Towards Day One
Hey there! And welcome to MeeGo project on my behalf too. In this post written on behalf of the MeeGo Technical Steering Group I will address some of the top questions on everybody's mind and written all-across meego.com by now. By doing so, I also will outline the first concrete steps to get the core of the software work on foot by all of us together, including various mobile computing companies and individual members of moblin and maemo communities.
But let me first introduce myself: My name is Valtteri Halla. I am the Nokia member of the currently two-person Technical Steering Group (TSG) of MeeGo. A Nokia old-timer already since '97, I lately used to introduce myself to Ari Jaaksi's new team-members: I have spent >75% of my Nokia career in bringing Open Source and Linux to Nokia and >50% of my adult life on the same mission. So, I guess I might be a bit biased :-)
And now to the business: The most important question is of course about the code. We hope to move on here very quickly now. Nokia and Intel have set the target to open the MeeGo repository by the end of this month. I guess this is something that finally will signify the real "Day One" of MeeGo project, a genuine merger of moblin and maemo. What is scheduled to be available then is the first and very raw baseline to a source and binary repository to build MeeGo trunk on Intel ATOM boards and Nokia N900.
While code is certainly the most important question, the most frequently asked, however, has been about technology selections. The big ticket items like Qt, OBS and RPM were already communicated at the launch and as we expected, kicked off a few small avalanches of debate! These selections were, of course, pre-agreed and I can assure you that the amount of effort spent in resolving these was not small. After all, these are the points driving most of the investment cost and transition pains for Nokia, Intel and the Moblin and Maemo communities. Further selections are mostly still under discussion and beyond a few obvious ones (X, connman, ofono, gstreamer, dbus,...) can be considered as working assumptions for MeeGo 1 release. Now that the internal responsibilities within Intel and Nokia are becoming clear I expect that the people behind these selections and assumptions will start appearing in meego.com pages, mailing lists and wikis during the coming days.
Once we just get going the objective is to have all of the MeeGo platform work fully in public. During the last few years both Nokia and Intel have learned that the success of moblin and maemo R&D mode fundamentally comes from the Open Source way of openness and MeeGo is a huge further commitment on this path. MeeGo will be a complete yet not entirely productised Linux distribution, it is fully Open Source in code and in process. What will our computers, and the whole world for that matter, look like when constraints of engineering resources and software innovation go away with standard pure Open Source becoming the default in mainstream computing products?
The final thing for this post is about practices of getting the open way of working off the ground. Here I would really like to ask for your help and co-operation. This is critical and this is always a challenge for big new projects. Thanks to starting points from moblin and maemo, it should not take that long for MeeGo. Both Intel and Nokia teams have considerable experience in openness and open source skills are becoming quite commonplace nowadays. Still, there are some bumps to be expected: MeeGo is supposed to go beyond its parents in openness. Also, MeeGo is not just a combination of the existing moblin and maemo teams but it also means that much much more people from Intel, Nokia and other companies will get involved as open source makes its inroads to device business mainstream. Yet MeeGo operations are expected and designed to be completely transparent - R&D in the public internet! This is still a baffling proposition to many. Some do not want to do it, some do not dare, many do not know how to. We still have a trainload of openness virgins here! Herding the teams to go public will be a big task for Imad, me and others, no doubt. So, this is where we need your help. Please make this happen with us by maintaining constructive dialogue, together finding out the MeeGo way-of-working and being patient and encouraging with newbies not to scare them back inside corporate firewalls. BTW, I find it very encouraging to read meego-dev and notice many maemo veterans like Nils, Carsten, Randy and many others doing exactly this already. You guys get it. And I am very excited to know that with moblin community there will be equally big legion of talented people I have an opportunity and privilege to meet soon. This talent is, after all, fundamentally the thing why most of us believe MeeGo will grow to become great and why we are so passionate about our M*:s and not some other technology for mobile computing, right? :-)
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Comments
How about the timings?
"Nokia and Intel have set the target to open the MeeGo repository by the end of this month."
Are there any delays?
Or is it all a big April Fool? I hope not!
