Lick Observatory from Ranch Grant, by Sean O’Flaherty.

Hi, just a short note to let everybody know that I’m in the process of leaving Nokia and joining… the Platform Engineering team at the Wikimedia Foundation! There I will help improving the volume and quality of community contributions in technical areas like QA, sysadmin and development of features for Wikipedia and related projects. I don’t need to tell you how excited (and impatient) I am about diving into such massive and complex project full of openness and freedom.

But before I need to deal with something more prosaic and mundane: the change of status of my US visa. Hopefully it will take just a few weeks. In the meantime I’ll have time to leave things properly at the Qt and Maemo communities, while getting more familiar with the wide and deep Wikimedia biosphere. I’ll also have time to read units of 140 pages instead of the usual 140 characters, learn something requiring full concentration and perhaps get a few samples of the peaceful Summer holidays I didn’t have with all this professional instability. Like attempting to pedal up to the Lick Observatory while, down there, Silicon Valley is pushing frantically new businesses, products, releases…

This is enough for today. Not saying “Thank You” yet.

Overview

Erudite makes it possible to use Amazon’s Cloud Reader service under MeeGo. You can either read books online, or download them for reading offline. Your progress in a book is kept synchronised between your N9 and other Kindle devices.

Screenshots

Video

Video of Erudite on a Nokia N9

Download

Nokia N9/N950 version available in the Ovi Store: http://store.ovi.com/content/307241

Nemo mobile version: com.mikeasoft.firestarter-1.0-21.4.Nemo.Apps.MTF.armv7hl.rpm

Front Page

Proposed by-laws for 'Hildon Foundation'

RM Bauer has posted the latest draft of the proposed constitution of the "Hildon Foundation", the not-for-profit organisation intended to takeover management of maemo.org and the Maemo community:

"The mission of the Foundation is to promote and progress the future availability of maemo derived or inspired open source software, and related toolkits, for mobile pocketable devices. The Maemo operating system and Hildon user interface was originally developed by Nokia Corporation and used in several commercially available devices, including the N900. Most of Maemo and Hildon is currently open source software as defined by the Open Software Foundation and, as such, continues to be improved upon by a volunteer community at www.maemo.org. Nokia intends to cease its operation of www.maemo.org and has indicated a willingness to transfer it to a suitable organization."

The links below cover the original Community Council blog post; the threads on maemo-community and TMO which were automatically created from it; and the previous discussion. At the time of writing, the responses have been limited to the maemo-community mailing list.

Read more (maemo.org)
Read more (maemo.org)
Read more (talk.maemo.org)
Read more (maemo.org)

In this edition (Download)...

1. Front Page
   • Proposed by-laws for 'Hildon Foundation'
2. Applications
   • Breeze allows quick installation of apps whilst browsing on the desktop
3. Development
   • Succesful build of stable Thumb2 binaries for Fremantle
4. Announcements
   • Tweetian updated in Nokia Store for N9 and Symbian

In an effort to increase transparency and access for the community, Council holds public meetings each Friday at 18:00UTC. Meeting logs are available at any time, and minutes are posted to the Council blog soon after (usually the following Monday).

Council logs for meeting on August 24th, 2012

Meeting held on FreeNode, channel #maemo-meeting (http://mg.pov.lt/maemo-meeting-irclog/%23maemo-meeting.2012-08-24.log.html)

Attending:  nieldk

## Summary of topics (ordered by discussion):

Update on bylaws and presentation/setup for NFP
Infrastructure migration issues
CSSU support and issues
Misc topics.

## Topic 1: Update on bylaws
SD69 have updated bylaws document in order to publish it for community feedback. It is published on wiki (http://maemo.org/community/council/by-laws_for_hildonfoundation/) for community members review, feedback and final acceptance.
This issue is blocker for several actions, including:
- Elections for next Council/Board of Directors, we'd like to use one single voting for both elections and Bylaws approval
- Legal entity, that will took place after elections.

Other open issues from previous Council meeting is postponed due to Council members on vacation.

