Due to my overall workload, I have not had a chance to look much after the Python packages in OpenEmbedded. For the OpenMoko distribution, we want to stay neutral against scripting languages, that is, there won’t be an official recommendation.
However, my personal take on that should be well known. At the time I’m writing this, I’m working on a major Python upgrade in OpenEmbedded, bringing all Python packages up to date and adding some optimization patches I have been working on.
Unfortunately, this also means I have to deprecate some of the packages which are end-of-life and won’t work with Python 2.5 – notably this involves the Python Qt Bindings for Qt/Embedded 2.x which I have been maintaining for quite some time. I no longer work on Opie though and I am not even sure if there were other people than me using these bindings.
I decided to visit this years Chaos Communication Camp near Berlin for a day or two. The mission is to have a coding sprint there that brings the first OM-2007.2 snapshot image up to par. I expect to meet some OpenMoko and OpenEmbedded guys there, i.e. Zecke, Stefan Schmidt, Alphaone, Shoragan, LaF0rge, Roh, …
This year’s GUADEC was very successful for me. I managed to attend to a lot of talks while still having time to perform several business meetings. OpenMoko Inc. was present in the GMAE meeting and contributed a tiny little bit to the discussions. GUADEC refreshed and renewed my interest and confidence in many GNOME technologies.
My talk about OpenMoko and the Neo1973 was very well received and although I called for flames by stating that GTK+ as the heart technology of GNOME is also its weakest spot, I hardly received any. To the contrary – other talks and discussions pointed out the same.
The Gnome Mobile Platform is progressing nicely and I’m looking forward to integrating the best libraries and frameworks into OpenMoko.
On to some personal notes… I really enjoyed the 4 days, spending some time with Stefan Schmidt and Daniel Willmann and my OE buddies, however both the Formule1 Hotel and (some of) Birmingham’s taxi drivers (not to mention the public transportation system) were quite suboptimal…
So we are finally selling hardware now. This is mainly a good thing, since we show that this device is not just vapourware. However, it is also a dangerous thing, since now people may buy this under false assumptions, being very disappointed because it (more or less) doesn’t do anything… To put this very straight:
**THIS IS NOT AN END-USER DEVICE! IT IS NOT (YET) THE IPHONE KILLER WE ALL ARE WAITING FOR! THIS IS A DEVELOPER RELEASE, NOT A CONSUMER PRODUCT! **
It may not even always be a phone – since thanks to all the distracting hoops and roadblockers we had to jump through, the result is a software that’s really not up to par yet – everything is in an amazingly unsatisfying and rough state and I won’t bet on its ability to make or receive calls all of the time.
However, this doesn’t prevent it from being a revolutionary device – it is a canvas that will enable you developers to draw your own ideas upon – thus shaping the future of mobile communications and being a part of a great community. And it won’t be alone, there will be many more canvases to follow.
The really good thing is that not only are we super-committed to making this hardware and software platform a rocking success, but we also got some big guys standing behind us and supporting us. It may take a while for OpenMoko to really get off, but we already seem to scare some of the big players :D
If you ask me how long we will take to get to a device that is end-user friendly, then I will answer you: At least 6 months from now, perhaps even more. But don’t forget – this is more of an open source project than anything else. We release early and we release often – now go and flame us for that, because it doesn’t live up to your expectations. Or see it as the developer board it is and join us in developing a mobile platform based on openness, freedom and virtually endless possibilities.
While I was in Taipei, I revamped the EFL recipes in OpenEmbedded. They suffered from a lot of hackish workarounds that were necessary while EFL didn’t use pkgconfig and had some bogus autotools usage. This is now history and so we have a more or less clean set of EFL recipes in OpenEmbedded!
Related to that, I have recently been contacted by Andreas ‘audifahrer’ Volz who’s going to work with me on refreshing my C++ bindings to the EFL unavailable that have unfortunately been stalled since many months. As a first step towards more visibility, we agreed to autoconfigize them (they were using my beloved qmake :-)) and put them into the Enlightenment CVS. Over the next months, we plan to catch up with recent changes in the EFL and enhance them. Lots of cool things forthcoming for ya C++ lovers.
This – of course – also has some relevance to OpenMoko.
By the way, Aaron Bockover joins me with a rant about Gtk+ theming unavailable.
We finally switched off the dryer on saturday and almost all of my stuff has been placed into the office again. I’m now fully operational again and can (finally) continue to work as usual *phew*
Much like the first week, the 2nd week in Taipei really rushed by and I’m finding myself being back in Frankfurt for until the 15th of July, when I’m leaving to Birmingham to attend GUADEC. I will have a talk about OpenMoko there and I’m looking forward to meet a lot of GNOME guys and gals.
My last day in Taipei was spiced by a whole day meeting with Carsten ‘The Rasterman’ Haitzler, whom we invited to visit us – talking about graphics for next-generation user interfaces, the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries, and more. Raster is a really nice and competent guy and I enjoyed that meeting a lot – thanks for your patience with all my questions :)
Unfortunately, I also have some bad news. While I was in Taipei, Frankfurt struggled under massive amounts of rain and water poured into my new office room in our apartment :-( Fortunately, nothing important has been damaged, however the whole carpet is drenched and there is now a (really loud) dryer operating in the room for a couple of weeks. *sigh*
The first week in Taipei has passend and it’s really good to be here. FIC is a great place to work in a comfortable and focused way. All people are very kind and helpful. The climate is pretty warm and the humidity is a bit higher than what I’m used to, but then again, I’m spending the lions share of every day in the FIC building anyway :D
I didn’t have much of a chance to see some sites in Taipei yet – and I’m afraid that won’t change next week, so I have to come back soon.
Of course all you Neo-lusty folks are probably not interested in how I feel here, but more in what I am doing here… alas, I can’t tell much at this point of time. What we are focusing on right now is not even directly hardware or software related, but more structure related. It’s a bunch of good things happening though. I expect OpenMoko to post an announcement pretty soon that will explain what happened in the past weeks, what we are heading towards, and what we can expect from the next months.
Yesterday night I arrived back in Frankfurt/Main. I’m going to stay until Friday and then head over to Taipei for a while to work on OpenMoko.
As usual, the LinuxTag was very exhausting, but fun and productive at the same time. My talk was very well received and a lot of people are looking forward to (finally) get this phone into their hands. If you want to get an idea about what I presented, feel free to read the slides unavailable and hear the speech unavailable (sorry, german language this time).
Once again, I took the opportunity to get some Berlin spirit and Holger ‘Zecke’ Freyther lead me into a bar. This time the walk was much shorter (very appreciated after two days on an exhibition) and the bar was also pretty cool – thanks! :-)
Writing this on my way to the LinuxTag 2007 that takes place in Berlin this year. In roughly 9 hours, I’m going to give a talk about OpenMoko – the backgrounds, vision, and status. Due to all the stress with moving, I couldn’t prepare like usual, however I’m sure it’ll be good enough to spread the word :-)