all be fixed in the next generation of WinMo.

Woo Hoo! My troubles will all be over for another $100 more or less for the upgrade.

Wrong again!

Even though the OS continued to improve with the attention of a large corporation like M/S, the dang upgrade required more onboard memory than my then 1 year old, state of the art device had. I would need to spend another $500 on new hardware.

I didn’t invest anything more in the old H/W because I couldn’t. As soon as the upgraded OS was released, development stopped on the apps I had purchased and went into newer versions that required more memory.

***

Enter the N800 in January ’07…

My N800 took half the time to set up even with the Linux (new to me) learning curve. The apps were free and available in repositories reachable by the device wherever there is internet access. Most of the original apps still needed polish however, since that time…

The OS has evolved and had 3 or 4 major upgrades… no charge.

Personal Menu, Personal Launcher, OMWeather upgrades… no charge.

Major apps like MaemoMapper and Canola continue to improve with user contributions to the code…

And, when a new OS ships that can’t run on this h/w, a user contributed OS called MER will be available with limited support from the manufacturer.

Over the past two and a half years after the original purchase, the costs to me to operate and develop my N800 into a useful appliance have been free… as in free beer, btw.

With the conventionally marketed iPAQ I spent $900+ that I will never see again.
The N800 I use every working day.

What is it that you expect from your NIT?


Addendum: I lied about not seeing anything out of the purchase of the iPAQ. I just purchased an N810 from a member for $150 as a second device and found that my old iPAQ soft sleeve fits it pretty well
 

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nwerneck is offline nwerneck
2009-08-15 , 14:44
Posts: 304 | Thanked: 233 times | Joined on Jul 2009 @ São Paulo, SP, Brasil
#43
Originally Posted by ysss View Post
most open source developments start for the following reasons:
- Scratch their own (individual or collective) itch.
- Compete against commercial offerings that are deemed too: dominant, important, monopolistic or 'bad\evil'.

Whereas a commercial development are there to fill a certain users' needs (demand). They have to identify this for them to properly monetize it.
I'm not sure it's so simple. Some companies also have itches to scratch too, and that often results in consumers being forced to pay more to gain less than they could win.

Companies often create exclusivity contracts, for example. They do things to build demand so they can sell a fish they already have... It's not just the liberal (I refer to the classic economy theory) naive dream of market demands being filled. Software is not some commodity as steel or coffee.

For example, why is it soooo difficult for large companies such as Adobe to release Linux versions of their programs? Do you really think it is just that the demand is not large enogh?

Profit driven is what many companies are. That does not imply consumers (and even employees!) will get the best possible products and life quality.

PS: don't think I haven't noticed your use of the backslash character, sir!! '\' is a windows thing!!! this is taboo!!!!!!!
Last edited by nwerneck; 2009-08-15 at 14:47.
 

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ysss is offline ysss
2009-08-15 , 15:12
Posts: 4,384 | Thanked: 5,524 times | Joined on Jul 2007 @ ˙ǝɹǝɥʍou
#44
Originally Posted by nwerneck View Post
I'm not sure it's so simple. Some companies also have itches to scratch too, and that often results in consumers being forced to pay more to gain less than they could win.
Yes, and customers can vote with their moeny. And as long as there are paying customers, there will be enough motivation for competing firms to fill this niche if the existing solution are deemend unworthy.

Companies often create exclusivity contracts, for example. They do things to build demand so they can sell a fish they already have... It's not just the liberal (I refer to the classic economy theory) naive dream of market demands being filled. Software is not some commodity as steel or coffee.
'Build demand'? Such as?
Actually, software IS being commoditized with the advent of open standards and open source solutions.

For example, why is it soooo difficult for large companies such as Adobe to release Linux versions of their programs? Do you really think it is just that the demand is not large enogh?
The demand is most definitely much lower than Windows and OSX. Other than that, it's probably deemed as uncharted territory that is still not worth exploring due to the potential return.

Profit driven is what many companies are. That does not imply consumers (and even employees!) will get the best possible products and life quality.
It was never implied.

PS: don't think I haven't noticed your use of the backslash character, sir!! '\' is a windows thing!!! this is taboo!!!!!!!
I'm on OSX. I also have windows, solaris and linux machines.
Last edited by ysss; 2009-08-15 at 15:21.
 
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Texrat is offline Texrat
2009-08-15 , 16:24
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#45
The interesting thing about dialogs like this one is that many posts contain points with which I agree along with points with which I diametrically disagree... and yet so far no outright slugfests.

Carry on!
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nwerneck is offline nwerneck
2009-08-15 , 16:50
Posts: 304 | Thanked: 233 times | Joined on Jul 2009 @ São Paulo, SP, Brasil
#46
Originally Posted by ysss View Post
Yes, and customers can vote with their moeny.
I alway prefer to vote with ballots.

