Sad Story

Fri Dec 12 07:28:09 CET 2008

Although I do agree with you that I'm whining, I ask you can to a look 
at your own statements: 'Though not yet truly fixed', 'Usually', 'though 
it's not tackled'

Let me say what I wanted to say: A phone would, should, must, work 
reliably every time. If there is a 'slight' chance of error, it would 
prove a liability. For example: Let us say that you were kidnapped by 
someone, and you wanted to make a 911 call, and the ALSA volume screwed 
up, or the GSM screwed up, then you wouldn't be looking forward to 'hack 
a fix' that night, would you? I hope and pray 'karma' doesn't take a 
toll on Openmoko devels.

Yeah, If I were going to file it a ticket, it would be this: 'Make 
Openmoko work all the time, in all these scenarios'. I'm sure my ticket 
would be dismissed as being too 'general', but it represents a hole that 
all of us (as in Openmoko owners) feel. Forget my ticket, I check the 
Trac every week. I haven't even seen the Om2008.10 release out there 
yet, not all of it's issues are closed. Instead of blaming me for not 
filing a ticket, blame yourself for not closing all  those other tickets 
yet.

@Joel: See, when Openmoko's marketing department sells this phone as 
'Free your phone', I'm sure they are referring to a 'phone' not a 
'unstable but hackable computer'. If, there was a lawyer willing to take 
up these causes and whine on the owners' behalf, it would land Openmoko 
in class-action trouble, causing millions in litigation. Oh, there are 
lawyers who take up more frivolous lawsuits, and you know they win. 
Please refrain from saying that 'you got exactly what you paid for', or 
'you weren't promised a thing'.

See, Openmoko devels may not have themselves been responsible for this 
false marketing. But Openmoko as an organization includes everyone 
concerned (the devels). As a person representing Openmoko Inc, you 
should be responsible to your stakeholders. Including your customers.

See, if everything you have made until now were fixed immediately, the 
community would benefit. And I speak for 1973 owners as well.

You should have fixed the GTA02 months back, when you released it. 
Instead, you people are working on GTA03/Neo Whatever. It proves that 
you don't care about the community, You just care about the bunch of 
people who might want to buy your upcoming phones, who sponsor your own 
selfish causes and suffer while you are working on GTA04.

I'm sick and tired of reflashing my phone every time, reconfiguring it 
every time, hoping it would 'all' work at one point of time. Why don't 
you do something about this instead?

Joel Newkirk wrote:
> If there's nothing YOU can do with the freerunner then it's just a
> worthless paperweight - wanna sell it for $10?  I might go to $20 if you
> insist, it really is a pretty paperweight.
>
> <rant>
> I'm sick of people whining like this.  If you have a specific issue, raise
> it, if you have a fix, post it.  If you have general bitchiness send it to
> /dev/null.  The latest stable kernel version at kernel.org is 2.6.27.8, but
> they're working on 2.6.28.  Does that mean that "clearly... they didn't get
> it right yet"?
>
> To state that "there is nothing you can do with the freerunner" is just a
> sign of whininess, or lack of creativity or interest.  I use mine daily as
> a phone and a pocket computer, and nightly as a hobbyist project, and have
> for several months.  You don't need to be a programmer, but at this point
> in the lifecycle of the FreeRunner you do really need an understanding of
> Linux, or at least willingness and capability to learn.  (at least if you
> aspire to do more than place/receive calls, use GPS, send/receive SMS, etc
> - the smartphone basics don't require linux-specific knowledge)
>
> My GPS works great.  
>
> I've not had any GSM 'buzz' problems AFAIK.  I've suffered from the GSM
> echo problem which is now satisfactorily (though not perfectly) addressed,
> and the 'bouncing Calypso' problem where GSM loses and regains
> registration.  (which is avoided lately - though not yet truly fixed -  and
> only apparently affects a portion of shipped units with particular GSM
> firmware)
>
> Suspend and resume usually work fine.  (qualified as 'usually' because I
> frequently change rootfs, kernel and bootloader - and some combinations
> thereof have problems)
>
> Oh, and I've had no problem with GPRS.  At one point I was turning it on
> and off via an icon, then I changed over to have it always-on or on-demand
> - if not plugged into a host PC and wifi is down it 'just works'.  Setting
> this up this way requires some knowledge of linux, granted.  But I found
> Assisted-GPS and GPRS to work just fine back under 2008.8 with the
> wiki-documented addition of a settings app that enabled/disabled GPRS,
> Wifi, and AGPS.  More recently frameworkd (FSO and SHR) has taken care of
> AGPS and GPRS nicely, though it's not yet tackled wifi.
>
> AFAIK nobody here was promised a perfect fully-functional smartphone.  If
> they were, and want to complain about it, talk to whomever made the
> promises.  Most of us, at least, are here to participate in a community
> comprised in large part of developers who are finding new things to 'do'
> with the FreeRunner every day.
>
> We are ALL the 'they', though I read your post to use "they"="Openmoko". 
> Did you happen to notice that Andy, the person to whom you replied, is "one
> of them"?  In fact, the same Andy as referred to in the kernel mentioned,
> 2.6.28 "ANDY-tracking", which AIUI Andy has devoted quite a bit of time and
> effort to, making all the Openmoko-specific kernel bits work with a kernel
> version that's still not even "out", and is very distinctly a moving
> target, as the upstream source changes slightly on a frequent basis.
> </rant>
>
> Sorry if I've offended, but I really am getting tired of the frequent
> generalized complaints posted about 'it no work', 'it junk', etc.
>
> j
>
>
> On Thu, 11 Dec 2008 23:02:13 +0530, "Karthik Kumar"
> <karthikkumar at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> Next week,  not as of NOW. Clearly, the point was, they didn't get it
>> right yet. So unless they have actually done something, there is
>> nothing you can do with the freerunner.
>>
>> On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 10:14 PM, Andy Green <andy at openmoko.com> wrote:
>>     
>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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>>>
>>> Somebody in the thread at some point said:
>>> | Hi,
>>> |
>>> | For instance, the Openmoko GPS signal level is bummed because of a
>>> | hardware fault, also there are merely quirks to solve them. The
>>>
>>> ... which was worked around in kernel once the aggressor signal was
>>> identified.
>>>
>>> https://docs.openmoko.org/trac/ticket/1542#comment:27
>>>
>>> | Openmoko battery discharging, suspend and resume have not been ironed
>>> | out fully yet. You would see these in _ANY_ basic phone out there. And
>>> | people have been giving commands to get the GPRS modem to work. You
>>> | see what I'm talking about? Nothing is connected, really.
>>>
>>> The problem with charger restarting is solved
>>>
>>> https://docs.openmoko.org/trac/ticket/1158#comment:33
>>>
>>> and suspend and resume should be on a way more solid footing now on the
>>> 2.6.28-rc andy-tracking kernels.  Starting next week the root
>>> filesystems will be adapted for these kernels and we start to provide
>>> packages for them.
>>>
>>> | Now, If you can't get to fix these today, how do u expect a person to
>>> | program it well enough to rescue it back? You can't expect everyone to
>>> | spend all their time getting their bare minimum phones to work, do
>>> | you?
>>>
>>> Well, three of the four things you mention are solved AFAIK.  It leaves
>>> "people have been giving commands to get the GPRS modem to work"... it
>>> doesn't quite sound like the terrible thing that supports the general
>>> argument you're making.
>>>
>>> - -Andy
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>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> support mailing list
>>> support at lists.openmoko.org
>>> https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/support
>>>
>>>       
>>
>> --
>> Karthik
>> http://guilt.bafsoft.net
>>
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>>     