So if Nokia takes a sip from the MeeGo fountain, tailors it to one of their device (infuse it with proprietary hw drivers, proprietary UI and a set of proprietary base apps); how would one revert it back to 'open'?
Would it be a simple package removal/substitution?
Well if Nokia provides the necessary drivers like they do now for the MeeGo preview release (they can be pulled in at image build time) then it's a matter of grabbing whatever community release there is.
Anything that belongs to Nokia is Nokia's, and not part of MeeGo. It'd be more along the lines of wiping your PC clean of the vendor provided install and loading a fresh install of say, Ubuntu.
So if Nokia takes a sip from the MeeGo fountain, tailors it to one of their device (infuse it with proprietary hw drivers, proprietary UI and a set of proprietary base apps); how would one revert it back to 'open'?
Would it be a simple package removal/substitution?
My hopes are they'd provide whatever is needed for hardware adaptation to MeeGo Core (+ closed repo like we have in N900 hw adaptation) and then that together with the differentiation (closed apps+UI theming etc) makes out the final product..
In my wet dreams they'd provide a .ks on the emmc on how to remix the OS image
Are those sufficiently reasonable assumptions though? That Nokia will appease the community with such gesture?
Well, they are providing the necessary bits -now- to get the graphics going, with luck the next drop will include wifi and cellular support. If they want the N900 to be a reference platform for an ARM MeeGo handset, they need to. It does them no good -not to-.
Originally Posted by
Or is there a less altruistic motivation that would drive them to do such thing, improving our chance of getting such windfall?
Handset sales? Getting more people working on the core such that they don't have to?
nothing happens without competition. if everyone is using google (sony ericsson, htc, samsung....) there is no more competition...except apple and microsoft...but... :-)
Well, they are providing the necessary bits -now- to get the graphics going, with luck the next drop will include wifi and cellular support. If they want the N900 to be a reference platform for an ARM MeeGo handset, they need to. It does them no good -not to-.
Well, the N900 will most likely already be discontinued when the first MeeGo phone is released. My question was for non 'developer' MeeGo handsets in the future and it's sustained 'openness'.
Originally Posted by
Handset sales?
I can't see it affecting sales numbers significantly. Mainstream users has other things higher in their priority.
Originally Posted by
Getting more people working on the core such that they don't have to?
This is a reasonable assumption from OSS community view.. but have we seen that happening in the NIT iterations before this? How about all those close bits in N900 that's nagging its performance?
My question was for non 'developer' MeeGo handsets in the future and it's sustained 'openness'.
The only thing that makes the N900 a "developer" phone is, well, nothing. It's a not-quite-consumer-ready phone that appeals to *nix geeks. If Nokia makes the "secure mode" thing a simple switch you can turn off, then there's no issue.
Originally Posted by
I can't see it affecting sales numbers significantly. Mainstream users has other things higher in their priority.
It should be completely transparent to the mainstream user. For Nokia, however, MeeGo is a decrease in developmental expenses that directly reduces costs, at the expense of someone's time to keep the device drivers current with whatever kernel/X release is in MeeGo at the time, and that's not much.
Originally Posted by
This is a reasonable assumption from OSS community view.. but have we seen that happening in the NIT iterations before this?
I don't think so, but considering that the entire OS is a downstream assembly from numerous independent projects MeeGo is in a far better position than Maemo ever was.
I have seen more than a few people working on Hildon Desktop and Modest in the past couple months, but the lack of effort in this area can be directly attributed to Nokia's weird behavior towards the community.
Originally Posted by
How about all those close bits in N900 that's nagging its performance?
We can't do anything about closed bits. Ironically, the only closed bit I can think of that -directly- impacts performance is microB. Everything else is poorly tuned open programs (iirc) doing things at inopportune times.
Neutrality is a big thing when it comes to your use case. If it's all about creating a platform for you to sell services, then a platform like Android gives Google a leg up on that, in addition to riding your brand.
any companion can blew things up badly. neutral can become something else in a second if wrong persons paths cross between 2 companies (case Porsche & Volkswagen for example)
but I am betting that MeeGo gives the most and car manufacturers can switch from arm to intel if needed and everything should stay at least almost intact in software front.
nothing happens without competition. if everyone is using google (sony ericsson, htc, samsung....) there is no more competition...except apple and microsoft...but... :-)
if there had not been a 1ghz nexus one and such there would be no 1ghz iphone4g because apple would have only made the phone slightly better than the previous model so competition is good for everyone and all those companies you listed are in competition with each other adding there own differentiations to android but since android 2.1 its easier to upgrade custom builds to newer version build so fragmentation issues are now null
