How Nokia could have eliminated about 75% of its problems
 

Remember all of those infinite threads asking when the next firmware update would be out, and Nokia's oceanic silence in response? Remember all the bitter complaints, which became kind of a permanent insurgency on this site?

I think that if the following could only have been instituted a year ago, many of the N900 bad vibes might never have happened, which might have changed everything.

The in-development Maemo 5 Community SSU

Check the enthusiasm in those threads! This is what many of the nabobs of negativism (Thanks, Spiro) really wanted, whether they knew it or not.

Re: How Nokia could have eliminated about 75% of its problems
 

Yes but this work couldn't have started earlier. You only start this when it's clear that nokia's support ended. If you start work on a community ssu and nokia releases a different one you will end up with incompatibilities.

Re: How Nokia could have eliminated about 75% of its problems
 

When the wind was taken out of the positivity sails, so to speak, the problem was that Nokia didn't utter a word one way or the other. This continues with the Microsoft strategic alliance (or whatever it'll go down in history as) and yet... it's more of the same.

Nothing could have helped that, not even communication near the end. It would have taken deliverables like FCam in the middle of their development known to the folks that were enthusiastic to the Maemo cause then.

It just didn't happen. And stuff like the Community SSU, I remember when the one came about for Diablo. Loved it, wanted to test it, put my 2 cents in... and now? My enthusiasm is next to zero for it. It's gonna happen to this project too... it'll invariably lose steam.

And even that... I blame Nokia. Open up all of the bits, give it all up like you (Nokia) basically gave up on this community.

Re: How Nokia could have eliminated about 75% of its problems
 

My God! You're right!! I can't IMAGINE how desktop and laptop manufacturers warranty their products! People install other versions of Windows beyond the one it came with! HELL! People sometimes even install Linux no their PC's! :P

No wait, you're wrong. They have restore images on a disc that you can fall back on. I think Nokia provides you with a flashable image to go back to in the case of a warranty issue, no? :P

Once again, somebody who gets it shouting it to the company and customers who either don't get it or don't care. (i.e. "The N900 is PERFECT!" heheh...idiots). Good on you, gerbick... but then I'm sure you know I thought so.

Re: How Nokia could have eliminated about 75% of its problems
 

Here's a good related article, from slashdot's summary:
http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/02...-Trial-By-Fire

"The H has a damning piece on Nokia's open source smart phone projects, Maemo and MeeGo, and why they failed. 'They did dumb stuff like re-writing the whole networking stack, duplicating as they went. So instead of re-using NetworkManager and improving it, and getting to market fast – they re-wrote, got something that still doesn't work well, failed to push Linux forward, and failed. Repeat that for every technology pick and you get the idea,' said Andrew Wafaa. 'The N900 was a great product. Immediately [after] it was launched it was announced that it was a dead product, ISV-wise. They announced a Qt re-write/project re-set. Then they merged Maemo into MeeGo, giving another project re-set. Then, when they were coming up to release in September 2010, there was another project reset to switch to a different Qt technology (even the Qt groups in-fight in Nokia). In consequence they have no shipping product.' At the same time, 'both Nokia and Intel were working on separate handset UIs using Qt, the former proprietary, the latter open-source. A better worked example of squandering your leadership role and wrestling yourself to the ground is hard to see. Nokia deserve their trial by fire – and I hope the people who truly screwed up the amazing Linux opportunity that was the N900 get shut down in the process.'"

And the article:
http://www.h-online.com/open/feature...e-1194928.html

Re: How Nokia could have eliminated about 75% of its problems
 

I think it's more an issue of wanting to know you're not going to waste your time fixing or re-writing something that will then be fixed in an upcoming Nokia release.

Once we know that there's no more support and/or that given bugs are not going to get fixed (and additionally that there's no way the source will be released) it makes more sense to start writing replacements.

I agree though that it's a shame it took so long - we all sat around waiting for an awfully long time, wondering whether things would be fixed or source released so we could do it ourselves.

Re: How Nokia could have eliminated about 75% of its problems
 

I think there just HAS to be a way for a company to effectively harness this kind of energy in a way that would benefit volunteer developers, the managing company, and users. Maybe it's already been done, but I don't know about it.

Re: How Nokia could have eliminated about 75% of its problems
 

Nokia has no clue how to do that. Microsoft has a slightly better clue, but only certain parts - the Kinect team and the Mac BU. That's it.

If you want to take advantage of an eager community, you need to have clear separation of community and corporation and then you have to have very clear communication to that eager community.

Some of the communication from Nokia was as clear as mud and trickled out just as fast.

MeeGo was worse. I had to go from here (comfy home, formerly ITT) to MeeGo.com (new look, new feel, new drama) and it just didn't keep me there because of the harder set of rules of what could be said, should be said and the drones running the place (Yeah, I said drones, they were either support MeeGo or gtfoh) and I couldn't support it when I wanted factual answers instead of opinion.

Companies need to learn how to strike while things are hot. I've been a part of the Adobe Flash community for almost 11 years. The people are very active - forums, twitter, jaiku, blogs, newsgroups, conferences, events, books, white papers, one-on-one interaction, IM's, forward facing betas - and Nokia got some of that, but their communication left so much to be desired.

And their marketing plain sucked too.

Re: How Nokia could have eliminated about 75% of its problems
 

What MeeGo place are you talking about? IRC, mailing list, forum, all of the above, something else?

The MeeGo community is certainly a lot "stiffer" than this one, but I have yet to see any "drones running the place" telling anyone to get out... but maybe that's just because I don't know what "place" is in question...?

Re: How Nokia could have eliminated about 75% of its problems
 

He's quite clearly talking about the MeeGo.com forums.