Dnia Saturday 03 of May 2008, Igor Stoppa (Nokia) napisał:
> Sadly the padlock (and i'm not denying that there is one) is around
> some of the most boring or crufty stuff, not really on the family
> jewels.
The padlock is on many things which got limited just because no one took
a moment to discuss things with community (guess).
> -closed SW:
> Then comes bme: charging the battery is something that nowadays is
> described quite well in the application notes of many battery charging
> chips, so google would be able to provide all the needed information
> for some primitive charging sw, but again this is a lawsuit waiting to
> happen. If common sense was more diffuse and companies didn't have to
> be paranoid, probably more opening could be done, but i'm skeptic about
> anything happening on that front at the moment.
At least ability to *read* battery status without Nokia *closed* binaries
should be possible. There is battery class now in kernel...
> Finally we have the WLAN module and FW, which are again developed under
> NDA and it's quite unlikely that the manufacturer is willing to release
> the source.
Wlan situation was wrong from beginning - when 770 was released. N8x0 just
use newer version of 770 driver. Too bad that no one was working on it to
make it work with standard linux wlan components like WPA supplicant.
This also blocks Nokia tablets from being usable with non-maemo systems.
> In the end I think what would be realistically possible - and i'm
> already completely sure that many won't be satisfied and will complain
> - is that Nokia provides one person whose sole task is to support the
> community by mantaining the closed code and providing new binaries that
> link against recent libraries. The community would still be able to set
> the direction for the development and ask for updates, so that these
> closed areas would not hold back work done in the open part. Which is
> the majority.
This is not a solution. There are many closed components (some of them
were open in older releases) and one person will never get request queue
cleaned in acceptable time.
I will not mention that many of those closed components looks like closed
just because Nokia was able to close it -- other ideas do not came to my
brain now.
> And I think it would be only fair that, having Nokia enjoyed the
> benefits of taking these shortcuts (mostly can be summarized in not
> using better/more open HW), now it will take also the pain of providing
> continued support for the closed components.
I hope that one day (during this year not 2012) few Nokia
developers/managers will take a list of maemo components and triple check
which one should be closed and which not. Then releasing sources for
second ones and reasons of closing for others.
> This is my personal opinion - not to be taken as a promise or plan -
> but as an advice in what the community could do/demand to keep the old
> devices alive.
Can community also demand informations how to make non-maemo systems
working on tablets? What if I would like to run XFCE on 770 or Qtopia?
> Anyway note that in order to do proper low level kernel development,
> one needs also measuring tool and special boards that allow for precise
> measuring of what the sw is doing. Nobody in the community has such
> setup, so some help from Nokia for validation would still be required.
People are doing lot of low kernel development on misc palmtops with only
serial cables (some try even without them). Having measuring tools,
special boards is handy but such setups not always are the same as final
devices.
--
JID: hrw-jabber.org
OpenEmbedded developer/consultant
It might look like I'm doing nothing,
but at the cellular level I'm really quite busy!
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