Re: opieII

Hi Lorn,
I'm fully agree with Paul. If you think that just a fact that Trolltech 
released Qtopia 4 will bring all the developers back to work on OPIE 
you're happy, keep doing this, I wish you good luck.
 From my point I can say that I don't dream every night to get a job at 
Trolltech - my wish is slightly different: I want my PDA running Linux, 
but not to show it to girls (I'm happily married for >10 years) but to 
have more than Windoze might give me. Let's take a look at the current 
situation: are there applications for OPIE? Yes, there is a bunch of it 
at http://www.handheld-linux.com/swi/index.php. They may be good or not 
so good -- I can write C/C++, so I can make them work for me. Are there 
applications for GPE? People say "No, but you can port gtk application 
with no problem." I haven't tried it myself - I rely on other people words.
Are there apps for Qtopia 4? YESSSS! 
http://www.qtopia.net/modules/mydownloads/viewcat.php?cid=2
Have fun!!!
But a man like me says "If these are all,  I'd better stay away".
So, my position is simple -- if I see that there is a life in this OPIE 
II -- not in mailing lists, irc etc, but in a code repository, I'll 
think of doing something for it. But earlier - no-no, OPIE is not so 
coooool, progressive exciting, etc, but is simply works and does what I 
want it to do.
Good luck,

Dmitriy



Lorn Potter wrote:
>
>
> 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 ;-).
>
> :)
>
>
>
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