I don't see anything in any of the quotes you cited that can remotely be considered an attack. :-/

*cough cough* We're supposed to be talking about a software section here *cough* not bickering. Right? Although I do love to see Texrat and GA in action

So, will we be able to upload stuff to Maemo.org from iTT, or is it just one way?

Uploading to Maemo.org, then simply syncing it here, no going back up the other way?

You? ...to challenge me to for alpha status in that role?

It'll be one way only from Maemo to itT.

This thread is about to get closed btw if these attacks continue.

Ah well that's different.


YOU see that, but from my experience most non-techie end users would see things completely differently.

I agree that once you know what you're doing maemo.org's download section is very easy to find and use, and it's even more so if you go directly to it at maemo.org/downloads. That's why I regularly tell newbies about the site in the ITS tutorials.

However, most newbies will probably never see the ITS because Nokia doesn't really advertise it on any end user site. Their end user sites actually give maemo.org prominence, which doesn't make a huge amount of sense to me.

Imagine you know very little about computing. You enjoy using the web on your tablet, but you have no interest in software development. Then open up maemo.org.

Here's what you see:

-The mysterious name "maemo", which is not a name casual users would necessarily be familiar with, because it's not mentioned by the tablet interface at all. It's similar to Nokia's Symbian smartphones, no one knows they're Symbian because nothing in the phone uses that word.

-A menu at the top with options like SDK, Repositories, Documentation etc almost all of which lead to complicated technical pages. Downloads isn't complicated, but pretty much all of the other links are.

-Mysterious headlines like "Ogg Support on Canola2"

-Mysterious announcements like "Qt to be supported in addition to GTK+"

-An events list which consists entirely of programming conferences

-"Open Source Development" in enormous letters

-The site catchphrase "code in your hands"

Maemo.org is NOT a site which can be relied upon to tempt end users into the world of tablet applications. Relying on it reinforces the impression that the tablets are only intended for power users and hackers.

That's not criticism because maemo.org was never meant for end users, some other site should be doing that job.

We shouldn't be seeing maemo.org as a universal tablet site, it's meant for developers and hardcore users. Casual users should get their own official tablet community. If you try and combine the two into one site you'll end up with something that works for neither group.

What puzzles me is that Nokia hasn't put the same resources into a maemo end user site that they have into maemo developer sites. I've e-mailed them about this a fair amount with various suggestions but so far nothing has really happened.


I have done that many many times!

I even did a dedicated tutorial entirely devoted to maemo.org downloads in October 2007 (updated later to take account of OS2008):

http://tabletschool.blogspot.com/200...lling-new.html

But like I said before, I doubt most casual or newbie tablet users ever see the Internet Tablet School because there's no path for them to find out about it.

The only Nokia sites which regularly promote the ITS on their front pages are maemo.org (for deveopers) and WOM World (for power users and journalists). Newbies are unlikely to even know about those sites.

In theory Tableteer has a link too, but it's buried away in a section poorly labelled "explore", and listed along with loads of other less newbie-oriented sites. And the PC version of Tableteer doesn't have any link to the ITS, though it does have a very prominent link to maemo.org.

To clarify, I did not mean to attack any specific poster, nor have I ignored the syndication consensus that seems to only partially address the matters with which Reggie seemed initially concerned.

I do also find the strident resistance to ANY unique downloadable content showing up in ITt as a bit silly. That's my opinion, which which you're welcome to disagree.

My comment, which was admittedly crestfallen in tone, was just that, a general observation based on myriad experiences where extremely competent and well-meaning people demonstrate a subtle but profound misalignment in their interpretation of the underlying principles of a joint challenge.

I see, in re-reading the entire thread, obvious examples of people dismissing a variety of concerns, from what I suppose I'd call both sides of the discussion.

