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johnel is offline johnel
2010-06-13 , 20:27
Posts: 999 | Thanked: 1,117 times | Joined on Dec 2009 @ earth?
#11
When I got my n900 I played with it for a little while. One of my first thoughts was "Cool! What other stuff can I play with?"

Went to the App Manager to see what was out there and then started downloading stuff.

Users take it for granted that other apps are available and expect to "play with stuff".

The last thing you need is to expect users to enable or configure something - reasonable defaults are expected.

I think Nokia are determined to lose the "premium" Smartphone market and seem to think making money from down-loadable software is a bad idea!

Nokia's misunderstanding of the smartphone market is becoming rather funny.
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slender is offline slender
2010-06-13 , 20:34
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#12
Originally Posted by qwerty12 View Post
Not enabling Extras OOTB in MeeGo/Harmattan/whatever it's called is, plainly, an insult towards the community.
Why?

The QA process that maemo.org has now was put in place to prove to Nokia that enabling Extras OOTB would be safe, that only tested software would make it through.
We have just touched iceberg here. After meego devices start going mainstream at full speed I´m a bit afraid that it´s going to be total clusterfck here in testing. You can easily take advantage of it and widgets seem to be one problem.

IMO, it's succeeded: The Testing Squad are good at finding issues re. optification etc. and Venomrush was quick to post about sio2interactive's gaming of the system.
Optification is one of the minor issue here. I´m talking about memory issues that can be noticed after days of usage. Those issues could hit devices performance slowly. First you do not even notice that device start to slow down until eventually you end up rebooting it. Moreover most important issue to spot on this device is problems that releate to powe issues like cpu state wakes etc.

Yes it has worked but do we have enough know-how to spot all the memory or cpu wake up problems when meego hits the shelves and programs start to come in hundreds?

Contrast this to the Ovi store, enabled by default, run by Nokia, where non-optified apps have gotten through a few times.
It has been pretty horrible experience and i think that Nokia should first really see how bad quality of apps hits their image. They have all the resources and capability to handle QA (oh dear that twitter widget and optification problems...). BUT you probably understand that if (and they have) nokia enables extras by default it means that QA is also Nokia´s problem and then they should have permission to remove anything they want immediately from repositories. Right now I think that people take bit too loosely how quality of apps affect to the image of Nokia and Maemo.
Last edited by slender; 2010-06-13 at 20:42.
 

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qgil is offline qgil
2010-06-13 , 20:52
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#13
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we should do A or B. I'm just helping drawing the picture, like Jaffa and others are doing. And a little background: I have invested as much as time as anybody else to have Extras enabled by default in Maemo 5.

Short answer to Jaffa: no matter how you put it and how it goes with Ovi, the fact is that having an official Nokia image released with a community repository supported by default and not controlled directly by Nokia puts more pressure on Nokia and the community.

Ovi publishers agree to certain terms, including the possibility of getting their app removed if Nokia decides so. In the case of Extras everything is based on good faith, from the developers, the maemo.org admins, the council... Until now such good faith has existed and the cases brought in the Maemo 5 context have been handled very well. But nobody knows what will be the context of MeeGo-Harmattan, the community developers, the council members, the maemo.org admins (well, the latter is more predictable). I'm just saying that the relationship is quite unique and delicate, as opposed to the known model of Ovi Store clearly controlled by Nokia with agreed written terms and conditions.
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attila77 is offline attila77
2010-06-13 , 21:08
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#14
Originally Posted by qgil View Post
- Having Extras enabled out of the box has put more pressure in the community QA process, that several times has been criticized as too heavy.

- Having Extras enabled out of the box has put more pressure in cases like emulators, FM Radio, Chromium...

I'm not saying this is good or bad, and I'm not even saying that these problems wouldn't exist if Extras wouldn't be not enabled by default. But there is indeed a link.
Can you elaborate on the link, especially the latter ? It sounds like ’security through obscurity at best’, especially considering how the emulator story got into the limelight. Plus, nothing prevents Nokia from participating in the community repository processes, on a a) policy level, b) expressing concerns about particular packages/thumbing packages down.

As for the QA process being hindered by it, that’s IMO almost ridiculous. All the ’fuss’ about heavy QA was exactly because Extras was interesting to developers as the repository that is available to the broad public by default. Had it not been enabled and been established as a solid source of software, nobody would care and would stick with extras-devel or 3rd party repositories, rendering Extras pretty much pointless, or at best on the level it is on Diablo.

An option would be not to offer Extras enables out of the box but keep promoting great Extras apps in the official Nokia channels, like it has been the case in Maemo 5 with http://maemo.nokia.com/maemo-select/ and others.
This is worse than ghettoisation, it is essentially the death sentence to Extras, as that officially means ’Extras is the home to apps that are so crappy we don’t want them in Nokia channels’ and is on the border of sounding like ’all we want from the OSS dev community is good apps to boost our own channels’, which is really really bad from an OSS perspective. Maemo Select is dead/pointless. Ovi made absolutely no publicly visible progress in accomodating community applications, to the level that we have received ZERO feedback from them. A strong, healthy, independent Extras IS the only viable channel for community apps at the moment. If that is not seen as potential and something to cherish, but just a nuisance and liability, I’m slightly worried about the future of the platform as a bona fide member of the Open Source platform family.
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Jaffa is offline Jaffa
2010-06-13 , 21:40
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#15
Originally Posted by qgil View Post
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we should do A or B. I'm just helping drawing the picture, like Jaffa and others are doing. And a little background: I have invested as much as time as anybody else to have Extras enabled by default in Maemo 5.
Indeed, thanks for your original efforts and discussing it now. However, I do echo Attila's concerns to an extent - that it's not been seen as a commercial benefit to Nokia and "just" a headache is worrying. We are probably putting words in your mouth there, though.

