RE: Hackfest proposed (was RE: Summary of GNOME Mobile GUADEC BOF)

[Matthew Allum <mallum openedhand com>]

Hi;

On Sun, 2008-07-20 at 18:36 +0300, quim gil nokia com wrote:
> 
> > Focusing on tracker is a little risky imho as it is a bit of a 
> > hot potato among developers.
> 
> Do you mean for the Beagle/Tracker competition or...? I wonder how
> relevant is that from a mobile perspective. 

I mean like Fredricos comment you referenced. I think its relevant in
that if some technology fails to gain traction or has unresolved issues
in the desktop stack and then it is pushed into a Mobile one it could
effect mobile platforms credibility, especially when its a primarily
desktop focused technology rather than mobile.

Note, I really have no knowledge or real opinion on tracker itself. I've
only ever uninstalled it as personally not really needing its
functionality  and being to lazy to figure out how to stop it killing my
CPU. Within OH people generally do not seem to like it, but not
everyone.

> 
> If there are non-technical things (I remember some complaints when
> Tracker/Jamie landed in the GNOME context, do you mean that?) that can
> be improved, a hackfest is definitely a way to help getting them
> improved.

Jamie did upset one of the Tracker proponents within OH by not crediting
him for work done on Tracker but that was ages ago and I think of no
real consequence. 

> 
> >> Having a hackfest on GSM telephony stuff funded by Nokia around the 
> >> Maemo Summit would send a big and totally wrong message not only to 
> >> GNOME but to the whole mobile industry.
> >> 
> >
> > Oops sorry - I was thinking about this in a GNOME Mobile 
> > context not a purely Maemo one. 
> 
> I'm not talking from a purely Maemo context (e.g. Tracker is developed
> and used by many others) but since Maemo is covering the budget it would
> be good to hack on something that Maemo can actually benefit from.

Sorry I honestly thought Maemo could benefit from syncing and even some
kind of gsm support as well - though obviously not on N hardware but
things like the zooms or htc's or even gta's which do have accessible
modems. I also understand now this is a potential can of worms for
Maemo.

So how about another idea; making Maemo more portable and not so bound
to the tablet hardware (i.e screen resolution, hardware keys etc) ? That
seems like quite a hackfest friendly task ?

  == Matthew