Supporting 3G?
Will we be able to use Verizon's 3G Qualcomm cards built into their netbooks? I have the Gateway LT2016U.
Mapping middleware to Android and others...
Are there any plans to map the middleware to other capable OS bases like Android?
It would be nice to write MeeGo look and feel apps that can be deployed on a wide variety of mobile and desktop platforms.
Also, I think it would be a good idea to allow the UX to be mapped other UIs than Qt such as GTK or plain X11. This would allow development of apps that would run on smaller mobile platforms.
excited about announce - now expect real system/products to test
Moblin was developing for some time, but results of its development are hard to call exciting.
I hope User Interface of MeeGo would be much more friendly and usefull than Moblin has.
Qt is an excellent basement, and with WebKit part of latest Qt libraries we get unified, fast, robust platform for web communications.
For me first real-life platform test would be to launch browser in MeeGo (which I guess would be WebKit-based), go to http://acid3.acidtests.org/ and see waht result I woudl get.
Expected result is of course 100/100 - and as FireFox 3.6 still below 100 (94/100), it would confirm that "late arrival" sometimes can provide better results than "first to deliver or implement".
Another concern is availability of MeeGo smartphones from companies other than Nokia.
While Nokia 900 may be a great product, I am not ready to pay $1000 for it - that's the price tag it has here, in Russia.
Android dvices are widely shipping now and have $300-$500 price tag, with Nokia N900 double the price tag of Android I would go to Android.
Anyway MeeGo can be very interesting platform for netbooks.
But as any major distribution (Fedora, OpenSuSE, Mandriva, Ubuntu) easily installs and runs on all netboks I tested, MeeGo value or differentiation is not clear in such scenario.
do you plan to add parts of the KDE-project?
Since Meego will be based on Qt it might be an obvious step to include some of the KDE-componets.
There is much work already done and high quality-applications on KDE are ready to use...
Trust is the key behind all
We as owners of Nokia N900 have heard and express a lot since N900 came out to the market.
Nokia and Intel also have talked a lot since MeeGo is announced.
Community and commercial development procedures are very different. I am really worried the quality of MeeGo as an Open Source OS. Android and MeeGo have pros and cons, but if choice made from a trust between customer and develop company I will go for Android.
The reasons are:
1. None of Nokia nor Intel are good on software and the development structure of MeeGo is unknown. Everyone knows how often Debian updates. The development structure and supervision are the keys to speed and quality.
2. The action of Nokia and Intel gave an impression of irresponsible. Moblin did not go anywhere in the previous years and Nokia did not want to spent too much effort on maintaining Maemo (but surely it is a brilliant OS). So the both management dump these 2 OS together and leave it to Linux Foundation. None of these 2 companies promised to provide technical support or supervision to the MeeGo development. On the other hand Android has Google's supervision at least.
3. Nokia's previous reputation was badly damaged by its own action on the high end phones such as N97, Navigator...etc. The software support was poor. Even after Maemo is ready to go, Nokia's management still want to hold Symbian tight. Is it because you dumped too much money on Symbian? Yes, you did. Nokia management, you made a wrong decision and waked up too late. Now you want to use Community force to bring you up while you keep on your future planning of new devices and blue prints? Stop being irresponsible. Dreaming is good, but you should have the ability and resource to make it real and maintain it.
Last, I would not write all these if I am not one of N900 owner and worried about the future of MeeGo.
It's good to see a total open source phone OS comes out, but it will take a while until the customer can see how it's performance.
Both Nokia and Intel are relying on MeeGo, so are these two companies committed to provide commercial level support to MeeGo or just leave it to flow. We also do not know how much did both Maemo and Moblin really MERGED together. Are the source code for both Maemo and Moblin opened completely??
N900 will be the last Nokia device I have if the software support is interrupted or in poor quality (such as lacking functiosn, video calling, MMS..etc that missing on Maemo 5). It's all about trust, if your break it you loss in the competitive market.
Action and result are the best prove to any unreasonable promotion and talking.
I totally agree with this
This comment says exactly what I was trying to say in my post, in a more direct way.
