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johnel is offline johnel
2010-12-09 , 11:59
Posts: 999 | Thanked: 1,117 times | Joined on Dec 2009 @ earth?
#91
The way I see it:

Maemo is here, now, stable, many apps and mature.
This means any software the community develop can be run on the n900 now, source code is available and actually working.

MeeGo is in future, work-in-progress, no apps and hardware support is incomplete.
This means n900 implementation is not practical for every-day use, questions over Nokia implemenation (e.g. how much will be closed-source)

Let's suppose that people start writing open-source versions of the stuff in maemo and is ready for everyday use.

Let's suppose when Meego is "formally" released we discover some apps are closed-source.

Let's suppose Nokia release the "next-gen" Meego device and make the same decisions for "first-gen" meego devices as for the n900.

E.g. Nokia: "Meego 1.5 will obsolete by YouGo 1.0. We will endeavour to use your old meego device as a reference platform but will not be supported. Due to third-party and licence agreements the source code will not be available for Nokia developed software".

Nokia continue as they have before and that lovely shiny device you own now looks a little redundant.

At least with the community-written software "developed way back in the days of Maemo5/n900" the source is available and people will be able to keep porting the software to other devices and keep up with the pace of technology.

Imagine mohammadAG's media player running on the n900 and everyone enjoying contributed enhancements (e.g. gapless playback). Imagine Nokia release a meego device and people discover the media player is buggy and keeps crashing or does not support OGG files.

Just install mohammadAG's media player instead.

Finally we would have some future-proofing of our software collection and means no matter what "iteration" of device you own at least the software can benefit from years of refinement, improved quality and more features.

I mean honestly, this community has been through more reboots than The Matrix!

(Except Nokia haven't learned anything after each one)

(And Carrie-Anne Moss is not in it)

(And no bullet-time)

(you know what I mean)
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Last edited by johnel; 2010-12-09 at 12:02.
 

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Stskeeps is offline Stskeeps
2010-12-09 , 12:20
Posts: 1,671 | Thanked: 11,478 times | Joined on Jun 2008 @ Warsaw, Poland
#92
Originally Posted by johnel View Post
MeeGo is in future, work-in-progress, no apps and hardware support is incomplete.
This means n900 implementation is not practical for every-day use, questions over Nokia implemenation (e.g. how much will be closed-source)

Let's suppose that people start writing open-source versions of the stuff in maemo and is ready for everyday use.

Let's suppose when Meego is "formally" released we discover some apps are closed-source.
Any MeeGo reference application is open but Nokia's applications in 'Nokia MeeGo' are very likely closed. Anything in Trunk would be OSS (some artwork not, due to trademark stuff, but easily replacable)
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Last edited by Stskeeps; 2010-12-09 at 12:24.
 

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pelago is offline pelago
2010-12-09 , 14:13
Posts: 2,121 | Thanked: 1,540 times | Joined on Mar 2008 @ Oxford, UK
#93
Originally Posted by qgil View Post
The developer community can contribute to community projects under development with a good chance to become a top notch media player, a top notch calendar, etc. The frameworks and APIs are all there - I would argue that the candidates as well.
Sometimes a developer doesn't want to write a whole calendar or media player or file manager or web browser from scratch, and just wants to fix a little bug or add a little feature to the existing Nokia-developed one. I understand that Nokia might want to keep these closed-source initially, but once they've lost interest in them, I think they should open them.
 

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Jaffa is offline Jaffa
2010-12-09 , 14:28
Posts: 2,535 | Thanked: 6,681 times | Joined on Mar 2008 @ UK
#94
Originally Posted by pelago View Post
Sometimes a developer doesn't want to write a whole calendar or media player or file manager or web browser from scratch, and just wants to fix a little bug or add a little feature to the existing Nokia-developed one. I understand that Nokia might want to keep these closed-source initially, but once they've lost interest in them, I think they should open them.
I agree with both points, but opening them consists of a number of steps: it's not just throwing the code over the wall:
  • Has it been cleared by Legal?
  • Does it expose any internal/company confidential information? (In particular, in the build system)
  • Does Nokia have the right to open the source code up; or is some potentially owned by a third party?
  • Has it been reviewed for any inappropriate comments in the source?
  • ...

So releasing existing apps will cost Nokia real time & money; despite how sensible it seems to be (and I'd love to fix one or two bugs rather than help Mohammad in the effort to port the existing media player to Qt in an open source way)
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geneven is offline geneven
2010-12-09 , 15:16
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#95
Originally Posted by Jaffa View Post
I agree with both points, but opening them consists of a number of steps: it's not just throwing the code over the wall:
  • Has it been cleared by Legal?
  • Does it expose any internal/company confidential information? (In particular, in the build system)
  • Does Nokia have the right to open the source code up; or is some potentially owned by a third party?
  • Has it been reviewed for any inappropriate comments in the source?
  • ...

