[maemo-developers] N770 OS2007 hacker edition made it to the title page of Linux Weekly News

[From: Andrew Flegg]

On 4/12/07, Rainer Dorsch <rdorsch at web.de> wrote:
>
> N770 OS2007 hacker edition made it to the title page of Linux Weekly News
> "Two examples of abandoned hardware" http://lwn.net/Articles/229341/

It's a good article, up to LWN's usual high standards and worth
reading for anyone interested in how Maemo's now being perceived
outside of the somewhat closed community in which we're operating.

> It does not contain big news for this group though. It summarizes the
> statements from Ari and Quim. The overall conclusion for the N770 is
> negative due to "a fair amount of non-free software at all levels [in the
> 770]", though they see some hope that Nokia opens up more components,
> which would change the picture especially for the N800.

The easiest situation for Nokia here is not to carry on the
OS2007on770 work in private, but provide documentable, reusable steps
for how it was accomplished. Then the community could take over
ownership *and* (most importantly, I suspect, to Nokia) support.

A proposed plan:

  1) [Nokia] Update the Os2007On770 page with an up-to-date position on
             status, no legacy information (the history can be retrieved
             if necessary).

  2) [Nokia] Update the Os2007on770 page, or the garage project, with a
             build system and documentation which (preferably) outputs the
             current FIASCO image from a series of source components (or,
             where necessary, closed source binary blobs).

             This step needs to include how OS2007on770 can be updated when
             later OS2007 releases are made for the N800.

  3) [Nokia] Ask on maemo-developers for volunteer administrators of the
             Garage project, and give them admin rights.

  4) [Community] Join OS2007on770 project and provide community support
                 through Garage forums/mailing lists.

  5) [Community] Improve stability. Track N800 releases. Get to an end-user
                 ready state and polish build systems and processes.

  6) [Community] Promote and publicise on planet.maemo.org, ITT, LWN,
                 maemo-users etc.

  7) [Community] Go to step 5.

Yes, this requires some more work on the part of Nokia - but to be
honest, did anyone there think another binary-only image for the 770
was really going to cut-it? The problem may only be one of perception
and that all the bits are available, but I certainly think it'd help
recover some of the widening PR negativity which is out there.

Thoughts, as ever, welcome.

Cheers,

Andrew

-- 
Andrew Flegg -- mailto:andrew at bleb.org  |  http://www.bleb.org/