SD69 have updated bylaws document in order to publish it for community feedback. It is published here in full, for community members review, feedback and final acceptance.

This issue is blocker for several actions, including:
- Elections for next Council/Board of Directors, we'd like to use one single voting for both elections and Bylaws approval
- Legal entity, that will took place after elections.

It is by all means not a final document, and only a suggestion from the current Council for establising a legal entity to continue the Maemo society.

Therefore the feedback after review is necessary from community members and a final acceptance of the community is needed in order to establish a legal entity to be responsible for carrying out the Maemo.org infrastructure.

RevisedHildonFoundationBylaws.docx

In an effort to increase transparency and access for the community, Council holds public meetings each Friday at 18:00UTC. Meeting logs are available at any time, and minutes are posted to the Council blog soon after (usually the following Monday).

Council logs for meeting on August 17th, 2012

Meeting held on FreeNode, channel #maemo-meeting (logs)

Attending:  nieldk, Pali, ivgalvez

## Summary of topics (ordered by discussion):

• Update on bylaws and presentation/setup for NFP
• Infrastructure migration issues
• CSSU support and issues
• Misc topics.

## Topic 1: Update on bylaws Still pending on SD69 to update bylaws document in order to publish it for community feedback. As it was previously discussed during last Council meeting (August 10th) Woody14169 will review it himself in case SD69 is not available and publish it. If it's not prepared by the end of this week, we will publish it as is. This issue is blocker for several actions, including: - Elections for next Council/Board of Directors, we'd like to use one single voting for both elections and Bylaws approval - Legal entity, that will took place after elections. ## Topic 2: Infrastructure migration issues Woody14619 commented during last Council Meeting that merlin1991 had finally obtained the administrative rights to repositories but something wasn't working correctly in the web interface. merlin1991 is right now on holidays so it's unclear what's the status about this issuem. In the meantime. ivgalvez has sent a few emails to both X-Fade and merlin1991. ## Topic 3: CSSU support and issues A new CSSU Testing release is planned for this week. A new version of CSSU enabler is now in devel (should by in Testing by next week) and is candidate to land in Extras to allow users to install CSSU via HAM without the need to enter TMO. ivgalvez has asked via ML for the conclusions from last CSSU meeting and also proposed to keep fixed scheduled meetings.

Front Page

A look back at a year of Tizen

Nathan Willis summarises Tizen's first year as the Intel & Samsung successor to MeeGo:

"Tizen's goal, like MeeGo's before it, was clearly defined as producing a baseline Linux distribution suitable for consumer electronics products: from handheld devices like tablets to more embedded-flavored-platforms like smart TV and in-vehicle systems. Samsung and LiMo added a mobile phone handset to the mix."

"The first release came in January 2012 and consisted of public Git repositories for the core OS and a "preview" of the SDK. Perhaps most notably, that release was the community's first look at how Tizen would merge in the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL) graphical toolkit from LiMo and the project's HTML 5-based API for application development"

Read more (linux.com)

In this edition (Download)...

1. Front Page
   • A look back at a year of Tizen
2. Applications
   • TizMee 0.1 launched - Tizen, HTML5 and Cordova web apps on MeeGo Harmattan
   • Video of FireStarter, allows reading Kindle books on N9
3. Development
   • box.net client for Harmattan under development
4. Devices
   • Easier porting of Mer to Android devices using binary blob compatibility layer

