Harmattan & Maemo Community

On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 3:24 PM, Sunny B <sunnyb7532@gmail.com> wrote:

> 1)  Clarification of the SW Architecture - Is it Meego Core OS with a Nokia
> custom UI or UX on top?  QGil has said MeeGo APIs, but now Dave Neary says
> some legacy Maemo APIs (in addition?).

Harmattan is evolution of maemo5, with no MeeGo Core lineage. It has
several components that are shared with MeeGo though. That's why it's
said to be "meego compatible".

> 3)  MeeGo compliance

Harmattan is not MeeGo compliant at all, starting with the fact that
it's using deb instead of rpm.

> 5)  To what extent will developers of Maemo5 and Maemo 4.1 apps be
> comfortable with Harmattan and find it a "natural" extension.

Back-end stuff will feel very familiar, GUI development is supposed to
be done in QML (familiarity of which can be argued, as it's an overall
new phenomenon).


> I agree with Andrew that the thing is a mess.  I think that's beyond the
> control of maemo.org.  Perhaps we can try to clarify things through
> discussions with MeeGo people - core Meego OS goes to meego.com and
> Harmattan UI and UX are with maemo.org or something more strained than
> that.  But the division is admittedly not good - we'll have to see.  I hope
> we get some clarity at the conference.

As said there is no "Core MeeGo OS" in Harmattan.

>From Ville's clarification it's quite clear, to me at least, that Harmattan
has no business on the MeeGo side, and fits quite well into maemo.org. It
sounds much similar to the Maemo4 to Maemo5 relationship.

On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 3:36 PM, Ville M. Vainio <vivainio@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 3:24 PM, Sunny B <sunnyb7532@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > 1) Clarification of the SW Architecture - Is it Meego Core OS with a
> Nokia
> > custom UI or UX on top? QGil has said MeeGo APIs, but now Dave Neary
> says
> > some legacy Maemo APIs (in addition?).
>
> Harmattan is evolution of maemo5, with no MeeGo Core lineage. It has
> several components that are shared with MeeGo though. That's why it's
> said to be "meego compatible".
>
> > 3) MeeGo compliance
>
> Harmattan is not MeeGo compliant at all, starting with the fact that
> it's using deb instead of rpm.
>
> > 5) To what extent will developers of Maemo5 and Maemo 4.1 apps be
> > comfortable with Harmattan and find it a "natural" extension.
>
> Back-end stuff will feel very familiar, GUI development is supposed to
> be done in QML (familiarity of which can be argued, as it's an overall
> new phenomenon).
>
>
> > I agree with Andrew that the thing is a mess. I think that's beyond the
> > control of maemo.org. Perhaps we can try to clarify things through
> > discussions with MeeGo people - core Meego OS goes to meego.com and
> > Harmattan UI and UX are with maemo.org or something more strained than
> > that. But the division is admittedly not good - we'll have to see. I
> hope
> > we get some clarity at the conference.
>
> As said there is no "Core MeeGo OS" in Harmattan.
>

On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 8:36 AM, Ville M. Vainio <vivainio@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 3:24 PM, Sunny B <sunnyb7532@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > 1) Clarification of the SW Architecture - Is it Meego Core OS with a
> Nokia
> > custom UI or UX on top? QGil has said MeeGo APIs, but now Dave Neary
> says
> > some legacy Maemo APIs (in addition?).
>
> Harmattan is evolution of maemo5, with no MeeGo Core lineage. It has
> several components that are shared with MeeGo though. That's why it's
> said to be "meego compatible".
>
> > 3) MeeGo compliance
>
> Harmattan is not MeeGo compliant at all, starting with the fact that
> it's using deb instead of rpm.
>
> > 5) To what extent will developers of Maemo5 and Maemo 4.1 apps be
> > comfortable with Harmattan and find it a "natural" extension.
>
> Back-end stuff will feel very familiar, GUI development is supposed to
> be done in QML (familiarity of which can be argued, as it's an overall
> new phenomenon).
>
>
> > I agree with Andrew that the thing is a mess. I think that's beyond the
> > control of maemo.org. Perhaps we can try to clarify things through
> > discussions with MeeGo people - core Meego OS goes to meego.com and
> > Harmattan UI and UX are with maemo.org or something more strained than
> > that. But the division is admittedly not good - we'll have to see. I
> hope
> > we get some clarity at the conference.
>
> As said there is no "Core MeeGo OS" in Harmattan.
>
>
Thanks Ville. As to MeeGo compliance, I guess I meant that in a larger
sense, not the certification program, but I didn't know the core OS wasn't
MeeGo. The extent of shared lineage I hope some more knowledgeable than I
can address in due course. I know QGil is still trying to get the device
"accepted" in MeeGo community and his session was not accepted at
Conference. It seems poor Harmattan may be the poor child born after its
parents divorced.

