Re: opieII

Paul Sokolovsky wrote:

>   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.

According to many, Opie is already 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).

Yes, things will have to get rewritten. That's why many have waited for 
Qtopia 4, so we don't have to do the majority of the rewrite - TT does.


>> 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. 

Actually, GPE or some incarnation of it, has been around longer than Opie.


> 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
> ;-) ).

I am not worried about attracting devs from GPE. the split is religious 
c vs.c++ and X11 vs. Framebuffer. :)

What I am trying to do, is build interest and momentum for this new 
OpieII thing we will soon have - both developers as well as users.


>   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.)

TT has always 'got the hint'. TT was one of the first companies to 
release code as GPL. We even hire many people from the community... like 
me! (and we are quite actively still hiring.. any takers?? - sunny 
semi-tropical Brisbane Australia!!) It's just that up until now, TT has 
not been able to release Qtopia 4 as GPL. TT is a business first and 
foremost, and commercial sales drive development so we can then release 
open source code when the time is right.


>>> 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 ;-).

:)



-- 
Lorn 'ljp' Potter
Trolltech Qtopia Community Manager
Opie Core Developer
http://qtopia.net
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