We see that the competition is preparing itself and from my point of view in a much more clear and fast way than the Maemo/Meego/Moblin cooperation.
a) Microsoft - Rewrites its OS, puts tons of programmers behind Mobile 7, does not care about compatibility, money paid (If Nokia paid X for Symbian I believe that Microsoft paid 10X for Windows CE all these years with less profits) and tries to do something modern
b) Apple is designing is 4th version of the Iphone OS, shows tablet, prepares to fix the multitasking issue (as rumors say)...
c) Google succeeded to enlist more and more companies in its Android list, working around even the big mistake they made to make their own phone (Nexus)...
Now Nokia? Crying on money spent on Symbian? Symbian is now 100 years old - dead. It resembles MSDOS. Time to go to heaven... or to lower parts of the market... whatever... . Dump it, make it a good funeral and do something new. The ingredients are there (Linux - Qt) to create the fastest OS in mobiles.
Intel? Crying that the partnership with Microsoft is driving her out of the small netbook market? Needs urgently a lite OS to support netbooks? Regretted the sold-out of XScale ARM division to Marvell?
Whatever the story behind each company the one thing that must be inside ALL people involved in Meego from these companies is:
MEEGO NEEDS LEADERSHIP AND VISION FOR THE FUTURE!
And by the way, if Nokia wants to send MeeGo to #1 quickly why don't they backport it to N97 also? It is a highly successful mobile phone (in sales) is a little bit slower than N900 but it is good performer, has tons of memory...
N900!
meego on n900 . . . .great cause i was finking why the hell did i buy it 4 if its gna get a brother(Maemo6/Meego).
MeeGo ATOM/ARM emulators
Hi,
Perhaps not everyone(e.g, independent devs) may be able to purchase the real ATOM/ARM hardware kits, will any kind of ATOM/ARM emulator (read -> low cost maybe <= $50) devices+SW be made available in the beginning or would the development be completely done on the ATOM/ARM themselves?
Thank you.
Collaboration with MeeGo Developers
Thank you for this useful post!
Do you have a clear picture what is the process/model how MeeGo will be developed in the end? Who will do the decision that now the architecture of "this component" is what we want and we will provide the implementation based on that? What if the developers of community disagree the design and implementation, etc? I know that these kind of issues are not easy to solve even then when you're not doing open source.
In my opinion, this might lead to problems because from Intel and Nokia side you have schedules and bunch of architects and sw engineers working on design and the implementation, but the open source developers are usually doing this on their spare time (i.e. after work/school).
So in the real world, do Nokia and Intel provide most of the code and the community can just provide patches?
If you want to develop MeeGo WITH community, then the project management, collaboration and chemistry of developers (with Nokia/Intel and Community) must work.
I'd be interested in to hear any ideas how this will work on practice.
rpm vs deb
What i fail to understand is that if Nokia and Intel and the developer community share a common vision to make Meego a solid product, why isn't the process of evaluating technologies, pertaining to fundamental aspects of the distribution being made public? If we can all agree on the metrics for evaluating a packaging system (ease of use, features, performance, security, popularity, maturity, cost of implementation, etc) it should not be difficult to arrive at a consensus. I'ts obvious that we have to move quickly with decisions like these, and we all want that. Why not device a decision making process, involving the community, that pertains to the development/product release timeline to ensure that we don't remain stuck on issues for too long? I think if you open this door to the community, in a timed manner, expert opinions will come, and the best solutions will become obvious. In short, OPENNESS - from bottom to top is what will drive Meego.
Linux Standard Base
I think we make too much of a hassle for matters such as deb vs. rpm. Both have their pros and cons. RPM seems to me a nice choice, together with Qt and OpenSUSE Build Service. Since MeeGo is a Linux Foundation hosted project, adopting the official 'Linux Standard Base' package format is a sure bet.
Nevertheless the aforementioned things are not important imo. The ace in the sleeve for MeeGo is the support for both ARM and Intel processors. The combined ecosystem is really huge!
meego on n900
This was a very good read, thanks for writing it.
