[maemo-developers] Maemo & Linux mainstream (was Re: Projects Nokia should support (yours?))

[From: Quim Gil]

ext Neil Jerram wrote:
> (And I could be right to suggest that maximizing community benefit is
> a path to commercial success

Of course, why do you think Nokia hires (otherwise pretty useless)
people like me?  :)


> I completely agree that the UI requirement differences are very
> challenging.  I just don't think that we have yet fully explored the
> possibilities for addressing this within the infrastructure, as
> opposed to by modifying application level code.

Sure, but Nokia has a UI vision and a bunch of professionals working on
implementing it in the Maemo platform, while huge application areas are
on purpose left for third party development. This is why in this call we
are not looking at (otherwise interesting) proposals focused on
improving the platform.

> I'm worried you're missing amazing applications that
> already exist.  As well as supporting new development, what about
> asking for recommendations of existing apps that would be great on the
> tablets, with a little polish?

Did we put any restrictions on existing software and ports? Not at all.

> Yes, but I think the Debian people would say that they want to include
> mobile stuff too, not just desktop.  Hence (1) there may already be
> suitable mobile apps there; (2) even if not, it would still (I think)
> be a good distribution channel for future mobile apps, plus
> infrastructure needed for them.

(1) sure: list them for our consideration, please.

(2) sure, we have nothing against Debian and other distros becoming
stronger distributors of mobile software. We at Maemo will do also our
best becoming a good distributor of that software, probably including
users new to Linux and explicit free software.

> 
>>> - the existence of hildon.
>> Hildon is available in Debian and Ubuntu.
> 
> That's good, sorry for not checking that myself first; it means I
> should be able to push my hildon bindings upstream too!
> 
>> It covers features important
>> in the mobile context that GTK+ is not covering as for today.
> 
> I hadn't appreciated that, through just using the widgets.  Is there a
> write up of this somewhere?

Like http://maemo.org/maemo_release_documentation/maemo4.1.x/node7.html ?

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hildon for other interesting links.

-- 
Quim Gil
marketing manager, open source
Maemo Software @ Nokia