As someone who was pushing for #2, my main point is that we need a clear vision and a goal to rally around. I think #1, libraries and infrastructure, can be inspiring and visionary if we can articulate it well and know what we are working on.
You immediately made the vision GNOME components optimized for mobile. That works. But I've heard people say repeatedly that they aren't changed for mobile. The problem is if we say they are standard desktop components, then what is GNOME Mobile? How is it any different than GNOME? Are we driving change into the standard components to make them more mobile friendly? Are we developing additional desktop components targeted at mobile?
I like how you've articulated the vision and I really like the FAQ idea. Perhaps we can fill them out and reach agreement ...
Stormy
On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 4:41 AM, Ben Leslie <benno ok-labs com> wrote:
Hi all,
This thread has definitely been interesting. I'm (at this stage) very much
an outsider looking in, and I think it is really up to the people doing the
work to decide what the thing is that they are working on, but I thought
I would share some observations.
It seems that there are really two points of view:
1/ GNOME mobile is an umbrella banner for libraries and infrastructure
that is related to GNOME and useful on mobile/embedded platforms.
vs.
2/ GNOME mobile should be 'something more' with some vague ideas about
what 'something more' means. The closest to an articulation of
'something more' appears to be an 'application framework' or 'mobile phone
stack'.
The problem with #1 is that it does not seem to be inspiring enough, or
visionary enough, for some people's taste.
The problem with #2 is that there are already a bunch of other different
projects or efforts for these things, and it is not clear what the world
gains by GNOME mobile being one of those things as well. (I'm being
intentionally vague about what 'these things' are, but think product/
application stack/software development kit/standard/etc).
The other related problem with #2 is that, as far as I can tell, the
people that make up 'GNOME mobile', are the same people that use GNOME
mobile libraries to build 'things'. So there is going to be little
motivation from the main people involved to make GNOME mobile into
something more than #1, which ends up competing with their
project/product.
Anyway, if I had to come up with the 'GNOME Mobile vision' it would
be something along the lines of:
'GNOME Mobile is a set of GNOME and related open-source technologies
that have been optimised for mobile and embedded devices'
Not particularly flashy, but I think relatively accurate, and from what
I can tell, reasonably accurate representation of the current state of
affairs.
I would follow up with something a FAQ along the lines of:
Q: What is the GNOME mobile target audience.
A: Integrators and platform developers that want to reuse existing code.
Q: How do I write a 'GNOME mobile' application?
A: GNOME mobile is not an application programming environment. There are
many distributions/application stacks/standards/products that integrate GNOME
Mobile technology such as: LiMo, Meamo, PokyLinux, etc, etc. Please see their
documentation.
Q: How do I get involved with GNOME mobile?
A: Most of the development is through the individual libraries/technologies:
clutter, gtk+, glib, dbus, etc, etc. You get involved through contributing to
those projects. If you would like to propose a new library to come under the
GNOME mobile banner please email: mobile-devel-list gnome org
Of course, like I said, this is what GNOME mobile looks like from my point
of view, mostly as an outsider, however if there truly is desire for
GNOME Mobile to become a "platform/product/whatever" then there would seem
to be a need to get more people agreeing with that vision and cutting
code to make it happen.
Cheers,
Benno
On Tue Nov 18, 2008 at 11:01:38 +0100, Lionel Dricot wrote:
>Sorry for replying late but I think it's a very interesting question.
>
>Currently, from my experience, I see that Gnome Mobile is lacking something
>very important : a product !
>
>I mean something we can call "Gnome Mobile", with a webpage that shows you
>an explanation and some screenshots. And, the most important of all, a page
>called "Get Started".
>
>On this page, there will be a set of instruction that you can follow
>blindly. It will explains you how to download the whole platform, write your
>first hello world and then run it in a simulator or whatever.
>
>This is really needed. I realize that, currently, the only way to really
>take advantage of Gnome Mobile is to hire a Gnome Hacker. There's no
>incentive that makes you "wanting to develop with Gnome Mobile". There are
>currently no way to convince managers that it can be useful. Even for
>experienced programmers, there's currently no clear definition of what Gnome
>Mobile is and how to use it.
>
>Just let me write a Gnome Mobile Hello World ! Just explain me the process
>of programming for Gnome Mobile. Just let me download a Gnome Mobile tar.gz
>that I can build and run on a beagleboard or whatever !
>
>I think that something like Poky is a good start (but still not perfect)
>
>My 2 cents,
>
>Lionel
>
>2008/11/8 Stormy Peters <stormy gnome org>
>
>> I think GNOME Mobile could use a goal. Something we are all aiming for.
>> (And perhaps we have one and I'm not aware of it.) We have a mission that is
>> good, http://gnome.org/mobile.
>>
>> Could we make GNOME Mobile a complete solution like Android? A set of
>> software and a spec that hardware vendors could write to and ISVs could
>> develop on top of? I realized we'd need to expand into the Linux kernel
>> space to make that happen. GNOME mobile would be completely free and open
>> and not tied to proprietary web apps like Gmail.
>>
>> Thoughts?
>>
>> Stormy
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> mobile-devel-list mailing list
>> mobile-devel-list gnome org
>> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-devel-list
>>
>>
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