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

Aaron Sowry aaron at aeneby.com
Wed Jul 30 08:05:51 CEST 2008


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". I 
know Qt has gradually migrated to open licenses over the course of 
history, but what is the current licensing status of the Freerunner 
Qtopia release? How much is open-source and how much is proprietary? 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 [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?)

Aaron




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