[MeeGo-dev] N900 Questions...

[kate.alhola at nokia.com]

>________________________________________
>From: meego-dev-bounces at meego.com [meego-dev-bounces at meego.com] On Behalf Of ext Adrian Yanes [devel at ayanes.com]
>Sent: Friday, March 19, 2010 9:01 PM
>To: M. Edward (Ed) Borasky
>Cc: meego-dev at meego.com
>Subject: Re: [MeeGo-dev] N900 Questions...
>
>The fact is more simple: if Nokia and Intel (a big weights in the
>technology market) are doing a open source project.
>
>They have the choice now to deal with the vendors / manufactures and
>require open source components.
>
>This is not fiction, the largest manufacturer of mobile phones and the
>largest  semiconductor chip maker are together doing a project and we
>are speaking here about that we need use closed components because
>some vendors are going to release these components as closed-source?
>
>Really? Can't Nokia & Intel negotiate this thing with the vendors?

The world is not so black and white. There is limited number of GPU vendors and limited variation 
of SOC chips with GPU. The vendors have some price tag to release their proprietary property
as open source

Even Nokia and Intel are big companies, it does not justify to our management to spend 
big amount of money, may be tens or hundred of millions  just for releasing some of our
component supliers  code as Open Source.

Nokia did it wiith Symbian, bought it and made it as open source and after we bought Trolltech, we
released Qt as LGPL. In both of these cases there was clear business reason for that.

I would like to see all GPU drivers as OSS but i still can't justify spending big money just for it.
It is most important to make device and software that gives best value to money to customers.
Having Open source is one important factor but not only one.

I think that you should rather think that even MeeGo is depending OpenGL drivers, you can yourself 
chose your HW platform. If you find good small powerful low power consumption mobile platform 
with open source OpenGL(ES) drivers, yoy have freedom to use it.  

>I can't understand what is here the concept of open source.

Why you don't understand ? We have OSS platform, you are free to make code for it, you are free to distribute it,
you are not limited proprietary app store, you can modify the code if you like. You can put MeeGo run in your own platform,
you can use platform with open OpenGL-ES drivers if you have such platform.

You can compare it to desktop Linux, you can use some GPU card with open or oteher closed drivers, it is free choice.
You can make closed SW dor desktop Linux as you can doo for MeeGo.

Kate