[maemo-developers] Curious: Maemo devices other than Nokia?

[From: Michael 'Mickey' Lauer]

Mikhail Sobolev wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 21, 2008 at 06:00:14PM +0000, Ross Burton wrote:
>> On Mon, 2008-01-21 at 18:44 +0100, Hanno Zulla wrote:
>> > >> So in other words, despite Maemo being open source and free enough to be
>> > >> portable to other hardware, there is no other, non-Nokia device you can
>> > >> develop Maemo applications for, right? I wonder why this is so, since I
>> > >> like Maemo a lot (from a user's perspective).
>> > > 
>> > > Because there is no way to download "maemo" easily and build your own
>> > > images for a different machine.
>> > 
>> > If I am not mistaken, this is not exactly true.
>> > 
>> > Maemo (as such) is free enough, some of the apps and drivers that Nokia
>> > ships with its tablets are not. A competitor interested in building a
>> > Maemo device should be able to adapt Maemo to its hardware and build
>> > replacements for the non-free apps.
>> > 
>> > I wonder why this hasn't happened, yet.
>> 
>> You need to make a distinction between Maemo and ITOS, which is what
>> runs on the tablets.  Nokia take Maemo, add a collection of non-free
>> drivers and software,

> Exactly, Ross! I usually visualize relationship between different bits
> using the following picture (please use a fixed width font):

>   +--------------+----------------+------+
>   |              | Maemo SDK      |      |
>   +--------------+----+----+------+------+
>   |API           |Open|Open| Open |Closed|
>   +--------------+----+----+------+------+
>   |Implementation|Open|Open|Closed|Closed|
>   +--------------+----+----+------+------+
>   |                   |  IT OS 200X      |
>   +-------------------+------------------+

> The part that is covered by "Maemo" (and Maemo SDK) is not enough to
> produce a somewhat reasonable system, which:
>  1) is bootable
>  2) has support for all hardware
>  3) has a comparable to IT OS 2008 set of applications

> The really "challenging" areas are 2) and 3).  I believe certain work to
> make sure that 1) does not have any challenges is planned, but probably
> it's up to Quim to confirm.  

>> and using a build system they have not released
>> produce images.  If the build system were public, then anyone could
>> produce *Maemo* images for a N810, their laptop, or another PDA.
> The current build system is way too complicated.    It requires quite a
> few systems to be installed that include web interfaces, databases,
> etc...  There is a few really low level things -- detect an build
> order, build a single source package, produce image/tarball -- that
> could be used independently, however they do have some dependencies on
> other bits of infrastructure, so their extraction/polishing requires
> certain work [which was not done so far].

Please take a look into OpenEmbedded, which makes building images for
various machine types very easy. The configurations for the Nokia
internet tablets are supported, but could need some fresh blood.

Regards,

:M:

-- 
Dr. Michael 'Mickey' Lauer | IT-Freelancer | http://www.vanille-media.de