Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

Egg freakin' zackly dude.

We are not even making butter with all the tail chasing going on here. :D

Thanks for that link BTW, that is what I'm talking about when I say there are plenty of things we could still be doing. I see you found the extra forward slash bug that I also stumbled upon and solved while trying to load a locally stored page with a desktop script. I didn't think anyone would care anymore or would admonish me in some way if I posted about it. :o

Me's going to that thread now and will see if this also applies to M3U playlists stored locally. :)

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

Makes me think how open is Meego really going to be? With your scripts that you are discussing and distributing to everyone in the world through internet, which they want to use in their future offerings, but do not want to share ideas and let the people know what they are upto.
That does not sound OPEN to me at all.
Maybe something to do with it getting packaged with some of the Nokia's Binary but why not get quole on the post and let him take over rather than paying someone to do the closed inside job which you do not want the public to know about, and the person you are paying does not know clearly where to go without quole's help.
hmmmmm:confused:

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

You're right, which is why I decided to tackle something I believe is needed and important but not tied to specific hardware or even an OS [1].

I realize not everyone likes playing in virtual mud puddles like I do, but for anyone wanting to contribute to MeeGo and unhappy with current policy or lack of specifics, I'm practically begging for participation in our meta-project. Granted that right now we're mainly in fact-finding mode and have nothing of substance yet, but 1) all my research points to the importance of the subject and 2) it would be nice to move beyond theory and into practicality.

[1] http://wiki.meego.com/MeeGo_User_Eng...mework_Project

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

Not trying to be a party pooper, but does this discussion make any difference to Meego or Maemo ? Does Nokia care ?

I find Quole's account appalling, its like they run in, grab his work, and run off. Its impolite to say the least.

Oh well.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

I'll play devils advocate: two things to consider:
- you've only heard one side of that story (there may be some other reason they've not been able to follow it up).

and, partially related:
- MeeGo is not fully out in the open, yet. Meaning ways of contributing back and cooperating are not fully defined, and for those that are.. there is still going to be adjustment required. change this big doesn't just happen overnight.

One good example for how a team should work in the open is the ARM hardware adaptation team, who have regular meetings, in the open, who have an IRC channel, in the open, as well as public code, documentation, and use of meego-dev.

What is needed is more people leading the way as things continue, otherwise, it isn't going to happen. keep asking questions, keep prodding things along. the status quo is comfortable, and not everyone wants more than comfortable.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

And that, in itself, is a productive attitude. Kudos.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

One clear conclusion of this thread and others along these lines is that words alone are not enough to bring any change. We keep walking and we put all our efforts doing the best steps. Time will tell where does this lead.

I fully agree with you that discussing alone is not very productive. This is why I believe my/our best contribution to this discussion is to keep working on the stuff that brings changes.

These are the big items that keep me busy these days, in no particular order:

- MeeGo Handset UX pre-alpha, including image for the N900.
- MeeGo-Harmattan (provisional name) platform SDK pre-alpha.
- MeeGo-Harmattan community edition for the N900.
- MeeGo & MeeGo-Harmattan Extras (community apps infra).
- Opening of Nokia software components for MeeGo.
- MeeGo project openness and community engagement.
- Maemo community transition to MeeGo.
- MeeGo Conference.

Also not in my strict area but trying to help these days:
- MyNokia registration in Maemo 5.

I hope this list works for you. At least I know that progress in each of these tasks will bring progress in discussions like this one.

By the way, maybe it would be worth having a backlog of tasks/topics for me to follow as your official Nokia contact. Maybe the Council wants to consider this? I will be half on vacation half on relocation during July. If there is a backlog for me in August I will follow it. Yes, it can include any topic, not only open source development stuff. I'll do my best being a messenger or a gateway for those tasks/topics I'm not responsible of.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

Quim, again, thank you for spending so much time on this important discussion. I feel both guilty and glad for triggering it. ;)

Here's my synthesis and conclusion of the whole thing:

I think a significant gesture on Nokia's part would go a long way toward soothing some ruffled feathers.

I won't even define the gesture. Something from the list of grievances in this thread. And no offense meant to you Quim, but it would be nice to see the word come from Ari or higher.

Just pick one grievance, escalate, and help facilitate action on it (other than MyNokia issue). Maybe we could even start a separate thread to vote as a community if you'd rather not select and champion one yourself.

