Re: Maemo & Linux mainstream again (was Re: Projects Nokia should support (yours?))
There are synergies between ubuntu and maemo. Nokia does bluetooth and wifi much better. Ubuntu has better package management and updates. It would be wonderful if the tablet was just a subset of Ubuntu-(mobile?)-for-ARM, perhaps with a few additions. ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: Maemo & Linux mainstream again (was Re: Projects Nokia should support (yours?))
Hi, > Sure. However as for today there is no Ubuntu productized for ARM, so > it's not as easy as it might look like for the average Ubuntu > enthusiast. The Mojo project (funded by Nokia, btw) is investigating > that Ubuntu ARM port. It is probably not very difficult to put a "Maemo > Ubuntu Hacker Edition" in place, but the guys in the know think that > there is a longer way before shipping commercial products on that basis. I am sure this is pretty widely known but anyway armel is now officially debootstrapable on jaunty debootstrap jaunty http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports debootstrap --variant=buildd jaunty http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports > Another aspect to be analyzed are the implications of Nokia relying > totally on a platform delivered (ultimately) by a private third party. This can be achieved by thinking about how *both* sides can gain in the exchange. Ubuntu is interesting to Nokia if (and only if) the community around it gets big enough to support the kind of numbers Nokia deals with and Nokia is interesting to Ubuntu if (and only if) the markets it has access to continue to be available. I'd recommend Nokia hire some people to work on Ubuntu. Dell has a couple of employees who spend all day working on Ubuntu (one recently became core-dev), and so Ubuntu works very well on Dell hardware. Those people could also register specs, argue for them at Ubuntu Developer Summits, etc., and generally ensure that Ubuntu was exactly what Nokia needed. Work on getting patches directly into Ubuntu rather than maintaining a separate flavor. Realigning around a central core would help everyone > Don't get me wrong, we have good relationship with Mark and the > Canonical crew. But what if one day they all go for a new mission in the > outer space? Also, as more companies sponsor people (currently there are about four that have more than one employee working on Ubuntu), the easier it is for them to make sure the Ubuntu Foundation does it's job if Mark does go back to space. Assuming I was completely in charge of Nokia strategy, I'd loosely recommend looking at the internal goals, and thinking about whether you want to engage in a business alliance, or sponsor developers. Doing both is the most expensive solution, but if the volume is high enough, may be warranted. Option 1 --- Paying developers means either hiring existing Ubuntu developers, or getting Nokia devs to work through the processes to become Ubuntu developers (this usually takes about six months). The advantage is that you can completely control their targets and direction. The disadvantage is that you have to work within the framework to get the work applied initially. Option 2 Engaging in a contract with Canonical means that Canonical is responsible for the application of everything. The advantage is that it's not that much hassle, just a bunch of money. The disadvantage is working at a level removed: the basic vendor relationship. What balance of these two options provides for the best expression of Nokia's strategy would require me to have a lot more knowledge than I have at present about Nokia internal strategy etc but as a start it may be worth tracking down some of the other guys from Google, Dell or Sun who work with Ubuntu and talking with them about the costs and benefits of such a strategy however intangible each of these might be Regards, Ian -- http://ianlawrence.info ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: Maemo & Linux mainstream again (was Re: Projects Nokia should support (yours?))
Hi Carsten, thank you very much for the time, energies and skills you are putting in the Deblet project, and in this thread. http://wiki.maemo.org/Mainstream_Linux_Alignment was born this morning in a humble corner of the wiki. Let's compile there all the bugs and enhancement requests relating to upstream alignment and compatibility with Debian/Ubuntu. I already created some bugs from the feedback received at http://flors.wordpress.com/2008/10/24/distro-zen-question-of-the-day/#comment-1493 - if you (plural) can extract more bugs submitted from the discussion in this thread that would be great. Let's avoid having the mailing list as sole place for discussion. ext Carsten V. Munk wrote: > we've tried to > take fairly standard Maemo platform applications and put them on let's > say later versions of Debian, with Hildon, with quite a lot of hardships > caused by this. Are these stories documented anywhere? We are putting a lot of development in Hildon & GTK+ making them work better together. At the moment the team is quite busy with the short term execution but once we reach e.g. beta it will be a good time to have a discussion about Hildon's mid term strategy and how it fits with the new GTK+ plans. > Reconstruct Maemo - take the latest packages from Debian or Ubuntu, stay > consistent in package naming, it's been a long while since you forked. > - sure, build them with device specific optimizations, but keep up > when there's new releases. Sure, customize with busybox and such, but, > in the process of rebuilding the base system platform, release scripts > for bootstrapping a Maemo image, keep the system development open > (public SVN like with Hildon) - which would make developers happy in > terms of knowing how the base system is going to change - and adapt to > them before new OS releases come out. Alright, there are two things here: - Take a fresh upstream code when starting a new release like e.g. Ubuntu does. The idea is agreed and we need to come up with a plan to execute it. Related to the question about to whom to align with + some details relating to our own development process and schedules. Filing an enhancement request would be a good start to discuss in details and follow progress. - Keeping the system development open. The idea is agreed and we need to execute it during Fremantle and Harmattan with the goals http://wiki.maemo.org/Objective:Best_community_for_mobile_Linux_innovation and http://wiki.maemo.org/Objective:Release_soon_and_often > Stay out of making closed source solutions for the basic simple UNIX > system setup - for hardware, sure, binary blobs