Me Tizen, You Join?

Mobile Linux characters have been acting out lately like they were in a bad adventure movie.

Maemo lopes slowly and reluctantly toward its fatal date with the sunset.  MeeGo blinks in the same sun and finds its full commitment gone.  And like a battle-tested Phoenix, Tizen emerges from the ashes of twice-burned, thrice-shy skepticism.

Such is life in the largely undeveloped desert ecosystems outside the expanding stockade walls of Appleworld, Microsoftia and the remaining fading few. 

Gary Birkett: A Community Heart

Some of us like to think that systems and data and processes are the bones, brains and blood of any venture.  And for the most part that’s true.  But what body can thrive without a heart?

This isn’t just rhetorical.  The question came up for me a few days ago when I received the devastating news that a very good friend had passed away. 

Maemo, MeeGo, Mango and Me

Ever since the February 11 2011 Nokia event cheekily tagged as #NoWin and known colloquially as The Elopocalypse, I’ve struggled to cover Nokia’s present and abandoned strategies here with equal care.  Don’t be misled by my attempts of objectivity over Linux and Microsoft activities, though– it hasn’t been easy.  I’ve been moderating an internal conflict between a growing invasion of open source love versus a legacy of Microsoft development experience combined with strong curiosity.  Neither side has a clear advantage over the other for me and therein lies a conundrum.

I could have very easily avoided the whole controversy at the start.  When I assumed responsibility for Maemo internet tablet quality in the North American market, I could have taken the easy route and stuck to the basics.  That meant developing test plans, training auditors and inspectors, hosting Finnish and Mexican product teams, and making sure CES 2007 was supplied on time with 200 pristine N800s.  Nothing more.

But no.  I’m a device nut.  An admitted hardware geek.  As I’ve shared many times, laying eyes on the Nokia 770 tablet changed everything for me.  It put what I saw then as the future in my hands, literally and figuratively.  I could not just treat this product line as I did the various and sundry cell phones I also touched.  I took tablets personally. 

The Cells of Smart Power

When I last wrote about “smart power”, I was taking US business and especially political leaders to task for failing to craft comprehensive, forward-looking energy policy.  They seem to be more concerned with drilling for today’s dwindling oil than planning for tomorrow’s growing needs.  Meanwhile, citizens feel powerless to do much about it.

Part of the problem is one of scale.  Our energy dilemma is big and not easily solved.  There’s a great deal of economic inertia keeping us stuck in hydrocarbons.  As I said before, I believe it’s largely the role of government to help “unstick” us– to provide incentives, tax or whatever, in facilitating a transition from a polluting power paradigm to one more responsible and sustainable.

But that doesn’t mean the citizenry should sit back and wait for their tax dollars to be put to proper use.  There are moves we can make at local levels to get change underway… and set the stage for more expansive solutions. 

Achievement Badges: Not Just for Gamers

A friend of mine in the MeeGo community brought my attention to an interesting concept he calls MeeGoVerse, which translates common gaming elements to real-life work as a sort of “massive multiplayer” endeavor.  One important aspect is the use of achievements to reward people for attacking necessary community evils, like bug reporting.  I can envision Meegon badges for each achievement.  People love to contribute, and especially be recognized for it.

Badges can be found in unusual places and contexts.  While updating my LinkedIn profile recently I took stock of a couple of icons I had not really thought much about before.

Right there beside the YOU indicator you’ll note an in and, next to it, a circular array graphic.  The first indicates  a Premium account, meaning for one that you get to harass potential connections with InMails.  Very valuable when I was searching for a new job two years ago.  The circle of circles shows profile viewers that I’m a member of an OpenLink network and thus open to said harassment.  Fair, after all, is fair.  

What is the Future for Forum Nokia Champions?

Like many high-tech companies, Nokia’s success depends not only on its vast assembly of internal talent, but also on the numerous volunteer advocates and ambassadors of its solutions in the wild.  To that end, Nokia formalizes recognition of top volunteers with its Forum Nokia Champion program.  Since 2006, hundreds of hard-working community leaders have been awarded this 1-year designation… which brings with it free devices, training and occasional travel to events.

As I wrote recently, it was under these auspices that along with several others I recently enjoyed sponsored travel to Microsoft’s MIX11 conference.  This came as a virtue of Nokia and Microsoft’s new close partnership around Windows Phone 7.  It’s a given that Microsoft MVPs would be represented at a MIX event, but this was a first for Forum Nokia and travel arrangements were made almost at the last minute.  