Any reader who thinks this is a reasonable idea, just Thank the post.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

My guest appearance for this thread: The Ovi store :-)

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

I'm the sorry fellow who sent you that email asking all the questions. I agree that our discussion stopped too soon but to my defence I did reply to your email then got no further response from you. I should have resent the email after not hearing from you again but I didn't so I'm sorry.

In that email I asked for suggestions for a place to discuss at. Now that I've created talk.maemo.org account we can even discuss here. I don't know if it's a best place but...

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

(tukem responding to qole's post)
To that common place, #meego-arm on IRC/Freenode or meego-dev with prefix 'N900' in subject line is where the team does it's work at least. We also have weekly meetings on IRC.

If we're not acting open (some exceptions to closed binaries and big reveals at the moment..) in MeeGo N900 team, beat us and remind us - we want to be open.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

I am troubled by noticing which individuals that are worried about the future of Nokia Mobile Computing. These individuals are amongst the very core of who I consider the Maemo community leaders. Council members, long time advocates, forum moderators...

It's like when a football fan club turns against the club after a losing streak. I know most of these former enthusiasts only will turn pessimistic after thorough re-evaluation of the situation.

When these Maemo figureheads pause in public, that's the kind of stuff that tech blogs notice and ends up showing in stock price drops. Well, would be if Maemo was considered important for Nokia by investors, which I doubt.

I am in no position to tell qgil and Nokia if their strategy is failing or not, especially this early in the new MeeGo direction. But I can tell qgil that it doesn't appear as [many of] those who know the most about Maemo on the community side have much faith left in Maemo/MeeGo.

Should this not worry you? I don't mean keep you in this discussion worry you, I mean talk to the marketing guys worry you. If you can't convince GeneralAntilles that you're on the right track, if qwerty12 and qole is losing motivation... Then I would think it'd be in the best interest for Nokia to sell some of your ideas to them. I am sure you're doing lots of right things. Doesn't help if no one believes in them.

This community is added value. Without this community, I would have had serious regrets about getting the N900. But this community seems to be having a lack of faith crisis. Send in the priests!

Or am I reading too much from this all?

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

But that's what it all is. Childish. It's about commodity fetishism and artificially imposed desires and enjoyment. What about names like Yahoo or Google. This is babyspeak par excellance, and that's why it works, especially in our globalizing world. Ironically when dealing with huge dimensions you have to stick to the lowest common denominator, or else you will fail. Consider that "Meego" is easily pronouncable in the asian world, probably even worldwide.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

Well, since you've called me out...

Why am I feeling discontented, you ask? Simple: This is the second time Nokia have ****ed the community over in terms of updates.
The first being FiF and Fremantle WRT the N8x0. It could be truthfully argued that the N8X0s aren't powerful enough (God knows I have fun playing my videos on it) but the N900? The excuse is that it doesn't have a capacitative screen. Please. I'm sure I've made better excuses to my teachers about my homework.

Helmuth has provided a list of bugs Nokia WONTFIX (not at all or in Harmattan) and Nokia have said themselves that they won't provide MeeGo officially. The resolution of this report especially makes me laugh. A bug has been found in one of Nokia's open modules, a patch has been prepared but we have the FiH ****. Now, if I'm not wrong, the FiH resolution was slapped on the report before PR 1.2 was released. This wouldn't be so bad were it not for the fact that Nokia, once again, aren't providing it for the N900.
An update to the kernel (Nokia's build, at least) was provided with PR 1.2, n'est–ce pas?

Now, you see, Nokia won't fix bugs themselves or provide an update themselves. The reluctant side of me can agree with that; Nokia don't have all the time in the world but then not releasing the code to the community - the same community you're happy to use as an excuse for your update policy ("Oh, but the community will provide a version") - just reinforces my belief. Someone compared them to cowboy builders earlier. Except you can call another builder to fix a mess caused by the previous one. It's expensive and not appealing, sure, but you have the option. Nokia's closed source stuff? Well... some alternatives to some things exist but they're not guaranteed to work as well and for the others...

I will *****slap anybody one time who mentions the community build. Why should Nokia be praised for making the community do what they should? How will it differ to Nokia's offering on the next device? What's the guarantee that a MeeGo update won't break one of many Nokia's closed source components in the future?

