[maemo-community] Get the FAT Out

[From: timeless]

On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 10:16 PM, Erik Hovland <erik at hovland.org> wrote:
> I wonder if there is any plan to get FAT usage out of maemo.

FWIW, the answer is "we're thinking about it", hence I'm aware of what
we're thinking, but basically, it won't work until all the platforms
with which we'd want to interoperate support something else.

Making a device like ours not work with average consumer devices
doesn't sound like a good idea.
If you aren't Apple, it's very hard to sell "this won't work with your
existing system, please buy a new one"

> Wow, strong statement. If I had known that lawyers inspired such scorn
> in you, I likely would have probably poised the issue differently.

I'd like to note that it should be obvious from most of the places in
Maemo that this is the case, search the top bugs in Bugzilla.

Lawyers are a necessary evil, but it is truly evil to force engineers
to have to talk to them.

> I agree that FAT currently rules. But there is no technical reason for
> it to be king.

> Only inertia and tradition.

These are technical reasons.

Technically I can't take my device and give it any other protocol and
expect it to work well.

e.g. My Windows XP laptop's bluetooth stack is a disaster, so that
rules out trying to get BT OBEX or BT File Transfer as a baseline.

Making me buy a BT dongle for my mac (I did this, most people won't)
would be annoying. Similarly, making me buy a USB WiFi adapter for my
mac (oddly enough, I believe I bought one at some point, but I have no
idea where it is).

The key is that Nokia as a vendor needs something that inter-operates
with whatever our customers are likely to have. Otherwise, there's no
point in including the hardware in the first place. Someday we might
want a product which is bought by normal people
<http://jaaksi.blogspot.com/2008/09/osim-news-whats-up-with-maemo.html>.
When that happens, we can't tell them "oh, we aren't compatible with
your desktop / laptop computer".

> There are literally dozens of other filesystems.
> Now there is a pretty significant reason to not consider using FAT.

Depends who you are. I'm hoping that given that Microsoft *wants* us
to support Silverlight, they'd be willing to compromise with us.

Now, I'm aware that you're a zealot (see previous thread about why
it's bad to be a zealot), but again, being a zealot, or having zeal is
not a good starting point. Again, please let this thread *DIE* and
*QUICKLY*. I'll unsubscribe otherwise.

Note: I work on the browser, I'm not a fan of Flash and am not in a
hurry to see Silverlight in our platform, but MS announced we'd get
it.

> Once again, I think you are overreacting. But you are welcome to your opinion.

I'm not. I'll unsubscribe tomorrow.

I've unsubscribed from other lists (maemo-devel).