[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] Re: N800 Developer Programme Application

[From: Dave Cridland]

On Fri Jan 12 08:37:08 2007, Jakub.Pavelek at nokia.com wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> You are right about this. One fact is, that release schedule has 
> been a
> trade secret - hence no "end user roadmap with release dates".

Yes, but I think you (or rather Nokia) is falling into the trap of 
closely coupling software and hardware. Some of the N800's, from what 
I'm reading via IRC, shipped with one version of software, others 
shipped with a later version. The 770 was the same over a longer 
period.

I think if Nokia made more releases [and not all of them need be 
stable], the connection between software and hardware would be 
reduced, and the hardware releases would require less synchronization 
with software work. Competitors would be able to gain less 
information from the software changes, because they'd not be able to 
detirmine if they related to a new device or not. You'd also make the 
gadget folk and the developer community much happier.

Of course there are exceptions - webcams, different CPUs, etc all 
have software impact - but fundamentally these are (or ought to be) 
low-level features and specific apps. And equally, there's the issue 
of your third party closed app licenses, such as Opera, but that's 
realtively simple to tie into hardware releases, and who knows, maybe 
the orphaning of 770's wrt new Opera might cause a surge of 
development on open source alternatives.

> Anyone could have made sure his application will work the day
> Bora/IT-2007 goes public.
> 
> 
True, but for the most part Bora could have gone public completely 
independently of the N800 release. By tying the hardware and software 
together so closely, Nokia is forced to keep software details rather 
more secret.

> Another thing is the developer program. I'm not too happy with it 
> myself
> and I agree we should have at least posted the deadline after which 
> the
> notifications are sent. I still hope we will at least announce that 
> the
> selection is over.

One of the major problems is that details are slipping out 
unofficially, and the entire community seems to be carefully 
interpreting every word anyone connected with Nokia says, in the hope 
of gleaning some information from it. In this case, your last 
sentence does not use the subjunctive, and furthermore uses the word 
"that", which has been seen by some to imply that the selection is 
over.

Dave.
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