So releasing existing apps will cost Nokia real time & money; despite how sensible it seems to be (and I'd love to fix one or two bugs rather than help Mohammad in the effort to port the existing media player to Qt in an open source way)
It's a good point, but to me it's almost funny that these apps that are in general not that good are so well protected. It's like keeping dog biscuits in a safety deposit box.
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MohammadAG is offline MohammadAG
2010-12-09 , 17:31
Posts: 2,473 | Thanked: 12,265 times | Joined on Oct 2009 @ Jerusalem, PS/IL
#96
Originally Posted by pelago View Post
Sometimes a developer doesn't want to write a whole calendar or media player or file manager or web browser from scratch, and just wants to fix a little bug or add a little feature to the existing Nokia-developed one. I understand that Nokia might want to keep these closed-source initially, but once they've lost interest in them, I think they should open them.
Indeed, something like this should be easy to add to the stock media player:


As Jaffa said, any contributions are welcome, gitorious page is again, here: http://gitorious.org/qt-mediaplayer/mediaplayer
 

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qgil is offline qgil
2010-12-09 , 17:51
Posts: 3,105 | Thanked: 11,088 times | Joined on Jul 2007 @ Mountain View (CA, USA)
#97
Originally Posted by lardman View Post
Ok, so that is useful information. Out of interest, what about the Meego reference media players, are they not considered worth using/working on?
Of course they are worth, but in your previous email you seemed to have some trouble with them so I just proposed an alternative.

Originally Posted by nicolai View Post
Why nokia can not adopt this for its own products?

In my opinion, developing and producing an open OS based, open
community supported device and deliver it with closed source application is a big mistake.
The OS development is happening at MeeGo and there you have a collection of open source applications being developed as well. It's up to vendors to take these, take other free software apps or take none.

When it comes to product development the guys deciding on the Nokia investments and the plans to convert them into benefits conclude that having a Nokia proprietary layer is better for business than not having it. Looking at the market and at the business results of companies shipping devices with 100% free software I can't deny that they have a point.

And note that some of the pre-installed apps in Maemo 5 are open source or have a relatively thin closed UX layer on top of open application engines. So it's not that black and white either.


Originally Posted by ZogG View Post
So where is all Qt and multiplatform porting between symbian/maemo/meego thing?
The current situation is that you have Qt 4.7 in Maemo and MeeGo, still Qt 4.6 in Symbian and you also have a recent Nokia announcement saying that the company strategy is to focus on Qt, Qt Quick and HTML 5. Qt Quick is precisely the main difference between Qt 4.6 and 4.7. Once Symbian integrates Qt 4.7 with the corresponding wider support of Qt Mobility the cross-compatibility promise will be fundamentally there. Looking at the Qt roadmap it looks like Qt 4.8 (expected next year) will bring the full materialization of this promise.
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lemmyslender is offline lemmyslender
2010-12-09 , 19:07
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#98
Originally Posted by qgil View Post
Originally Posted by ZogG View Post
So where is all Qt and multiplatform porting between symbian/maemo/meego thing?
The current situation is that you have Qt 4.7 in Maemo and MeeGo, still Qt 4.6 in Symbian and you also have a recent Nokia announcement saying that the company strategy is to focus on Qt, Qt Quick and HTML 5. Qt Quick is precisely the main difference between Qt 4.6 and 4.7. Once Symbian integrates Qt 4.7 with the corresponding wider support of Qt Mobility the cross-compatibility promise will be fundamentally there. Looking at the Qt roadmap it looks like Qt 4.8 (expected next year) will bring the full materialization of this promise.
Is this meant to imply that Maemo will get QT4.8 sometime next year? Or do you mean the "full materialization" will be between Symbian and MeeGo? It's a bit unclear (intentionally I'm sure) as to what you are trying to say.

*edit* I only ask, because IMHO based on history (here and elsewhere), vague statements are generally meant to subdue and pacify complaints while not promising anything. So my immediate suspicion is that Maemo won't get QT4.8 and will never benefit from the "full materialization" of cross compatibility.
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Last edited by lemmyslender; 2010-12-09 at 19:13.
 
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tso is offline tso
2010-12-09 , 19:51
Posts: 4,783 | Thanked: 1,253 times | Joined on Aug 2007 @ norway
#99
Originally Posted by lma View Post
The engine is open, the rest is an exercise left to the reader ;-)
Would try, if i did not need to setup what amounts to a parallel linux install to compile for maemo (that is, if it is even possible to compile a microb lib out of firefox these days).
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pycage is offline pycage
2010-12-09 , 20:27
Posts: 3,404 | Thanked: 4,474 times | Joined on Oct 2005 @ Germany
#100
Originally Posted by qgil View Post
The developer community can contribute to community projects under development with a good chance to become a top notch media player, a top notch calendar, etc. The frameworks and APIs are all there - I would argue that the candidates as well.
You're neglecting the fact that Maemo5 is a very hostile environment for such apps. You have to fight your way around a lot of artificial restrictions the OS imposes on 3rd party apps (heck, there is even a hardcoded whitelist on the device of apps the OS trusts and doesn't impose restrictions on: the closed source Nokia apps that come preinstalled).
E.g. your app gets no sound in silent mode, there'll be audio stuttering when pushing the power button or locking the device, or the OS simply decides to give your app no CPU cycles, making it look jerky.
You're forced (!) to use the Maemo5 frameworks and APIs to get around that, and those usually perform poorly and don't have useful documentation, either. As if that was not enough poorly written background tasks kicked in for no apparent reason, taking even more CPU resources away from your application.
I fought all that way along and it was really frustrating at times. Add to that the non-existance of documentation when it comes to Maemo-internal stuff, and not getting much help from Nokia employees either.

Developing for Maemo4 and earlier was fun, but developing for Maemo5 was a struggle. Hopefully, it will become fun again with MeeGo.
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Last edited by pycage; 2010-12-09 at 20:30.
 

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