I was one of the n900 owners getting ready to buy a Nexus One and give up on Nokia. Why? All the talk of a new OS but no mention of N900 was really discouraging. It seemed that Google and Apple both understood that a high end device is a two year investment (at least) and that software updates have to be made available for that period. But it looked like Nokia had not realized.
It seemed evident that Nokia would obsolete the device after a few months. If they did that my beloved N900 would go into the trash and be replaced by an Android device.
How quickly things change.
Now I read that the N900 will be one of the reference platforms for Meego. So, not only will the N900 be supported but it will a prime device. Suddenly the prospect of an obsolete phone changed into one of cutting edge development, a place I like to live.
http://maemo-freak.com/index.php/rumours/1383-nokia-n900-to-get-first-me...
This was the best news of the year (so far). Suddenly the N900 became exciting again, I cant want to install the nascent meego and to help the process of creating a new platform. Fantastic.
Reading through your blog entry, it seems that you may have been instrumental in the n900 decision. For that I thank you.
Now .... we just need to talk about downgrading from deb to rpm. You should have announced it on April 1 so we would all know it was just a your little joke.
It *was* a joke, right?
RPM vs Deb
There is a big problem with moving from deb to rpm, and it has practicly nothing to do with technical merit.
There are two kinds of people using maemo, and Meego in the future, the tech savvy and regular joes. To regular joes it doesn't matter which one you pick, but the tech savvies overwhelmingly prefer deb. And it is going to be a problem. The tech savvies are going to ignore your decision of going with rpm, and port dep into Meego, I'll coin the inevitable new debian Meego as Deego. Not only will you lose a lot of developers, you have created a competing ecosystem.
This is bad for Meego. Its going to reprodce the linuxes biggest hurdle, n+1 different distros that have fragmented the market to marginal. With single distro and software market linux would have much bigger marketshare and better software market. Now with Meego you are heading for the iceberg of distribution fork.
I seriously suggest you rethink your decision of going with rpm. Even thought it might seem cheaper at first, in the long run going with deb will be cheaper, prevent distro fork, and a big headache.
You can't heard cats, or linux programmers.
Forking is bad?
It is complete nonsense to say that forking is bad. Forking allows two teams to work on for the greater benefit one package while working as two different teams. Forking should be encouraged. Have you seen the Google Chrome browser? And that is the Chromium OS .. is the OS. It's just a fork, dude! .. so wherever you get the idea that forking is bad, put that idea back where you got it.
I am tech savvy and I prefer RPM. I prefer RPM because in my experience the software I receive in my Red Hat packages are more stable. I am also really tired of people bringing the idea that Ubuntu is Linux. It's Debian based, but it's not Linux itself.
Before you suggest they rethink their decision, you need to take in what forking has given us.
I strongly disagree. DEB vs
I strongly disagree.
DEB vs RPM is purely a preference. Having created packages for both, they provide pros and cons.
RPM (at least, with yum) is transactional, something DEB is missing. Same with licenses.
They are both great packaging systems but i do not think Meego will loose any developpers for going with RPM or DEB (The softwares are the same on both, just the encapsulating framework is different, a software is only written once for both deb and rpm)
Very interesting comments
Very interesting comments here. This is looking a very interesting journey.
As a current N900 owner I'd feel very bored just running productized "finished" code. As a developer, thats why I'm almost definately switching to Fedora 13 soon, and why I'll certainly be interested to look at Meego builds once out. Finding/reporting bugs is part of the fun right!
Excellent move from Nokia/Intel -But the devil is in the details
Being a Software Developer and project leader for many years in commercial software and a big fan of Open Source I am really excited from this move of Nokia / Intel. I hope also that it will get some foothold in the Netbook domain, where it would be even for commercial companies like mine, attractive as target.
But I am thinking of several small issues that plague Open Source that I really would like to learn how you will work-around or solve them.
a) What about version release coordination? Your engineering teams would like a well-defined version to integrate into their various devices. So I believe that you would create "Stable" versions that would be used with next projects and have also "Bleeding-edge" versions for the adventurous. Will there be an event that all major parties will gather and openly discuss which features the next version will have, like Ubuntu?
b) One of the strong points that iPhone has from my point of view, is that Apple more-or-less guarantees that even the iPhone version 1 will get the latest iPhone OS. This does not obsolete hardware fast and also creates a uniform platform for developers.