And yes, there are examples of people dismissing work that could serve the interests of end-users of varying degrees of sophistication as shiny or excessively hand-holding in nature. (I've spent real money paying human-factors people in the past. This stuff makes or breaks projects. If you haven't read Tufte, take a weekend, it'll change how you think about some of this stuff. )

(For the record, I have seen other people perhaps unappreciative of the time and effort that developers put in on their (often avocational) work, and dismissing the inconvenience that posting items in two places would likely pause them. We admittedly don't need disincentives to development, or "fragmentation" though I'm skeptical as to how horrible this instance really would be in the grand scheme of things. )

I have no desire to offend anyone, but an ivory tower developer mentality does not win mindshare, and I have little sympathy for people who wonder why their stellar technologies failed in a market after not meeting users on their own ground.


There's a post just above this one that is an excellent presentation of myriad subtle points; all of which when taken together demonstrate some real, constructive criticism as to why maemo.org's downloads section is not the be-all and end-all, no matter how well-intentioned it is. We disregard it at our own peril.

We can wish an end-user community to be different, but just as in any other venture where education and support are necessary, sometimes one must swallow the unpleasant pill (red in this case) in order to mollycoddle, coax and hand-hold people to lead them to a successful situation. It turns out that can even be fun, but not everyone is willing to do it.

I suppose I can sum the distinction up this way...

It's perfectly reasonable to ask someone to search the forums before asking a question, but it's a polite thing to give them the answer.

Lets kill the confusion then:

Maemo.org is and will be the developer site.

ITT and probably various other sites will be the end user sites which will use just the data from maemo.org to provide user friendly content.

Why all the bickering?

It's polite but quite tiresome. At the end noone will answer such questions anymore.

LOL... well, since you made the private message public, here's the entirety of the PM just so others know how "threatening" it was:

That's it. The whole banana.

But we're even, pipeline-- I didn't expect you to wrongfully go off as you did in this thread, nor did I in my wildest dreams consider that you'd call the text above "threatening".

Now... can we get out of the nursery and back to big boy stuff?



EDIT: okay, pipeline, I apologize for whatever I did to make you feel threatened. That was not my intention.

There's the indication that you did indeed either speed-read or ignore some very critical posts here.

The general opposition was not to "ANY". That accusation is overly broad, and you insult many people here with such straw men.

I see by your posts that you're adept with words. Thus my surprise reaction to some of your conclusions. The dialog did not lead up to what you allege.

What went on here was typical in such situations, and there was nothing wrong with ANY of the contributions since, as you very aptly assert, they are all opinions. No one was coerced, bullied or censured in this natural process; people expressed all sorts of ideas and for the most part contributed toward a productive dialog. And in the end, the screaming stopped, the feathers settled back down, and it looked to me like we had indeed arrived at a reasonable solution that took ALL inputs into account.

So while you think the process was silly (), I think coming in rudely at the end with your nonparticipatory analysis and unnecessarily restarting it in confrontational fashion is beyond silly. But hey-- that's just my opinion.

You may characterize it differently, but in the aggregate, that was how it looked to me. The "let them eat cake and theme templates" position notwithstanding.


There's no lack of articulate discourse with this group. There are clearly good folks here, with a wide range of expertise. I suppose that gave rise to my surprise at some of what I've seen.

As regards the dialog, that's an interesting belief, but not my experience.


We arrived at a compromise, that does address some of the issues. Agreed.

I may be a little unusual in that I tend to ascribe serious ownership rights to people who take the time to operate useful discussion fora. I readily admit that while I think it's wonderful for them to solicit input, that in the end, they should be empowered to do what they see fit for the greatest good. When people begin suggesting that content not be included, I tend to become circumspect, as I think the market of ideas will decide in the end what the most useful venues are.


I believe you may be rendering your opinion on an analysis I didn't make. I never said that the process was silly. It would seem that the strawmen are denizens of a number of places.

I support and respect the desire for a collaborative process, the integrity of the collective code base, sane workloads for developers, and growing evangelism for new users.

I stand by my assessment that this thread demonstrates some classic examples of technical group process that may not always serve the original goals, even in the face of settled consensus.

P.S. Texrat, you're clearly insightful about some of these matters, how about addressing the more substantive aspects of my last post? I'm all for being criticized, but I think Krisse's message is a perfect example of the sort of discussion that should take place BEFORE people make decisions.