Re: Summary of GNOME Mobile session in SF?

[Nils Faerber <nils faerber kernelconcepts de>]

Hello all!
It has been several weeks after the SFO meeting of the Gnome/mobile
group and high time to post a summary.
So, here we go:

1. Review Of Last Year's Activities / New Developments

 - Gnome/mobile sourcecode releases are part of Gnome releases now:
	http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/mobile/
   According to plan, September '08 2.24 introducing gio/gvfs as part of
   new glib, March '09 2.26 and as of this writing V2.27.2.
   Release manager for the Gnome/mobile part(s) is Ross Burton
   from OpenedHand.

 - Intel strengthened the Moblin team by acquiring OpenedHand,
   Clutter now becomes an integral part of Moblin:
   http://moblin.org/

 - Nokia/Maemo has released a first version of their new software
   suite codename "Freemantle", currently only SDKs and emulator
   environments are available, a device is yet to come (which will
   at least have 3G data connectivity)
   http://wiki.maemo.org/Task:Maemo_roadmap/Fremantle

 - A GTK+ 3.0 roadmap has been drafted
     http://testbit.eu/~timj/blogstuff/GtkRoadmap3Draft2.html
   and work has started
     http://live.gnome.org/GTK+/3.0/Tasks

 The Gnome/mobile group has consensus about the necessity to extend GTK+
 in a way to enable rich UIs within GTK+ as this is a top demand by
 almost all consumers of Gnome technologies, especially in mobile.

 - Canonical has announced a specialised Ubuntu distro for netbook style
   devices, called "Ubuntu Netbook Remix", which is also based on
   developments by the Moblin project:
   http://www.canonical.com/projects/ubuntu/unr

- LiMo has released their first set of API specifications
    http://www.limofoundation.com/
  As of this writing on June 2nd '09 R2 has been announced.

2. New Technologies To Be Considered

 - GeoClue - Formerly under the Hood of Gnome, moved to Freedesktop.org:
   http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/GeoClue
   Quote from their homepage:
	"Geoclue is a modular geoinformation service built on top of the
	 D-Bus messaging system. The goal of the Geoclue project is to
	 make creating location-aware applications as simple as
	 possible."
   Should be considered to become part of Gnome/mobile since geo-aware
   application become more and more important (location based services).

 - Clutter
   http://clutter-project.org/
   Quote from their homepage:
	"Clutter is an open source software library for creating fast,
	 visually rich and animated graphical user interfaces."
   Should be considered to become part of Gnome/mobile since rich UIs
   have become a necessity for mobile devices.

 - GUPnP
   http://gupnp.org/
   Quote from their homepage:
	"GUPnP is an object-oriented open source framework for creating
	 UPnP devices and control points, written in C using GObject and
	 libsoup. The GUPnP API is intended to be easy to use, efficient
	 and flexible."

 - FreeSmartphone.Org (FSO)
   http://www.freesmartphone.org
   Quote from their homepage:
	"freesmartphone.org is a collaboration platform for open
	 source and open discussion software projects working on
	 interoperability and shared technology for Linux-based
	 SmartPhones."
   Mobile phones have become the de-facto standard for mobile devices
   targettable for Gnome/mobile. Mobile phones require not just
   a UI but integrated application frameworks addressing the special
   requirements of mobile phones (connectivity, call management,
   messaging, event handling, etc.) FSO could serve this purpose.

Not mentioned at the SFO meeting but nonetheless important and falling
into the category of FSO:

  - oFono
    http://www.ofono.org
    Quote from their homepage:
	"oFono is licensed under GPLv2, and it includes a high-level
	 D-Bus API for use by telephony applications of any license.
	 oFono also includes a low-level plug-in API for integrating
	 with open source as well as third party telephony stacks,
	 cellular modems and storage back-ends."

3. Positioning of Gnome/mobile

The group rather selfreflected its own position, goals and outside
perception. Most comments by the attendees showed their concern about
the fuzziness of the Gnome/mobile group itself and the lack of clarity.
This was commonly perceived as a major obstacle for the further
development and growth of the group. The group identified this as major
area of work for the next year, i.e. to improve the outside picture of
the group and more clearly define goals and tasks.

Concerning the possible goals three major streams could be identified:
 - Gnome/mobile as a marketing exercise, promoting technologies
   stemming from the Gnome community and usable for mobile devices
 - Gnome/mobile as a technology driven group, setting own standards
   for what the group sees fit for mobile devices
 - Gnome/mobile with the final goal of being a product so that one day
   a full Gnome/mobile stack could be installable creating a working
   product.
And several mixtures of the three.

Similarly the question of the main audience/consumers of the
Gnome/mobile group was raised. Who are we targeting with our work, what
is the main audience? Is it the platform developers, application
developers, handset or chipset manufacturers?

The major result of those two topics after the meeting was that both
questions are unanswered by now but need to be addressed soon in order
to bring more clarity to the Gnome/mobile project.

There was no actual action plan decided but group members Dave Neary,
Stormy Peters and Nils Faerber volunteered to push this forward.
If nothing happens soon, kick them! Stormy volunteered to keep track of
action items and chasing the action takers.


Finally a call for action for all attendees and group members!

Soon after this summary there will be a second post to the mailinglist
subject "SFO call for action". It will contain some questions which we
kindly ask *all* group members and mailinglist subscribers to answer and
send to the mailinglist so that everyone can see the result. We hope
that the answers will help us all to define Gnome/mobile better.

Many thanks for your help!
It will be to your own advantage!


Comments and additions are absolutely welcome!
And in most cases I would recommend to send those directly to the list
address so that we all can participate from them.


Cheers
  nils faerber

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