Originally Posted by ysss View Post
And as long as there are paying customers, there will be enough motivation for competing firms to fill this niche if the existing solution are deemend unworthy.
Not so simple. Weren't you previously saying exactly that we must cease to be a niche to become some kind of iPhone killer? Are niches viable or not? How can minorities survive in this cold world?

Originally Posted by ysss View Post
'Build demand'? Such as?
One simple and positive example is advertisement, marketing. Good innovative designing, branding... This kind of stuff helps you build demand for your products from nothing.

But there are negative techniques. Dramatic example: murder the rivals. Arson. Buying the other companies and shutting them out. Killing elephants with AC electricity (Edison actually did this, decades ago of course.)

Altough rare, we see some of this things (not the illegal ones) happen in the floss world sometimes. For example, the Ubuntu advertisement that implies that Debian users are not human beings.

Originally Posted by ysss View Post
Actually, software IS being commoditized with the advent of open standards and open source solutions.
I sure hope so. But I fell we still live too much surrounded by things such as difficulty to open the popular MS Office files, or the patent issues around GIF and MPEG while formats such as PNG, OGG and OpenOffice files have such a hard time being accepted by the big bad companies.

Originally Posted by ysss View Post
The demand is most definitely much lower than Windows and OSX. Other than that, it's probably deemed as uncharted territory that is still not worth exploring due to the potential return.
And on the meantime all strange people will be just left out in the cold.

There are cases of companies that almost had Linux versions of their applications released, but eventually gave up. It is not always just a decision regarding demands and costs. There's a lot of behind the scenes decisions between companies going on. Call me paranoid.

Originally Posted by ysss View Post
I'm on OSX. I also have windows, solaris and linux machines.
I didn't imply you don't.

Hey, I agree something can and must be done to make the floss world more amicable to new users, and specifically to enhance the development of Maemo apps. But I don't think it's just a matter of 'capitalizing' stuff, or cloning Apple's model.

I actually don't mind if this happens, as long as I can opt for buying a virgin machine and putting strictly libre stuff there. No jailbreaking needed. I'm not sure yet how do I hurt the other users by wanting that. Why can't we be friends??
 

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ysss is offline ysss
2009-08-15 , 17:07
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#47
@nwerneck: where exactly did I say that Nokia\Maemo community should herd themselves to a scenario where they can make an 'iphone killer'? or even if such thing is a good thing?

where did I say if it's a matter of 'capitalizing' stuffs or cloning apple's model?
 
GeraldKo is offline GeraldKo
2009-08-15 , 17:43
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#48
I think there is an unstated concern underlying Silvermountain's posts that some of the subsequent posters are ignoring.

AFAIK, NITs are unique in the following way. Other near-totally-open Linux installations are on generic hardware that wasn't built for Linux. (I'm excluding, for example, Android and embedded Linux as not "near-totally-open".) The deep-into-FOSS posters are accustomed to servers and desktops and laptops -- machines that would be built or could be assembled even if Linux sucked or had too little software to interest many "mere users."

The unique issue here is that if Maemo and the software that runs on it does not attract enough users, then the hardware itself disappears. That doesn't just mean the loss of the hardware but the loss of the ability to have an open-source environment on such nice hardware. There is no corresponding threat to Linux on PCs. None of us are able to build a pocket-sized Linux computer like we can build a desktop PC. As a result, "FOSS purism" is possibly a threat to NITs in a way that it isn't a threat to Linux/FOSS in general.

I don't get that Silvermountain is overall disappointed in the experience, but sees holes in the offerings and support and wishes not only that it were better for himself (you can't argue with such a wish, even if you find the NIT a continually renewing Christmas present) but that it were robust enough to ensure a big enough following to make it worthwhile for Nokia to keep building us these things.
 

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Texrat is offline Texrat
2009-08-15 , 17:51
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#49
Gerald, that was an absolutely beautiful summary IMO and I hope it will serve as a critical demarcation point in this discussion.

Time to breathe, people, and reflect.
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zerojay is offline zerojay
2009-08-15 , 18:23
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#50
Originally Posted by GeraldKo View Post
The unique issue here is that if Maemo and the software that runs on it does not attract enough users, then the hardware itself disappears. That doesn't just mean the loss of the hardware but the loss of the ability to have an open-source environment on such nice hardware. There is no corresponding threat to Linux on PCs. None of us are able to build a pocket-sized Linux computer like we can build a desktop PC. As a result, [I]"FOSS purism" is possibly a threat to NITs in a way that it isn't a threat to Linux/FOSS in general.
If, by "the hardware itself disappears", you mean the tablets themselves, yes, that's possible... but ARM has been around since 1983 and is more popular than ever with a good 90-95% of mobile hardware using it. Even if Nokia never puts out another tablet ever again, it doesn't mean Maemo dies. It just means that it'll mutate to work in other places... of course, assuming people are motivated enough to do so.

So while I agree with you, I think you're slightly overstating the threat of that happening.
Last edited by zerojay; 2009-08-15 at 18:33.
 

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