This is an area where Nokia is REALLY weak. I bought an N97, costing more than an iPhone and I am pretty sure that by the time the next Symbian version goes out, my phone will be obsolete. No upgrade, nothing. With N900 as I hear the situation is better, but still Nokia is not giving concrete answers.
My belief is that the hardware manufacturer SHOULD make his BEST effort to support new OS with older machines.
This, from my point of view, is THE strategy to get lots of applications. If you try to compile for Symbian you need at least 4-5 different platforms to compile for. I do not like to see this happening for MeeGo.
c) All the open-source products lack something like the "last coating of paint" to make them the shining, user-friendly applications that the average user expects. Always some final polish is missing, either from User interface, or from Bugs or from Documentation. Who will be responsible to do the final polish of a MeeGo version?
d) Will you support version upgrades and firmware upgrades through rpm, similar to how we upgrade Ubuntu version after version? I need 4 hours (backup - flash - restore) just to upgrade the O/S of N97. The more memory you put inside these machines the worse it gets...
e) How you will manage the various hardware manufacturers reluctant to give out drivers? Even basic things like hardware accelerated codecs? This always plagued Linux. How would you do this better?
f) How will open-source OS deal with the DRM that many people need to supply things like Video, Music, Applications? How will the code be protected? How will you get it to a level acceptable by mobile network operators, who usually ask for stupid restrictions? If you do not do their "favors" then probably the MeeGo powered machines (like what happens already in many countries with the N900) will not get subsidized. Machines in the 600+ euro range are not what you call "mainstream phones".
I hope that I did not get you tired with all my questions/comments.
Couple of Questions
Hi, I'm a Nokia N770 user as well as a Netbook Moblin user, I've gotta say that I love both tools. Will there be support for the Nokia N770 (also known as the bastard child, hahahaha).
Also, I haven't seen any new updates for Moblin, does that mean it's a dead product?
Thanx, GWDavis28 |B)
What about "Maemo" the brand?
Kinda an off question but is Nokia going to use the Maemo brand on Nokia devices? I'm sure that their going to at least on the interface side try to differentiate themselves from the other handset makers that will inevitably use Meego.. Is Maemo going to be an interface "shell" on Meego?
And what about the build coming in this month? what will it look like? The N900's interface is beautiful and it would be a shame to drop it for the default Moblin one even though Moblin's isn't so bad.
Consider being more open
You said:
"The big ticket items like Qt, OBS and RPM were already communicated at the launch and as we expected, kicked off a few small avalanches of debate! These selections were, of course, pre-agreed and I can assure you that the amount of effort spent in resolving these was not small."
However, this effort is not communicated. Since you're talking about openness, you should start communicating. Can you please mention the reasons (especially the technical) that led to the RPM transition?
Of course, you cannot expect one-way openness and communication (see the failure of Sun's openoffice). Many of us are happy to contribute (and already doing so) but that requires proper communication from your part. If you are going to keep saying that meego is more open than maemo then you should make this information public as well.
Until now, the deb->rpm transition looks like a management agreement/decision and not a technical one. This decision (change) greatly affects developers but was never explained. This makes me worry that this will happen again and again. So, to clear the openness smoke and before asking for support, you should start by being more open.
Didn't I already say it
Didn't I already say it there? Pls look at the next sentence after the one you quoted. Investment and transition cost/pain implications of these decisions were often decisive. Strategic objectives and deployment aspects also count, not just technology.
Regaring packaging, the thinking process went between complete distro infrastructure systems for open platform project (moblin OBS+RPM vs. maemo proprietary system+DEB vs Launchpad+DEB and like) and not betweeen packaging formats alone. We do want to merge the best of both moblin and maemo but it is also important to get a quick start and not to invent too much work in the beginning.
