[maemo-developers] Public maemo repository

[From: Rodrigo Vivi]

Hi Quim Gil,

When I wrote that I was not with nokia company in my mind but the
maemo community that is made by people.  I know that there is no free
lunch, and many (most?) of this community is being payed to work on
this platform, but I was thinking in free time contributing, that is
common in free software community.

I'd never write that thinking in nokia itself because I know that for
a company it is not easy to change. There are costs, strategy,
discussions, etc...

About the technical challenges, I'm pretty sure about that and I have
all of them when building Mamona.

Sorry if I was not clear in my last email.

Regards,
vivijim.

On 8/7/07, Quim Gil <quim.gil at nokia.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Thu, 2007-07-26 at 13:20 -0300, ext Rodrigo Vivi wrote:
> > I don't believe that wait is a good approach.
>
> We are not waiting. We are doing plenty of things.
>
> Nokia didn't wait to start producing n years ago tablets with Debian
> GNU/Linux and GNOME inside. We are dealing now with real products
> already in the market and only this should explain clearly why our
> priorities today can't be just the same than the ones Ubuntu Mobile
> currently has.
>
> A bit more of background about Nokia not waiting.
>
> For what I know Nokia didn't wait Debian to have something ready when
> the maemo project started. They (I say 'they' because this happened
> before I joined) didn't wait either Ubuntu to become mobile, being
> present and active in the Ubuntu summits and keeping good communication
> with the key people in Canonical. We were talking with Intel and others
> in the context of the GNOME Mobile conversations months before the
> initiative was announced (in fact Nokia's participation in this
> initiative was key since the first day). We didn't wait to talk face to
> face to Intel about collaboration as soon as they talked publicly about
> their MID using Hildon. We didn't wait to make explicit this
> collaboration with Intel and Canonical, making all our internal steps at
> light speed (in corporate sense) to start moving Hildon to real GNOME
> upstream.
>
> This thread shows that we are not waiting today/tomorrow either.
>
> > If we believe and
> > conclude that Ubuntu Mobile will be a good alternative we need to join
> > and help the Ubuntu community to do that.
>
> A move like this is not done by belief. You check strategies, you look
> at processes, you analyze interests, you listen, you discuss and a long
> etc until the day you decide to change the way you have been doing
> things for another way that seems more appropriate. Then another odyssey
> starts. Doing all these while keeping your production and own R&D is not
> simple.
>
> Besides, there is no single good alternative to the current status.
> Ubuntu, Debian, maemo distro... all these options have pros and cons and
> 'belief' is perhaps one of the worst advisers when you have a project
> like Nokia has in its hand with maemo and the tablets.
>
> Also, "help the Ubuntu community" is a nice way to put it. We are
> helping Intel and Canonical as well (or primarily, at this stage). As
> for today this means we are indirectly helping also Samsung, Fujitsu,
> Kohjinsha, HTC, Amtek, Elektrobit and probably other vendors to come. No
> problem, we believe in open source collaboration and we expect this help
> provided and received to be sustainable and useful for all parties. But
> don't be surprised if we get questions from a business perspective,
> since all these organizations are businesses as well.
>
> More than businesses, they are also brands. Brands are amazing: just a
> name and a logo bring a complex message to the inner parts of people's
> consciousness. "Nokia joining the Ubuntu Mobile project sponsored by
> Canonical and Intel" is a single sentence that tells nothing specific to
> a distro developer but has a strong many for the rest of population (in
> fact this sentence would have 100 interpretations).
>
> And well, don't you think that there are not technical challenges in the
> pure codebase. Ubuntu and maemo lovers should know all this already:
> It's not only about ARM/EABI vs x86. We have cross-build vs native
> build, toolchain changes, different security models, single user system
> vs multi-user, root vs no root, passwords management, different
> organization in partitions and package management, Busiybox vs GNU
> utilities, Perl and Python as essential or not, debconf yes or not,
> upstart yes or not, Kdrive X vs full X, different way to handle
> localization a lot more.
>
> And what about the differences in product schedules, that's another
> whole story.
>
> Nothing that couldn't be aligned somehow (nor with pure & original
> Debian if that option should be chosen) but you reckon the amount of
> effort is noticeable - already if we enter at a planning level. Remember
> that for Nokia (and for any company) effort = time + people + money. As
> said we are doing plenty of things and we probably are doing a good use
> of time, people and money available. "Helping the Ubuntu community" is
> not a free-as-in-beer exercise.
>
> > This kind of contribution
> > that makes the free software community even better.
>
> Well yes, but Nokia has already a good account of contributions that
> make the free software community even better, don't you agree? We try to
> keep being a good open source citizen in this community and even
> improve.
>
> My *personal* opinion is that nowadays the best favor Nokia can do the
> community is to push the tablets with (your) free software inside/around
> and an open development platform to a mainstream product as Nokia
> understands mainstream products: something your auntie and your neighbor
> won't ignore.
>
> The question is how Ubuntu Mobile, Debian ARM or a public maemo distro
> help in that direction, while Nokia helps others in their own open
> source purposes.
>
> --
> Quim Gil - http://maemo.org
>
>


-- 
Rodrigo Vivi
INdT - Instituto Nokia de Tecnologia
Blog: http://blog.vivi.eng.br
GPG: 0x905BE242 @ wwwkeys.pgp.net