[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] OS2006 roadmap

[From: Simon Budig]

Dave Neuer (dave.neuer at pobox.com) wrote:
> On 1/10/07, Simon Budig <simon at budig.de> wrote:
> >Now that sounds as if you haven't watched very closely what happened the
> >last year or so. Claiming that Nokia did not provide hardware and (more
> >importantly) code is - in the best case - just uninformed.
> 
> Yes, I missed the post to the mailing list and wiki that described the
> steps to build a complete IT2006 environment from source (including
> sources for DSME and the dsp gstreamer stuff) and pointers to
> comprehensive documentation for Retu and Tahvo.

you wrote "[Nokia] won't pay us w/ the only thing the open-source
community cares about: code and documentation of hardware".

I missed the word "documentation" when I read your Mail originally, but
my main point is, that plenty of code has resulted for the free software
community. Off the top of the head: there has been done a lot of stuff
done in GTK+ and GStreamer. The Hildon/Maemo framework is interesting in
its own account and could grow into an important framework for all kind
of devices. I guess some more close looks will bring other important
contributions to the free software community in sight. Especially if you
consider indirect effects - interesting stuff like Maemo-Mapper which
would not exist if there were no 770.

Even if the development is not directly funded by Nokia, the impact the
770 has on the community is huge. And I've seen a lot of companies
trying to outsmart the Free Software community. Nokia is not one of
them. From the very start they tried to understand what makes the
community tick and they are trying to collaborate and openly acknowledge
the problems they face within their corporate structure. Demanding the
release of all hardware specs is easy. But even if they wanted to
do this, they probably could not, because of contracts they have with
third parties. I have no clue about hardware development, but I suspect
that this contractual stuff is the pure horror.

I would be surprised if the minds behind the 770 were like "yay! lets
break compatibility and fool our userbase" when they were faced with the
descision to fork. I am willing to assume, that they have put a great
deal of thought in this issue. I am not happy about this either and I
too wonder if there could have been a better solution. But I don't like
at all the insulting tone of a lot of messages in this thread and I
don't think it is justified.

I hope that the "general mood" would acknowledge, that the 770 won't
stop working immediately just because of the fork. It still will do the
stuff it does now, which is a lot. And I'll bet that the software on the
770 will see further improvements, although they won't be as big and as
great as the stuff that will happen on the N800.

Bye,
        Simon

-- 
              simon at budig.de              http://simon.budig.de/