Qt is _the_ native application platform strategy of Nokia and we are driving that strongly everywhere and towards more openness (e.g. LGPL licensing). When it comes to offering a state-of-the-art ISV platform with open source Qt makes a lot of sense.
Yes, that's what I'm asking
Yes, that's what I'm asking for: "the thinking process went between complete distro infrastructure systems" is very vague and abstract, just like everything else regarding this issue. We would like to know the actual details (a.k.a. the reasoning) of that. What's the advantages of moblin's infrastructure w.r.t. meego? How do they compare against Debian's and Maemo's infrastructure? Were there any tests involved? Which ones? What are the results? What justifies discarding the time of all of us that invested time on Maemo's packaging and Maemo's procedures? etc...
Sharing those things and allowing open processes to evolve them (e.g. with community discussion) is what I'm calling open communication and open processes. Not just communicating the results.
Moving forward
As valhalla said, it's natural to expect conflicting interests when trying to join two big and active communities and more. The important thing is that we have a packaging format.
In a project of this scale its essential to have a base to launch upon. Starting a big Open Source project with everything from scratch, only by community consensus in my opinion is a recipe for failure. Imagine trying to decide on the project name, infrastructure, and what not. If this was the case, I'm pretty sure we'd be still not-agreeing to call it MeeGo or join forces with Moblin/Maemo at all. :)
Now that there is some groundwork, it's important that we look towards future. So the question should be (if any) "why not?" rather than "why?". RPM has been part of the LSB for a while, been used in several popular (also in commercial) distributions, mature (with metadata, deltas, tools, libraries, etc.) and proven. So I don't see why it can't be good for MeeGo.
I'm not trying to spur up the argument again. I'm sure you got valhallas point. Just adding my thoughts here. :)
It seems to me there are some
It seems to me there are some big why not reasons. Maemo already using Debian as a base is a big one. I'm aware that Moblin uses RPM, but Moblin seems to be more widely used as PART of a distribution instead of a distribution itself, so its package infrastructure is arguably less important. Yes, RPM is widely used, but it's strong areas are more in the corporate side, while there seems to be considerably more momentum on the consumer side with apt/Debian, even on the non-linux iPhone for the jailbreak community. Don't get me wrong, I prefer using RPM over yet another packaging system, but I think Debian would be a better choice.
What others have said seems to be ringing true. The community is being left out of big things, which comes off as a bit insulting. I'm not saying that there should be a referendum for every little thing. This is a project that has an agenda, and sometimes decisions need to be made in a timely manner, but dictating to the community and then expecting active contributions is foolish.
Thanks for sharing your
Thanks for sharing your concerns behind the your questions. I can relate to those maybe better than you might think of. Of course it is fair to ask us to walk the talk on openness. But at the same time I think we must focus our limited energy to places where we can make a difference. When two big streams come together the major dividing elements need to give in first and the result is always a compromise, hopefully worthwhile. I fully understand your pain of discarding the time invested in maemo infra. I was there myself too and put in long hours over many years on the Nokia side. I believe this is worth the pain. I hope you do too.
To your questions, I honestly think that if you just read what I wrote above and think it hard you will see the logic and have answers to those of your questions which can be answered. There is no point in re-opening the technical questions because big infra decisions are now irreversibly done and the train is leaving already. Now it is time to look ahead and focus on those questions and problems that are still open and there are many. Of course we should come back to individual tech choices whenever something radically better new emerges. Timely discussions then need to take place and I am sure experts will show up, also those who will bring to the table any insights gained in the previous rounds.
Respect matters.
Of course it is fair to ask us to walk the talk on openness. But at the same time I think we must focus our limited energy to places where we can make a difference.
"We're only going to be open when it suits us."
I honestly think that if you just read what I wrote above and think it hard you will see the logic and have answers to those of your questions which can be answered.
"We're not going to answer your questions."
There is no point in re-opening the technical questions because big infra decisions are now irreversibly done and the train is leaving already.
"We don't want to talk with you. Go build stuff for our platform."
