[maemo-developers] No more 770 bug activity?

[From: Dave Neuer]

On 4/3/07, quim.gil at nokia.com <quim.gil at nokia.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> >Is there any chance to have a community maintained release? If
> >I remember correctly some drivers are missing to get there,
> >any chance to get the open sourced?
>
> >From a Nokia 770 customer point of view, any solution around this device
> needs to come sooner than later, since devices get old quite fast
> nowadays.

Absolutely right.

> From a Nokia Corporation perspective open sourcing components
> might be a slow process even if all the parties involved have a clear
> and common wish opening a specific source code. If we are talking about
> hardware drivers, the process might be *really* slow. Therefore, there
> are little chances that the solution for 770 customers comes from Nokia
> opensourcing components, really.

Understood.

>
> The current hacker edition looks like the best candidate to become a
> more continued solution. Some people here have got a deep look at it.
> What do you think?

No, that's totally bogus: a binary-only distro that's supported by a
community which doesn't have access to the source? Give me a break.

Instead, how about Nokia get every bit of source used to build the
last IT 2006 release which it has permission (both internal and
external) to release in source form together in _one_ _repository_ and
then let the community maintain that.

It would end up being a sort of fork, and we'd need some help from
Nokia to understand what proprietary components we'd need to replace
(even if it's just in the form of hints like Igor's about power
management that I posted a while ago) though obviously real
documentation would be much better. Additionally, keeping it
compatible with N800 OS releases would be challenging to say the least
(maybe Nokia employees could help w/ that little bit, like backporting
fixes to bugs in the public source).

Anything else, from both a end-user and a non-Nokia developer
perspective, IMO, is just crap.

I mean come on, there are now users of $450 one-and-a-half year old
devices out there (which didn't work well at all for 1/3rd of that
time even for basic stuff) that are now being told they also won't get
"official" fixes for KNOWN BUGS, ever.

Give me a break.

Dave