are alright, just don't > let them block kernel updates and such. For power savings, - you've > mentioned using HAL, Upstart and OHM - make closed plugins for OHM, HAL, > sure - they're for the hardware interfacing, - the software and OS > architecture is what people are interested in, because compared to many > other embedded linux, it works quite well, has very little power > consumption and probably has the envy of platform makers. The idea is indeed to have the base system as common and interoperable as possible. You have seen the progress done in the base system and we are continuing the trend. Enhancement requests against specific obstacles in achieving that goal are welcome. > Moving up to user interface - if you're going to do break API, use > seperate directories for the standard API and the embedded API (GTK, > GTKMM for instance). Ship > embedded API in the FIASCO image, sure, - but This sounds like being good beef for Address upstream packages patched - by Nokiahttps://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3827 > add Nokia tablet specific > services, but keep the platform open and keep the development open. I'm not going into the rest of topics but just wanted to say that your sentence above clearly embodies the strategy we have for the Maemo platform. Please file enhancement requests for those additional topics, put me in CC and list them on that wiki page. Thanks again! -- Quim Gil marketing manager, open source Maemo Software @ Nokia ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: Maemo & Linux mainstream again (was Re: Projects Nokia should support (yours?))
Quim Gil wrote: > The strategy taken for Maemo is different, promoting the direct > collaboration with the relevant upstream projects and going as far as > possible with the open source way of working. Maemo is mostly based of > open source components. Any manufacturer could take that code base and > add their own hardware adaptation and find/develop the set of > applications to offer. As for today Nokia is not interested building a > business out of that. The Maemo team rather invests the money aligning > more and better with the mainstream Linux. From a system/OS developers point of view, Maemo platform developer and a Nokia tablet lover, I have given some thought to what would help some of the frustrations I've had regarding Maemo as a system and as a platform. Some of these frustrations deal with the difficulty of porting applications for the platform, but I also have respect for Maemo being the best user friendly (and quite open) OS around for embedded devices targeted towards users. And obviously that adds to the interest in having applications you write for Maemo would be able to be easily ported to other tablet/portable "less powerful than desktop" devices - but I'm not confident about the statement of "taking that code base" and being able to construct a sane Maemo-like platform - as we've tried to take fairly standard Maemo platform applications and put them on let's say later versions of Debian, with Hildon, with quite a lot of hardships caused by this. What I would love to see in Maemo 5 would be, - not focusing on the user interface or hardware items, but on the Maemo platform itself, under the surface: Reconstruct Maemo - take the latest packages from Debian or Ubuntu, stay consistent in package naming, it's been a long while since you forked. - sure, build them with device specific optimizations, but keep up when there's new releases. Sure, customize with busybox and such, but, in the process of rebuilding the base system platform, release scripts for bootstrapping a Maemo image, keep the system development open (public SVN like with Hildon) - which would make developers happy in terms of knowing how the base system is going to change - and adapt to them before new OS releases come out. Stay out of making closed source solutions for the basic simple UNIX system setup - for hardware, sure, binary blobs are alright, just don't let them block kernel updates and such. For power savings, - you've mentioned using HAL, Upstart and OHM - make closed plugins for OHM, HAL, sure - they're for the hardware interfacing, - the software and OS architecture is what people are interested in, because compared to many other embedded linux, it works quite well, has very little power consumption and probably has the envy of platform makers. See where I'm going with this? People would with this setup take the base of Maemo, port them on to their new tech, giving back to the open source community a platform that can be quickly adapted to new devices. When new devices come out, the applications of those device communities will directly port to Nokia's tablet, leaving Nokia to be able to compete on quality, hardware interfacing, having good karma with the open source community, and specialize in tablet specific differentiations - with people interested in developing their underlying system platform as it benefits them. Just see Windows Mobile - there's -tons- of applications for these devices, due to the pervasiveness of the OS. Nokia/Maemo -could- put themselves in the same position by simply working with upstream, doing some small changes, working with the community, and poof, you have a general platform for tablets - the devices this runs on don't need to be power hungry netbooks, they'll be just fine with a low-power ARM processor at 400mhz. And in connection with the idea of Pervasive Computing, this is a wonderful thing. Low cost, low powered tablets with low power consumption. And this is where the open source community is missing out - proper OS'es for these devices. Moving up to user interface - if you're going to do break API, use seperate directories for the standard API and the embedded API (GTK, GTKMM for instance). Ship embedded API in the FIASCO image, sure, - but use tricks like pkg-config maemo-gtk to make applications "able" to use the embedded extensions (and use launchers to load the specific embedded libraries), and don't make the embedded and standard API be mutually exclusive. For instance, try running Maemo GTK on a window manager that isn't matchbox - it doesn't work well. This would make "porting" easier, and help bringing Maemo GTK vs GTK deltas down as you conciously have to consider if you want to use traditional hildon + GTK or hildon + Maemo GTK. Let's say we want a partition editor for our tablets. It'd be a matter of a recompile, maybe helping a bit along with hildon extensions, but you don't run into the issues of no vfuncs for instance, which breaks the compilati
Maemo & Linux mainstream again (was Re: Projects Nokia should support (yours?))
