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Items by Ari Jaaksi

No strings attached. Enjoy!

Posted: October 18th, 2011, 2:31pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

We released a new software release (3.0.4) for the HP Touchpad a few minutes ago. It gets downloaded over the air and is automatically updated to your devices. As always, no strings attached. Enjoy.

We have a big number of TouchPads out there, and we wanted to continue serving users and developers. We improved performance, added better support for the camera, made connectivity with non-HP phones possible, improved messaging, touched the UI in many places, etc. Also, we’ve got over 1000 applications available for TouchPad through Application Catalogue.

We have also continued longer term architectural development for webOS. We are working hard around webKit and V8. Those are core engines for the whole webOS. The Enyo framework and developer tools are getting a lot of attention now. We have also some very cool development around UI especially in the area of working with many task simultaneously, and using the table screen even more efficiently. The web development model, strong cloud integration, and a fluid and beautiful UI are the cornerstones of webOS.

WebOS is a good operating system. I’ve done my own polls lately, too. I can see many TouchPad’s in Starbucks, Peets, and other such places. I often go and ask a user what they think about it. I’m getting very positive feedback! Last week I had my car in a repair shop for maintenance. I was in the waiting room working on my TouchPad when a mechanic came to me to deliver the keys. “Hey, I’ve got a TouchPad, too. I love it!”.

I’m really happy being able to ship this latest release to you. So, go ahead and try it!

P.S. No, I don’t have a tablet for you.
P.P.S. No, I don’t have news about that.

The first webOS update for TouchPad available

Posted: August 2nd, 2011, 8:45am MYT by Ari Jaaksi

We started selling HP TouchPad about a month ago. Yesterday, we made the first OTA update available. Already, prior to that, we made a few important application updates, such as Kindle and HP Movie Store. And more and more apps are available every day. I think pretty good, eh?

In my previous blog post, I tried to explain some of the concerns raised by early reviewers. I'm happy to see that other people have reported what I explained. James Kendrick says: "Some speculate that the crashing reported by reviewers was likely due to the way webOS Synergy does a lot of background syncing with social networks. I don’t know if that is the case, but my experience with the TouchPad has been completely different after day one with the tablet, and it is a good difference." It is not speculation. I know. TouchPad didn't handle the first hour of sync, logging in, indexing, and other admisinstrative task well while reviewers were pushing the performance tests at the same time. But after things settle, TouchPad performs much better. And now the new update addresses also some of these concerns.

In our first OTA update, we have made several performance improvements, added functionality, fixed errors, and generally improved webOS. My team is working hard. We keep on improving webOS, work on the next software and hardware releases, and work closely with developers and partners. I do not have any news on timing yet. I know never fast enough for some of you. But as you can see, they keep on coming. And, by the way, thank you for your comments. They are helpful.

Go and judge for yourself!

Posted: July 11th, 2011, 4:57am MYT by Ari Jaaksi

7 first months
It’s been now a bit over 7 months since I started to run webOS software and services for HP/Palm. We got the HP Veer out a month ago. A week ago, we started selling the HP TouchPad running webOS. I’m proud of the progress we’ve made. It is so important now to get products out and get webOS to developers and customers.
As we expected, WebOS is extremely well suited to a large tablet screen. Multitasking, rich notifications, Flash, integrated email accounts, and other goodies work well on a large screen. You can work any way you want. You don’t need to suspend and stop ongoing activities because something else happens or comes to your mind. Also, gestures for moving to different phases of your workflow work so well on a big tablet screen.

But I’m the first to admit that the work has only started and we still need to improve. Our products are very good already now, and they are only getting better through oncoming software updates; over-the-air, of course. We are extremely committed to take the webOS experience further
Some reviewers have been concerned about some aspects of the webOS and HP Touchpad. Let me comment a few issues.
Multiple accounts, data, and advanced features
Some reviewers are pushing the first hours of the TouchPad usage harder than we expected. We saw cases when users took a new TouchPad into a use. They set up their corporate email account – typically an Exchange account – and a few additional private email accounts, all with contacts and calendars. Then, they set up their Skype account, Facebook account with thousands of friends, and potentially a Snapfish photo account. Then they log on to their Kindle account and started to synchronize their book library. Then, immediately, they transfer tens of gigabytes of music and pictures to the TouchPad. And then they go and install a few dozen of applications from the webOS application catalogue. At this point, webOS synchronizes all accounts, indexes all music and pictures, creates image thumbnails, downloads books, connects to Skype and other accounts and so forth.
While Touchpad is busy doing all the above, users watch a Flash movie and make a Skype video call while having email, Facebook, messaging, a couple web pages, and a few other applications running.
And I admit – we do not handle the situation as well as we should and webOS may get sluggish. We need to clearly improve the system performance especially when setting up new accounts and downloading a lot of data.
Apps
Another thing reviewers commented was the lack of applications. Well, I see a steady stream of good quality applications. We started later so we need to work really hard with developers. This is also a reason why we wanted to get the TouchPad out as soon as possible. TouchPad needs applications, and developers need TouchPads. We are getting very encouraging messages from developers. I firmly believe webOS is a very good platform to develop apps.
My bad
In addition, there is a few embarrassing things. As an example our dictionary included “dont” and “wont” instead of ”don’t” and “won’t”. What can I say? Stupid. But hey, English is not my first language. Yeah, I agree, not good enough - and you need to add the missing words yourself.
Go and judge yourself!
So, we've got a good start. We are working really hard for our first update release, and it will address several issues discussed in reviews and first end user comments. Later, we will crank out more good stuff. WebOS is uniquely different. Well suited for tablets. And we at HP are fully committed to further improve the already very pleasant the experience.
I strongly suggest you go to a BestBuy, Staples, WalMart, Office Depot, Costco, Fry's, or other places to check it out. Judge for yourself!
(Thanks for the "Judge for yourself", webosroundup. By the way, I spell my last name Jaaksi :-) )

Veer available May 15th

Posted: May 4th, 2011, 10:21pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

AT&T announced today the availability of the HP Veer. Veer is world smallest 4G smartphone. It runs a full webOS -- and it is so cool.

We've been working really hard to make it happen. I want to publicly thank my team and everybody else who made this happen. A lot of planning, design, implementation, bug scraping, blood, sweat, and even some tears. Go to an AT&T store to see why!
I joined the HP / Palm team in November. So this is the first HP/Palm product for me! I was really impressed to see the dedication and passion within the team. It became very clear to me that even though this is not the easiest team to lead, this is most passionate and talented group of people. A lot of action going on.
As announced earlier, we will have more products coming out. We are thus engaging with developers every day. We run workshops and distribute SDKs and other tools. We are polishing webOS , and doing our best to make sure developers have the best possible tools and the latest know-how from our engineering on how to develop applications and services on webOS. In addition to the core webOS team, developers all over the world are a key source of innovation and drive. Add that team seems to be very passionate about webOS, too.
So, a lot of hard work, emotions, drive -- and a very nice webOS phone -- the HP Veer!

Developing with webOS 3.0

Posted: April 1st, 2011, 12:18am MYT by Ari Jaaksi

We've been busy working on webOS 3.0 and the devices we announced in February. I'm really excited -- especially about Veer; the smallest and cutes smartphone I've ever seen.

If you are a developer, now it is a time to get started. We made the HP webOS 3.0 SDK developer beta available for download through the webOS Developer Early Access Program. This is the first webOS release specifically targeted at the HP TouchPad, and we want to make sure you have time to make great apps ready for this exciting platform.
Your old apps will also run OK, but you may wanna take a look at the new platform and see if you could benefit from it. The new Enyo framework is also more developer friendly, and provides many enhancements for the TouchPad form factor. Of course, it is an early access program so things will still change. But changes should be very manageable.
Some people commented to my last post and suggested that we'd take qt as a part of our tool set. I don't see that happening. WebOS is much easier. It offers web based tools, such as Ares, and a rich framework (Enyo). Developers use familiar tools (HTML, Java Script). Those developers who want to go deeper and develop e.g. real time games can use our PDK. Providing these two powerful tools, we keep the platform simple and accessible. Other tools would just make things more confusing and provide no real added value. I claim that for developers, webOS is the best platform available.
I also want to remind you that we have a lot of open positions. But that you already knew, eh?

You CAN make a difference!

Posted: February 11th, 2011, 7:08pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

Wednesday was great! Just take a look at

We have ambitious goals. We will make webOS a winning mobile operating system. We will create an exciting ecosystem with developers and other partners. We are very committed, we have products in the pipeline, and we do not hesitate. We control our own destiny, and that is what matters in life. Right?

We’ll have a cool tablet, world’s smallest smartphone, a big screen workhorse smartphone, plans for printers and PCs. Did you see how they work together? We have a clear developer focus with Enyo, Ares, and PDK. Have you tried them already? I’d say this is a pretty good demonstration about how serious we are. WebOS will go to places, and HP is very dedicated to make this happen. For partners, developers, and new employees; this is the time to join the ride.

On another note, I worry about my old friends a lot. I’m sad to see they no longer trust they can make a difference. They’ve given up and given away their passion. Sorry, that ain’t gonna work. You must believe in yourself and what you are up to, and you must believe you can change the world. That’s the only way I know. All the best, though.

So we’ve got many openings at HP in the webOS team. We need good C / C++ developers. We need good javascript guys. We need good HI people, testers, and architects. Now it’s the time to join. Where else are you going to have fun?

webOS launch in San Francisco!

Posted: February 9th, 2011, 4:54pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

We announced today 3 new webOS devices that work beautifully together and make webOS shine. We also demonstrated many new innovations that show how great software webOS is for end users and for developers. I want to publicly thank my team and others who have done a tremendous job during the last months and weeks and days and nights. I’m very proud to be a member of this team!

We showed a true webOS smart phone, the Veer, no larger than your credit card yet a fully capable smart phone running the latest webOS. We demonstrated a true workhorse, Pre 3, with a beautiful big screen and a qwerty keyboard. At the same time, we launched the HP TouchPad, a large beautiful tablet running the same webOS.

Let’s then think about the products together. Touch and share. Download and study information about the Sharks today’s game on your Touch Pad. Then, touch the pad with your Veer before leaving home – and take the information with you to go. This is pretty close to my old vision – now just much better implemented!

And, with webOS, you can use the small phone to so much more than just talking. Veer is a true full featured smart phone. And for a tablet, I claim the webOS is better than any other OS for that form factor.

There are three aspects that, in my mind, make webOS so great:

It is designed for cloud. Synergy is a part of the webOS running in the cloud.
It is standard. Developers can use standard HTML and javascript and unleash the full power of webOS, internet, and their favorite services.
It is task oriented. The highly scalable UI promotes tasks and activities you want to perform. You can do you task on a small screen or on a big screen – but instead of concentrating on launching apps it concentrates on getting your things done.

But I wanna talk more about these later. Now, let’s party!

Getting ready ...

Posted: February 4th, 2011, 6:20am MYT by Ari Jaaksi

2+ months @ HP. I’m enjoying the ride tremendously. And in my personal life, I'm loving the weather and living on Craigslist.

We are working hard to develop webOS and services further. We will show some new stuff next week, so stay tuned.

As a teaser, take a look at this.

And this, we are in the finals ;-)

And this, we are hiring!

Continue posting ...

Posted: November 24th, 2010, 7:39pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

I originally started this blog for one reason: I felt that I needed to communicate the strategies we were executing especially in the area of open source. I was responsible for the most part of it at Nokia, and I thought you wanna hear it from me. Thank you for all the feed back. All of it!

From the early days of Nokia 770 everything has changed. We did turn the company around and put both open source and MeeGo into the center of Nokia. We released Nokia's first Linux and open source based smartphone, the Nokia N900, and participated the creation of the Maemo community. We then joined forces with Intel and others and created MeeGo operations to continue that work we started. And my dear colleagues and community members continue doing that. It will be a great success!

But I moved on. I started at HP / Palm 3 days ago. I'm exited and thrilled about this opportunity. I've always been a great fan of webOS and I'm now proud to be a part of this great team. One of the first things I did even before joining was to install and try out the SDK. I was impressed to see how easily I got started with it!

I do not know yet what are my future needs for communicating through this channel. Palm seems to have good publicity actions going on, such as developer days and sites. But we will see .... talk to you soon!