---
Of course you had to make some decisions behind closed doors, otherwise there would have been months of squabbling in public and nothing would have gotten done. But speaking to the community with respect is how you get buy-in on those decisions. That's not too hard: spend 45 minutes writing a blog post on why you did what you did. For example: did you choose RPM because it's in the LSB? Say so. Did you choose it because the Moblin package infrastructure works better than Maemo's and is based on RPM? Say so. Did you choose it for business reasons? Say so. Are you unable to give all of your reasons due to business arrangements? Say what you can and omit the rest. But telling us to mind our own business isn't going to work, because we don't report to you. It's just going to make us mad because you're not respecting us.
Now is the only time you'll have an opportunity to build your reputation from scratch. "Now that the internal responsibilities within Intel and Nokia are becoming clear," please stop to consider your relationship with the community; it can't be bolted on after the fact and it can't wait until sometime down the road.
Thank you
Thank you for clearing up a few of the questions people have had wrt Meego. I am excited that we will have an openly developed and governed free software mobile OS for mobile phones, netbooks and beyond that developers can commit to and we can all do innovative things on top of.
Using the N900 as a seed device brings the OS into the hobbyists' hands, not needing to have yet unannounced products to fiddle and work on improving and contributing to Meego.
I look forward to the initial code release and to seeing Meego flourish with open development.
Open MeeGo on Expensive CellPhones?
I am just wondering how'd this inexpensive or *as promised as free* OS would go about to change the prices of the mobile phones. The last revolution was android, would this be a head to head competition for that? I wonder.. Check these costly phones and comment how meego would go on these
Costly Cellphones
MeeGO Universal...
I seriously doubt "IF" Apple will ever allow users to switch the OS on their devices.
So having ruled out iPhone, i don't see any reason why MeeGo can't run of the rest of them.
I'm itching to check out how the UI will be...
Is there any possibilty of native 3D UI on MeeGo?? Just a thought.
[Keeping my fingers crossed]
A Little Peek at the Big Picture
The most unsettling comment for me in that whole post was this:
"What will our computers, and the whole world for that matter, look like when constraints of engineering resources and software innovation go away with standard pure Open Source becoming the default in mainstream computing products?"
Is this a peek at the vision of the future that Nokia and Intel share? A completely standard, predictable operating system running all of our computers from the tiniest ones in our coffee makers, TVs, cars and pockets to the big powerful ones on our desktops? Do we dare dream that there will be a standardised platform and APIs for writing applications that will truly run *anywhere*? On *anything*?
This sends a shiver down my spine. This isn't just the merging of Maemo and Moblin, is it? Nokia and Intel see it as the birth of something bigger.
Yes! Thats it :):)
Yes! Thats it :):)
heh
you're catching up. ;)
Blog
texrat, maybe u can supply a link to ur blog ?? plz thanks
Sure. My blog:
http://tabulacrypticum.wordpress.com
I will be journaling at least some aspects of the MeeGo community as it pulls (or pushes!) together.
Zooming off
I'm more than catching up, I'm catching on.
This is a flanking attack that might win the war.
I think Nokia and Intel see the OS war being won, not from the desktop (the traditional battlefield of computer operating systems), but from the pocket and the backpack. People won't be asking for applications from their desktop computers to run on their mobile devices, they'll be asking for the mobile apps to also be available on their desktops.
; )
qole you should drop in and read MY blog once in a while.
Community Project Pitfalls
A great iniitiative by NOKIA and INTEL.
But i'm still not convinced. Hey people do NOT let MEEGO become yet another publicity gimmick.
Take initiave and lets hope that an active community can overcome any resistance put up by the Tech Giants.
Here's my worst nightmare come true...
http://2600hertz.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/meego-destroy-in-6-steps/
Maemo yes, lets hope meego does better
That was brilliant, thanks for the link.
http://2600hertz.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/meego-destroy-in-6-steps/
This was a pretty fair description of the maemo process. we all hope meego fares better but unilateral technical decisions don't engender confidence. The lack of respect shown to the community by the rpm mandate followed by a dogmatic response when it was rejected by the majority was a very bad start.
