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

The community is nice and all but, what doesn't have a community. Basically, every device and software have a community but, wtithout direct access to their internals as previously mentioned here, there is only so much the community can do. That is the difference. There are, I am sure lots of community supporting sites for apple products but, that doesn't mean apple quit working on supporting their products. Look, I am not saying I'd rather have an apple product, I don't. Not right now anyways unless they made something similar to the N810, then yes.

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

SynchML, thanks johnkzin. :)

I hope that this will be implemented in Maemo 5.

Edite: But SyncML is for transfer via the network, not via a USB cable, no?

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

On the other hand, I've seen no sign of Apple stepping up development support for Darwin to allow it to run the Pro Apps, so Nokia is ahead in my book for encouraging the success of Mer. Heck, I'm more excited about the future of Mer than Maemo proper.

That, and I didn't pay ~$6,000 for my tablets.

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

4- and 5-year-old desktop machines which are more than capable of handling the performance requirements of Snow Leopard.

The situation isn't even remotely comparable to embedded devices where each generation is only barely capable of running the software it ships with, let alone the much more advanced software shipped 2 and 3 years down the road (ever used OS2008HE?).

Puh-lease, justifying dropping support for 4-year-old $4,000 computers. :rolleyes:

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

That would put the purchase shortly after the architecture switch announcement. In that context 4 years of regular updates (such as they are) with only one paid upgrade isn't too bad. The soon-to-be-unsupported OS will still run most new third-party packages for a while longer, and when it's really obsolete, there's a large number of other regularly updated *nix distributions that will run just fine on the box.

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

Let's see. I own a G4 Cube, went from OS 9 to 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, and multiple points therein. With the option to go to 10.5. That's a 8 year old machine as of September of this year. 7 OS major revisions, over 25 minor point revisions.

Just received a cumulative security update last week, running iTunes 8.6, the latest Flash, QuickTime.

Sorry, but it's not the same at all. And the move to 10.6 excluding non-Intel Macs has been known for over 12 months. And all but Adobe CS4 is all that I lack on that G4 machine that's in my current repertoire of apps that support my needs.

Nokia can't say that about any of their machines at all.

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

:) (I am getting my Newton out of the closet......) :)

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

I think it's fair enough that handheld devices would enjoy a shorter product lifespan than desktop machines. As GA noted, the investments are different. I'd prefer handhelds lasted longer, but then, they're in the tech-o-sphere that's developing fastest right now, aren't they. ;)

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

My own pet peeve since december of 2005 :-)

Especially galling as Nokia is one of the core creators of SyncML and has it is most of their phones...

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

You can network over USB. SyncML is just a data exchange protocol, it is transport-neutral. You can sync over anything that will carry TCP/IP, which is quite a lot.

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

I found this blog comparing freedom of Android and Maemo:
http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2010/03/04/mobile.html

Mr. Kuhn seems to be an advocate for free software and he seems to think that Android/Linux is definitely the mobile platform for the free software community.

I found this interesting because I was thinking that GNU/Linux based platform like Maemo/MeeGo would be the preferred one.

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

Interesting article. I wonder what Mer developers think about it.

I was also under the impression that Maemo was more "open" than Android and, as such, the first choice for FOSS advocates.

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

While I do agree with most of his opinions, he's under the impression Mer was 100% open source in all cases on all hardware. The common platform in Mer shared amongst all devices is open source (Like MeeGo), hardware adaptation in kernel should be open source (Like MeeGo), hardware adaptation in userspace may be closed source but should ideally be open source (Like MeeGo), differentiation by vendors may be closed but ought to be redistributable for the target device (not entirely like MeeGo yet). For this reason I recommend people interested in Mer from the open source platform point of view, to contribute to MeeGo.

As I said in a mail at some point on MeeGo-dev (http://lists.meego.com/pipermail/mee.../000986.html):

I personally believe that it is better to hold hands with a hardware vendor and show them the strength of a open source community and helpthem towards workable solutions and open source, than to adapt the stance that it's fully open source or no way.

I think an attitude of 'reaching, understanding and working towards open source solutions in the long term' is better than a confrontational attitude of 'open source or nothing, now' at making
good citizens of hardware vendors in the open source community.

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

I do agree that confrontational attitude will lead the open source community nowhere. On the other hand I also believe you put way too much of the burden on the open source community. The community has been showing the strength of FOSS to Nokia for a few years now. Unfortunately a single fact remains their hardware remain closed. What will happen with MeeGo remain to be seen ...

I invite you to have a look at : http://www.nokia.com/NOKIA_COM_1/Tec...hite_paper.pdf (Page 4, Figure 4).

Open source : UI, Development Frameworks and platform (MeeGo)
Closed source : Apps, Services and Hardware

(Perhaps I read too much into that ?)

As a customer, I will always choose the most open "phone". It is not my duty to sell a device to myself. It is up to Nokia to show me what they can/can't do and after that I make my choice. I may or may not buy the MeeGo phone from Nokia depending on its openness. I don't see what is wrong with that.

For what it worth, I am following the discussion on "[Meego-community] [MeeGo-dev] Proposal: A vendor social contract". I am also prepare to take an active role in the UX working group. After what I said it might look like I am contradicting myself but I enjoy being wrong because it means I learned something. (To be proven wrong and learn one must be around if it happen)

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

Possibly - it may just mean that they're not making available the transistor layouts for the various chips, the trace layouts for the circuit boards, etc.