Can 2) and 4) be answered sometime before device release? Although I
understand if the Nokia UX/UI cannot be known until the big reveal.

On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 4:13 PM, Sunny B <sunnyb7532@gmail.com> wrote:

> Can 2) and 4) be answered sometime before device release? Although I
> understand if the Nokia UX/UI cannot be known until the big reveal.
>

Not in an overly meaningful way - the package licensing (or, for that
matter, what packages/components are there in the first place) will be
revealed when the SDK is released, until then it's what's open is open and
what isn't isn't (except for the things like Qt for which you already know
the answer). As for the UX/UI it is clear that no specifics will be
revealed, but it's known that there is a major technical switch in there
(GTK/Hildon -> Qt(Quick)), which will of course impact look & feel because
of the technologies involved. In Maemo 5 we had the QMaemo5 module which was
about replicating/wrapping Hildon/GTK functionality/feel. As Ville says,
Harmattan is geared towards QtQuick, and has no need for a QHarmattan module
as there is no native widget set that needs to be wrapped, QtQuick and Qt
Components *are* the native approach for development on Harmattan (just like
MeeGo, and, lately, on Maemo5, too). I would also like to underline this for
our point 5) - those who did QML development on Maemo5 will feel right at
home (I would argue that they feel at home on MeeGo, too, but hey...). Those
who developed using QWidgets will have a bit more work to do, especially if
they used QMaemo5 stuff extensively. AFAIK Hildon/GTK is at community level
support, I have no idea of the porting status there.

Best regards,
Attila

On 05/06/2011 04:04 AM, Dave Neary wrote:
> Harmattan devices.

Plural? I doubt there will be more than one if that one device ever sees
the light of day. If it isn't LTE compatible then it is truly destined
to die in the womb.

/rant

Harmattan deviceS

...

just for the ephasis..

2011/5/6 Michael Cronenworth <mike@cchtml.com>

> On 05/06/2011 04:04 AM, Dave Neary wrote:
>
>> Harmattan devices.
>>
>
> Plural? I doubt there will be more than one if that one device ever sees
> the light of day. If it isn't LTE compatible then it is truly destined to
> die in the womb.
>
> /rant
>
>

Hi, I have shared my opinions and all I know and can say at
http://forum.meego.com/showthread.php?t=2719 - and in other threads even
before.

Summarizing what I *personally* think as a Maemo & MeeGo community
member (and as a Harmattan tester too):

- No matter what, the big % of users will go where the big % of users of
DeviceX can be found, regardless of the URL, name of the OS, packaging
format and system architecture. As others have said, let's wait to the
DeviceX launch to discuss this further since now nobody (no-bo-dy) has
all the pieces needed to bring a good discussion and propose a good
decision.

- Application development support and discussions for the most part are
going to be based on Qt. I don't think Qt developers have the luxury to
split hairs about the postMaemo-preMeeGo discussion while the big wheels
of iOS, Android and others keep turning. Instead, they should be better
thinking how to bridge better with Symbian and the other Qt compatible
desktop and embedded platforms in order to make the most of their work.
Depending on their motivations and targets each one may find their home
in the Qt upstream community, Forum Nokia (if you are targeting
Symbian/Ovi too, AppUp, meego.com (those prioritizing the Linux & open
source way), etc.

- Platform development discussions will gravitate towards meego.com
since the interesting pieces of Harmattan are basically common to MeeGo,
candidates or closed source complements covering features that MeeGo
vendors will probably need to cook themselves as well.

More *personal* opinions:

- I hope Harmattan is accepted as a target for the meego.com Community
OBS and apps.meego.com. This was discussed back at the time and is still
the default assumption afaik but the final decision relies on the
Community Office or the TSG, so basically Dawn or Imad have the last word.

- Since we are talking about a Nokia product, the default locations for
official Nokia involvement should be Forum Nokia (mainly for developers)
and Nokia Support Discussions (mainly for users).

