lemmyslender is offline lemmyslender
2009-04-27 , 18:49
Posts: 968 | Thanked: 974 times | Joined on Nov 2008 @ Ohio
#191
GA, I think you misunderstood. Please correct me if I'm wrong. It seemed that you were suggesting that if a new user turned on their tablet and found GPE Calendar installed, they would be less likely to develop/port/etc their own calendar program. I was suggesting that when they turn on their tablet, find a need for a calendar app, they would see in extras at least 2 (GPE, home), maybe more. Therefore, under your premise they would be even less likely to develop/port/etc a new calendar program.

I don't think that would be the case. As is evident (and has already been pointed out) the folks here who want a better program can and will do it.

@ jolouis I really like the idea of metapackages. You want to find a good media player? Here are four bundled in one easy download/install. Try em out, find the one or two you like, uninstall the rest. You want PIM software? Here's the GPE Suite or the Home Suite (installs Calendar, Contact, Todo, widgets, etc). Excellent idea.

If you don't have enough base programs installed, new users will be turned off, "too hard to make it do what I want". Too many installed and the choices are confusing. The more adept people will deal with it either way. The more tech savvy will always provide a market for this type of device. If you want it to flourish (and why wouldn't you want increased sales), it needs to be accessible and work out of the box for the less tech savvy.

In the case of the N8x0, even though the default media player doesn't handle larger resolution files well if at all, it doesn't mean the device can't. Sure Nokia will dumb down / fool-proof the default bundled apps somewhat. As long as we have the option to tweak or install other apps we'll be fine.
 
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daperl is offline daperl
2009-04-27 , 19:00
Posts: 2,427 | Thanked: 2,986 times | Joined on Dec 2007
#192
Originally Posted by GeneralAntilles View Post
Is it really necessary to flame me for answers questions?
It was funny. Laugh. Old-school internet humor is good for the community.

But if I were trying to flame you, I would probably just quote Sgt. Hulka at this point.

Keep on Truckin'.
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GeneralAntilles is offline GeneralAntilles
2009-04-27 , 19:03
Posts: 5,478 | Thanked: 5,222 times | Joined on Jan 2006 @ St. Petersburg, FL
#193
Originally Posted by lemmyslender View Post
GA, I think you misunderstood. Please correct me if I'm wrong. It seemed that you were suggesting that if a new user turned on their tablet and found GPE Calendar installed, they would be less likely to develop/port/etc their own calendar program. I was suggesting that when they turn on their tablet, find a need for a calendar app, they would see in extras at least 2 (GPE, home), maybe more. Therefore, under your premise they would be even less likely to develop/port/etc a new calendar program.

I don't think that would be the case. As is evident (and has already been pointed out) the folks here who want a better program can and will do it.
I'm suggesting that if developers see community applications that are "blessed" by Nokia, they may be discouraged from writing their own (or further improving existing ones). Replacing vendor-provided software is slightly different from competing with vendor-endorsed community software.

Anyway, however it were to work out, there's still the point that Nokia is going to meddle with bundled applications and we aren't going to like it.

Originally Posted by lemmyslender View Post
@ jolouis I really like the idea of metapackages. You want to find a good media player? Here are four bundled in one easy download/install. Try em out, find the one or two you like, uninstall the rest. You want PIM software? Here's the GPE Suite or the Home Suite (installs Calendar, Contact, Todo, widgets, etc). Excellent idea.
Metapackages are rather dirty, I'd rather have well-organized categories, good package descriptions and meta-data and user reviews right in the Application Manager.

Originally Posted by lemmyslender View Post
In the case of the N8x0, even though the default media player doesn't handle larger resolution files well if at all, it doesn't mean the device can't. Sure Nokia will dumb down / fool-proof the default bundled apps somewhat. As long as we have the option to tweak or install other apps we'll be fine.
This is a good example of why bundling community applications wont work. There's a reason the built-in Media player doesn't work as well as MPlayer, and it has to do with the sort of optimizations that Nokia is willing to accept. Look at how MPlayer handles fullscreen/windowed. You notice the transition is rather ugly and that you tend to get framebuffer weirdness, right? You also notice that you never see any of that with Nokia's media player. These are the sorts of things you can't have with bundled applications, and why bundling MPlayer wouldn't work (not that it matters for Maemo 5, however, since media playback out of the box should be top-notch).
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GeraldKo is offline GeraldKo
2009-04-27 , 19:05
Posts: 1,950 | Thanked: 1,174 times | Joined on Jan 2008 @ Seattle, USA
#194
Originally Posted by GeneralAntilles View Post
None of these applications are bundled, so using them as examples to refute my point about the harm bundled applications will likely come to doesn't make much sense.