Can't really take anybody who
Can't really take anybody who uses 'duh!!' in a post very serious. :)
Funny read. Especially with
Funny read. Especially with this writer profile statement:
“The Laboratory for the Destruction of Communities,” otherwise known as Sun Microsystems. That experience has been distilled into a “patented ten-step method”
Imad, do you think we should hire this consultant?
=)
V
garbage
I put zero stock in that rant. There's no real substance to it, just some far-off speculation by someone with an alternate agenda.
Great News for us N900 owners
Thank you for this Valhalla. It's good to know that Nokia N900 is part of the devices that will have Meego OS soon! I, for one, can't wait for its release.
Great timing, thanks ... was
Great timing, thanks ... was hoping on my feet for somenews about MeeGo. When you say "R&D in the public internet", what would be the driving force? How would competitiveness be handled?
Cheers
Raghu
Open Source is pretty much
Open Source is pretty much the antithesis of competitive advantage when it comes to software itself. The business is made from providing people great products and experiences i.e. refined packages of HW+SW+the story (the marketing bit) in the place and time they need it. Competitiveness is achieved by doing this package differently, faster or better than the competition.
When it comes to competitiveness, I can comment on behalf of Nokia only: Nokia continues to compete on great device product designs and experiences which we ship globally and with best time-to-market. Strong involvement in the OS stack is a pre-requisite to be able to lead. And Open Source is here to stay as the winning SW model. Summing these two up, I guess the equation is quite simple in this area. Nokia also nowadays makes very good business in deploying services, solutions and selling applications. These are mostly software and back-end operations and this is not so much in the MeeGo scope today. MeeGo as a platform provides a great opportunity to scale this business too.
I guess the good reception of Android and Symbian over the past years also is quite convincing evidence that Open Source client stack is not any more a competitive issue that would keep companies away :-)
Thanks
Valtteri, good timing on this article! Mentioning the N900 at the very least should ease some fears. And as for MeeGo's success-- you've got a rapidly-solidifying contingent of sharp and motivated people determined to make MeeGo a success. After some initial trepidation, I'm now confident it will be.
-Randy
N900 is a natural tool for
N900 is a natural tool for Nokia to drive MeeGo support for our designs and for the ARM CPU architecture in general. We want to have baseline HW that is powerful, easily available for anyone and form-factor stuff so that one HW works for most platform and application development needs.
That said, please do not take this yet as a commitment to fully productise MeeGo on N900. I am quite confident that we will end up having a really good developer distro for N900 already but committing to stabilise a consumer-grade MeeGo 1.0 (first half this year) for N900 is another story. That is a product business decision beyond my scope. Also, we do not yet know about MeeGo 1 release content. I am not yet sure if I would be personally ready to let my Maemo5 go for the first MeeGo release in my daily N900 use. Let's see,
Valtteri
Re: N900 is a natural tool for
"That said, please do not take this yet as a commitment to fully productise MeeGo on N900"
I think that's understood - and I'm fairly confident that even if Nokia doesn't fully productize it on the N900, that the community will come up with something that's pretty reliable on the N900.
That being said, once there are builds of MeeGo that do work on the N900, I hope there will be an easy way to dual-boot the N900... I'm using it as my daily phone, and as much as I'd love to help test out MeeGo --- I'm not sure I'm up for buying a second N900 at this point...
N900 and other devices
It seems that the goal is to create an open system which can be installed on many different devices that being smartphones, netbooks and perhaps something between the two, right?
I know a lot of N900 owners and potential buyers fear that their phone will be outdated within the year with the release of Meego.
But the N900 is as open as can be and at the moment represents some of the best hardware in a mobile device, so wouldn't you say that there is a pretty good chance N900-owners will be able to just install meego when it's released -if they wanted to that is?
Of course like with any other OS the functions of the OS will be limited by the hardware it's installed on so new features of the OS compared to maemo which are hardware-related will of course be no-go for N900.
It's just like both my new and my old home computer run windows but only one of them is able to play Crysis - if you see what I mean.
Thanks
@valhalla
So you are a N900 user also? =)
Well, I hope N900 support will continue on to get Meego 1.5 , 2.0 etc.