WebOS has just been re branded as Gram. Long live Gram!
Unfortunately now is also the time for me to announce that I have left webOS. I am now working at Samsung.
Before the web takes this statement and make it again one of those this-is-the-proof-that-webOS-is-dying kind of thingy.
I want to make clear the following statement.
When I left webOS, I left a great team with great people and an organization with a credible business plan, a strategy and the support and means from HP to make it happen.
I also left an organization that was mature and had thought through its DNA and culture. And I left also an engineering team  that had been re-organized, re-composed, that was cranking out code, hiring, setting up processes and architecture like never before, with the budget and support to achieve their goals.
It is not up to me to predict the future and say whether they will be successful or not, Believe me when I say that Gram has a very, very good prospect. And my gut feeling is that it is not the last we hear from them.
I also left a great boss - named Martin Risau - which has been the major force behind this rebirth. A great boss, who made and said all the right thing to make it very hard for me to go.
Actually I left so much behind that it was one of the hardest professional decision I have ever had to make.
But in the end, what Samsung offered me, was- from a professional and purely intellectual point of view - simply to good to resist; I had to listen to a much lighter and selfish side of me and break away from a family to join a new one.
I needed to make this clear, as - starting next week - I will be recruiting for my new Samsung team and I did not want any confusion on the subject nor did I want this to be misinterpreted in any way.
I want to thank all the great people  I have worked with at webOS.
Martin, Leonid, Steve, Itai, Dragan, Jayshree, Kent, Enda, Gray, Susan, Christine, Keith, Keith, Roger, Ari, etc..and all the other that I could not name.... I will see you around and wish you luck from the bottom of my heart.

During the past ~20 months I've made several blog posts about Qt5, QML Scene Graph, shaders and whatnot. As Qt5 beta is getting reeeeally close, I thought this would be a good time for a fresh Qt5 technology demo. This one is called 'Cinematic Experience' and looks a bit like this:


(best viewed in HD)
Cinematic Experience collects many of the new Qt5 QtQuick 2.0 features into the same UX demo application. It uses particles, sprites, path animation, custom shaders etc. features which Qt5 introduces for QML UIs. As usual, source codes are available from here.

Performance note: The GPU in N9 (SGX530, released Jul 2005) is showing its age. Especially fragment shaders need to be very conservative as the GPU just isn't powerful enough for the N9 screen resolution. To get the application perform in N9, some optimizations were required like disabling the normal-mapping lighting and reducing the amount of fog particles. As seen in the video, after these tweakings N9 can run the demo okeyish. Definitely far from velvet, but I would say it's more like butter ;P

PS. In case you own RPi, Beagleboard, Pandaboard, Snowball or any other embedded hardware running Qt5, please grab the demo and give it a go. I'm waiting for feedback and videos!

In an effort to provide increased transparency of the operation of Council, meeting minutes are being provided via the Community Council blog. (Sorry for the delay in posting this week!)

Meeting held on FreeNode, channel #maemo-meeting (logs)
Attending: Woody14619, Ivgalvez
NielDK is on holiday.

Summary of topics (ordered by discussion):

• Update on bylaws and presentation/setup for NFP
• Infrastructure migration issues
• Preparations for elections
• CSSU support and issues
• Misc topics

 

Topic 1 (Update on bylaws)

• SD69 will update bylaws to reflect topics discussed and post to blog/TMO for further discussion.
• Woody will attempt to do changes and push this before vacation if time permits.

 

Topic 2 (Infrastructure discussion)

• Woody14619 attempted a follow up on Monday, but there was no reply.
• Merlin1991 informed that there was an issue using the web interface.
• Woody will try again via IRC and Ivan will try again via e-mail.

 

Topic 3 (Elections)

• If we want to hold elections in September (we do), we need to announce that this month.
• Elections should he held for both Council and the Board, to best use our limited resource time.
• Late August for the announcement sounds reasonable, with elections in late September?  But we need to get bylaws up and stable to pull this off.

 

Topic 4 (CSSU support/issues)

• CSSU team looks to have stabilized where they are going.
• It could be helpful to suggest they formalize and do minutes for their last meeting to make sure everyone is resolved the same way on issues.

Topic 5 (Misc/reminders)

• Woody14619 will be on holiday August 17-25th.
• SD69 will be on holiday August 19-25th.
• Woody is looking at voting machine docs to see if he can help in the setup for the next election, to reduce time needed by X-Fade to do so.

Action Items:

• SD69 to retouch bylaws and post as a blog entry for review by full community
• Failing that Woody will attempt to do the same and post, perhaps while on vacation?
• Woody14619 will post bylaws to wiki for markup and review edits
• Woody14619 to follow up with IRC topic links and announcements once blog/wiki are up