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Sorry, but no...Sorry, but no...Posted Mar 30, 2011 8:11 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252)In reply to: It's kida a moot point... by daniel Parent article: How Amazon could loosen Google's iron grip on Android (ars technica)
What is underwhelming about Maemo? It was only killed by Cathedral politics. Right. But the fact remains: "Cathedral politics" was able to kill it. It means few people cared. Ask yourself: why Nokia threw it away and went with Windows Phone 7? Because only geeks wanted "normal unix workstation in your pocket". The same happened with Zaurus years before: few geeks bought it (of course they were disappointed when they found out it's chock-full of binary blobs), but "normal people" were not interested so eventually it stopped being Linux-based and switched to Windows. The next thing we'll hear from MeeGo apologists is that Hurd, too, is a resounding success. BTW, Linux kernel is a product of the bazaar, so your negative assertion is disproved by example. Linux kernel only become open bazaar after years of development. Initially it was developed by quite small number of people - and they coordinated development quite precisely among themselves (kinda like OHA just without all these secrecy - it was mostly replaced by obscurity because few people were interested in Linux back then). BTW new features are still developed privately in cathedral manner and often are shipped in real products before they are presented to upstream.
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Sorry, but no... Posted Apr 1, 2011 7:11 UTC (Fri) by rilder (subscriber, #59804) [Link]
"why Nokia threw it away and went with Windows Phone 7? Because only geeks wanted "normal unix workstation in your pocket"."
So you are comparing Windows 7 mobile with Meego ? Interesting. Even though Meego is/was geeky, it is still far far better than Windows 7 as a mobile platform. Also, regaring "unix workstation in pocket", now Nokia will soon realize that there is no pocket where there phone will fit in; sorry, but they went completely antipodal to their core strategy. There is no need why anyone would want to use Nokia on Windows 7 when there are Android and iPhone serving different user bases.
Another thing being - geeks - not the same when it comes to mobile phones, I have seen plenty of non-geeky people who wanted to change/mod their phones to help them better, look at Cyanogen Mod for instance - it is not just geeks who are using it.
Sorry, but no... Posted Apr 2, 2011 13:15 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] There is no need why anyone would want to use Nokia on Windows 7 when there are Android and iPhone serving different user bases. Time will tell. I, too, think Nokia did wrong choice, but I'm not so sure noone will want Windows Phone 7. Previous incarnations of Windows Phone were pretty popular. Not as popular as iPhone or Android, but pretty popular nonetheless. I have seen plenty of non-geeky people who wanted to change/mod their phones to help them better, look at Cyanogen Mod for instance - it is not just geeks who are using it. Sure! But the problem here is: only geeks buy things with explicit goal of changing/modding them. When Joe Average buys phone (or any other gadget, really) the "freedom to tinker" is very far on the list of things he looks for. It's when s/he already owns the phone s/he finds out it's locked and can not be fixed. If there are many similar models then may be s/he'll choose the more open one, but if you can buy locked system on each street corner and unlockable one only in a few select shops... it's not even a contest. When new phone models come out every few months you just don't have any hope of keeping your "community-driven" project relevant: when all new models are not supported and you must buy things which are almost obolescent or even "sold out" (means you can only buy them used)... who will do that except geeks?
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