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

[Quim Gil <quim gil nokia com>]

Hi,

ext Jamie Bennett wrote:
> On Thu, 2010-05-06 at 11:24 +0300, Quim Gil wrote:
>> ext Jamie Bennett wrote:
>>> It is well known that Gtk+ and Clutter will be used for the first
>>> iteration, it is also well known that Gtk+ and Clutter will be replaced
>>> by Qt after this release.
>> Source? At least this is not well known by me.  :) GTK+/Clutter are
>> supposed to be in future releases as well.
> 
> There has been numerous discussions about Qt being the main toolkit for
> future releases, I'm sure you know that ;) I was not saying Gtk+ and
> Clutter would be banished, just put on the back-seat.

The MeeGo project has been clear since the launch about Qt being the
main toolkit and API provider. Any other toolkit and API provider in
MeeGo needs to deal with this fact.


> 
> Anyway, this is not productive as a Gnome Mobile discussion so I'll stop
> talking about it.
> 
>> The question for the GNOME project is whether it wants to make sure that
>> GNOME technologies will be available for developers in that platform. If
>> we talk about mobile platforms, what are the implications for GNOME of
>> not using MeeGo as a reference platform? 
> 
> Gnome would have to fund some other existing initiative or create a
> community around one?
> 
>> Are there better strategic candidates to choose?
> 
> At the moment, not really, but that doesn't mean one cannot
> materialize/be created.

It's not trivial to materialize/create an initiative like MeeGo. A well
planned and comfortable back-seat might bring the GNOME project to a
range of possibilities wider than driving alone or with other alternatives.

But going back to the main question, it shouldn't be that difficult to
find an initiative benefiting GTK+ developers targeting Maemo 5 now and
willing to target MeeGo or any other Linux mobile platform in the
future. Getting that fund from Nokia in these Qt driven times was not
easy. If nothing clear comes out of it you guess what are the chances to
repeat the experience.

-- 
Quim Gil
open source advocate
MeeGo Devices @ Nokia