I have been asked to interview Dr. Ari Jaaksi, Vice President of Nokia, in a "Maemo Devices/Maemo Community Face-off". I have been told that the "[f]ocus of the dialog should be on how the community interacts with Nokia and how Nokia sees the value of the community."

It seems to me that a dialog with a very highly-placed Nokia representative about community would be very weird if there was no community input into my side of the discussion.

I see this talk as having three or four sections.

1. Early days, the 770, Nokia goes OSS
2. N800, N810, development of Maemo
3. Summit '08 (Fremantle and new device specs) to Summit '09 (present)
4. Future

My rough outline will start in the days of the 770, when Nokia first jumped into Open Source, and then move through the years of the N800 and N810, with a final section on "what now?" which will focus on Fremantle and future plans.

I want to ask about Nokia's take on the Linux community when they first started exploring OSS, and how much friction there was internally as the Maemo department/unit came into existence. What kind of culture clashes did they see? What did they expect would happen when they released their one-of-a-kind product (not a phone, running Linux)? Did the community teach them anything in those early days?

I am also curious about the relationship of Nokia to its community through the last few years, as they dealt with the inherent cathedral-vs-bazaar tensions of Linux. I think they understood that Linux brings a developer community with it. But, did they expect the enthusiast community that grew around their tablets? (I think not; they had mailing lists for developers, but no forums for users.) Were there any surprises along the way?

Finally, I want to talk about the current generation of software and (hopefully, eventually) hardware, and the future of Maemo and the community. What is Maemo's current strategy regarding open source and community involvement? What kind of problems have they seen as they try to implement their strategy? What successes have they seen? As Nokia takes Maemo mainstream, now and in the future, how do they see the community changing, and how do they plan to adapt?

I'm particularly interested in how recent announcements are going to impact the community and Nokia's interaction with it. What will happen as Nokia teams up with Intel? What about the switch to QT across Symbian and Maemo platforms?

When formulating your questions, please don't phrase them like accusations or demands, and always find the community angle.

For instance, one of the big recent discussions on the forums has been about the lack of a D-Pad on the allegedly leaked N900 specs. If you want me to ask a question about this, don't write, "Why didn't you put a D-Pad on the new device?!" but instead, ask, "Comments from Nokia representatives in the forums suggest that, up until now, a focus group approach has been used to get feedback regarding new device designs. This has led to some heated discussions in the forums about missing features such as the directional pad. Do you see any change in the focus group approach now that Maemo Devices will be designing hardware? Will there be any more community involvement in these designs?"

I also expect that everyone will be eager to contribute questions about the recent changes in maemo.org, Fremantle, Harmattan, the N900, etc., but I am really hoping for some good community-contributed material for the other parts; I know we have members that have been around these forums since the beginning. Now's your chance to get those old questions answered.

I have to the end of August to submit my script so let's get to work on this!

I'll keep this post updated and if things fall silent, I'll bump the thread periodically with prods and musings...

Maybe its just me, but I believe the N810 would sell much better if it had a decent GPS receiver. If the N900 fails in this regard, I will buy one of those "slim" credit card sized bluetooth GPS receivers and "velcro" it to the back of my N800.

What is the interview scripted? I thought you could ask him any question. There is really no fun in well prepared answers to scripted questions!

Oh, I would rather he have well prepared answers. While there is some fun to be had watching your interviewee squirm in the hotseat, I honestly believe everyone will gain more from the talk if he has had time to prepare robust answers to the questions.

I'll probably leave a little wiggle room in my script so I can push him a bit if he dodges a question with vague answers.

I also am expecting his script, which will have questions to the community. This will be going both ways...

It is better than it was back in 2005/2006 (oh, those heady days constantly hitting reload on the expected URL in the Nokia shop for the 770; I don't think I told anyone I really badly sprained my ankle at work going downstairs to collect the parcel when it arrived).

However, we get things like the new "third party package policy" which get discovered in Fremantle when people start having problems. And that's in an open, community-involved package like Application Manager.

My question (and I'll ask Ari/Quim this myself when I see them at the summit) would be: "Accepting that some things need to be kept behind closed doors for commercial reasons, when are Nokia engineers going to be operating in the community for everything else?"

I think this package policy thing could be my drum I bang on about as an example of the closed source thinking for months, if not years :-(

Jaffa: That's an interesting question. Are the Maemo developers going to continue working mostly behind closed cathedral doors, with liaisons like Andre and Quim trying to keep the community bugzilla in sync with the internal bugzilla, or are they going to move to a truly open development model, where the community sees the same code and the same bugs that the Maemo developers see?

Am I on the right track? If not, please elaborate...

Pretty much yes. API design discussions in advance, on maemo-developers, let alone same bugzilla & open code.,,

I'll give you a dollar if you start the intrview with.. "What's up Doc?".


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Who or what is the intended market for these things?

How many smart phone OS does Nokia intend to support?

Will Symbian go away in favor of Maemo?

When?

This may not be a question that can be answered right now, but I'll put it up here in case the situation changes before the interview script is finalized.

I'm not really happy with the wording, but what I'm essentially wondering is, how is Nokia going to find a way to make a successful, popular, Linux device without losing what makes Maemo what it is? To date, most Linux-based products I've seen have been niche-market products, or "linux-based", without embodying the spirit of Linux. I sincerely hope that they can pull this off, and if they can tell us anything to reassure us of that, I'd rest easier.

jaem:

You're not alone. Good question!