Re: opieII

Hello Lorn,

Wednesday, December 13, 2006, 11:14:34 PM, you wrote:


[]

[]
>>> I have disclosed my plans.
>>> So far, that _is_ the plan -> being based on Qtopia 4.2. No plans other
>>> than that at this time. First part of plan is to let TT release code so
>>> we can fork it.
>> 
>>> Although I suggest we use some differing graphics, fix a few silly bugs
>>> and things which I think are silly/not working yet in Qtopia, and add 
>>> some new device configurations for all those poor fellows that have iPaqs.
>> 
>>   I guess, that's additional good reasons to use different name,
>> even if it's "internal name hosting name". I personally wouldn't want
>> that after so many years of many people's work, it turned out that all
>> what "opie" is something waiting for upstream release to just

> This is the reason given why so many core developers have moved on.. 
> because they were waiting forever to get another updated code drop from
> Trolltech. This has even turned Mickey to the dark side...


  I take your word for it - that just basing on newer version of
qte/qtopia would bring all the core developers back, and specifically
quick enough for OPIE (old OPIE) to become obsolete.

>> start, having vague feature requirements, and barely any working code.

> This is nothing new to Opie. Its always been vague feature requirements.

  Been, but no more. OPIE is defined by software which is part of it
(i.e. for me OPIE is not just GUI libs, but the whole application
environment). And you want to shake just the base of it, requiring apps
to be rewritten (though I still if it was more of rhetorical figure,
that's why I keep mentioning it again and again).

> This is not a commercial endevour, and so we have no strict 
> requirements, roadmaps, detailed project status meeting, or anything 
> like that. Most of the work has been done as someone thinks of it and 
> core developers reach consensus. After all, we are all volunteers and do
> this as a hobby.

  Wonderful. But let me try to argue to you that companies do all
those funky things not because they are "commercial endevours" and
just love to do something funky, but because they work in competitive
environment and must understand competitors's strength and figure out
what they will do to fit or, better, outstrip it, and plus actually hold
a grip on doing that.

  And believe me or not, but current situation in PDA open-source
realm is not the same as it was when OPIE conceived. After all, now
there *are* OPIE and GPE. So, anything new will need to compete for
developers' attention (I don't mention users here because it is so
slim that users will, and have to eat, whatever developers feed them
;-) ).

  Of course, I already got the answer to this concern too - as soon as
qtopia will be gone GPL, all the older OPIE developers will start to
work on OPIE2, so there's no need to draw new developers who may not
understand what's so cool about qtopia 4.

> Opie's roadmap is determined, in part, by Qtopia's roadmap. It would be
> good if we can leverage the 40 some developers now working on Qtopia as
> our own developers, and continue to apply TT's patches. Think of Opie v
> 2/4 as Qtopia++.

  Good ;-). I guess TT finally got a hint! ;-) (Thanks for that.)

>> Because OPIE is not like that - it's UI framework in production state
>> for many yes, suitable for immediate use. And most people won't notice
>> difference in case. (But hopefully trained enough to known that X and
>> X2 may be pretty different things.)

> Then they can still use the qtopia 1 based Opie. and I recommend they 
> use that until Opie version (2 or 4) is ready.


  Perfect! That's what I will tell users if they dare to ask, and
if they will keep daring more, I will refer them to you ;-).



-- 
Best regards,
 Paul                            mailto:[email protected]

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