Linus Torvalds, Linux, and the Issue of Software Quality

Friend and Maemo/MeeGo bugjar master Stephen Gadsby alerted twitterites yesterday to a Fedora bugzilla flamefest, and at first blush it made for interesting comic relief.  Who doesn’t enjoy a good Internet argument?

But a second read sobered me up quickly.  The bug turned out to be an issue introduced into the crucial (and occasionally controversial) glibc code library that doesn’t appear to have been sufficiently regression-tested.  The code change reason is described as an execution speed improvement, but it appears to have come at the expense of pre-emptive error-checking.

Most people aren’t going to care about the technical reasons underlying the discovered bug.  Most will, instead, be concerned with its impact.  And that gets us to the reason behind me writing today.  

A Personal Note on the New Nokia

Ever since last Friday’s monumental announcement (do I have to say which one?) I have wrestled with Nokia’s new direction.  I admit to being skeptical of its success, and I’m very disappointed in what I see as a significant retreat from open source… but I’m going to try really hard to be objective.

I see a lot of very polarized reactions and people forming into two distinct Pro and Con camps.  This is understandable; Nokia’s new clothes signify a very different empire than the one to which many of us have grown accustomed.  Because we’re looking at so many unknowns, I have to lean toward the doubters on this one, and Nokia is going to have to work harder than it ever has to prove itself in my view.  Too many words from the past unmatched by action.  Not that the past need dictate the future, but after repeated bumps and potholes one begins to distrust the road.  The one Nokia has been on requires much more than simple patching, to be sure, but the jury will be out on the shotgun wedding to Microsoft for some time yet.

As an (unpaid and often gonzo) journalist I often walk a fine line here between opinion and strict reporting, but I will always make it clear which is which.  In the same vein, I will work at not letting my personal opinion get in the way of highlighting the positive aspects of Nokia’s new developments.  That won’t be easy though!  But I was recently reminded that being a Forum Nokia Champion means supporting the communities, whatever form they take.

I do think some of my peers have been far too eager to radically embrace Nokia’s abrupt shift, but then, I can understand it– especially from employees concerned about their future.  On that note, I left a post at forum.meego.com about showing understanding toward Nokia employees and I hope it’s heeded.  They certainly don’t need any grief right now.

So expect me to cover this subject some more, maybe at times in an aggravated tone but perhaps with some hopeful accents as well.  I don’t want Nokia to fail… far too much at stake that goes beyond the success of Stephen Elop.

Disclaimer: author is a current stockholder and customer as well as former employee of Nokia, and a longtime developer with Microsoft Visual Studio.

DFW MeeGo Network: Review of First Meetup

As many readers already know, I tried to get local Maemo meetups going around a year or so ago, using the Dallas/Fort Worth (Texas, US) area as a prototype..  Just as the effort began gaining traction, the MeeGo announcement put an unwitting crimp in those activities.  So I was excited and relieved when the MeeGo community finally reached the critical mass necessary for local enthusiast groups.

More information on this effort is available on a specific wiki page, so in this article I am going to focus on the first gathering of the Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) local group.  

My Time at the MeeGo Conference 2010

I’ve had a few days now since the first-ever MeeGo Conference ended to jettison the jet lag and sort my thoughts, so it’s time to run through experiences there.  This will come from a purely personal viewpoint; later I’ll do a more objective analysis of the event.  Apologies in advance for the epic length.

Preparation

I had a “Birds of a Feather” (BoF) workshop scheduled as well as a lightning talk, so there was obvious work involved for the presentations.  The lightning talk, an introduction to MeeGo Greeters, was easy to work up.  The BoF on user engagement was more difficult, as I had never conducted one before at the conference level.  After kicking ideas around I decided to wait until arriving in Dublin and draw out the thoughts of friends and especially my two co-panelists Timo and Leinir.  Since this was meant as a brainstorm I figured it might not even hurt to completely wing it.  Barring, though, a frustrating tendency to occasionally freeze into a mute on stage or fail to edit a long talk down to lightning class.

But most of my time beforehand was spent drawing requested custom characters for the MeeGo community.  Dubbed “Meegons“, the little things turned out to be immensely popular, particularly the week before I had to leave.  I had decided to create badge and device stickers of them for as many people as I could.  As luck would have it, high humidity made printing a real pain just prior to my flight out, but by some miracle I got everything done that I could.