From what I understand, some components will be opened. I've heard libcal will be one of them. Great for hackers... if you're using an N8x0. For the N900, it means **** all but providing a slightly more future-proof MeeGo. Look up sysinfod.
For the rest, Nokia have given their permission for special images to be hosted containing those components. Woohoo! Break out the party poppers, people.

No, I'm not interested in MeeGo's code. I want to see Fremantle's stuff. Why? Put it this way: My opinion of Qt mirrors Qt programmers' opinions of GTK.

tl;dr - Nokia WONTFIX many bugs and don't provide official updates to the next version of Maemo. After all this, they won't provide much of their closed source to the community, the same community that Nokia mention will be providing an update whenever similar topics arise due to their not being arsed.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

Well, I may have asked that... Or I may have asked if a content qwerty12 adds enough extra value to the Maemo/MeeGo ecosystem, that someone in Nokia - and probably not a developer - should take some time to contact GA, qole, texrat and qwerty12 and boost their faith. I don't believe it takes a complete conversion to only open source components or guarantees of full corporate support to legacy devices to win them back. I believe Nokia should let them vent, listen to the venting, and then say "we can't do that, but what do you think if..."

Seriously, the main problem with Maemo as I see it, was never hardware or not even software. Surely not the open/closed ratio that is better than any other comperative phone ecosystem and does AFAIK improve over time, too. It's the feeling that Nokia isn't doing what they should be doing and what they are doing doesn't feel like what they should be doing. People clearly feel cheated, left behind, cut out of the loop, forgotten. I believe words alone can in fact, clear a lot of air here. I brought up the football fan club because like that, it truly is a lovers quarrel.

But, you can only smooth over ruffled feathers so many times. It's better to say "sorry, but this is the best we can do" than to let down again.

Me, I haven't been around long enough to feel as let down as qwerty12. But unless someone has a good and honest sit down with him, he's leaving soon.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

Meh, I doubt my swearing-laden posts'll be missed. But it was going to happen anyway; I don't do Qt. :)

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

You have 4,606 thanks, more by the end of the day. You have the fourth highest karma. You bring essential software to the table. Maemo.org is better for having you around, my N810 and N900 is better for having you around.

If Nokia convinced you to hang around, maybe gave you a tour of the Qt facilities and sat you down with Qt staff 1), they could have won you over, I am certain. Nokia shouldn't do that unless they think you important.

But that's what I am saying. This discontent I am seeing here is coming from people that I consider important. And more than that, from people that usually work against discontent.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

...after my recent posts? :)

Nah, I wanted to like Qt but I just couldn't get my head around the way it does things. I personally think the team that brought Qt to Maemo have done a stellar job - most, if not all, applications look native - and I think Nokia did ultimately make the right decision. Even I can't deny the influx of new, proper (no, I do not consider myself to be one. My math skills are non-existent and I have no CS degree. Still, I find some solace in the fact that I've made programs to do things that others could not figure out how to do) developers that are using Qt.

Shame I could never figure it out and much prefer GTK. But I digress. The community has real, proper hackers such as javispedro (whom I admire very much).

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

Same here.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

Out of curiousity, if there was a plain-GTK implementation and a libhildon on top, in MeeGo, would you be more interested?

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

I'm not sure, but I'm guessing you're talking about this list:
"Nokia has a strong community. But the biggest failure could be, they don't ask or doesn't matter. Their staff seems to use other devices or the N900 only in development environments." (only for all who are interested, I wouldn't repeat the list here) - It will not change anything, but please vote if you care about one of the Bugs...

And I added a additional one in the small hope we could get the good Idea of a community Brainstorm system working again: #10687 (at the moment it is more like a storage siding - "move it there and shut up")

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

Sure... but MeeGo is all about the Qt. Like I said, it's a good choice: I bet MeeGo will gain more developers for this fact.
GTK would never reach the level of integration in MeeGo that it has in Fremantle. This is why my interests lie in Fremantle and not MeeGo.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

On a side note, this is a two edged sword. This means that there will not be a single OMAP3 'real' MeeGo device, which casts certain shadows on the N9's future. It could help A LOT if somebody official dropped in a future-proofing guarantee or two around release time. What I'm saying is that, from a MeeGo aspect, the N900 and the N9 aren't that much different, not only hardware, but software-wise, either. You will never be able to OTA the N9 to the next version of MeeGo, and, from what is known currently, has the same stance on drivers and closed components as Fremantle (if you can't wrap your head around this, think about it as Maemo 6 and it will be clearer), so I can already envision stskeeps doing an "N9 hardware adaptation project for MeeGo". This has to be handled from day 1 of the N9 - the Maemo missteps were bad, but given the N9's 'mainstream' goal, questions of this magnitude CANNOT be left to the community.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

Yes. Otherways seemingly intelligent people love Apple products. Adult, thinking and functioning people believe in God. I am sure they could make you reconsider Qt.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

@volt
And otherwise intelligent people believe in picking one library and running with it.

