Em Quarta-feira 10. Março 2010, às 20.45.06, Warren Baird escreveu: > Is there anything we can do to increase the likelihood that if someone > buys a cheap ARM tablet from China with MeeGo on it, that they can > easily upgrade to a newer community supported version of MeeGo? Are > there constraints that can be put upon closed source binary drivers > for instance, that would make it easier to be able to move to a newer > version of MeeGo without a vendor's support? > > If all MeeGo users have a relatively simple path to move to the most > recent MeeGo version - it could greatly reduce the number of platforms > app developers need to develop and test against. > > Thoughts?
Hi Warren
Those are interesting thoughts. I think you're right, if we could guarantee a
safe upgrade path to a supported version of MeeGo, we would probably ensure
fragmentation didn't happen.
However, I don't think we can enforce that all devices are upgradable. In the
commercial world, many companies do test their devices only once, with one
specific version. So asking them to provide an upgradable device would be
asking them to do testing all over again.
You may say, "ok, so don't ensure it works, I'll take the responsibility if I
brick my device". I would actually be with you there. However, again that's
not how it works. In some industries, you have to pass the device through
certification programmes, and those may include the software. In other
industries, allowing upgrade could compromise the security of the network
(imagine a VoIP deskphone). And in some others, the company could be held
responsible even though you installed an unsupported image.
I am not sure if any of those actually apply. But if it does apply, then
enforcing upgradability would not be possible.
I don't want to be a naysayer, but I just don't think your plan could work in
all cases. We probably need to work harder to ensure API compatibility across
MeeGo versions and profiles.
--
Thiago Macieira - thiago (AT) macieira.info - thiago (AT) kde.org
Senior Product Manager - Nokia, Qt Development Frameworks
PGP/GPG: 0x6EF45358; fingerprint:
E067 918B B660 DBD1 105C 966C 33F5 F005 6EF4 5358
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
_______________________________________________ MeeGo-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.meego.com/listinfo/meego-dev
