[Announce] Intel and Nokia announce open source telephony project (oFono)

[Pander]

Lorn Potter wrote:
> Michael 'Mickey' Lauer wrote:
>> (Private note: I have this strange sense of Deja Vu :-), although it's been a 
>> long time since we had this argument :-)
>>
>> On Tuesday 12 May 2009 02:56:12 Lorn Potter wrote:
>>> Michael 'Mickey' Lauer wrote:
>>>> Yeah,
>>>>
>>>> that's pretty sad. They should have picked FSO or even Pyneo or at least
>>>> something that is already in development for quite a while. This way it
>>>> looks like NIH syndrome.
>>> kettle calling the pot black...
>>> I always thought one of open source's strengths was choice.
>> What sounds like an asset is a liability thanks to fragmentation. I'd rather 
>> chose among few great options than lots of medicre ones.
>>
>>>> Until now, trying to co-work with these guys typically went like "yeah,
>>>> you can take our APIs, if you want. No, we don't want to look at yours,
>>>> thanks.".
>>> This is partly due to the fact that they planned the roadmap forward in
>>> years, not weeks or months, not to mention the waterfall development style
>>> they are probably using.
>>>
>>> It might have been developed internally for quite some time before this.
>> Which doesn't make me more confident in their ability to shape the platform 
>> APIs _together_ with the application developers as opposed to merely impose it 
>> on them. If it continues to be like that, FSO has a bright life.
>>
>>>> In contrast to that, FSO rather embraces application developer's
>>>> requests.
>>>>
>>>> Lets see what happens this time.
>>> You tell me, is Nokia opening up and really embracing open source?
>>> http://qt.gitorious.org/qt
>> That's Qt and they have inherited this style from Trolltech.
> 
> But it isn't "Trolltech" that gave the "ok" for this to go ahead. Nokia had to sign off on it too.
> 
> 
>> The way Nokia has developed Maemo it was always about take it or leave it the 
>> way it is. 
> 
> True. But Nokia is paranoid about patents and copyrights and licenses and such things. Which might
> explain one reason why this has been true.
> 
>> Open source does not necessarily mean an open development process, you should 
>> know that better than me :)
> 
> I think that most open source projects have a rather closed development process.

Just some simplified thoughts (my 2 euro cents):

Invitation to major companies: give lead developers of a certain open
source technology you want to adopt an air plane ticket to your office
and sit down for an afternoon. Those guys (and girls) can also work
under a contract with/for you or you could assign some developers of
your own to work with them. Just do lots of operational risk management
to guarantee a successful outcome (=proper project management).

I know it sounds a bit daring, because major companies cannot afford to
have a zillion phones produced without properly working software to go
with it. From the other side, complete automated test suits integrated
in release management, like Android is using, is lacking in FSO/SHR.
such a tighter procedure could be used to control the risks in releases
and lower the threshold for outside investors.

> 
>