[maemo-developers] Hello Maemo - CFSONID 2008

[From: Paul Bloch]

Interesting thread, and I agree that it's complex for businesses to
find out how open to be while still being able to maintain a working
business model.  We certainly live in interesting times.  I'm glad
that such a question is on the table.

One thing that comes to mind in terms of augmenting Maemo and making
it a more robust system is whether it's possible to consolidate
efforts being made by other groups such as the Ubuntu mobile project
(I can't recall the name of this effort), and perhaps the efforts of
openmoko and Android.  My feeling is to benefit from the work we're
all doing and share the prosperity and accomplishments in whatever way
possible.  Ultimately the open mobile OS, which Maemo is a fantastic
example of, could be a project that could help strengthen the open
source community as a whole through cross-pollination of ideas and
work.

My feeling is trying to work by going from strength to strength and
capitalizing on the enthusiasm of open-sourcerers around the world and
showing what a portable, lightweight, dynamic, flexible, immaculate,
and useful open OS looks like.

I think we can give more to people than any current solution on the
market.  I think we could give people everywhere with cellphones,
handhelds, and tablets an extraordinary product that truly benefits
the world and enhances their work and lives.

I think an open OS can do that, and I think that any company who is
running the best, most feature rich OS will make a heap from selling
devices that run it.

My prediction is that we're reaching a certain technological
singularity for portable devices, where you don't need multiple ones,
that every one of them has the power of the grid behind it and has the
capacity to be a virtual omni controller for any conceivable
application.  Think of the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy meets Adam
Sandler's universal remote from the movie Click.  I think that's where
we're headed, a pocket-sized super computer.  So why not start to
design the OS in that vain?  A superfluid platform that can be
imported to many kinds of devices, repurposing them into new useful
things.  I think it's also a very green vision to have that we can
still upgrade devices that would otherwise head to the trashcan.  Or
at least donate them to the developing world, upgraded with a new OS,
so that we can give cheap super-communicators to people.  There's a
TED talk about when people have more avenues for communication people
small economies that have been sagging will revitalize and begin to
become prosperous.

I think the current version of the XO was designed to be learning toy,
but Maemo, Maemo has an enormous amount of potential to be more then
just a toy to people.  It can augment entire economies and societal
structures for the better.

So I'm totally enthused to see what can be done.  My personal vision
is for a device called a Geode, the passport to planet earth.  It
would be an inexpensive ubiquitous device that would have the world
within it.  It would be the hitchhiker's guide to planet earth.  The
only caveat I would add to the license is the the software is only
available to people involved in what would be defined as socially
evolutionary.  If you do destructive anti-social things (like
genocide) then you are betraying the terms of use and the software
license is revoked.  :)

That's my riff.

Cheers,

Paul aka openartist


On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 11:49 AM, Marius Vollmer
<marius.vollmer at nokia.com> wrote:
> "ext Robert Schuster" <theBohemian at gmx.net> writes:
>
>> You are not a zealot like me and need an argument now? Ok. The free
>> software scene came nearly out of nothing. Although free programs
>> existed long before Linux was written, there was no organisation of
>> those. One of the early communities that rallied together to make a
>> change was Debian.
>
> Heh, please don't write the GNU project and the FSF out of the history
> books...
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