(let's keep this in -developers to avoid cross-posting to -users as well) This mail is about the relationship with Linux mainstream in general, Debian/Ubuntu particularly. Moblin, LiMo, OpenMoko to be considered in this view as well. The principle is clear: we want to align as much as possible. The implementation is less clear though, due to several factors: - Align to what? There is not a single common reference as for today. - Which technological approaches prevail? There are different technical approaches not always easy to combine or make one prevail. - There is something around organizational aspects that needs to be considered too: how to move platform development processes closer between the Maemo team and whoever we align with. A year ago or so Eero came up with a table comparison showing the essential differences between Maemo, Debian and Ubuntu (where is it? couldn't find it). In this time some things have changed in these 3 projects and perhaps now the differences are less. ext lakestevensdental wrote: > If Nokia is really serious about being a larger player, they ought to > aggressively develop and license the Maemo tablet OS to other > manufacturers so that it has an opportunity to become a dominant player > in the this growing market niche instead of just another somewhat > self-limiting (soon to be abandoned) proprietary sand castle. Nokia is already a large player, knowing perfectly well the licensing model through Symbian/S60. The strategy taken for Maemo is different, promoting the direct collaboration with the relevant upstream projects and going as far as possible with the open source way of working. Maemo is mostly based of open source components. Any manufacturer could take that code base and add their own hardware adaptation and find/develop the set of applications to offer. As for today Nokia is not interested building a business out of that. The Maemo team rather invests the money aligning more and better with the mainstream Linux. > Perhaps the OS might be set up as an independent entity to manage > aggressive development and spread of the platform. Stockholders would > get a break in licensing fees dependent upon their status with Nokia > currently the 100% stocker owner. If PadsRUs has a tablet device that > needs an OS, they could buy X licenses for $Y, or buy stock in the OS > and buy X licenses for less that $Y, related to their stock investment > in the project. That's basically the game of Symbian/S60, and even that is changing to an almost royalty-free approach: http://www.symbianfoundation.org/ We have 0 plans of moving Maemo into that direction. > As it is, with other tablets, like Archos, coming out with their own > OS/Linux variants, it seems the market is going in the direction of > being more and more fractured with lots of reinventing of the same OS > wheels over and over. The market would probably benefit having some > central organization to manage and develop the OS so that hardware folks > could focus more on developing cost effective powerful hardware rather > than both hardware and OS/software. This is what the Symbian folks say as well. ;) But what is the point here in maemo-developers? It is basically the API. Developers would like to have ideally the same API in different platforms so it doesn't matter what components you have underneath, the applications always run. Less work put on boring porting/maintenance and more time available for exciting new development. For Maemo, collaboration upstream is the essential medicine to that pain. This is how Linux projects have been fighting the issues related to diversity (which as such is seen as a good thing). ext Ryan Abel wrote: > Rather than building Maemo up as yet-another-Linux-distro, I'd > _rather_ see Nokia come inline with upstream and essentially ship > Ubuntu or Debian, but with their own differentiation on top. As said above, agreed in the principle and willing to discuss the implementation. > Though, if speculation based on certain rumors is to be believe, this > may actually already be happening. Give it another 6 months and I'm > sure we'll know for sure. What are these rumors? fwiw I would also like to a have a plan in place in 6 months. Those of you with good knowledge of Maemo and involved in other distros can play a role in this process. Feel free moving from rumors and guesses to wiki pages and real discussion. ext Ian wrote: > This makes a lot of sense and has been suggested numerous times on > this list already. Dude, an Ubuntu based maemo (or maemo based ubuntu > ;) would seriously rock. Handing over (collaborating on) the distro > with Ubuntu (which they evidently do very well) would allow Nokia to > concentrate on what it does very well which is shipping extremely well > tested, consumer accessible devices to lots of markets with reduced > economies of scale. Sure. However as for today there is no Ubuntu productized for ARM, so it's not a