1.2 out tomorrow

Posted: May 25th, 2010, 5:48pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

1.2. You should have it tomorrow the latest.

In a nutshell,

- The world's first phone with Skype video calls
- Google and SIP video calls, too
- Other stuff like browser, exchange, browser etc improvements
- Qt 4.6 for developers ... this is very important. This now bridges us to the forthcoming MeeGo apps that will then run also on you N900.

So with all the above, with full Flash, Mozilla browser, and a lot of cool apps at Nokia OVI store and Maemo repositories, a very compelling little computer. And a phone, too.

More info here.

Competition is good .. it makes things happen!

Posted: May 1st, 2010, 5:57pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

I've been working with software, computers, user interfaces and all that since late 80s. I've seen interesting development and several paradigm shifts happening. But I feel that we are in the middle of the most significant one!

It is happening now!
We are right in the middle of a very interesting era. Mobile phones are in the center of high tech innovation. The most of new interesting user interface paradigms originate from mobile space. Laptops and other are borrowing connectivity and other features from mobile phones. And, Moore's law has made it possible for mobile phones to run full operating systems without any limitations thus killing limited "mobile operating systems". If I ever had a doubt now I'm sure! Now we have full computers in our pockets. No wonder mobile phones and their software are in the center of innovation.

Competition
And competition is fierce. Competition is good because only through competition can we ensure continuous development and added value to consumers. PC operating systems have lost this competitiveness after somebody won. Now innovation has moved elsewhere -- increasingly to mobile space.

This is why I follow up and value highly our tough competitors. This is why I think about the industry as a whole. I want to learn from our competitors, copy them, collaborate with them, and try to be better than them. We can commonly do so much more than a single dominant player could do. Competition boosts innovation and makes things possible.

So what is happening right now. A lot!

Apple will come up with their new iPhone OS 4. It will be great, I believe. And even if it wasn't the will make it sound great!

I've been using Google Nexus One a lot lately. It is such a great device. The way they've integrated Google services sets the bar for all of us.

I used to use a Palm Pre a lot. What a great device. What an astounding software. I was so disappointed to see it not getting the traction it deserves. I really hope that now that it has found a new home @ HP it will rise again! And by the way, I have an extra sweet spot for Pre. It shares a lot of stuff with Maemo and N900.

Nokia just announced N8, the first device running Symbian^3. It is a great device with a very nice user interface. And together with the new Qt SDK, the application development environment for Nokia devices is one of the best in the industry!

And of course MeeGo and Maemo. A true computer software running in a mobile phone. Developed as an open source project with Intel, Nokia, and others.

My biased N900 view
As you know, we are selling the first Maemo phone, the N900. I'm biased, but I claim we have the best Flash implementation anybody has. We optimized full Flash to run with an open Mozilla browser. And it works very well!. (These are merely excuses, I think.)

We have the best browser based on the open Mozilla engine. We have the best multitasking implementation.

And --just try it -- we have a brilliant audio quality. Go ahead, plug the best possible studio headphones into you N900, and listen. To my ears, the best in the industry!

So competition is good. It is so exciting to see all this development.

P.S.

I'm running a 1.2 release candidate on this phone now. And this is the best phone ever to write blog posts!

Getting there -- and back! (A volcano post)

Posted: April 23rd, 2010, 9:18pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

I finally got back home from the Linux Foundation summit where I gave a keynote. We are now building both the platform and devices, and we need to keep the following things clear on our mind:

Other parties are joining, too. This all is happening fast and I noticed a lot of support for MeeGo during the summit.

Thank you Linux Foundation for hosting both the summit and the MeeGo project!

-----------------

And then, everything started to go bad. Islanders broke their volcano and seriously complicated things. Those guys seem to screw up banks and mountains on a regular basis.

I had originally a flight back home from SFO, leaving Thursday evening a week ago. It was canceled, as we all know, and there was no idea when would British Airways start to operate again. Actually, BA never ever contacted me on anything during the trip.

I'm one of those guys who cannot relax if everything is not under my control. So no way could I have done what --looking back now ---would have been the right choice: stay put and wait for BA to take me home. No no. Instead, I started my own journey step by step getting closer to home.

So I booked a flight to New York City. It is closer to Finland than SFO, I figured. Then, in NYC I started to look for flights to Europe.

I managed to get myself on a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt. But while the plane was already starting to board, I saw the pilots walking out of the tube. I thought: They either gonna ask me to drive or then they'll cancel the flight. Was not my day, so back to the hotel and a night in NYC.

Next day I desperately tried to book a flight to Europe. No airlines or travel agencies were of any help. My dear admin, Merja, did all she could back in Finland, but no flights whatsoever! The longest time I waited on a phone on a single call was 2 hours 20 minutes. A long distance call from NYC to Helsinki on my N900. I had the waiting tone playing in my ear plugs while doing shopping in NYC. I hate the music loop they've created.

But then, Sunday evening, an Alitalia / Delta flight from JFK to Milan. And I managed to get a ticket. So here we go.

In the latter part of the flight, I heard an announcement in Italian. I could not understand anything but I saw Italians making weight lifting moves (without weights) and saw the map on the screen drawing a dotted line to Rome. OK I thought. Rome is not Milan, but Rome is Europe. Getting closer now.

In Rome I saw all the flights north canceled. Nobody knew when they would start again. It is now Monday and I was already supposed to be home by Friday. I went to different car rental offices and tried to rent a car. No cars available anywhere. None. I tried to buy a car. Yes I did -- I've always thought I'd like to buy a 70's Alfa. It would have taken me 5 days to get an export license, they say. So no good.

Then I went downtown and checked into a hotel. I took a subway to the central railway station to get a train. No availability in any trains leaving North until Saturday. Buying a complete trip to, say, Stockholm --- no idea. There was a 500 m line queuing to the ticket office -- while there was a sign saying "No tickets available". Go and figure ... And it was raining!

I was also trying to call different places and become sort of an expert on waiting tones. If you ever make one don't you loop your waiting tone music so that when the loop stars again there is a click and noticeable loop break. It gets reaaaaalllly annoying after an hour listening.

Very tired now, I go to the hotel bar to get a beer before going to bed. It was around 11 pm and the previous night in Alitalia coach wasn't really cozy. Then I heard two persons talking Finnish and I ask if they were stranded, too. They said, yes, but we are leaving for Helsinki tomorrow, they continued. They were leaving the Rome Central railway station Tuesday morning 6 am. Holy shit, how?

They have found a group of people on Facebook going for a bus ride Rome - Tallinn organized by a local travel agency. And then a ferry to Helsinki. They gave me a phone number to call, but the bus was already full. Sorry.

I went back to my room and brushed my teeth. Then I -- packed up my things and set an alarm to wake me up 4.30. I thought eventually you also get lucky if you just keep on trying.

So, in the morning I checked out from the hotel (a sign of commitment ... no plans for the next night other than it won't be Rome) and went to the railway station with my new Finnish friends so see what's going on. All 49 showed up and they loaded the bus . I was silently hoping a now-show but I was not lucky. Or actually I was ... the bus company had told the travel agency that there are 49 seats available, but the bus had 50!! So I got in! Here we go from Rome to Tallinn.

I save you from the details of the bus trip. But I will never ever use a bus again. Some of the highlights were:

-We had three drivers who would take turns in driving and resting. They would change a driver without stopping the bus.
-We drove non-stop Rome - Tallinn. Only 20 min stops here and there every 4 hours or so.

-The bus had one broken TomTom navigator that didn't boot up, my N900 run out of battery already in Italy, and the drivers considered buying a map in Austria but decided not to. So the navigation was all f'd up. We got it wrong during the trip pretty often.
-The drivers were driving to Belarus before we as passengers realized that this is not the way to go! Its not on the way to Estonia and you need a visa to get in and .... really ... nobody is interested in going there at this point.
-There was no WC or fridge or anything in the bus. Just 50 hard seats.
-It took us 46 hours with a few 20 minutes breaks to drive from Rome to Tallinn.
-The roads in Poland and Lithuania are not for motor vehicles -- or for human beings.
-If you give a Finn too much alcohol he may get aggressive. In a bus that is not good. (I'm not talking about myself ....)
-Women pee more often than men.

So the, 5.30 am Thursday we got to Tallinn. I check into a hotel just to get a shower. The I take a ferry to Helsinki and a train to Tampere.

I get to bed early. It is now Thursday evening -- last time I was in bed more than 4 hours was Saturday in NYC.

This is all Jim's fault! But now hard feelings -- I'm home. And the Summit was superb.

MeeGo is now opened

Posted: April 1st, 2010, 7:42pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

MeeGo project is making progress. We opened the MeeGo distribution infrastructure and the operating system base. It is not on official or tested release, but the opening of the public development of the MeeGo OS layer. So, it is an invitation for hackers who want to participate in MeeGo development, not for end users ;-)

If you consider yourself a developer, go and check it out. You can run it on an Nokia N900, and on an Intel Atom based laptop or handset.

If you study the code closer you can also see how we are merging Moblin and Maemo projects. Moblin contributed things such as the entire OpenSuse based build infrastructure, geoCLue location framework, PcakageKit, Connman etc. Maemo contributed things such as Telepathy for Internet communication, Tracker for user and metadata management, Maemo multimedia application framework, Qt toolkit etc. And, as we know, a big part of Moblin and Maemo were already the same.

And, by the way, our team within Nokia was called Maemo Devices. We are now MeeGo Devices. Same guys. Bigger ambitions!

P.S.

As explained, N900 is used as one of the platforms for MeeGo development. I do not have any news about the actual Nokia products running MeeGo. We will tell about the products separately.

N900, MeeGo, and Barcelona

Posted: February 18th, 2010, 9:17pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

In-flight entertainment with N900

Flying to Barcelona over the Alps.
N900 takes the pictures and monitors the speed of the plane … keeping the pilot honest.

Open source and Business

So how was Barcelona? I met with many device manufacturers, software houses, and chipset and technology providers. It became clear that many of them will be looking into MeeGo as a viable target platform. The feedback was very positive.

We managed to get a very good traction with open source community on Maemo. MeeGo now expands that to next level -- and this is one of the biggest contributions Maemo will provide to MeeGo. I've been discussing with community members, seen the discussion and work taking off at the MeeGo discussion forums, and so forth ... the ball is rolling! Now it is the time for you to get on-board. Now!

But that's not all. With MeeGo we now get business interest like never before from the key players in the industry. As a truly open alternative, strong community support, with full blown standard Linux, powerful application environment, and the two biggest investors in mobile Linux backing it up it has all the potential. There was a huge need for something like MeeGo. Openly developed operating system backed up by enough money and a strong community.

I’m very encouraged!

Buzz!

Suits!

So what’s with today ….?

N900 is one of the most interesting products you can own at the moment. It is on open Linux based smartphone / mobile computer that offers, among other things, a superior browser that runs full Flash and renders pages better than any other mobile browser, good multimedia cababilitis (DivX and stuff ... even to your TV), a very deep social networking integration, a conversation view that allows you to maintain short message and IM conversations in order, capability to run many applications at the same time, OVI store for more apps, community repositories for really advanced stuff and apps, a Carl Zeiss camera, etc etc. (I indeed sound like a sales guy … but then again I and my daughter are using N900 as our primary device, of course)

And now, going forward it will only get better. We just released a new software release for you this Tuesday. Third over-the-air update this year pushed to your N900 by us. And we have new software updates in the pipeline for you, more applications coming, and we open new markets for sales.

But there is better to come. The announcement of MeeGo takes N900 even further. Now listen to this:

MeeGo has already gotten many more people interested in N900 than Maemo platform alone would have done. I already know many people now gearing up their Qt based application development on N900. Why now? Because now they know it will not be just a Nokia-only thing but will be much wider and thus worth investing in. This means that there will be more applications for N900 owners in the future than there would have been without MeeGo. This is for sure. This is the most important thing for the majority of N900 customers. With MeeGo, Maemo and N900 will only go stronger!

This is the next step ... a step forward

Posted: February 16th, 2010, 6:26am MYT by Ari Jaaksi

Greetings from the Nokia party here in Barcelona. I'm blogging on my N900 which really makes me the geek of the party!

MeeGo is the next step fro Maemo. Natural evolution. Gets us much wider adoption. So it is not at all about forgetting Maemo. It is about merging most significant open source mobile projects together.

Nokia roadmap will be accelerated. Maemo6 plans have not changed. We are workingd days and nights to get it out.It will be Qt based and MeeGo compatible.