And last but not least

- I keep feeling amazed every time somebody says "Harmattan is not
MeeGo" based on some architecture differences and then continues
"Harmattan is Maemo" based on... what? No Fremantle UX, no Hildon and no
GNOME-style API means a totally different story for most Maemo users and
developers. Leave alone all the middleware pieces that were rewritten
from Fremantle to Harmattan and happen to be the same or quite close to
MeeGo. Sorry, but I don't buy that. If you insist that Harmattan is not
MeeGo then you need to be consequent and reckon that Harmattan is not
Maemo either. And once you are there please ask yourself how useful was
for you and for the [LinuxMobile+Qt] community to stress the exceptions
instead of the commonalities.

Ville, I don't know what were you motivations stirring this discussion
now but I still believe we can discuss a lot better when there is a
device launch, or at least an official technical description of what is
Harmattan.

--
Quim

On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 1:03 PM, Quim Gil <quim.gil@nokia.com> wrote:

> Ville, I don't know what were you motivations stirring this discussion now
> but I still believe we can discuss a lot better when there is a device
> launch, or at least an official technical description of what is Harmattan.

My motivation comes from the realization that I have no idea how the
community dynamics around harmattan will work; and was willing to
check whether someone has a better idea. I do know what is not an
approved communication channel (meego.com).

My understanding is that all the relevant technical details about what
harmattan is are out there in public already, including differences to
meego. Things that are not known are technically insignificant things
like how the email application will look like. That is, stakeholders
in maemo community can already start thinking about whether they
should have some role around the platform. My earlier question is
still valid I think - what is the missing piece of information that is
needed to make this decision?

[ Not saying that this decision needs to be made now - but having more
time to think rarely leads to worse decisions ]

Things like technical support, qml questions etc. are easy, they have
their own mailing lists and forums. Telling people just to go to forum
nokia with their questions doesn't lead to a situation where people
help each other (i.e. community); they just post their question there,
wait for an answer and disappear.

My own opinion in case it was not obvious earlier: we should retain
all the maemo channels as centers of gravity for non-corporate
activities, even if Nokia will not be pushing harmattan through those
channels. What's the realistic alternative? Call it quits as far as
community goes? We could declare the community as being "assimilated
in the greater Qt community", but with maemo5/harmattan/meego there is
tons of stuff outside Qt, as is evident from thousands of discussions
not related to Qt at all.

On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 1:03 PM, Quim Gil <quim.gil@nokia.com> wrote:

>
>
> Ville, I don't know what were you motivations stirring this discussion now
> but I still believe we can discuss a lot better when there is a device
> launch, or at least an official technical description of what is Harmattan.
>
> --
> Quim
>
>
>From the perspective of maemo.org, discussion is helpful and of course it's
nice that someone actually asked what things might be found relevant and
then there is a response and things move along in a somewhat cooperative
manner. Of course, we could discuss better when there is a device launch or
technical description, but when any of that will happen and with how much
advance notice is unknown. As a volunteer community maemo.org can't move
quickly on a dime and so we will try to do the best we can with what
information we have.

The MeeGo conference is probably going to be the only opportunity for us to
sit down and have conversations with a spectrum of people this calendar year
so it's a good idea to start the discussion. I noticed that you proposed a
session to discuss how Harmattan fits into MeeGo community infrastructure,
so hopefully at the conference you could informally discuss how Harmattan
fits into maemo.org (or doesn't) to some extent.

Rob

On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 9:11 PM, Ville M. Vainio <vivainio@gmail.com> wrote:
> My understanding is that all the relevant technical details about what
> harmattan is are out there in public already, including differences to
> meego. Things that are not known are technically insignificant things
> like how the email application will look like. That is, stakeholders

Does this mean that Harmattan is all open source apart for the closed
UI ? If this is the only closed source part, then I don't see a
problem in assimilating it in maemo.org. The problem as I see it is in
introducing more closed source parts that would re-generate the feisty
discussions on talk. about new closed parts that are discovered by the
community.

I feel we have walked a good path the end of the day with open
sourcing Maemo, my concern is to keep this somewhat accepted opinion
(I hope). Maemo is now days I hope conceived as a non commercial
product which does good to us as members of the maemo community and
the infrastructure. If this is exactly the case with Harmattan, no
issue then.

-Sivan