Trolltech/Nokia and QTopia on FR [...]

[Lorn Potter]

Aaron Sowry wrote:
> Knut Yrvin wrote:
>> Hi Yaroslav and all the good contributors to Freerunner, 
>>
>> I got a short answer on your second question :)
>>
>> On Tuesday 29. July 2008, Yaroslav Halchenko wrote:
>>
>>   
>>> another question (sorry if I missed answer in some of the threads) -- I
>>> wonder if you are the only person dedicated by Trolltech (or Nokia) to
>>> work on qtopia for openmoko? 
>>>     
>> Holger Freyther was working on supporting Qtopia on OpenEmbedded paid by 
>> Trolltech for almost half a year, also benefiting the Freerunner effort. 
>> He is now contributing through OpenMoko, and I think he's doing a good 
>> job. We will increase our effort supporting free software. That will be 
>> expressed in actions instead of words. 
>>
>> I'm planning to invite some of the heavy contributors using Qt in 
>> Freerunner to a round table session in Brisbane Australia. There are 
>> several things on the agenda, but it boils down to what Trolltech can 
>> improve. The only reason I as a community manger has not been faster, is 
>> all the work with the Nokia acquisition planning. When you include my 
>> usual travelling to free software events, there has been no time left to 
>> cover more bases. 
>>
>>   
>>> It is just interesting ;-) also it would 
>>> be great if you could summarize in few words (if you feel like it) what
>>> are the future directions you and your team are going to accomplish for
>>> qtopia on FR? would be there a 'long term support' of any kind for
>>> qtopia on FR?
>>>     
>> Trolltech will further develop, improve and enhance Qtopia. When it comes 
>> to Freerunner, they are in charge for their plans and actions regarding 
>> software development.  Of course there are cooperation with Trolltech 
>> engineering, community and some marketing activeties. And we are working 
>> on improvements there too.  
>>
>> Personally I'm a fan of the Freerunner effort. When I got the opportunity, 
>> I've sponsored travels and accommodations for persons who present what 
>> can be done with Freerunner and Open Source on phones. Ole Tange was one 
>> of the speakers[1] at Open Nordic Mobile in June. He did a really good 
>> presentation of the Freerunner project and opportunities with free 
>> software on phones. 
>>
>> 1. http://conference.ez.no/eng/Open-Nordic-Conference-2008/Program
>>
>> We have shown the prover of Qtopia with Neo 1973 since Open Source in 
>> Mobile September 2007. We also got a demo called Qt Everywhere with a 
>> touch screen program launcher using PictureFlow[2]. We are running that 
>> on Neo at all our trade shows and some of the free software events: 
>>
>> 2. http://qt-apps.org/content/show.php/PictureFlow?content=75348
>>
>> Several people are working on the program for Mobile Developer Days 2008 
>> (MDD) in Berlin 10-14 September (the conference will be from Sept 10-12, 
>> the weekend Sept 12-14 will be a code camp). Last year a couple of 
>> OpenEmbedded/Freerunner developers participated at MDD in Denmark. We 
>> hope that more can join this year in Berlin. I know more people will join 
>> from Nokia this year. 
>>
>> 3. 
>> http://mobiledevices.kom.aau.dk/team_and_organization/events/mobile_developer_days_2008/
>>
>> This was maybe not a short answer, but it shows that we are committed and 
>> really pleased with the progress of Freerunner and the use of Qtopia. The 
>> question now is when and how to organise our round table trip to 
>> Australia :)
>>
>> Best regards
>>
>> Knut Yrvin
>>   
> I very much appreciate the work Trolltech/Nokia have put in to the 
> Qtopia release and the support which they have shown for the Freerunner 
> project and open-source mobile in general - thank you, I always enjoy 
> reading your posts on the mailing lists.
> 
> I have a couple of questions - I read somewhere on the Openmoko wiki 
> that (to paraphrase) "enough of the Qtopia release is open-source that 
> you can run it on the Freerunner without the proprietary components". 

Qtopia is 99.8% completely open source. Only some proprietary DRM 
components are not available. But who wants DRM anyway?


> I 
> know Qt has gradually migrated to open licenses over the course of 
> history, 

It was not really gradual at all. Qt has been GPL'd since Qt 2.2.

> but what is the current licensing status of the Freerunner 
> Qtopia release? 

GPL.

> How much is open-source and how much is proprietary? 

Qtopia on the Neo is completely GPL.


> And 
> if I can finish with a horribly vague question, how much of the 
> open-source component of Qtopia is contributed back to the Openmoko 
> project in a usable fashion (i.e. do the open-source components rely on 
> a proprietary component

None whatsoever.

> [or Qtopia-specific feature such as writing 
> directly to framebuffer] to work and therefore are only open-source in 
> the context of Qtopia development, or are they totally portable to 
> ASU/FSO with little or no modification?)

Yes.

:)


-- 
Lorn 'ljp' Potter
Software Engineer, Systems Group, Trolltech, a Nokia company