We will absolutely not forget N900 users and developers. If you are a developer, develop on N900 with Qt and your apps will run on MeeGo devices. If you are an N900 owner (or an owner wannabee) this is all good for you. All the MeeGo and Qt momentum will give you many more interesting applications to run on N900. Now and in the future.

MeeGo time!

Posted: February 15th, 2010, 8:42pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

We’ve been busy with our friends @ Intel.

We decided to expand the relationship we started already last spring. We merge Maemo and Moblin projects into one single project called MeeGo. MeeGo is an open software platform – an operating system – for a wide range of devices. It’ll run on X86 and on Arm based hardware. It will be developed as an open project hosted by the Linux Foundation.

So what does it mean? Many things.

Joint development

We will merge Maemo and Moblin projects. Their architecture is already very similar. They share many components but sometimes use different versions. But they build and integrate releases independently. And while Maemo is for ARM, Moblin is for X86. Now we merge them to get the best of both. A good Moblin build and integration, Maemo’s mobile optimizations and ARM support, Qt etc. We can also now make the bright engineers of Intel and Nokia to work close together.

And even more. I invite all active Moblin and Maemo community members to now join the MeeGo project. It’ll give you all a much bigger pond to swim in. And it’ll get your work into much wider use than either of these projects separately.

Freedom

MeeGo is free. Code will be available for everybody under proper open source licenses. No strings attached other than making your contributions also free. The development and integration will be open, too. Everybody can invest in MeeGo and participate. It is a genuine open source project. Free for everybody to participate, contribute, and enjoy. Free. No papers to sign. Just show up!

Compatibility

MeeGo offers the broadest possible compatibility for application developers. It uses Qt as the framework and toolset for application developers. It means very good tools and possibility to run your apps in a wide range of devices. Code once – deploy everywhere.

MeeGo also means compatibility and full compliance with leading open source projects. We will not fork projects if we can possibly avoid it. We will work with leading open source projects using the open source best practices.

A perfect target

MeeGo will aim high. Nokia and Intel are the biggest investors in mobile Linux based technologies and now – together—even more significant. We will put all our force behind making MeeGo THE operating system.

So, for chip-set companies, hardware vendors, software companies, application developers, device manufactures, operators … this is the place to go. Make you stuff work under, inside, or on top of MeeGo and you get your stuff deployed all over the place. Nokia will ship tons of MeeGo devices, Intel, too. And others will use MeeGo in their devices. It is open, free, powerful and compatible.

Devices

So what’s with Maemo6? Maemo6 will be MeeGo compatible.....consider Maemo6 already a MeeGo instance.

So aim at MeeGo. We will!

Applications on Maemo

Posted: January 21st, 2010, 11:20pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

Some people are questioning Maemo as an application development platform. I claim that it is one of Maemo's strong points going forward.

We have always had a strong and productive maemo.org community that builds very interesting stuff. Their work has been available for more advanced Maemo users already for some time. I claim that the depth and coolness of those apps and compos beats almost any other mobile platform. Maemo is open and as a true computer OS it allows developers to create really nice applications, widgets, and extensions. If you want to experience them just open disabled repositories or go directly to maemo.org.

And now, Ovi Store for Maemo applications has been open for a week or two. It is the official Nokia supported application store where developers can distribute their work. You should defenately check it out.

Angry Birds is one of the many applications you can install to your N900 from the Ovi Store. This is what the developers of that entertaining game say: " In the first week that Angry Birds has been on the Ovi Store, it has been downloaded almost as many times as the iPhone version in six weeks. Given that most N900 users have not even used Ovi Store yet, we are confident that there will be many more downloads in the months to come, and are sure that the N900 version will be very profitable."

I suggest you read the whole interview and go to the Ovi Store with your N900. Get your apps there, too. And have fun!

Maemo is on the right tracks ... Friday afternoon!

Posted: January 15th, 2010, 11:57pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

When we started Maemo 5 we said: let's make the world's best pocketable computer, that is also a good phone! That is exactly what we've managed to do. And this is my vision of the future, too.

My impression is that if you read reviews and blogs, all of those that start with "Internet", "Computer", "Multimedia", "Networking" or any other such terms love N900. They think it's the best device out there. Those, who think it primarily just as a phone have more concerns.

Just as we planned! The best browser ever, the best conversation view, the best social network integration, very good camera & imaging capabilities, good multimedia support --- and a crips and well working mobile phone. And -- as a true computer- open and upgradeable by end users:

Two firmware updates within a week. Over the air. Some glitches, mostly going well!
Application store with good stuff in it
MMS implementation coming in as an open source project (Frals, cool!!!).
In addition to basic applications, a lot of other very integrated features, such as the Firefox browser, MSN and other IM plugins, codecs etc available as downloadables. Demonstrates the power of a true open Linux computer!
+ many so interesting apps ... hundreds already ....

Not bad, eh?

It's Friday afternoon and I'm still in a phone conference, as you can see in the picture below. I'm in a phone conf (on mute, of course) and on my Facebook at the same time -- and a card game going on ..... this late in Friday, I felt that I needed to post and brag a bit about it ;-)

A good start for 2010!

Posted: January 12th, 2010, 11:54pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

Happy new year!

We opened Ovi Store beta today for Maemo 5, i.e. for N900. Go and check it out! More here.

I made a trip during the new year. And I used my N900 to take a lot of pictures. There are at least two advantages in N900 over a conventional camera:

1) The sharp high resolution screen makes it possible to really edit pictures with the device. I think somebody should build or port a good image editing software for Maemo 5. The screen would make it really useful. But even with the in-build editing capabilities you can do nice stuff.

2) I can upload the images directly to my Flickr, Facebook, Ovi and other accounts. And make my friends jealous ... By the way, there is a nice N900 group @ Flickr.

..and now, back to work!

Houston, we have a take-off!

Posted: November 10th, 2009, 6:03pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

We gave a few hundred Nokia N900s out to the Maemo Summit participants. That happened about a month ago. You have now been using the devices and provided us with feedback. Thank you so much! That has been very helpful. You've helped us to focus our effort and work on the remaining issues. That's why I want YOU to be the first to know.

We have also been testing the software extensivly in our own labs. We will continue working on the software and will provide important software upgrades as we go forward. But we also wanted to have very good software release to start with.

Based on our testing and your feedback we decided to postpone the delivery start. We had oroiginally said October, but now we said November. Now I'm happy to tell that we ment only days, not weeks or months.

The shipments of the Nokia N900 have now started. The factories are now working full speed and the devices are on their way to distribution.

Houston, we have a take-off!

My vision of Maemo ... at least a part of it

Posted: November 8th, 2009, 9:45pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

We say that the Nokia N900 running Maemo 5 is a computer. It is a computer in your pocket. What an earth do we mean? Let me try to explain what I think. This is my interpretation.

A computer of 2009 -- not 1999
When I talk about a computer, I talk about a computer people use today, especially young people. Think about the internet, messaging, sharing, openness, and think about browsers and players. Don't think about spreadsheets, word processors, file managers, or closed systems. That should put you in the right ballpark to start with.

Open and expandable
I want Maemo software to be expandable without limits. I want to encourage people to write apps that install themselves into the application grids and sit on top of the Maemo OS. But I also want to invite people to build services and apps that integrate within the Maemo software --- as an integral part of the end user experience. Not only apps but Maemo OS expansions. Maemo devices are open and true Linux computers so the sky is the limit.

Let me try to explain. An application that goes "on top of Maemo" is like the Nako game from Jakub. It sits on top of Maemo. The N900 will have many of these!

Figure: The Nako game -- an application

A MSN messaging I'm using is implemented with a piece of software called Butterfly developed as connection manager to the Telepathy communication framework. It is developed by the community (hackers, developers, 3rd party companies, ....) but it is tightly integrated into Maemo. Maemo allows such integration. For the end user MSN messaging becomes an integral part of Maemo as if it was originally developed by Nokia.

Figure: My accounts -- including MSN -- integrated within Maemo 5

Figure: Butterfly MSN discussion with my daughter

Figure: Similar discussion over SMS -- both look exactly the same. SMS is developed and integrated by Nokia and MSN/Butterfly by others

So Maemo is an open platform for all kinds of integration possibilities.

Addictive, active, and connected
My vision is to make Maemo really addictive. I want users to be constantly checking it out -- what's happening, who's online, who said what etc. Instead of a boring static menu grid, I want Maemo to open directly to the world around us. Maemo is active -- not passive. I want plug-ins, message bars, picture galleries, and status indicators constantly changing on the home screen. I want to see the latest from the world around me. I want to be connected all the time with a glance at the screen!

Figure: What's up RIGHT NOW?

Figure: What's up RIGHT NOW?

Doing many things at the same time
We all multitask. I want Maemo to make multitasking simple and understandable. I want to be able to shift from one activity to another with one touch of a finger. I do not want to limit people to only one job at a time.

Figure: A whole lotta things goin' on ...

Cult
Maemo is rough on the edges. It is a bit dangerous. It is open to experiments. It is about community involvement. I want these to stay. I do not like boring cars, either.

Figure: Torrents ... like in any computer

Summary
These were some of my thoughts when I'm thinking about Maemo 5, pushing Maemo forward, and making computers. We are not making a new iPhone or Symbian here. They both exist already and are pretty good. So no need to replicate them.

With Maemo, I see computers that are always connected, fit into your pocket, are open, and addictive.

About boring cars

Posted: October 24th, 2009, 2:40am MYT by Ari Jaaksi

Getting close now!!

It was cool to see the Maemo Summit participants playing with N900s. For those of you who still need to wait for a while (yes, my fault ...) check out the new videos from our UI team.

We are working like maniacs to get the N900 finalized. I'm so proud of the Nokia teams in India, US, and Finland working hard on Maemo 5 .... and already equally hard on Maemo 6. And I'm also very happy to see the Maemo community efforts getting cool stuff on and inside the Maemo platform.

People speculate now if N900 is a smartphone, or a computer, or a some kind of a killer of another phone --- you know. I understand that people want to compare N900 to other devices, but it's like comparing apples and oranges. Literally. N900 does many things better than any other device I know, some features could be improved, and some tricks it cannot do at all. So you better check it out and form your own opinion.

Those of you who know me know that I'm a bit of a petrol head. So for me my N900 is a bit like my Alfa Romeo. It can be almost anything -- but boring it ain't!

...and, life is simply too short to drive boring cars. But that's another story .....

Sttgrt

Posted: September 4th, 2009, 9:52pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

We had a good few days @ Nokia world in Stuttgart. Nokians, journalist, analysts, partners, operators, Maemo.org dudes, etc. I received overwhelmingly positive feedback from people once they saw a N900 in action. But then again, I do not know what they talked behind my back.

Or actually I do. Very positive comments also in various blogs and articles. People understand what we are doing and they like the product.

It is all about
1) Internet (browsing, chatting, sharing, talking ....) first
2) Open source & collaborative development for consumers
3) True computer experience in a small package

Alan has a nice story @ maemo.org.

How do we build Maemo devices?

Posted: August 29th, 2009, 8:17pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

Nice buzz ;-)

We have a tough last mile to finalize the N900 for the sales start. The Maemo team is working very hard and I'm so proud of it! Thus, I want to say a few words about how we build the Maemo devices. We do it as a part of the community in upstream projects, maemo.org projects, and internal hardware and software development, finalizing, and releasing.

Upstream projects
The most significant part of this joint development happens in upstream communities, such as kernel.org, Mozilla, and Gnome. Hundreds of individuals are participating the development and this is what creates the foundation of the Maemo platform.

Maemo is based on the world's most significant open source components. It is build with the community. I've said some time ago that our vision is to bring open source to consumers. That is what is happening right now.

Maemo.org
While working within these upstream projects, we have maemo.org as the Maemo community. It provides a means for developers to discuss, contribute, follow up, praise&complain, and be part of the Maemo evolution. The Maemo community has over 16.000 registered members that contribute to more than 700 development projects. Is it the largest community of mobile open source developers? We as Nokia sponsor it but it is governed by the community council.

Nokia Maemo team
The Nokia team runs device development programs, such as the N900 program, and software programs, such as the Fremantle software program as a part of the Maemo Devices. Software programs and the roadmap are communicated and discussed openly within the maemo.org. Device programs are Nokia secrets before days like this Thursday.

The Nokia programs utilize the work from upstream projects, maemo.org work and Nokia internal R&D. They finalize the software and hardware, and create an open source based user experience that -- I hope -- people will love the way I do.

