Re: Maemo: 100% Free Software (GPL, etc...)
 

The objective is to be as good as possible. Open soure is one of the ways used in Maemo to reach that goal.

If you find or develop a better implementation of the OpenGL ES drivers that is better than the one provided by TI/IMG we will happily consider it.

Re: Maemo: 100% Free Software (GPL, etc...)
 

That's because they are so used to being locked into Apple's walled garden... and even if Nokia had an OS X version, the Apple users most likely wouldn't buy a tablet anyways without the Apple logo on it, especilaly now with all the rumors.

Re: Maemo: 100% Free Software (GPL, etc...)
 

You may be right about "most" users, but not all... Back when all I used were Apple products (we're talking mid-90s here), I purchased a Palm because it allowed me to do things no Apple product could do -- and I was able to sync it with my Mac. I considered other PDAs, but none of them so easily integrated with what I was already doing.

Now, imagine a customer -- a Mac user -- at Best Buy looking at an iPhone next to a Maemo 5 device. One already (and natively) syncs with their Mac via iTunes. The other? Well, there might be a way if they purchase Parallels and a license for Windows... Yeah, right.

But, what if both synced with their Mac right from the get go? I think it would make for harder decisions while purchasing.

I know a lot of iPhone users who -- while they really love their iPhones -- would have considered other competing options if they were available at the time... Especially if they could have avoided the $100/month service plan with AT&T.

Tim

Re: Maemo: 100% Free Software (GPL, etc...)
 

Amongst what demographic? Hardcore Linux coders?

Not the general public. As has been hashed over numerous times, it was a combination of poor advertising plus out-of-the-box experience that doomed Maemo devices up to this point-- and the former was by Nokia's deliberate design.

Re: Maemo: 100% Free Software (GPL, etc...)
 

Truly spoken like someone who hasn't ever owned an Apple machine (my friend's 4-year-old PPC G5 wont be getting any more updates, nor will my 5-year-old one).

Re: Maemo: 100% Free Software (GPL, etc...)
 

Since you didn't specify user oriented software... within each of these project's "markets", they are definitely "worth the fuss".

Apache
SpamAssassin
ClamAV
OpenSSH
OpenSSL
BIND
Samba
Kerberos
OpenLDAP
Jabber

Since you mention Linux, I would also argue that FreeBSD is worth the fuss, but less so than 10 years ago (during the late 90's, and even the start of this decade, FreeBSD+Apache was _THE_ web server platform -- MS sucked on all levels, and Linux didn't scale in memory performance well enough to be used by anyone but a wannabe; the BIG sites (porn sites, for example) were largely standardized in FreeBSD and Apache); back in those days, throwing a couple million hits per minute at a Linux+Apache site would take it down quickly and HARD ... throwing it at a FreeBSD+Apache site wasn't even noticeable).

I would also mostly argue that OpenOffice is worth the fuss, but it's a bad example. They're not a leader (like Apache is a leader in web server design), they're probably the most annoying and glaring example of the anti-FOSS "it's all just imitating proprietary software" criticism/stereotype.

McCafee started out as 100% open source (for the app; the signatures were "for pay"), but I don't know if that's still true. And I have no idea if they're still "worth the fuss" or not.

Other important 100% FOSS projects, though with a lower profile than the list above:
nagios
cfengine
tripwire
tcpwrappers
Sendmail
Exim
Cyrus
UW-IMAP
OpenAFS


That's just off the top of my head. Given more time, I could probably come up with more.

Re: Maemo: 100% Free Software (GPL, etc...)
 

What is needed is not a PC-Suite multi-platform, but a scalable, documented and Free protocol to transfer any data, which is not a file (ex: contacts, calendar, Web bookmarks) towards the Maemo software.

Thus, the whole world to write compatible software, free or not. It could even incorporate a distibution Maemo GNU / Linux better than the iPhone into Mac OS X.

Re: Maemo: 100% Free Software (GPL, etc...)
 

Libre? or Open?

Android is definitely more Open. It's 100% open source (the base dist., but there are add-ons in, say, the HTC Hero version of Android, that are closed; but, IIRC, the G1 version of Android, and the Mytouch version of Android, are both 100% open source). But the upper layers are not GPL, they're Apache licensed. So they're not as libre as the lower layers of both Maemo and Android. But I don't know what percentage that is (to compare with the parts of Maemo that are neither Open nor Libre).

Is that more or less than the closed layers of Maemo? Is "open but not libre" better? Dunno.

Re: Maemo: 100% Free Software (GPL, etc...)
 

I believe that's called SyncML.

There are already adaptors for it for Apple's suite of products, I think for MS's suite, for syncing SyncML devices to Google, and many MANY phones and PDAs already have SyncML clients (including Nokia S60 phones).

People have been requesting a SyncML client in Maemo for _years_. (me, specifically, for 2 years)

Re: Maemo: 100% Free Software (GPL, etc...)
 

On the other hand, those are 4 and 5 year old machines.

How old are the NITs that have been abandoned? Seems like they get abandoned on a 2ish year cycle.

Apple isn't perfect about it ... but the criticism of Nokia is still valid, and Apple wins in comparison.