Really, it's rather strange how totally you've missed the points I was trying to make.
Oy. I rather think you entirely misunderstood my point! What you said above was in response to:

Originally Posted by GeraldKo View Post
Nothing you have said shows the cause-and-effect of how bundling well-developed apps would actually hinder developers. You say that bundling "chosen" apps would discourage people in the open source community from developing alternatives or advancing development of the bundled apps. But I look at tear (competes with the provided MicroB), Advanced Backlight Statusbar Applet (competes with the provided Backlight control), Maemo Mapper (competes with Wayfinder), emelfm2 (competes with the provided File manager), the myriad apps that compete with the built-in media player, etc., and I don't see the innovation-killing effect to which you refer.
I'm not saying that Advanced Backlight Statusbar and emelfm2 should be bundled. I'm responding to your argument that bundling some apps will discourage developers from creating alternative apps. To wit:

Originally Posted by GeneralAntilles View Post
Having a "blessed" set of applications may discourage other developers with similar applications, or discourage new developers from trying to create any competition.
File Manager was a "blessed" application. But pipeline brought us emelfm2 anyway. The standard backlight control was built in; but another developer created Advanced Backlight Statusbar Applet. MicroB was a "blessed" application; but Bundyo went and ported tear, nonetheless.
 
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GeneralAntilles is offline GeneralAntilles
2009-04-27 , 19:12
Posts: 5,478 | Thanked: 5,222 times | Joined on Jan 2006 @ St. Petersburg, FL
#195
Originally Posted by GeraldKo View Post
File Manager was a "blessed" application. But pipeline brought us emelfm2 anyway. The standard backlight control was built in; but another developer created Advanced Backlight Statusbar Applet. MicroB was a "blessed" application; but Bundyo went and ported tear, nonetheless.
As I said above, replacing vendor-supplied applications and competing with vendor-blessed community applications are two different things.

The assumption I made earlier was that "blessed" would generally be understood to apply only to non-Nokia applications, but evidently not everybody agrees with that. So I'll say it now: I do not consider vendor-supplied software to be "blessed".

For the record, a combined backlight/volume applet was my idea. rm_you (initially) and then jott just did all of the work.
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krisse is offline krisse
2009-04-27 , 19:12
Posts: 1,540 | Thanked: 1,045 times | Joined on Feb 2007
#196
Originally Posted by GeneralAntilles View Post
The point everybody seems to be ignoring, though, is that, when Nokia's involved, it's not as simple as just "bundling" things. There will be certain requirements and limits placed on them that the community is unlikely to like very much. When you make your product a part of the Nokia experience, it has to conform to the Nokia experience.
So, in summary:

In favour of bundling - New users immediately see the best that the maemo platform can do, pre-installed, without having to do any exploring or installation or tinkering. Some of the community members involved with the creation of these apps would be pleased to see them reach a mass audience.

Against bundling - Some of the community members involved with the creation of these apps would be offended and disappointed by alterations made to the apps by Nokia in order to make them meet internal corporate standards.

If that is fair summary I would definitely still tend towards bundling the best maemo apps with the tablets.

Surely one of the main aims of open source is to give others the freedom to use your work in the way they see fit?
 

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GeneralAntilles is offline GeneralAntilles
2009-04-27 , 19:16
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#197
Originally Posted by krisse View Post
Against bundling - Some of the community members involved with the creation of these apps would be offended and disappointed by alterations made to the apps by Nokia in order to make them meet internal corporate standards.
Generally speaking, but it's more extreme than that. Many of these applications would be completely unacceptable for Nokia.
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daperl is offline daperl
2009-04-27 , 19:29
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#198
Please stop all this fairy tale talk about "discouraging developers." It's not going to happen. Stick to the only software topic that matters: New and existing users that want a great out-of-the-box experience. Everything else should take care of itself. Or we can get back to idle hardware speculation.
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krisse is offline krisse
2009-04-27 , 19:41
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#199
One big difficulty is that different people are coming to the tablets and Maemo with different expectations, and Nokia is being a bit coy saying what their full agenda is.

A lot of us are assuming our own expectations are the same as Nokia's, and Nokia seems to just agree with what everyone says. If you ask them about their plans for the community, they say it is the main aim of Maemo. If you ask them about their plans for big-selling devices, they say they are on the way.

But Nokia never says what they will do if these two aims are in conflict. They don't say what their priorities are, and as such they leave it up to us to squabble about what should happen, without giving us enough information to guess what Nokia really intends.

I wonder if Nokia has no idea itself what it wants from Maemo...
 

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qgil is offline qgil
2009-04-27 , 19:49
Posts: 3,105 | Thanked: 11,087 times | Joined on Jul 2007 @ Mountain View (CA, USA)
#200
Originally Posted by krisse View Post
If you ask them about their plans for the community, they say it is the main aim of Maemo. If you ask them about their plans for big-selling devices, they say they are on the way.
And where is the contradiction?

I wouldn't say the community is "the main aim of Maemo" but what kind of future could expect Maemo without a community?

I wouldn't say it's all about "big-selling devices" but what kind of future could expect Maemo without pursuing them?

There are reasons to think that there is a potential relation between bigger sales and a bigger community (and the other way around), isn't it.
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