Request for help: Would like community applications to show anddiscuss at LinuxWorld

Marcus Bauer marcus.bauer at gmail.com
Tue Jul 29 08:23:29 CEST 2008


On Tue, 2008-07-29 at 01:08 +0200, Kristian 'kriss' Mueller wrote:
> Am Dienstag, den 29.07.2008, 00:46 +0200 schrieb Marcus Bauer:
> > On Mon, 2008-07-28 at 15:33 -0700, steve wrote:
> > > Of course!!! Every toolkit  is allowed.
> > > 
> > > The whole point about FSO is to free people to pick their toolkit!
> > 
> > The opposite is true. FSO forces you into ASU. It basically makes all
> > work that has been put into OM2007.2 useless.
> > 
> > Please stop telling these lies.
> 
> Marcus, did I miss the irony here, or do you really believe this?

This is simply a matter of fact, not of believe. FSO is a shitty API
collection which is closely connected to ASU. Steve is a sales guy and
has not much clue of the underlying software, thus he simply repeats
what others told him.

The bad combination is NIH (not invented here) together with
almightyness thinking which results in all this religion here, making
people like you ask whether I "believe". I don't believe, I simply know.


> Why should anyone at Openmoko want to keep out other frameworks, 
> after even putting qtopia to X11?

That was mostly Trolltech's work. And apart from that you technically
can't "keep out" any other toolkit because there is Linux below and X on
top of it.

But FSO combines plenty of different things into one collection of API's
and that is how the Microsoft world works and always did and which drove
so many developers to Linux. If I use Apache as webserver I can use
Konqueror, Opera, Safari or Firefox as browser. However, Microsoft has
more than once tried to tie Internet Explorer to IIS, giving it an
advantage over other browsers. Same goes for Microsoft Office and
Windows.

To make it clear (and to prevent Wolfgang Spraul from alluding to
incorrect assumptions in case he should answer me): I welcome both
qtopia on X11 and an ETK based desktop and ETK based applications on the
phone.

Linux is all about choice (and that is what freedom means): If I don't
want to, I don't have to. On my desktop computer I have a big choice of
window managers and they flawlessly work together with a big choice of
browsers and a big choice of webservers.

For all those teletubby fanbois who are now ready to jump on me: I'm the
developer of tangoGPS and have a decent clue what I'm talking about. 

I'll ask you one question: why was there so much fighting in the free
software world about ODF versus Microsoft's OpenXML? I'll answer it for
you: because OpenXML ties people to MS Office.

FSO is the brainchild of Dr. Michael Lauer, fresh from the university's
ivory tower but lacking any industry experience. It is reinventing the
wheel and drains lots of ressources that are needed elsewhere inside of
Openmoko. It combines plenty of things out of which one is a new PIM API
based on dbus. This idea alone is worth to be mentioned every day for a
year on the dailyWTF website.

It is not about GTK or qt or ETK. It is about getting a working platform
out to users and developers. OM2007.2 was mostly there. It reminds me to
a joke:

        Two fools try to escape from a lunatics hospital. There are 100
        walls to climb over and so they start: 10, 20, 50, 90, 99. In
        that moment says the one to the other: 'Lets go back and do the
        last wall tomorrow'.

...have fun and enjoy life and start looking at the Neo what it is: a
tiny Linux computer with a GPS and a GSM modem. There is no sudden
revolution going to happen tomorrow.

Freedom is a synonym for choice. The choice for your keyboard, for your
window manager, for you applications, last not least for your gsmd.

FIC/Openmoko came to support Linux on their hardware platform in order
to give you this choice. Now it has changed into some religious
life-style thingy with phantasies of becoming tomorrows ubiquitious
lifestyle equipment. Linux definitely will be, Openmoko can be part of
it but thinking that Openmoko is the only parent is just megalomania.

Come down to earth, stop excusing hardware flaws with "open" and
"freedom", just sit down and fix them and Openmoko hardware will have a
bright future.

Best regards,
Marcus









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