Don't think that this is a simple engine to run! In addition of getting the most significant parts of the code from community projects, the Nokia Maemo team has a huge job to develop, finalize, optimize, fine tune, test, and integrae the devices into ready packages. The work varies from bootloaders to UI widgets, from power management to graphical elements.

In addition to the open source projects, the Maemo team works intimately with external companies providing components and technology to Maemo devices. Texas Instruments, Adobe, Ebay/Skype to name a few.

Summary

Great user experience through open source. Excitement in the air. The community development in the core.

This really made my day: A reason to get up in the morning by Philip.

N900 announced

Posted: August 27th, 2009, 10:50pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

Ifeel good. It is now publicly announced. See www.maemo.nokia.com.
More to follow.

See you at Nokia World, Maemo Summit and OSIM.

Collaboration, upstream, Intel, and others

Posted: June 23rd, 2009, 11:14pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

We are living interesting times. The current economical situation has made things change faster. The whole mobile world is changing. New players are entering and old players are changing or disappearing.

There is now less time and energy for games, politics and religion in the tech world. For all of us who are in this for the long run -- we all need to get products and services out to consumers ASAP. For us, the key is collaboration.

As a part of our strategy in Maemo, we collaborate with many partners. We work closely with the Mozilla foundation and the Linux foundation. We work in several open source projects such as Gnome, Qt, X and so forth. In addition we work with several industry partners, such as Texas Instruments, who provide us with the underlying technology for the existing Maemo products.

And today we announced that we collaborate with Intel inside several new and established open source projects. This is the kind of upstream collaboration we've been talking about. We say: "Intel and Nokia are coordinating their Open Source technology selection and development investments for Maemo and Moblin. This means alignment behind a range of key Open Source technologies for Mobile Computing such as: oFono, ConnMan, Mozilla, X.Org, BlueZ, D-BUS, Tracker, GStreamer, PulseAudio. "
We both feel that it makes a lot of sense to collaborate and direct key investments to the same direction. It allows us both to contribute mature technology to same open source projects – and not fragment the industry.
All this is needed to create new interesting products and services.

Spam on Qt, Maemo and Moblin

Posted: May 14th, 2009, 12:16am MYT by Ari Jaaksi

It's been a while.

One guy just told me he's reading my blog. I guess I better start writing ...

Let me spam this time with two topics only:

Look at Qt opened up. Pretty cool. You can see the work in progress.

Look at Maemo and Moblin work. oFono.org is a place to design an infrastructure for building mobile telephony (GSM/UMTS) applications.

Qt goes LGPL

Posted: January 15th, 2009, 1:54am MYT by Ari Jaaksi

Qt will be available under LGPL and repositories will be publicly available. We invite contributions ... so the development process will open up too.

This will make Qt a very interesting platform. It is now truly open, cross platform, and technically very advanced.

Many people had already earlier an opinion that Qt is technically very advanced, flexible and powerful. It was only the licensing and the development model that was wrong. Now, that’s fixed.

Open and Agile -- the Transparent Twins

Posted: November 30th, 2008, 10:08pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

Component level

Open source adds transparency. It provides a very practical means to access and share code, work together with others, and design and implement software in a collaborative manner. When code is licensed under a copyleft license, there is also a guarantee that nobody can mess it up! Transparency and free access to source code provide very powerful tools for software development.

Commercial system level

However, building complex systems remains challenging. Developers who never worked in a large commercial project easily underestimate challenges outside the source code domain. Creating right user experience is hard. Collecting feedback from users during the development is not simple. Providing accurate project estimations for various stakeholders remains tough. Integrating complex systems from components that originate from different sources is much more difficult than writing the actual components. Testing and stabilizing large systems gets harder and harder as systems grow. Replanning after late and big changes in project conditions is laborious. And, running several software projects concurrently multiplies all the above challenges.

Open and Agile

Open source adds transparency to software development. The code, developers, and design decisions are all visible to everybody. I believe transparency can also be used in other areas of software projects. Agile methods, such as Scrum, can provide such transparency on the system project level.

Our context is challenging, though. Teams cannot be co-located. Non-agile hardware development happens simultaneously with software development. There are tens -- and even hundreads -- of Scrum teams working for a same project. Projects deal with issues ranging from hardware design, driver and OS base port, middleware and application adaptation -- all the way to end user experience and over 40 language variants ... and so forth. In these circumstances a basic idea of a a few agile software teams is hardly a complete solution.

I believe

It is a bit early for me to make any final conclusions of agile methods in practice. But I'm a believer, and we are using Scrum now more and more at Nokia. I believe that what open source has done for software development, agile methonds can do for commercial system and product development. Add visibility, access, and intellectual honesty. Transparency. You cannot hide shit no more.

A few thoughs based on your feedback

Posted: October 26th, 2008, 8:20pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

Some time ago I asked you comments about openness. You sent me some interesting links. Thanks! I try to summarize your comments a bit.

Rights vs. executing the rights

Joel explained the idea of community openness by using three different characteristics:
1) the IP (right to use),
2) the development (right to influence the direction of the code) and
3) the governance (right to make decisions like who's in charge).

Then, Andreas talks about comparing and constracting community models by two axes:
- governance model
- license type used.

Both Andreas and Joel seem to have similar ideas, and I think they both have very good characterizations. But, in addition to these, I'd like to add an other dimension. The three elements above talk about the rights. In addition to the rights I'd like to think about the reality; i.e. is anybody really using these rights. And if not, why not.

Let me give you an example. Suppose I start on open source project and put my stuff into the sourceforge under GPL. I then invite others to discuss and influence the direction of the code I'm developing. And invite them to contribute. I also say that any time somebody suggest to change the leader, I'm ready to step down if somebody else gets a majority vote. So now, in Joel's three dimension model presented above, this would be very open, eh?

But what if nobody shows up? What if nobody is interested in my project and I'm left alone to develop it. Or if somebody just takes bits of my code and uses them elsewere inside another project. Is my project then open? I theory it is, but really? I'd claim that the project is open only if people use their rights, show up and contribute, and thus make it open. To me open source is more about "doing it" -- less about theory or human rights. So, to make the project open I also need to get others involved.

Another interesting aspect by Joel was his study on corporate sponsored open source projects. Check this one out!

Other comments

A good summary of different projects was provided by Smancke. He compares different projects in terms of their openness.

Jaffa gives us some ideas and opinions on how to continue with maemo. He talks about the community involvment, openness and control. He says "Nokia need to take action to really push community involvement. Nothing's got for free: if Nokia aren't seen to be committed to the community, why should the community be committed to Nokia?" Good points, Jaffa!

Usability

Then last but not least, David opened up a discussion on usability and open source. He refered at a good article by Matthew Paul Thomas. An interesting topic that needs attention. While talking to different people, I hear a lot of similar concerns and discussions.

Thanks!

c-base

Posted: September 19th, 2008, 10:41pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

Greetings from the Maemo Summit here at c-base. Quim found us a cool place to have the Summit. You who didn't come -- you missed a lot! We are all here. Over 200!

A few new announcements about the current plans with Fremantle:
-WLAN / power management to open source-Fremantle to support OpenGL-Clutter -- altough there is a roadblock now ... but we're hopeful
We just had a nice lighting sessions. Alan ran OpenOffice in a Debian bubble within Maemo. Sebastian showed how Maemo devices can be used in police cars. Eduardo showed new Canola stuff on Qt. And so forth. Cool stuff. More here.

OSiM News -- What's up with Maemo?

Posted: September 17th, 2008, 2:54am MYT by Ari Jaaksi

I had a presentation at the OSiM conference in Berlin today. I discussed about the future of the Maemo software.

Bringing open source to consumer mainstream

Nokia operates in two worlds:
a) in a product and business world manufacturing and selling devices and services
b) in an open source –even in a free software world—participating in many projects and peer development groups

The open source and the corporate world used to be very different. But now they overlap more and more each day. This closeness provides very interesting opportunities, but also challenges. Our vision is to bring the innovation, quality and end user participation into consumer mainstream. Our vision is a fruitful and beneficial collaboration.

Photo: Ian McKellar

A suit -- a t-shirt

So the suits and the hackers! For the suits I have one warning. We have no product announcements today. And for the hackers, we are not educating anybody here, not even the Linux community. But I’ve got a good story to tell.

Maemo

Maemo.org is an open source project, sponsored and contributed by Nokia. It is both for the application developers and for the platform developers providing a means to work together.

Nokia uses Maemo.org as the foundation of its own Maemo software that currently fuels Nokia’s Internet Tablets, such as N800 and N810. Maemo is the first mobile project that takes the Linux desktop paradigm to mobile devices. I’d claim that Nokia essentially created the Mobile Internet Devices (MID) category with the Nokia 770. It included several internet centric applications, such as the desktop browser and VoIP and IM services, as opposite of PDA or Phone centric applications, such as PIM or telephony apps. And it was based on GNOME and Linux. And it was all about the touch screen from the very beginning.

A preview of the 5th Release

Maemo software evolution has progressed through 4 releases. It has powered several multimedia computers, such as the Nokia N810. It is now a time to introduce some of the future directions for the Maemo software.

The 5th release will include cellular connectivity for the High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) data. Maemo already supports WLAN, Bluetooth and WIMAX. With HSPA we can now build use cases for wireless broadband anywhere.

Maemo will enable more computing power by running on OMAP3 processors . OMAP3 enables laptop-like performance and advanced entertainment capabilities. It is based on the ARM® Cortex™-A8 superscalar microprocessor core.

Maemo platform will include support for high definition camera sensors. This enables new multimedia use cases such as instant photo tagging and sharing.

And like before, Maemo remains to be one of Nokia’s software options for Internet optimized multimedia computers.

The Linux Foundation

Nokia becomes Gold Sponsor of the Linux Foundation . Linux and open source is becoming more and more important to Nokia. Thus, increasing our contribution to the Linux Foundation and to the Linux kernel is a self-evident step for Nokia.

It is good to notice how well our goals are aligned already. Nokia’s vision is to bring open source and Linux to consumer mainstream. The Linux Foundation expresses its goals by saying:

...For Linux to remain open and attain the greatest ubiquity possible, important services must be provided, including legal protection, standardization, promotion and collaboration. The Linux Foundation has been founded to help close the gap between open source and proprietary platforms, while sustaining the openness, freedom of choice and technical superiority inherent in open source software.

As many of you know, we have been active in several open source projects, including the Linux kernel. Nokia has become today the first to contribute code on HSPA cellular connectivity for OMAP3 processor to Linux kernel.

Work in upstream is the way to contribute to community also in cellular connectivity area. It is our core way of working! As in most work with upstream projects, we start bottom up with our contribution. The first code on HSPA cellular connectivity was made public in the last 24 hours.

Later on, we intend to contribute to the Linux kernel the SSI (Synchronous Serial Interface) hardware driver for OMAP3, and the power management, link layer protocol, and the network layer protocol for the modem according to Nokia specs. Let’s work together!

Software Developed with the Community

Maemo.org community is the open source community that innovates on top and within the Maemo platform. We invite innovation not only on top of the platform but also into the platform as an experimental lab for innovations.

Maemo community has over 13.000 members today and works on over 600 projects. It is probably the biggest open source community for mobile Linux. As a part of the Maemo work, Nokia contributes to many other upstream open source projects such as GNOME/GTK+, Linux kernel, Debian, Gstreamer, Telepathy, etc. Nokia will shift more and more of its R&D work into open source mode to avoid forking.

Maemo Summit

Meet you soon there! Almost 200 participants and growing – just around the corner here in Berlin.

Different ways and paradigms - a theoretical post

Posted: August 31st, 2008, 1:52am MYT by Ari Jaaksi

And now, something a bit more theoretical -- or is it?

I know many bright people in software and high tech, both in business and in academia. I feel very privileged. My network gives me new ideas, helps me testing some of mine, and gives me valuable feedback. I try to learn and understand why people and companies do the things the way they do. I then try to utilize this learning in my own work.

In addition to talking to people, I find it good to have some models in my mind when trying to understand how people and companies operate. A good model helps to put things into perspective and answer many "why" questions.

I've found the model shown below usefull in many occasions. It models the way companies utilize open source. As an example, the model can help companies to set goals for their open source operations. They do not necessary need to get very deep if they are on the left hand corner. But, if they plan to laund a new project around what is important to them, they better prepare to invest in it!

OSSI project; [www.coss.fi]

Another important consideration is the approach towards software openness in general. Does openness have a value as such? Why? What value? Consequences?