Why can't we have both?

The argument over inclusion of qt vs gtk is arbitrary.

And I forsee down the road the libraries merging (in several decades).

From a development perspective, should a developer have to learn a new language every time something new comes along? No. We left that "new language of the day" mess in the 80s.

Of course my beef with it, is that Nokia isn't using stock qt, they decided to add in their tweaks/"enhancements".

There are two distinct groups of developers at work here: the coders, writing software from scratch for a platform; and the porters, trying to get existing software working on another platform.

The coders have to adapt and learn to code in a new language or an existing language that has been modified.

The porters have to try and remedy dependency hell.

And yet "we're moving to qt. deal with it" is a good argument, how?

After so many people have learned to deal with Maemo's push for gtk*+hildon, you just want to lead them down another dead-end path?

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

FWIW, (as I've extended the invitation elsewhere) - I'm more than happy to help you - or anyone else - learn. Just try things, ask questions, and we'll get there. I have a wide base of skills, but a lot of it centres around Qt, so use what I have.

I don't have as much time as I used to, but if tutorials would help you, then ask for specific topics, and I'm happy to look at working on that.

I'm in the same boat, but on the opposite side of the river. I have no CS degree, and I can't even tell you what 8 x 8 is without resorting to a calculator, yet I can code. Life's weird ;)

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

That's what Samsung is doing. Putting out Android phones while trying to get their Bada platform finalized and decent developer support for that.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

Well, from that point of view, maybe what "they" would need to talk to qwerty12 about is more along the lines, "while we're building the frameworks around Qt, you're still free to...". It's not like they're blocking anyone from setting up alternative libraries and frameworks. (?) I know they don't want to push away apt loving people, and they surely don't want to push away gtk loving people... They just have to focus on one way to go. They've been encouraging people to move on to Qt. Not forcing.

My point is, though, I believe Nokia should have a brainstorming session around how to make long-time resource people @ maemo.org stay resource people, short term and long term. Or they could start a meego community from scratch and see how long that takes. It's not like Android has a head start...


Oh wait.


Edit: I am sorry that I keep writing names with no capital letters with capital letters.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

w00t, thank you. Who knows, I might just take you up on that :)

volt, I don't want this to be about me. My inability to use Qt is just that - my inability. I'm not blind; I can see that most new Maemo contributors are using Qt so something about it must be easier.

Believe it or not, I find Autotools (yes, Autotools!) easier to qmake despite qmake being a lot more simpler and, essentially, doing the same thing. I've managed to make quite a few GObjects during my time (and even managing to export them over D-Bus. Though, after seeing how much easier it is to do the same in Qt...). I've gotten used to it. It wasn't like this in the beginning, though but the way it worked clicked to me. I wish I could say the same looking at Qt code, but, again, it's my problem.

For every one contributor liking GTK, there's 10 more using Qt so, no, my coming or going makes no difference. I want to get back to Nokia's problems*! :)

EDIT: *I still stand behind #174.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

http://lists.meego.com/pipermail/mee...ne/003201.html might interest you then.

EDIT: Above is Hildon 2.2.19 built for MeeGo, against stock GTK+.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

I have a CS degree; it's ten years back and honestly i don't see that anyone should feel a lack of such puts them at a real disadvantage. More than any other field, the resources to learn the relevant material are all available online and the pace of change makes recent practical experience far more important than distant academic experience IMO.

On the subject of Qt: i started a project and ran into problems with the repo (Qt binding for poppler) that prevented me from getting it into the repo. When PR1.2 came along and failed to resolve the issue with the broken repo, i started on the project again only to find that the app would no longer build (presumably due to messing with qmake or something in PR1.2 SDK) so, while i was fairly impressed with my first day with Qt, the rough edges on Maemo/Qt have about bled my enthusiasm to death.

