[maemo-developers] Why should I write apps for Maemo?

[From: Nicola Mfb]

On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 10:48 AM,  <tero.kojo at nokia.com> wrote:

[forwarding to the list too]

On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 10:48 AM,  <tero.kojo at nokia.com> wrote:
[...]
> Later on when 4.6 got final it might have made sense, but as Eero said, the release is based on quality and not calendar. And the 1.2 tree had moved forward a lot in that time.

Good point, but it *seems* to be not coerent with the entire
n900/maemo5 launch, that to many users *seems* was based on calendar
(why a front camera without video calls? why skype video calls on pr
1.2 and not umts video calls? are they planned? should we wait for pr
1.3? or meego? but meego will run on n900? n900 is "as is", buy the
next meego device for improvements, so why pr 1.2? and so on)

*user opinions I gathered on maemo forum, do not blame me please*

[...]
> Because it would have to be tested to the same extent as the 1.2 image. And that is not a few days.

You may have 3/4 blocker issues on not qt components, while qt may
have passed all the QA tests some months ago, or at least is what I
can perceive as there is no qt 4.6.2.1 or 4.6.3, but I'm an external
guy so can only guess and ask.

> Look, the N900 is a consumer electronics device. That means that normal people, like your mother, the guy you passed on the street and the person drinking coffee in a cafe use it. Those people cannot handle crashes and bad quality. It really is that simple.

Again I have a different view, I'm not so sure that normal peoples
know the word "maemo" or "meego" as they know "symbian" or "iphone",
and at least here, in Italy, I do not know a single guy that buyed the
n900 in a normal store, are it's rarely available, and the nokia
market was focused on "free gps navigation" and "n97" (every single
day on main tv!) so it seems not to be targeted to the mass.

And, important, a lot of my friend (linux geeks) buyed the n900 from
"poor mass market" guys that wanted to give it a try and after 2 weeks
put it on e-bay becouse not complete on the phone/gps side.

In every case this does not mean that quality is not important!, I
want only to "communicate" as a community rappresentative, that there
is a big (it may be very big) part of n900 users that are linux geeks
and possible developers, and listing for their needs may be good for
Nokia too.

To fix the QA for normal peoples, and the bleeding needs of developers
you have to provide them previews (it seems that qt-sdk, pr 1.2 sdk
and meego already follows that line so it's not so absourd).

In that way you'll assure a free (gratis) testers community while
actually testing happens only inside to Nokia (that has to pay for
that, while it wants to give more man power to meego), and you'll
never get all the use cases that an entire community have.
So, actually, when PR 1.2 will be released if an hided
one-line-commit-to-fix bug will come out, we have to wait again for
3/4 months to have it fixed and pass all the qa tests again, while it
may be discovered before by the community on the preview images.

But I may be totally wrong about that, in that case ignore all my words :)

Going positive, I understand that the community stress is at least
comparable to the one of nokia developers and administrators, so
really hoping you the best in these hot days!

Regards

      Niko