We can think about two extremes and then many shades of gray in between. In one extreme we can find true free software advocates. Those who follow the thoughts of Richard Stallman and such. In the other extreme are people and companies who keep everything closed. They never reveal their source code and only give a limited license for the end users to use the binary package they provided. I bet you have you favorite company or individual to think of.

Then, somewhere in between are various ways of sharing code, opening APIs, and giving more rights to the user. Foundations, such as the LIMO foundation and the Symbian Foundation are examples of these. Also, products, such as our internet tablets that have some portions of the code free and some parts closed --- for various reasons -- fall into between these extreams.

Closed ---> Free

I wonder if anybody has tried to develop something similar to the one shown above. Academia? Anybody.? How would you label the extremes? How would you label colored boxes form A to E? Why? More or less boxes? Why would somebody choose a specific box for their products? What are the consequences? Is this even relevant? (I think it is!)

I have something like above often in my mind when thinking about products, individuals, and companies. But has anybody really tried to develop it further? I'd like to the map reality against the models. A good model can help us to explain and understand why things are the way they are. Also, as an example, reading Free As In Freedom helps you to understand the far right corner. It is a good book for those interested in understanding why people feel so strongly about free software -- why it is so fundamental, un-compromized, and clear in many people's minds. There are also good books explaining the far left corner; e.g. from the man himself!

Anyway, please, let me know if you have something more tangible -- papers, publications or thoughts. I'd like to know.

P.S.

See you at the OSiM. Also, do not forget the Maemo Summit.

Summer Greetings!

Posted: July 22nd, 2008, 2:24am MYT by Ari Jaaksi

I'm taking several weeks off. Up here in the north, summer time is so valuable that I want to dedicate as much time as possible to my family and to myself.

So I've been sailing with my family and doing other relaxing stuff. (Lasse, thanks!)

You may know that up here in Scandinavia we have something we call "every man's rights". In essence, I can hike on any land, spend a night in any forest, or moor my boat to any island I please -- as long as I'm not in a close proximity of anybody's home or summer cottage. Open access to our beautiful country!

10 pm!

You need proper tools for docking in the wild!

So I'm getting ready for the fall. One important occasion will be the Maemo Summit right after the OSiM world in Berlin. I hope we can -- once again -- initiate some fruitful discussion around open source (I know we will ;-) ), do some real work, meet interesting people and have fun. See you there!

Foundations and principles

Posted: June 25th, 2008, 3:32am MYT by Ari Jaaksi

Symbian Foundation

As you may have noticed, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and NTT DOCOMO announced today their intent to unite Symbian OS, S60, UIQ and MOAP to create a new open mobile software platform. Together with AT&T, LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone we plan to establish the Symbian Foundation as a means to support everybody who wants to use, and/or enhance this platform. Contributions from Foundation members will be integrated to further enhance the platform. Membership of this non-profit Foundation will be open to all organizations.

To enable the Foundation, Nokia today announced plans to acquire the remaining shares of Symbian Limited that Nokia does not already own and then contribute the Symbian and S60 software to the Foundation! Sony Ericsson and Motorola also announced their intention to contribute technology from UIQ, and DOCOMO has also indicated its willingness to contribute its MOAP(S) assets. The Foundation will make selected components available as open source at launch. It will then work to establish the most complete mobile software offering available in open source. This will be made available over the next two years and is intended to be released under Eclipse Public License (EPL) 1.0.

Now let’s think a bit what this means. The S60 on top of Symbian is by far the most widely used smartphone platform. If you then add technologies that Moto and SonyE run on top of the Symbian OS you get a pretty good market coverage. 200 million phones shipped already! This all will now be available with very favorable terms – mostly under EPL. And what is most important is that this particular software really works. It is not a specification exercise or a strategy statement. It is real. It runs already in 235 different phone models. And it will be available to all.

Linux @ Nokia will go strong

This is now Nokia’s next step in the smartphone front running Symbian. But this is by no means a sign of us abandoning the work with Linux, Qt, Gstreamer, Mozilla, WebKit, Debian, X org, and so fort. Now, more than ever, we will strengthen our efforts within the upstream projects we already participate in – as well as around the maemo.org. And we will keep on developing most interesting Linux based products also in the future.

Some further comments

Which leads me to comment some of the recent discussion that – let me say – went pretty much where I didn't expect. So as said, we are 100% committed to expand our work with several open source projects, contribute even more code, collaborate, and learn. By doing this we expect to be able to create better Linux and open source base products.

We are by no means in a position to “educate the Linux community” or any other project for that matter. I never used those words, of course. Also, I do not like DRMs, Simlocks or any of that stuff any more than you do. I always want my music DRM free if humanly possible. I buy a laptop and remove Windows to put in Ubuntu and so forth. I also claim that we have been pretty careful in maintaining a proper division between open and close on our software to make it possible for open source portion to grow and get more significant. We have replaced many significant closed components with open ones over the years.

To illustrate my point, let me try to list some of the key principles I hold dear when developing Linux based products around the maemo.org.

-Play by the rules. Respect the projects you participate in. Respect the license fully.
-Be open. Communicate even the difficult topics. Release your roadmap us much as you can and you know. (ours @ maemo.org)
-Contribute code. If not, shut up.
-When closed code is used, make the borderline clear. Respect the licenses used.
-Maximize the use of open source; select a copyleft license if you can.
-Respect the different motivations and agendas. Tell yours and be open about it. (We build products to make money)
-Don’t get intimidated if somebody disagrees with you. Just do what you see right. ( ;-) )
-Ship good products. (sure trying hard!)

These are some of the things we try to do the best we can around Maemo and even more importantly … in the various upstream projects we participate in.

Good comments from Bruce

Posted: June 14th, 2008, 6:53pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

Bruce had a good comment to this discussion. He call it a bright line system. He says: " The key is knowing how to draw bright lines between different parts of the system. That's a legal term, and in this case it means a line between the Free Software and the rest of the system, that is "bright" in that the two pieces are very well separated, and there is no dispute that one could be a derivative work of the other, or infringes on the other in any way. All of the Free Software goes on one side of that line, and all of the lock-down stuff on the other side."

This exactly the same thing I discussed in my article on our experiences and learning on building consumer products with open source. Section 5.2: "As some components are available only as closed source components, we need to mix open source and proprietary code. This mixing calls for proper architecture management to manage different licensing rules within the product code."

We understood this, of course, from the day one. And it is still the way to do it. Others, like Ubuntu, follows the same rule very well indeed.

Some learning to do?

Posted: June 14th, 2008, 1:27am MYT by Ari Jaaksi

...related to the article found here.

The journalist emphasized things his way -- things that he saw important. Fair enough. My points are:

Companies like Nokia need to learn the open source way of working. This means not only fulfilling the letter of GPL, LGPL etc. but also the spirit. In my mind this means integrating the corporate work with the open source community, participating, contributing back the code, building the code in open projects and not only releasing it when mandatory, not forking, etc. Open source is a very effective way to create software together with others; together with other individuals and other companies. This is something that the corporate must learn to really benefit from open source.

The open source community should also be willing to learn. I think it would benefit everybody if people developing open source code would understand WHY certain things are made the way they are. Maybe there are other reasons than stupidity and an evil mind? Trying to understand and learn would benefit both open source projects and corporate to come up with better solutions. As an example, a subsidized business model has it challenges in the context of truly open devices. Understanding why, what to do about it, etc, would benefit us all.

Then, somebody told me that the open source community do not need to listen or learn from the corporate. They do not work for you, somebody said. But actually, many of them do. Let me explain:

The most relevant open source projects have an increasing number of corporate developers. Companies like Nokia, Red Hat, Novel, IBM, Opened Hand, Imendio, Trolltech, HP, and so forth develop code in projects such as Linux, GStreamer, Mozilla, KDE, GNOME etc .. For these companies, open source is not a hobby but serious business. It is a way to get software developed in an open collaborative manner -- to meet their business goals. So if a company pays (as a salary, as a contract to a hacker company or some other way) for the development, then I claim that the developer works for the company. Even if the development happens in an open source project.

We participate in open source projects with individuals, but also with companies like listed above. I think it benefits everybody to understand the constraints, motivations, and limitations each individual, corporate or project may have.

I'm not a teacher, I'm a learner.

Berlin -- Handsets World

Posted: June 10th, 2008, 5:09am MYT by Ari Jaaksi

I just arrived in Berlin to participate the Handsets World conference. (The Netherlands just scored a goal, by the way!)

I'll have a keynote talk tomorrow, and a panel session. My talk is going to be about our vision -- and how open source can help.

And now it is 2-0!

Permalink for 'Ari_Jaaksi_s_Blog/2008/05/30/Open_source_%e2%80%93_yes_'

Open source – yes!

Posted: May 30th, 2008, 12:07am MYT by Ari Jaaksi

Thanks for the feedback to my previous post!! I merely described the current situation.

But things are changing. We see many new kinds of devices appearing: Internet Tablets, small PCs, multimedia computers, and so forth. For all these new interesting devices, open source is the way to go. Seriously, what else? A closed sw stack? I do not see any other way to develop these new interesting devices –bundled with interesting services – but to use open source more and more. That is simply the way to build these devices. It is the only approach flexible and powerful enough.

In the traditional phone business, things may be a bit more difficult. Traditional phones have already good operating systems and software optimized for their reasonably narrow set of use cases and for fixed business ecosystems. So, it’ll be more difficult to change that landscape to more open direction. I thought the same was the case with the PC – but Ubuntu may be proving me wrong. So you never know about the traditional phones either. The sure thing, though, is that for all new interesting highly connected devices, Linux and open source is the way to go. This is my opinion.

Then, what can we do to speed this all up? We work very hard on the next highly connected products – to bring new stuff to maemo and develop it further. And I also want to invite you all to do it with us.

So, please, take a look at this. For the next 10 days, we are opening a brainstorm period for the future of maemo.org. The goal is to consolidate feedback from the developers and users in the community, and integrate that feedback into the mid-term agenda of the project.

The work we do with maemo is our practical implementation towards more open environments for mobile devices. In our case, the Tablets provide a challenging new device category that will evolve over time. And open source and community participation are the only means for us to succeed.

We hire people and open new initiatives to get there.

P.S.
Linux phone shipments declining. Why
1) one reason descibed above
2) another reason
3) a third reason

Phones no, Ubuntu yes?

Posted: May 29th, 2008, 1:28am MYT by Ari Jaaksi

We’ve been busy lately! Next software releases and products, architecture works with the Trolls, browser work with Mozilla, and so forth. It’s already almost June and I’m thinking we just got over Xmas. It’s good to realize that in about 4 weeks, nights start to get longer and days shorter here in the Northern hemisphere. The Earth rotates towards the next winter! Get ready!

Linux phone shipments declining – cool user experience from closed camps

We all like open source. Free speech, good beer, bugs are shallow, community will fix everything (if you let ‘em), no patents to slow us down, decisions based on technical merits, etc. If you hear all this positive talk you may wonder why won’t this good software just crawl into devices and turn them on. How come the shipment of Linux phones is declining globally? How come some of the bravest open source device and phone activities do not seem to get very far? And why do the most interesting user experiences and new user interfaces seem to come from proprietary camps? Apples, Microsofts, LGs, Samsungs, Nokias – they all introduce cool new devices, software and user interfaces based on closed software stacks. Why is this? The answer is NOT that because the companies are evil. There must be a better answer. Maybe I’ll explain them in my next post ;-)

Ubuntu rules

So what’s with computers then? Ubuntu is surprising me. I’ve been thinking that the traditional PC desktop environment is always going to be dominated by the closed players – where the one has 90% and the other has 10% and that's it. I also thought that the computer concept needs to radically change before anybody can seriously challenge the status quo. Network PC, mobile devices, something else. But now then, what’s with Ubuntu?

I do not know about their exact market share or Mark’s goals with Ubuntu. But the team is making a great progress. I’ve always liked Ubuntu but was kinda ashamed of using it. It’s brown, it doesn’t have an apple on it, and it doesn’t come with Internet Messenger. But this week two little things happened.

First, I bought a new smart card reader. I connected it with the laptop (!) running Ubuntu, pushed in an SD card – and it just worked! Ubuntu – laptop – smart card reader. Plug-n-play. This is seriously important to my father! He’s 78.

