Re: What would you do to encourage application developers on GNOME Mobile?

[Quim Gil <quim gil nokia com>]

Hi,

ext Dr. Michael Lauer wrote:
> I wonder whether this support is limited to user interface infrastructure
> or whether middleware(*), such as telephony, resource handling, location
> awareness, context awareness, etc. would be eligible as well.

At least I can speak of the original motivation of this fund:

Nokia has been using and developing GTK+ and Hildon in Maemo since the
work for the 770 Internet Tablet started years ago. Last Summer we
announced the plans to base our UI and application frameworks on Qt,
leaving GTK+ and Hildon as "community supported". The fund was planned a
concrete step to help consolidating that community support, benefiting
current and future Maemo users.

The arrival of MeeGo changes a bit the context and GTK+ itself is now
officially supported, but the core problem remains.

Nokia is already investing a lot in the middleware layer, and in the
context of MeeGo you can add the Intel resources which are also big. The
fund was approved for the GNOME Foundation and (it's my opinion) the
GNOME project has more urgent problems that the components being
addressed in the FSO context.

Another thing. Someone (Dave?) commented that the effort should
concentrate on MeeGo, but it's worth thinking of short-term actions for
bringing more GTK+ based apps to Maemo 5 and the N900. This is where the
users can be found now, Maemo 5 is the best showcase of a GTK+ based
handset UI and this is btw where many application developers with a GTK+
background are considering alternatives right now.

So one idea could be:

- Half (or something) of the fund to be put in a contest or something to
get great GNOME apps ported to Maemo 5.

- Half (or something) to be put in a hackfest or something to bring the
best of Nokia's GTK+/Hildon to mainline & MeeGo.

If both actions are addressed properly, you would get many GNOME apps
now for Maemo 5 with a clear path forward into MeeGo.

Easier said than done, but at least sounds like a plan.  :)

-- 
Quim Gil
open source advocate
MeeGo Devices @ Nokia