Ovi publishers agree to certain terms, including the possibility of getting their app removed if Nokia decides so. In the case of Extras everything is based on good faith, from the developers, the maemo.org admins, the council...
OK, an obvious answer is "Nokia can remove any app if they say so". Assuming we want to find a ground somewhere other than that extreme (although AFAIK, every time Nokia has requested a package to be pulled, it has) are there any things which you think the community do which would make Nokia happier; and ensure that Extras continued to be enabled as the best place to get a broad range of engaging, quality software?

Explicit terms which developers sign up to would be something you've mentioned; if a developer clicking "I accept" on uploading a package and/or signing up reduces Nokia's legal (rather than brand) concerns, I don't see that as too onerous.

However, I'm just saying that the relationship is quite unique and delicate, as opposed to the known model of Ovi Store clearly controlled by Nokia with agreed written terms and conditions.
BTW, has the Twitter applet been pulled from Ovi? That's the most obvious example of a broken and extremely, and immediately, damaging to the end-user experience in Ovi. What about the unoptified packages which can damage the brand in terms of SSUs?

If these packages had made it through Extras QA (and large unoptified packages almost certainly wouldn't; the speed with which the Twitter applet flaws were noticed suggest it wouldn't either), I think the Council would have made the decision to pull them from the repo.
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qgil is offline qgil
2010-06-13 , 21:56
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#16
Originally Posted by Jaffa View Post
Indeed, thanks for your original efforts and discussing it now. However, I do echo Attila's concerns to an extent - that it's not been seen as a commercial benefit to Nokia and "just" a headache is worrying. We are probably putting words in your mouth there, though.
Well, yes you are.

I'm playing evil's advocate in this Sunday night (in fact Monday here now) as a community member reminding the extra hassle this Extras-enabled-by-default has caused to the community in the form of extra pressure from Nokia. If the posts here reflect the sentiment of the community then this is useful information.

Nokia sees Extras as a benefit more than a worry. This is why it's enabled by default in Maemo 5 (it wasn't before), this is why the MeeGo-Harmattan application manager and security framework know about its existence and this is why we have been pushing the Extras concept (community QA included) to the MeeGo project.

The "just a headache" goes more for the community than for Nokia. I haven't heard anybody at Nokia questioning the current setup, and I will ask about feelings and current situation for MeeGo-Harmattan.

If you think the collateral headaches of being enabled by default are worth considering the benefits then, as said, this is useful information.
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Jaffa is offline Jaffa
2010-06-13 , 21:59
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#17
Originally Posted by qgil View Post
[Words in mouth] Well, yes you are.
Sorry :-)

If you think the collateral headaches of being enabled by default are worth considering the benefits then, as said, this is useful information.
I very strongly believe the benefits outweigh the disadvantages. But then I've not received a C&D letter yet :-/
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ZogG is offline ZogG
2010-06-14 , 06:35
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#18
i think even if there would be no more extras, it wouldn't be a problem to make our own repo for them.
 
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qgil is offline qgil
2010-06-14 , 07:51
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#19
http://wiki.maemo.org/Extras is already the community's "own repo for them", no need to think on a new one.
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evad is offline evad
2010-06-14 , 09:30
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#20
I am probably looking at this from a bystander perspective, but what I see here is that Maemo is clearly transforming from cool and hack'ish mobile distro into more established and "serious" MeeGo OS, that is keen to attract the masses, hence "hack'ish" label isn't very welcome. This is why we get this discussion here: unofficial community powered extras vs. official Nokia's Ovi.

Personally, I wouldn't mind to see Ovi Store as a main source of 3rd party apps, but the trouble in my eyes is that... it hasn't got them. Apps, I mean. In fact, I hate HAM for its slowness, but this is the only way to get something fresh. If I could see extras-approved (aka maemo-select approved) apps straight in Ovi Store, I'd be more than happy to use it more often. But it simply doesn't happen. I'm not the one who answers "why?" question on that, as I'm writing this from bystander pov.

One more thought on QA side of extras. Although I've signed up for testing squad, I admit I didn't put much effort into this. Main reason is that I have my work and personal life aside of Maemo, which clearly isn't helping to get involved more. However I think this is important point - community don't get paid for their involvment, it's their free time when they get into it, hence we can't always expert QA will be as quick and good as we wanted it to be, and facing potential explosion of new apps once MeeGo devices start hitting public, community-powered QA might simply be not enough.

I don't think there's golden solution to this situation, but what I'd definitely would like to see is another step of "promotion" of extras apps to Ovi Store. So the process might look like: devel -> testing -> extras -> ovi, with more paid and dedicated QA testers (probably directly from Ovi) involved in the process. They could hand-pick apps from testing repo and help promote/demote in order to get ball rolling much quicker.

Don't know how T& of Ovi fit in such approach but anyway I see that as an option to consider by both sides.
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