Then, our Windows XP laptop lost its network settings. I said to my daughter, I’ll fix it. Meanwhile, why don’t you use my laptop. I got the Windows laptop fixed the next day and gave it back to my daughter. She had used my Ubuntu laptop for a day for all she does. I did not get any comments nor any complaints or “how can I do this and that” questions. She was just happy using it. She is eleven now.

I find this pretty amazing!

CTIA and Qt

Posted: April 15th, 2008, 5:01am MYT by Ari Jaaksi

This is a bit old news. We announced the WIMAX version on the N810 in CTIA already 2 weeks ago. And we received a CTIA WIRELESS 2008® E-TECH AWARD for the best Fashion & Lifestyle Product.

Wow, I feel pretty fashionable now!

We are also making progress with some longer term plans and thoughts. We plan to make the maemo platform even more powerful and extend its capabilities further. In addition to GTK+, we intend to provide a Qt-based application development environment to the maemo platform. We will therefore hire people with knowledge of GTK+/C and/or Qt/C++.

I’ll keep you posted. Take a look at the Nokia jobs and the maemo.org, too.

Greetings from OSiM USA

Posted: March 12th, 2008, 9:47am MYT by Ari Jaaksi

OSIM USA 2008

I arrived at San Francisco on Monday to attend the OSiM USA 2008. The first day was very interesting. I met partners and colleagues. I found many talks, such as the Access keynote by Kamada-san, and Bill Weinberg’s on communities very interesting.

I’ll give my keynote on Wednesday morning SFO time. Thanks Quim and Peter for helping me with it. Let me share the story with you right here.

What Mobile Users Need and How Open Source Can HelpLinux and open source CAN meet the needs of mass-market.

We create mass market devices and services. This means that we must provide enjoyable quality devices and services that provide rich experiences. In order to do so, we need to tap into innovation and creativity. We must also manage our operations and cost by utilizing reusable assets, agile methods, and shared development. In all of this, the right use of open source can be a huge asset.

We at Nokia have invested a lot to learn. We participate in many open source activities, such as Gnome, Debian, Linux, Mozilla and WebKit browsers and so forth. We plan to increase our involvement there. We believe open source is a key strategy to create exciting devices and services.

Our role: Bring open source to mainstream consumer electronics

Our role as Nokia is to create a bridge between open source projects and consumers. We can provide integration, final devices and services, and help with distribution. We can also take care of such difficult things as warranty, legal, IPR, DRM, regulations, customer support, and so forth.

In my mind, our role and possibilities are clear. We can help end users and open source innovation to meet. I think we have a great role in helping my 70 something parents to communicate with their grandchildren over a VOIP client developed by a clever 20 something hacker.

We need to learn from each other. Both.

The theory is simple: We work together; the open source community and Nokia. We provide excellent devices and services to end users in large volumes with attractive terms. In addition to software and product development, we need great marketing, smooth distribution, and good manufacturing. We also need to support various business models that can deliver the devices and services to our customers. Excellent devices, available everywhere, with the right price. Simple….

…. not. It is not trivial to combine open source and corporate to benefit end users. We all need to learn.

We at Nokia are working hard to get it. We have to. We need to get better in communicating our strategies and plans. We need to be more open and get even more involved in various projects and communities. We must be better at articulating our views, providing information and code back, and supporting the community. We must be sure we support freedom and openness and do not try to limit anybody’s work. But at the same time, we must be better at telling what is OK for us and what is not.

And the open source community also has to get it. The community needs to understand the business realities; possibilities and restrictions. It needs to learn the business models and rules in order to participate. If a project or a developer wants to ensure the success and max usage of her code, she must understand the functional and quality requirements, license the work under a proper license, and make sure her work doesn’t restrict business models needed.

It is actually brutal out there. Customers are very demanding and they do not accept anything but the best. Also, partners and other players want their share and support for their business model. It is not OK to steal music or crack and resell a subsidized phone. As an open source developer this makes me think: the majority of the most interesting and successful mobile devices and software –excluding Internet Tablets, of course— are clearly not based a large use of open source, or developed in open source manner. So we all have some learning to do here.

Building upstream. Community rules.

We see Open Source upstream projects as a base of our industry platform for Linux-based devices. Upstream is where the thing really happens. Alignment with upstream. Share plans. No forks. Contributions back. Ignore upstream and you loose!

We select the best software components that make sense in our architecture. If we select an open source component is because we think it's the best. This also means that the team that developed it is the best. Then we intend to align our work to their processes. This is not always easy because we have internal processes and requirements, but we are working on it. In fact any big organization has things to learn from open source development practices, even applied to internal and private processes: agile, decentralized, documented, peer reviewed... and the very human aspects of it.

As an example, I’m very thrilled about the discussion with Trolltech. Trolltech knows about upstream leadership and community rules. Working with this brilliant team together with Nokia is an opportunity no open source enthusiast should ignore.

Beyond code and licenses: developers and projects.

Source code and its licenses are critical in the use of open source for a company like Nokia. But code is just an output -- the top of an iceberg. It is the people, developers and contributors, the projects, the organizations, the users involved that truly matter. These are what really make open source unique, good today and even better tomorrow.

Nokia can do a lot more to get really involved in the community and make a good contribution as well. We keep working on this. In my dreams I see Maemo (open source innovation) playing a useful and exciting role bridging OSS upstream products and regular owners of Nokia devices.

Image: Alex Graveley presenting “Gimmie”, by Tuomas Kuosmanen. CC Attribution-NonCommercial License

Until now we have decently supported the projects directly related to the source code we use: Linux, Debian, GNOME, Mozilla and so on. We are moving to a wider support to those really smart upstream projects. Help them pushing their vision forward, shaping their ideas into alphas, betas and final products. Help them getting visibility in the mobile industry and the Nokia channels.

For instance: why not helping Qt and its software ecosystem fitting in the GTK+ based Internet Tablets.

Diving in: deeper involvement

A few years ago, Nokia started from zero. In summer 2005 we announced the Nokia 770 internet tablet and started the journey.

Now, I claim we are a good open source citizen – we’ve got our feet in the water. We are shipping Linux and open source based Internet Tablets, our S60 phones have many important open source components, and we use a lot of open source technologies in building our new services. We participate projects, contribute a lot of code, sponsor GUADECs, Debconfs, buy services from hacker companies and projects and play our part pretty OK.

And next, we’ll start swimming and dive into the community. We want to help and influence the open source community to succeed with Nokia. We provide channels to markets. We work as community participant playing Nokia’s own role. We’ll educate and help the best we can. And we try to constantly learn more.

This all is actually very selfish. By doing so, we can provide better devices, services, and experiences to consumers – and make a buck or two.

Meeting open source community ethics

Life –even a corporate life -- is more rich and human that just “profit”. As long as I remember, Nokia always had values; statements that we used to direct our work and operations. Because Nokia is made of people, we want values to guide our behavior. And we’ve always wanted to make the values explicit.

Last year we felt we wanted to revisit and renew our values. The process was most interesting. We organized several big workshops – Nokia Cafes – with hundreds of participants all over the globe. These workshops discussed what is important for Nokia and how we as employees want to see Nokia and its values. The workshops then continued in various on-line activities and projects. Eventually, we came up with four new Nokia values: engaging you – passion for innovation – achieving together – very human

If you are part of the OSS community these value will sound very familiar to you. Also, the process of developing these values must sound familiar.

We are not that different after all, are we?

Global warming ... in a candy store

Posted: February 29th, 2008, 5:50pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

Global WarmingThey say that this will be the warmest winter ever in Finland. The last record is –no it’s not from 2006 - but it is from 1924. Early days of global warming? But seriously, at the grass root level things are different now.

January ---------------- February

Back in the 70’s, I used be play ice hockey with my friends on an outside ice ring from early December to late March – even April. Now I’ve managed to take my 5 year old on the ring only once this winter. No ice. Well, today we have -5 degrees Celsius, it is kids’ winter break, and the sun is shining. I’ll post this now and then go out with my kids!

Candy Store

We’ve now dived deeper into the Trolltech stuff. Good stuff. I’m more and more understanding the great ecosystem and a partner network they have around their technology. I’m excited. Also, the guys are really nice – but then again, have you ever heard about an angry Norwegian? (yes, they are not all Norwegians but I was trying to be funny … sorry) People are extremely important -- people and relationships are far more important than lines of code. Really, even in business.

So now there are many things on my mind. We will use Trolltech technology in a range of Nokia products. That’s for sure. If the acquisition goes through, that is. I’m also very keen on finding the best balance and combination with G and Q technologies. I feel that we have a unique opportunity to act as a catalyst to even fill some chasms here? I'm like a kid in a candy store! So much candy – this is exciting!

Ads
Then something else. Two ads:

OSiM USA. I’ll be there. Come and say hi!

The Finnish Summer Code 2007 project employed five university students for the summer. Nokia’s maemo team was one of the sponsors of the students' projects. The Finnish Summer Code is organized by COSS (The Finnish Centre for Open Source Solutions) and aims to help Finnish students participate in open source development.

Now it is time to apply for Summer Code 2008! We’ll sponsor it, too. So if you have nothing better to do next summer ….

Trolltech -- good!

Posted: January 28th, 2008, 4:58pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

So we plan to buy Trolltech. I know those guys and I think they are true professionals! Good stuff. Good for Nokia and Trolltech.

Nokia's intention to acquire Trolltech is a good news to maemo, too. Nokia has now more technology alternatives to use and a wider outreach to open source communities.

Both GNOME and KDE are very interesting and active projects. Our strong participation in the Gnome community and the new access to KDE and Trolltech's technology puts us in an unique position to create even more interesting mobilde devices, together with the open source communities.

This is all about the products and how to make even better products to our customers. This will help!

Maemo overview

Posted: January 20th, 2008, 5:09am MYT by Ari Jaaksi

If you ever wanted to have an overview of the maemo software, now there is an easy way. I'm proud to promote the new Maemo technology overview. (HTML version here). Even if you are not a developer, or you are too busy to scan through the entire maemo.org, or you are a strategist and want to understand if maemo could provide something for your company this is a place to go.

More detailed stuff can be found e.g. from here under application and platform development ... more for developers then ...

(this was a paid advertisement)

When open is too open

Posted: January 18th, 2008, 5:49am MYT by Ari Jaaksi

Open is good, eh? Not necessarily. Let me give you an example.

A few days ago my wife woke up in the middle of the night. It was 2 am and she thought she heard something from the street. I couldn't care less and just wanted to sleep. I thought that maybe our neighbor had just came back from a night shift, or maybe some teenagers are having their Ford Sierra rally going on to impress girls (remember when you were 18?). It wouldn’t be the first time this happens.

But my wife insists that there is something strange going on. She says she hears just one voice – a man talking. Not shouting, not laughing, not yelling – just talking. You better go can check this out she says to me. So I get up.

Our bedrooms are upstairs. So I go downstairs and .... hear somebody talking loud and clear. Somebody is talking inside our house 2am in the morning! And all our phones are downstairs!

I go down the stairs and see a big guy sitting on our floor. A total stranger. He’s talking to himself saying ooh, ohh shit, ohh, I don’t feel that good, …ooh. I approach the guy and I ask him what an earth are you doing here? He doesn’t seem to recognize me. I can see he is drunk as a skunk. He’s reasonably clean, proper clothes and so forth but you can tell he drinks a lot. A lot.

I put my hand on his shoulder and keep on talking. Slowly he notices me and understands he’s not where he is supposed to be. He apologizes and says that he shouldn’t be here. Then he ask where is here?. When I explain he says ooh, I should be in the other end of the town; totally somewhere else. I say we better get you outta here and he agrees.

He keeps on apologizing. He notices my kids clothes on the floor (yeah, my kids leave them on the floor) and says he has 4 kids. I really do not want to talk about my kids with a drunken giant inside of our house, I’m thinking. Then he notices our kid’s pet and says that's a nice fellow you got there – is that a bunny?. I stay calm and say yes. I do not want to irritate this guy twice of my size. I’m a smooth talker now.

I asked him if there is anything I could do for him. He keeps on apologizing and asks if I can get a taxi for him. Sure can. The taxi arrives in 5 minutes. I help this guy to stand up and put on his shoes and jacket. Then I walk him to the taxi. He apologizes once more. I say not a big deal – take care of yourself! And he’s gone.

My kids never woke up and my wife didn’t freak out. I found the situation mostly odd and amusing. So it doesn’t feel like somebody intruded our privacy or wanted any harm for us. The situation was not threatening at all. It is only afterwards I started to think about how lucky we were. Suppose this guy had been on drugs or something.

