Thread: Open source vs confidential products
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qgil is offline qgil
2009-04-20 , 22:45
Posts: 3,105 | Thanked: 11,088 times | Joined on Jul 2007 @ Mountain View (CA, USA)
#45
Originally Posted by qole View Post
So you really believe there are lots of third-party developers out there, rolling up their sleeves, developing new OMAP3 apps, and running the Alpha SDK on the BeagleBoard to test them out?
No, but it's better than nothing. And who has released better (and still affordable) hackable OMAP3 hardware? Lack of reference hardware is an objective fact that makes many direct comparisons of Maemo with [your x86 Linux distro of choice] not directly applicable.

The Beagle Board is targeted to platform developers anyway. And any little success around the Beagle project encourages similar initiatives for the new reference hardware platforms to come.

I hope that this "Use the BeagleBoard to develop for Maemo 5" approach is yielding some results with some developers out there. Maybe developers who have access to hardware like HSDPA chipsets and high-definition cameras that can be used with the Alpha SDK.
As an application developer the lack of this is not a showstopper. You assume there is always data connectivity. You assume the pictures look good. Then you think what would you do with that.

So far, Fremantle Extras-Devel has some rough NIT ports, but all the things that differentiate the new devices from the current tablets (except OpenGL and my PC's powerful processor) are not available to me to experiment with.
The APIs are there in the alpha SDK and you can experiment with them. If you prefer to wait for a beta SDK with frozen SDK that's fine. If you prefer to wait to a device announcement to see if you like it, that's fine too. If you prefer to wait until having the hardware in your hands that's fine as well of course.

The latter stage is the one most developers take and one strategy could be not to distract anybody from Diablo until Fremantle is ready, well documented and in your hands. Some prefer to wait less in order to have more time to experiment, and these are the ones we want to play with SDK pre-releases, Beagle community support and such.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what happens when the first third-party developers get their hands on the new devices and start making apps that take advantage of the new hardware. What will happen when the developers have a powerful processor, high-definition camera, always-on HSDPA, mobile form factor, and standard Linux available to them?
Me too. The assumption is that those that did their homework with the pre-releases will be in good condition to experiment and also deliver software ready for real end users - sooner and better.
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