Not supporitng GTA01? [Was: [openmoko-announce] Om 2008.12 & Beyond]

[Peter Rasmussen]

Funny comment, as are too many of those from the OpenMoko camp :-(

My Neo1973 was from one of the first, if not the first batch sent out to 
regular people and nobody was more excited about OpenMoko than I. Sean 
probably doesn't remember it, but if he has saved his mails, he'll have 
the mail trail.

1.The Neo1973, the GTA01, was promoted as the final developer's version 
of a platform that would be the open source version of iPhone. When it 
shipped, it couldn't even boot the image it was shipped with!?!
2.The follow up to the Neo1973, then just known as the GTA02 was 
supposed to be a general available phone for the masses, in September 2006.
3.Let me repeat that: The GTA02 was supposed to be a general available 
phone for the masses, in September 2006!
4.However, since then, the GTA01 and the GTA02 were rebranded as 
developer's versions of a platform that will be OK, real soon now!
5.The GTA01 was apparently orphaned and is now a 'collectors item'. So I 
paid $500USD for a potential collectors item? (item cost+handling +tax) 
for which I am not happy, as I appreciate it's potential huge value in 
the hardware it is made up of.
6.The OpenMoko camp failed miserably in many ways, of which the most 
obvious, as is unfortunately the usual scene, the management failed to 
understand their task.
7.If the GTA0? was to be a developer's platform, then why wasn't it 
developed as such?
   7.A A developer's platform will contain elements as 'focus on making 
it easy to produce an environment to develop the kernel and platform 
software'
   7.B A developer's platform will produce easy communication between 
*all* developers and not just the primadonnas that are good enough to 
make *something work, *but apparently not to talk with the lesser able 
in order to make a whole team work for the whole.
8.I am not a highly efficient core developer type, but more on the later 
wave, and as a tester. I can do module and system test very well with 
reports that will be useful for core system developers, see for example 
Openmoko Bug #1158.

So, if the OpenMoko team at FIC is serious about supporting the 
community, please communicate it much more clearly, and don't think you 
have the backing the size of the Linux kernel!

You see, apparently you haven't been able to after now several years, 
create an image on the Neo 1973 that will not run out of juice even when 
apparently shut off, after 12 hours. Colour me unimpressed! The calorie 
meter you have on the GTA02 should only be able to tell you better 
values to show on the display, but if you had better control of the 
actual electric consumption it should last better than 12hours, after 
apparently shutting off the device.

Colour me unimpressed!

Then, you are apparently trying to develop this device to the whole 
world, but aren't able to, after more than a year able to produce 
support for anything else than the US ASCII character set when writing 
SMS. And FIC being in a Chinese country that actually needs double byte 
character sets, I am amazed that it wasn't in the first image!

Colour me unimpressed!

So, the whole situation reeks of a top management problem to recognize 
the issues of making a platform that has the basic problems at issue, 
instead of letting everyone on the FIC/OpenMoko payroll know that 
producing a working platform for everyone else is important.

Sean Moss-Pultz hasn't done his job.

I work as a developer for Motorola, but with infrastructure not the 
mobile handset divisions, and there a number of people have also lately 
not done their job well, but we still sell multi-million handsets a year 
and have since 1973, so at least a history has been made. OpenMoko still 
has to.

My Neo1973 looks more an more like a door stop, and my friends with 
iPhones, HTC Touch and such understands my original excitement less and 
less!

Peter


Markus Fischer wrote:
> ...at least the NEO 1973 will for sure be a collectors item!
>
> OpenMoko was and still is for developpers purpose. Let's see what round 03 
> will bring ;-)
>
> Cheers
>
> Am Dienstag 23 Dezember 2008 15:57:29 schrieb Gothnet:
>   
>> Craig Woodward wrote:
>>     
>>> I disagree for one simple reason: There has yet to be a stable kernel and
>>> interface for any GTA* phone from which to build.  There are releases
>>> that are labeled "stable", but most of them crash after a short time, or
>>> have major bugs that prevent the hardware from working like a normal
>>> phone for any length of time.
>>>       
>> This is the same concern I have had when developers talk about improvements
>> and not doing anything FR specific because they want to concentrate effort
>> on stuff that will improve the experience on the 03
>>
>> I've got this horrible feeling we'll be left with an unsupported device
>> that never really did the basics properly. I hope the FSO/OM2009 release
>> next year will get us there, but I'm lacking in faith right now. I'd be
>> pretty annoyed if I owned a 1973.
>>     
>
>
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