I have this bad habit to leave doors open. I better start locking them up. For nights at least. Open is not always good.

P.S. My kids do not read my blog. Please do not tell them this story. They might start to worry for no reason!

2007 & 2008 and Happy Holidays!

Posted: December 21st, 2007, 2:16am MYT by Ari Jaaksi

This was a good year!

A very good year, indeed.
Let me highlight a few goodies:

Nokia N800

A major sw upgrade to N800

Nokia N810 + the same sw to N800

Almost tenfold increase in maemo.org developers during 2007

Nokia N810 #2 in the Wired shopping list for Xmas ;-) ....

A lot of new stuff @ maemo.org, like a better maintained bugzilla and many new documents, tutorials and guidelines. Many SDK releases. But even better: cool apps!!! Strong improvements there!

Forum Nokia supports maemo for business

770 hacker editions released

So for us this was a good year! I’m very proud of the team and the results. We managed to do a lot of good things and get a lot of job done.

Elsewhere

So what is happening elsewhere? I’ve got a bit mixed feelings.

Linux and open source is clearly in the mainstream of consumer devices. We no longer discuss about can or should you build devices based on open source. Instead, we discuss how to do it well. We also see a lot of technologies maturing fast to be more and more suitable for devices and consumer goods.

Also, some killer products, like the Nokia N95, N810 and iPhone, kept us awake. I like them all a lot!

And...

The market share of Linux phones did not grow. I know it is not because of Linux or open source but because of –well- not so good phones. Good products with the right price point sell well regardless of the technology used.

Linux consolidation activities are struggling and I personally do not see their impact. CELF, LiSP, Limo and even GMAE, to be honest. What is happening – anybody home?

So what’ll happen 2008 …

Let me prophesize:
Linux and open source will go to a declining hype cycle – steps 3 & 4 . It is no longer sexy to be open or create products with Linux and open source. That’ll scare honey bees and suits away and we'll see decline in publicity. But, because these technologies are now in the mainstream, open source will have bigger impact on technology and products than ever before. It’s not a Hollywood story any more, though.

Let me hope:
Peace (inside and outside), cool products, happy families, and a proper winter!

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

Services -- straight and deep

Posted: November 7th, 2007, 3:23am MYT by Ari Jaaksi

Applications are boring

Applications are not interesting. They are old-fashioned. But I still struggle and often think about applications. I think about applications such as emails, browsers, instant messaging applications, and so forth. How stupid is this. Especially in the mobile space.

It is funny that I never think about a “phone call” application, although from the software point of view it just an application; similar to an email and other applications. I bet my application thinking originates from the desktop world where I’m used to “install”, and ”purchase”, and “use” applications, such as word processors and spreadsheets. But such thinking feels increasingly stupid and I predict that such thinking will first disappear from the mobile world and eventually from the desktop, too.

Services should go straight and deep

So instead of applications that do things, let’s talk about services that serve users’ needs. So what are my experiences of mobile services so far?

A good service goes straight and goes deep. (Ari’s service rule, eh eh). An example of a straight & deep service is an old-fashioned phone call. It is straight: I just click your name on the phone book. And it is deep: It automatically makes all the necessary steps and gets you in the other end of the conversation. So an old-fashioned phone call is a service provided by my phone, my operator, and my friend in the other end of the conversation. It is straight: green button. It is deep: we’ll talk!

So let me introduce two services that are not straight or deep.

I subscribe to a portal service provided by my cell operator. I first open a phone browser and then select a bookmark provided by my operator. Then, I have a selection of things such as “Ringing tones”, “Pictures”, “Games”, and “Applications”. I select “Games” and the I select “Categories” and then I select “Fun” and then I get a screen that says “not supported by my phone”. After selecting different categories I finally find some games. And then, well, I need to figure out how to buy and download one! Not very straight forward.

I used a non-Nokia phone for a few months. It is good to use competitors’ devices ;-). The phone provided an interesting service that uses the technology created by Gracenote. This is how it works: I’m driving down the road an hear a nice song on the radio. I put the phone next to the car speaker and press a few buttons. In a few seconds I get a text message that tells me the artist, the song and the album. A marvelous piece of engineering --- but not very deep. I’d like to purchase the song, or listen it again, or something. But the service doesn’t go that deep. It just sends me a text message – almost like a teaser!

So, gimme straight and deep, please. The one that does, wins.

(Written with google docs on my N810)

Nokia N810 -- announced!

Posted: October 18th, 2007, 2:17am MYT by Ari Jaaksi

So we fooled you! I bet you expected a new Internet Tablet in January but we worked overtime and will get it ready earlier! It has been fun to watch how things have leaked out and everybody knew about it already before the launch ;-) It's been fun to make it, too.

So what is Nokia N810? From the hardware point of view, the basic engine is the same as in N800. But we added GPS and a nice sliding keyboard. The on-screen kb works, too, of course. And it is a bit smaller than N800.

From the maemo based software point of view, a lot of new stuff. On the top of my list:

UI improvements. Looks and feels better. Eye candy, functional improvements
new browser
faster updated Flash 9
more multimedia formats supported
improved finger usage
nice set of 3rd party apps and services

So full multimedia on the move

the best browser on any portable device!
instant messaging
VoIP
music and videos
GPS with maps and downloadable voice guided navigation
WiFi + Cellular (through bt enabled phones)

And, you can update your N800 to run the new maemo based OS2008, too!

Some lessons learned --- I hope ....

Posted: September 14th, 2007, 1:13am MYT by Ari Jaaksi

Developing maemo and Internet Tablets has always been a learning journey for us at Nokia. We have learned a lot about using mainstream open source technology in mobile devices, about integrating big company and open source culture together, about shipping open source based products, and about working with communities.

An important learning case happened during the last spring. We made some mistakes. No doubt about it! And on top of all, we underestimated the passion people had towards our work and products.

We launched the N800 in January. People loved the product. But some of you simply didn't accept that we didn't promise to provide new features and hacker support for the old 770s any more. Back in January -07, we got a lot of comments that eventually made us re-evaluate the 770 software situation. And now, as you know, a few days ago we released an Internet Tablet OS 2007 Hacker Edition for the Nokia 770. Not perfect, but we are learning.

So thank you. Your enthusiasm, positive comments, good reviews, criticism, sarcasm, and doom's day predictions prove that we are doing something right. Actually, I have not received any 770 software comments with f words for my posts recently ... so wake up, kids! Something's wrong?

Another thing we put out recently was the Hildon Input Method Framework.

And next week I gonna go out myself and fly to Madrid.

Summer teasers

Posted: August 31st, 2007, 10:34pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

During this summer, I participated conferences such as GUADEC, OSS 2007, and Linux World SF, and met developers and teams in places like India, UK, and US. We also had our closing meetings and presentations for an interesting research project called “Managing OSS as an Integrated Part of Business”. A whole lotta open source going on!

So I’ve been making some observations, too.

First, open source is really becoming an integral part of any software business. It is very difficult to think of any new software product, service, or initiative that would not include significant open source elements. Somebody told me that VCs have included open source into their funding check list. If your new startup doesn’t base its software operations on open source – no money. I wonder if this is true. Anybody knows? Haven’t done fund searching lately.

Second, free software and open source are drifting further apart. There is a practical approach for getting good quality software available through simply sharing code. And then there is a deeper philosophy. ...but...., this topic is a taboo. Thou shalt not have wrong opinions on free software or .... Do you feel the heat?

Third, open source based UIs and end user experiences, build by communities and hackers, are not that good. It is not easy to find community built software that provides UI W-O-W and high level of usability. It seems that high quality integration and user experience requires a stong central mechanism, such as a company, to run the implementation. Now, please, prove me wrong!

GUADEC 2007

Posted: July 18th, 2007, 2:24am MYT by Ari Jaaksi

I took a break from my summer vacation and flew to Birmingham, UK to attend GUADEC. It is the GNOME Users' And Developers' European Conference. Held annually in cities around Europe.
We base our work on GNOME and therefore this is the place to be.
I had a keynote today at 2 PM. Some of the main themes in my presentation were as follows.

We are taking open source to consumer mainstream. This all happens step by step by participating open source development, releasing new software, and building new products. Some of the recent steps are:

new software for N800 just 2 weeks ago

announcement of the development version of a new browser -- a Mozilla based browser engine that shares the key components and extension interfaces with Firefox. As small computers, internet tablets should have this option, too!

announcement of the development version of the new communications software. SIP connection manager, UI improvements, Google Talk relay support ...

The Hildon application framework contribution to GNOME and GMAE (...well, this is kinda old news but important ...)

---

This is a mostly a developer conference and I'm talking about development versions. We do not advertise these, other than the new N800 software, to general public at this point. We want to develop them openly and collect your feedback. See maemo for more details.

---

There are also many other interesting talks from my team and other GNOME developers related to maemo, GNOME etc. To pick a few:

*Maemo and gtk+: Past, present & future *A Modest E-Mail Client for Gnome and Maemo

*Embedded Browsing and Open Source

*Speeding Up Libglade/Gtk-builder in Embedded Devices Using Shared Objects

*5 tricks and 4 and 1/2 tips for porting GNOME applications to the Maemo Platform ...

I bet I forgot many!! And then, Lefty from Access and Open Moko should be interesting :-)

GUADEC 2007

Posted: July 16th, 2007, 5:48pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

I took a break from my summer vacation and flew to Birmingham, UK to attend GUADEC. It is the GNOME Users' And Developers' European Conference. Held annually in cities around Europe.

We base our work on GNOME and therefore this is the place to be.

I had a keynote today at 2 PM. Some of the main themes in my presentation were as follows.

we are taking open source to consumer mainstream. This all happens step by step by participating open source development, releasing new software, and building new products. Some of the recent steps are:
new software for N800 just 2 weeks ago
announcement of the development version of a new browser -- a Mozilla based browser engine that shares the key components and extension interfaces with Firefox. As small computers, internet tablets should have this option, too!
announcement of the development version of the new communications software. SIP connection manager, UI improvements, Google Talk relay support ...
The Hildon application framework contribution to GNOME and GMAE (...well, this is kinda old news but important ...)

---
This is a mostly a developer conference and I'm talking about development versions. We do not advertise these, other than the new N800 software, to general public at this point. We want to develop them openly and collect your feedback. See maemo for more details.
---

There are also many other interesting talks from my team and other GNOME developers related to maemo, GNOME etc. To pick a few:

*Maemo and gtk+: Past, present & future
*A Modest E-Mail Client for Gnome and Maemo
*Embedded Browsing and Open Source
*Speeding Up Libglade/Gtk-builder in Embedded Devices Using Shared Objects
*5 tricks and 4 and 1/2 tips for porting GNOME applications to the Maemo Platform

... I bet I forgot many!! And then, Lefty from Access and Open Moko should be interesting :-)

New software for N800

Posted: July 6th, 2007, 5:37pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

It's out now. Flash 9, Skype etc. See the maemo pages for further details.

A middle management sandwich

Posted: June 21st, 2007, 5:13pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

I want to share an observation with you. People ask me if new things get started from the top or from the bottom. Is it executives or developers who get things started? How was it with maemo and Nokia’s open source work? The answer is that is started from both ends.

There are basically three kinds of people in a big corporation: company executives, middle managers, and then workers – in our context developers. Nokia is very fortunate because we have some really bright and innovative executives as well as many world class developers. So, even with our average middle management, we’re ok!

So what’s with the middle management then? There is this sandwich where the middle management (=cheese) is squeezed between the executives (=bread) and the developers (=bread). Picture this:

A corporate executive has just red “The World is Flat” by Thomas L. Friedman. He is spiritually and emotionally engaged. He believes that all labor goes to India and that open source is the answer to the software crisis. He just learned that some guys in communities will do the work for free, and that we just need to use free software to get things done. Just do it! Party on!
A developer has just participated debconf. He has not taken a shower after the trip. He believes that if we just use free software everything will be great. If problems arise the community will fix them. He believes he can get his driver ready with product quality for tomorrow – and if not, somebody will fix it soon. Just get it out. No worries!
Now the corporate executive, the developer and a middle manager meet in a room. After two minutes it seems that the developer and the executive connect – they talk the same language and they agree at all levels. So it seems. The executive leaves the room saying to the middle manager: I totally agree with your developer. He is so bright. Now you just go and get things done his way. What’s stopping you?

