So... any way I can finally remove the default media player or browser in Diablo on my N800 so that I can use the purely open-source software like Panucci or Tear? ....and still have everything work well with them? (Like the RSS feed reader and file manager and so on?)

I could even replace the RSS feed reader (which I rather liked) and file manager (which I rather dislike) but is there any way I can remove them without breaking even more things? It would certainly be nice to be able to free up all those resources in favor of software I prefer.

Wait.. so stuff like mplayer is being ported over by Nokia employees? It seems like mplayer and other apps were initially being developed by folks that didn't have any knowledge of how to work with the drivers, though. Or did you mean that they jumped on-board after seeing the efforts started? I'm curious about this from the standpoint of trying to understand why more people weren't privvy to things like accellerated video, DSP programming and A2DP (which is STILL an issue). I just sort of expected accellerated API stuff to be much more easily available on a device intended to be open to developers from the start, is all.

stlc45xx needs pretty recent kernel because of wi-fi stack it depends on. It is great we have it but it got dragged down by the rest of the hardware/software being not supported in recent kernel. For stlc45xx being effective it would also need to push everything from nokia kernel into linux-omap or mainline. It could be done now by community too but it takes far more time and effort then doing it by tighter collaboration with upstream when 2.6.21 was current. Still I see N8x0 linux kernel situation to be unfortunate, there are many things that could be done by community now but looks like there is few people with motivation and both time and skills to hack the kernel. I hope this will be better with N900 because OMAP3 is more open. I don't know about any other OMAP2 based device with community interested in maintaining support in linux kernel except us. Fortunately for OMAP3 there is plenty of them.

IMO dsme does not count. DSME got opened by ripping out closed parts and moving them into mce which is still closed. Mostly we got not so interesting (i.e already reverse-engineered) and almost empty shell. Again it is of course better than nothing but still I consider dsme to be 99% of 'too little too late' variety.

I'm a Free Software "zealot"(some would call me this). I'll give my opinion on this as I think there's a good middle ground for all.

a) the CORE OS(kernel, basic userspac, compilers, drivers etc...) should all
be Free Software - there is no distinction here... less distinction infact
makes it far easier to reuse things from other devices and so forth thus
making it even more user apealing. And I'm not talking about binary firmware
here I don't mind that since I am aware that that runs on the hardware itself at
a much lower level - and would generally be a ROM. What do I see as usable
drivers. Drivers that will be easy to upgrade to a newer kernel version,
something that will not hamper the user to switch from one kernel to another.
It should not be a thin wrapper around a large blob like Nvidia/Ati. It should be
a proper driver that just hooks into the device - if the device needs a firmware,
load it in some way. Battery management should fit in this as well. Either
document how one could do this oneself or move this into firmware so that
there is no userspace thing at all

b) UI - as long as it is possible to replace it and still get everything else that's
running underneath, that should be Free Software, in a usable state I have
no problems if by default it comes with a closed UI. Infact the best would be to
have a GUI abstraction layer that would translate between all the various UI
intefraces(hey one can dream)

c) User facing things should be easiyl replacable without actually killing things.
If I don't want to use Conversations I should be able to use something else
that does things the way I want to. If I want to use an alternate phonebook I
should be able to do so. It should still all hook into the system though so
those api's and the backends should all be open and Free Software. Same
for example bookmarks and such. - yes differentiate it however you wish but
don't make it nearly impossible to replace things.

d) closed software - as long as it's possible to replace such software by those
who want to I have no qualms about it. Feel free to package Flash, Adobe,
whatever As long as I can remove it or replace it with what I want and still
have the proper functionality

Sorry if this is incoherent but I very rarely have any coherent thoughts

I'd like to point out that I've been using Nokia products since 1998 or so(my first cell phone 5110 still runs way better than most things nowadays though I don't use it anymore). I've always used Nokia - why - because they make nice products for all ranges.

What I dislike about Nokia? They are one of the companies that want stronger patents and even software patents in the EU.

Does that make them evil/bad/good/etc...? No... it's how they are used to doing business. Hirring OSS developers - makes sense, means they'll do what they want them to do - i see nothing much benevolent in this just a logical business decission. Buying QT? well it's run on symbian for a while, maemo6 will be running it... again makes perfect business sense to get it so that things you want will be in.

Anyway I'm rambling so feel free to ignore this if you want

Are you for real ?

Yes he is... what most people would consider open source is being able to see the code... That's all. Free Software is something else... but most people would associet free with as in beer. But there's something new that is a bit clearer: Freedom Software... same thing as Free Software.

So yes there are differences.

@ruskie
No my friend, open source means not only you can look at the code. You can also use the code. You are restricted sometimes towards your intentions of making money of that code . Can you give an example of an application open source that you cannot use for free to back up your claims?

You clearly didn't understand what ragnar meant when he said that. Go back and read his entire post.

What is there to understand? While I totally agree that nokia is entitled to release closed source in their own device featuring maemo, I only sanctioned a phrase that is totally wrong. Then ruskie also came in with his claim and I was responding to him with my last statement.
So again, ragnar's statement was wrong and so was ruskies. That is all.

No since I don't want to start/continue a flame I will continue no further on this idea.

Folks, simmer. I believe what he meant was that, sometimes, simply being 'open source' implies being able to view the source code.. even if the license if harmfully limited and prevents you from actually USING it (depending on your situation). On the other hand, if you mean Open Source (as in the Open Source Initiative (OSI) standards) then you're generally open to use the source code as long as you provide attribution, source code, etc.

I replied already, but I'll reply again. I used my words incorrectly.

I meant that when maemo.nokia.com talks about an "open source operating system", it doesn't mean that it is 100% open source.

It is more of a statement like "This is an environmentally friendly product", i.e. that is something that has much environmentally friendly aspects. A statement of general intent rather than a statement of being 100% free.