[maemo-developers] No more 770 bug activity?

[From: Dave Neuer]

On 4/3/07, Frantisek Dufka <dufkaf at seznam.cz> wrote:
> Dave Neuer wrote:
> >>
> >> 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.
>
> That also looks like 'binary-only distro that's supported by a community
> which doesn't have access to the source' if you really understood what
> Quim said about opensourcing stuff.

What he said was, "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."

I am talking about the open source code they used in the product and
their modifications to it which they are LEGALLY obligated to provide,
just all gathered up in one repo.

> How it is better? The only
> difference is old/dead codebase (and more current end-users without any
> support).

Why do you say that? It'd only be old and dead to the extent that
existing n770 owners who are also developers don't have any interest
in maintaining it. I never had any interest in running Opera on the
device, or any other proprietary component, so there is at least one.
And I suspect I'm not the only one.

>
> I guess more community members will help maintaining something not
> completely dead (i.e. os2007 for n770) then os2006, check
> http://www.fedoralegacy.org/ for example.

The community cannot support the parts of the hacker OS we don't have
source for (do we have all of the source for that gathered in one
place?) and Nokia has indicated that this is "unsupported" by them, so
even if the community tried to support the open bits, it'd be less
supported than an initially-incomplete, _all_ open source community
edition based on what they are already legally obligated to provide!

>
> The same push for opensourcing stuff can be targeted at os2007 codebase
> too and may have similar chances but better result.

Again, I'm just talking about that parts that are _already_ open or
for which Nokia has no legal footing to withhold modifications if
they've made any.

>
> >
> > 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).
>
> That's where os2007 codebase would be better ;-)

But, as I pointed out above, that's not a "code"-base, it's a "code
plus blob"-base.

> > Anything else, from both a end-user and a non-Nokia developer
> > perspective, IMO, is just crap.
>
> Yes, but as it is, end users have no supported choice anyway.
> Unsupported community maintained OS2006 or OS2007 is almost same to
> them.

Again, this 2006 release would not be unsupported, it would be
community-supported.

Dave