In most cases the middle management does not have the luxury of being innovative or bright – they just need to get the products out. The middle management is under heavy workload, with unrealistic release schedules, managing primadonna engineers. These middle managers never initiate change or generate new ideas because they are too busy running arons. So the change never starts from the middle.

So I’ve come to the conclusion that you need crazy executives and religious developers to get things changed and new things started. And you need stubborn and boring middle managers to get things eventually done.

Ari, a middle manager

Mobile is dead!

Posted: May 16th, 2007, 5:17am MYT by Ari Jaaksi

Years ago – I was responsible for Nokia’s WAP browser development. So I claim I’ve got some street credibility here, eh? So what do you think of this thread of thoughts?

Mobile Internet is dead
Back in the good old WAP-days we had a plan. We thought that we’ll ship millions of phones and put a WAP browser in them. Then, everybody will write WML content and that’ll create a new internet cloud called Mobile Internet ™ (TM looks good here!!).

That never happened. Internet grew richer and sexier and all we had was this tiny screen to WML decs and cards. And we thought that’ll change the internet and create the mobile internet. It didn’t.

It amazes me that I still see signs of this thinking. Web pages and services are tailored to small screens and people expect that to create the mobile internet. It won’t. There is only one internet, and if your device cannot access it, you’re out of luck. There is only one internet.

Mobile Software is (soon) dead
Back in the good old days we created mobile software from scratch. We created home grown operating systems for mobile phones, mobile stacks and UI frameworks, primitive light weight file systems, and so on. Back then, CPUs were lazy and flash was poor. Thus, we built dedicated software for mobile devices – and we called it Mobile Software ™.

Today, we run Linux, X, Gnome, Flash, and friends on Nokia N800. Our big idea form the start was to run --as closely as possible-- a desktop Linux stack. Others will start to do the same and I predict that mobile software will thus eventually die. All we need is software that runs everywhere.

Next
What’s next to die? Mobile phones? Now, this may be too much! We are making more mobile phones than anybody ever imagined! But, we are also making multimedia computers ... so you never know ;-)

770 feedback

Posted: April 30th, 2007, 11:15pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

Howdy,

Just a short one this time.

We've been receiving a lot of valuable feedback on our 770 hardware from you. Based on it we decided to continue fixing bugs on 770 and release new software for it. This work will happen on our "hacker version" branch. We'll do our best to make it usable for you.

See Quim's post on the subject.

More later ....

GNOME Mobile & Embedded Initiative

Posted: April 24th, 2007, 1:58am MYT by Ari Jaaksi

"The GNOME Mobile & Embedded Initiative will advance the use, development and commercialization of GNOME components as a mobile and embedded user experience platform. It brings together industry leaders, expert consultants, key developers and the community and industry organizations they represent."

I’m very pleased to see many other companies and initiatives moving towards using GNOME in consumer devices. We’ve been investing into GNOME for years and the open and even playfield that GNOME provides is serving us very well. We plan to continue strongly with GNOME and direct many of our activities through it. Our whole open source strategy relies primarily on strong upstream project participation – GNOME being a good example.

See the press release, too

The Linux Foundation

Posted: April 10th, 2007, 11:06pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

This is an old news already but we are now working with the Linux foundation.

I've noticed that companies are seting up different forums and clubs to standardize/promote/develop Linux/open source based technologies for mobile/consumer/embedded devices. I have my doubts... I do not fully understand how they plan to work. I'd go directly to places like the kernel.org or to GNOME to get things agreed, aligned, and -the most of all- developed. These are the communities that do the actual work and I'm not sure how these additional forums add value.

It may be that big companies are so used to do high level standardization and high level business deals that the simple community work doesn't seem real to them. They do not know how to deal with open source development, so they try to change it into something they are more familiar with: NDAs, business deals, and standardization forums.

I believe the Linux Foundation is slightly different. It is a forum dedicated to a specific open source project, Linux. And it promotes the community aspect of the work at hand.

New sw for N800

Posted: March 25th, 2007, 7:33am MYT by Ari Jaaksi

I suggest you now go and update your N800. This new software has several improvements & fixes. Just remember to make a backup of your data and settings first.

Nokia N800 Challence by Pop Sci

Posted: February 14th, 2007, 11:39pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

We had a Pop Sci party yesterday at the Nokia Flagship store at Manhattan.

We launched the Nokia N800 challenge. The idea is this:

You come up with the most compelling application, service, script, hardware addition or anything that you will use on the Nokia N800. You send your idea to the challenge as explained here. Your entry must be creative, useful, appealing, fun, versatile, or extremely innovative — something that truly impacts people's lives.

The entries will be judged by members of Nokia staff and the editors of Popular Science. They will select two of the best Nokia N800 innovations. The first winner will be featured in the May issue of the magazine and the second winner will be featured in the June issue. Each winner will show off his or her winning idea in the Popular Science magazine.

Your idea must not be necessarily an application running within the N800. It can be server or network based, and idea of controlling or monitoring something using the inbuilt apps on N800 etc. To my mind, the most important aspect of a good idea is that it utilizes the unique features of the N800 -- portability, good screen, connectivity, openness, and so forth.

So let's be creative out there.

A high level roadmap

Posted: February 13th, 2007, 9:18am MYT by Ari Jaaksi

People are asking for roadmaps for internet tablets and our software. Hey ... these are all trade secrets ;-) Seriously, I do not want to go and comment all "are you gonna have xyz and when?" -questions, for they are so many, and often even we do not know the answer yet. But let me try to paint a picture - illustrate some of our thinking. So here we go:

Short term

In a few weeks (I hope) we'll release a new version of the OS2007 with a
-better Flash performance
-better video performance and quality
-longer usage times i.e. better power management
-fixes here and there
These are still in the owen so wait and see.

Mid term

Then later this year we 'll have an
-updated browser with better WEB 2.0 support and other goodies
-improved multimedia support with more formats supported
-improved package management to better enable sw upgrading
-interesting 3rd party software such as Skype and Real Rhapsody
-more apps & stuff downloadable from [tableteer.nokia.com] (can be accessed with an internet tablet, only ....)

We want to also strenghten our open source community approach. We need to better articulate, how developers can participate in the development of these devices. Today it happens primarilly in upstream projects, and that will always be the most important way for collaboration. So see you @ GUAGEC, FOSDEM, DEBCONF etc and @ sourceforge etc. In addition, we will improve the usage of our external bugzilla, and study how to push Sardine forward. Also, www.maemo.org will be constantly improved with the help of the developer community.

Long term

Now this gets more difficult. But we'll work on new software to improve your internet experience. And we'll get WiMAX. And ...

And already now...

I wrote this whole post with the finger keyboard on my n800. I hardly use the stylus anymore but only with busy web pages. Also, I took this picture

from my hotel room a minute ago with my N91, and used my N800 to get in on this blog. Cool, eh..?

A status report #2

Posted: January 27th, 2007, 9:19pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

Thank you again for you enthusiastic comments. It is good to see that you care about our products and have strong opinions. Otherwise you would not bother ;-) I read all the comments but I’m not gonna go and answer them all … sorry for that … I simply cannot.

Let me repeat again what we’ll do. It seems some of you have difficulties understanding what I try to say. My fault.

770 support
770 is a fully supported Nokia product. As an example, we released a new official OS2006 version for the Nokia 770 only yesterday. So it is also getting better. Also, a new OS2006 SDK was released yesterday. And as I said in my previous post, we follow the situation as we go on and keep on supporting the product.

A developer version of OS2007 for the Nokia 770
We will not make an official OS2007 version on 770 available. Instead, we are in the process of making a developer version, as promised, based on your feedback. For some of you, it seems to be not enough, though … well, I’m sorry for that. We’ll follow up how that developer version will go, and then decide how to move on. But no plans no make a full commercial OS2007 running on 770.

Future features and improvements -- focus on N800
Thank you for your suggestions on how to improve our products. Some of the suggestions are already being worked on. In this competitive environment of consumer products, working with partners and competitors, we cannot provide a total transparency to what we’ll do. Therefore, I cannot tell you all the details -- before I can.

The N800 will get better, more internet services will be supported, and I feel very excited about the future ahead of us. Competitors are emerging, and more and more people understand and support our original vision . Let’s make internet mobile and put it into our pocket.

When to release – early or late?
As I said in my previous post, expect to see the software on N800 getting better and better. I’ve already seen it in our internal releases. Based on our earlier experiences we decided to release it in CES, get feedback from users, and with the help of communities, improve the software. So we released the product now because N800 is already a very good and usable product, and it is getting better. There are always people who would like to do it the other way – and then others would say “just release and we’ll suggest what to fix and help you”. Once again – you cannot make everybody 100% happy. But that’s life!

A status report

Posted: January 25th, 2007, 5:07pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

Here is a little status report of what is happening.

N800 software
N800 is getting nice reviews. People seem to like what we’ve done. Of course, there is a lot of room for improvements, but it seems we are on the right tracks. The direction is right – the speed could always be better, eh ;-)

We are currently working on improving the N800 software for the forthcoming new software releases. I believe we can improve performance in many areas. Also, the overall stability and quality is on our agenda, of course. So expect to see N800 getting better and better. I feel kinda bad seeing magazines and bloggers reviewing N800 and complaining about something that is already fixed in our internal sw releases. I hope all reviewers understand that N800 is a device that is going to improve over time – just like the 770 has done!

Some people are also asking about new Flash versions, new browser versions and so forth. These components involve customer and business partnership relations, technical work, and other things that make it impossible to tell exactly what is gonna happen. However, our goal is to make Internet Tablets as interoperable with internet services as possible. This includes services such as Skype and Google talk, support for major internet formats, and a brilliant browser. As I said earlier, the direction is clear and right, and the speed --- well, we run as fast as we can!

maemo.org
Another thing we are working on is the application installer and application catalog at www.maemo.org. You can already see the test version here.

770 support
As agreed, we are working on getting N800 software running on 770 – not a final product image but an engineering release that’ll help developers to bridge the gap between N800 and 770. Carlos posted you an update.

We're getting some feedback .. and we've got a plan now

Posted: January 11th, 2007, 10:38pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

Thanks

Thank you all for your feedback. Also you, Mr anonymous, who gave so many comments on my previous post.

The Plan

But seriously, this is what is gonna happen:

-We will now investigate what it takes to run N800 software on 770 hardware. We will post the details and ask you to solve problems with us, if possible, as we go on. Expect to hear from us through maemo and other sources. I do not yet exactly how we gonna do this all. I'm at the Heathrow airport waiting form my flight back to Finland, and we have not had a chance to figure this out fully yet. However, the team is already working on this.
-The goal is to provide an engineering release of those parts of the software that can be made to work. I do not believe we will make an official "consumer version" of the software for 770. But having a release working on 770 would allow developers and hackers to continue working on 770 and bridge the gap between 770 and N800.
-Once we've done the release we want to get more feedback from you about where to go from there. Unfortunately I do not have an estimate of when such release would be ready. But we are working on it now.
-Should we find it impossible to have N800 software even partially run on 770, you will see the details of our attempt.

Some of the challenges encountered so far
-WLAN configuration has changed quite a bit.
-DSP (770 is OMAP 1710 and N800 is OMAP 2420) is different. DSP code is developed by various parties and we do not have a full control over it. We need to figure out if we can support DSP (codecs and stuff ...)
-Browser is licensed separately for both platforms and we do not have a cross-platform version. We do not own the browser code.
-We have several commercial components that are licensed for N800 only. Should we make them available for 770, you or Nokia must pay. How do we arrange that is not clear at the moment.
-Some new components require more computing power than 770 offers, and they run slow even on N800. I fear making them work on 770 will be very challenging.

But as I said, let's try now. Thank you for your feedback!

Some reality bits

Somebody commented that it was easy to make a 770 application run on N800. Yes it is and that is very good, isn't it. But making the operating system and drivers and all the low level things running on a different hardware is significantly more complicated. It requires much much more than just recompiling. If that was the only thing needed we would have of course done that ;-)

Also, supporting and commercially launching a new software releases is a big task. If you have never done a product release you wouldn't know. This is why we're thinking about an engineering release that would work, would be supported for developers by developers, but not offered as an official release supported by Nokia's global support organisations etc..

770 didn't go away and is a good product

So we understand you comments. However, please remember that 770 is already an old product. It was announced 1.5 years ago and that is a long time! However, it is a good product and Nokia supports it fully and keeps on selling it, too. It is just that technology keeps on developing and we want to offer better hardware to our customers.

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