Re: Goal for GNOME Mobile?

[Quim Gil <quim gil nokia com>]

ext Ross Burton wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-11-11 at 23:22 +0100, Loïc Minier wrote:
>> On Tue, Nov 11, 2008, Ross Burton wrote:
>>> We consider Moblin 2 to be very much a GNOME Mobile based platform,
>>  A GNOME Mobile Platform based platform?  ;-)
> 
> Yeah, just like Maemo. :)

Actually there is a good point underneath the funny wording.

Ubuntu, Moblin and Maemo seem to have their visions, that lead them to
define strategies and make technology decisions. At least in the case of
Nokia, wording and affiliations are always important since you have a
bunch on analysts and media ready to guess and conclude.

One of the drivers of Maemo is 'common Linux Desktop technologies',
which is a strong statement for this big  "mobile" company. No mobile &
embedded variants. Instead, better and more flexible desktop components.

Saying that Maemo is based on (snip) "and GNOME technologies" fits in
the vision and the strategy (dealing directly with all the projects
developing relevant components to the platform). Saying that "Maemo is
based on the GNOME Mobile platform" is more tricky:

- The "platform" word increases confusion since by default a platform
generates products, not more platforms - as the funny wording above shows.

- The "Mobile" appendix doesn't add too much to Maemo, which is
intrinsically mobile and actually benefits more of the fact of pushing
the desktop paradigms to new levels.

- Then, combining the words "Mobile platform" is not making much good
either since in that world of analysts and media Nokia is asked about
its positioning on the many "mobile platforms" around, and implicitly
their business partnerships. There is a common interest in technical
collaboration and support to the components listed at
http://gnome.org/mobile/ - and Nokia is happy communicating and
promoting this collaboration. However, being a "member" of a "GNOME
Mobile platform" could be seen far beyond the technical aspects and into
the business collaboration with the rest of "members", which for Nokia
is out of scope in this initiative.

- Finally, the word "GNOME". It is clear that GTK+, GConf, GVFS or GIO
fit in that basket. I guess there are no problems adding other G's like
GLib and GObject. GStreamer, gUPnP, Telepathy, PulseAudio etc start
getting tricky: only reading this thread it is not clear whether
relating them to the GNOME "heritage" is appropriate or not. And then
the newcomer Clutter, proposed at the same level as GTK+ but...
considered therefore a GNOME technology? And let me add something like
Meta Tracker, not even in the GNOME incubation/consideration but being
hosted in GNOME servers and introduced in Maemo as we speak. I see Paul
and Jim's point seeing them "part of GNOME" or "desktop neutral" since
they are actually both. But again, it's about the final wording
published in an About page or a press release. Adding them or not to
your basket depends a lot on your vision, goals, wording.

These are concerns for Nokia but that's not relevant for GNOME and this
initiative. What might be relevant is that similar organizations might
have similar concerns, loving the technologies pushed under the G
umbrella but then having to deal with overlapping/conflicting visions,
goals and wordings. Actually a lot of this discussion is not new and we
saw it in the desktop between GNOME and the distros. The difference is
that the mobile game looks like getting x times bigger and complex, with
the risk of overshadowing GNOME itself. That's my (very personal)
opinion at least.

So you see, we don't even need to include Qt in the picture to get
confused.  ;)  I (personally, again) hope that Stormy & co get the
vision & wording strong and clear so by the time we have Qt officially
supported in Maemo we are able to see and explain what is the
involvement and contribution to GNOME, the mobile initiative and its
related technologies.

-- 
Quim Gil
marketing manager, open source
Maemo Software @ Nokia