Edit: I meant to make this whine somehow constructive by saying that i would appreciate a single wiki that describes Qt on Maemo in purely a PR1.2/Qt6.2 context so there's no ambiguity, and also an answer to the question of why armel/x86 packages depending on the exact same library will claim it is missing/available respectively.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

I too have a CS degree. Sure, it helped open a few doors, but in the end it's just a piece of paper. I read my textbooks more out of college than I did while in, and my enthusiasm for all things computing never stops growing (I'm 46). The two smartest guys I know are best friends. One has a PhD in CS and the other is degree-less. I can't hold a candle to either of them and they'll both always be well paid.

Even though I've left it behind for the time being, I still think Java is the best language I've ever known. The point being, OOP is here to stay, GObject is one of the best hacks of the last twenty years IMO.

qwerty12, it's time for the next step. Accept the hurt, master C++, bend Qt to your will, then take your rightful place at the round table of the computer knights. Java and Objective C will be waiting for you when you get there. :)

I feel your pain, brutha, but if it's any consolation, because of GStreamer, I think GObject and glib are here to stay for a while.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

Speaking of steps and not only words, some background about Hildon, GTK+ and other GNOME technologies.

http://gnomejournal.org/article/98/i...advisory-board

If you want to have good GTK+/Hildon support in MeeGo & MeeGo-Harmattan you can get Cornelius and others trying to push this activity with the help of the GNOME Foundation.

http://mail.gnome.org/archives/mobil...ne/thread.html

About the fast progression of Qt in Maemo, the main merit goes to the Qt team. Qt 4.7 officially supported was really not expected and, well, now it's in it way at extras-devel. That also talks about actions, concrete steps.

And about Connman and Ofono, Intel and Nokia have been developing these projects openly since last year. Concrete steps too. You can challenge them at meego-dev if you have a better technical plan.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

Well, the controversy is already heating up at the MeeGo forum over a preliminary wiki article on the MeeGo handheld UX being pulled:

http://forum.meego.com/showthread.php?p=3951

Bad for PR if nothing else...

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

Well, I only ment to use you as an example of high profile and important maemo members - which you are - that could need some extra encouragement to increase the chances of having a successful community. I realize that this encouragement would be different for each and every person because everyone is feeling a little let down for different reasons, but the overall mood takes colour from it.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

I believe that at the present time Nokia are doing more solid, concrete steps than what individuals here know about, and more than they trust them to complete. Examples like Mer was concrete, solid work that in reality ended up nowhere. Community version of MeeGo might be a carbon copy of that. People who had hopes for that here will probably remember that for a long time. It might create a distrust that for a change, actions alone can't really clear away. People are venting because they want reassurance. At least I think some are. This reassurance might be given in many different ways, I am sure.

Just by being here, I've seen you, qgil, spread that reassurance. Now, I don't know what tex and archie and everyone needs to hear to fall back in line. But I think they need to hear something.

For me, hearing about new Qt versions works wonders.

And I know, qgil, that you probably feel that this isn't how you should spend your work hours. But maybe a few hundred euros worth of work hours from someone working with community relations might pay back if it can give developers and moderators here reinforced belief in the Maemo/MeeGo direction.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

Just so we don't misinterpret anything. Quim, can you (re)confirm Qt4.7 is (going to be) officially supported for Fremantle ? I know it's in extras-devel (I played my little role in that maneuver :) ), but 'officially supported' and 'experimental packages for developers' are two things. If official support IS meant as in 'for end users, too', this is probably the most important Fremantle happening this month, if not quarter, far too important to be casually mentioned in a tmo thread :)

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

I was trying to be sarcastic, but you summed it up quite nicely ;)

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

The way this is playing out... Nokia will have way too much to prove to me to gather my attention ever again.

Simply put, deleting a wiki entry, that's been cached on the internet and on the other hand state that everything about MeeGo is open is incredibly two faced and superficially dishonest.

I don't like what "open source" seems to mean to Nokia. "Most open" doesn't mean that you use open source to bolster your offerings. It means you contribute and are open.

Nokia... you are neither and this one action honestly proves more against you than you will ever realize.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

This is not said to defend anyone since I agree with you in principle-- but do we know the responsible party? Nokia, Intel, Linux Foundation, ?