talks. with Quim Gil from Nokia.
The company is credited with the deployment of the ecosystem around GNOME and other free software technologies. How did this happen?.
Maemo project has been a pioneer in introducing a set of free technology for desktop'a commercial mobile products. While many experts in these technologies were either amateurs or professionals in other fields, did not know that companies such as Nokia were interested in their work. There followed the first contacts. Some of them were employees of Nokia, and moved to Finland, and some have proposed to create their own company and work with Nokia. Through this combined approach, Nokia has received expert for the company and at the same time created a new ecosystem of small and mostly European companies that have flourished around the GNOME project.
How did Nokia start to use technology GNOME?.
GTK was chosen as the basic tool for developing UI Maemo. The main reason for choosing this technology was the policy of the LGPL, the total for the rest of the GNOME and decentralized with respect to companies and individuals who collaborated in the development of GTK and other projects under the auspices of the GNOME Foundation. While this model is clearly different from the model with a commercial Qt license and the GPL, and the process was controlled by Trolltech. GTK has led to the choice of many other technology solutions.
In your opinion, what the strengths of the fund GNOME?.
GNOME Foundation supports the project as a neutral venue for cooperation, the aim of which is difficult to achieve and maintain for many years. Neutral in the sense that no company is responsible for general management as well as a good balance between commercial and non-profit companies, community organizations and enthusiasts.
What do you think, where the GNOME Foundation should concentrate our efforts?.
It can be argued that the GNOME Foundation is solely responsible for the success of the project. There were great events and changes in the free software world and in the software industry as a whole, especially in mobile communications. Some members of the GNOME Foundation is actively promoted the implementation of these changes, but if you go to gnome. org and follow along with releases, you can see, the project does not accelerate. One feels the influence of desktop- oriented branches of two. x persists to this day.
Maybe, GNOME Foundation lacks a clear strategy to move to the new challenges that arise for the industry, or continue to hold the selected position: to provide the functionality and organization of traditional desktop computers.
Following the acquisition of Trolltech and the transfer of Hildon community, what is the position of Nokia in technology GNOME?.
This issue still leads us to an old topic that is GNOME technologies. Because the transition to the platform Qt and Qt API people come to the conclusion that Nokia rebuffed the GNOME project. However, looking at the architecture Meego, it is easy to note a good collection of intermediate technology, and the general architecture of GNOME Mobile. In addition, according to the style Qt API, many components are under the patronage of the freedesktop. org. It is no accident and the dynamics of the main developers of the project is consistent with the philosophy of GNOME.
Such an explanation does not satisfy enthusiasts GNOME, but note that our approach to mixing Qt API and GNOME applications in the intermediate and the fans do not like KDE. Better to leave this discussion and try to install the axis Meego GNOME-KDE. This option and we adhere to in order to find the best aspects of each project and the community, thereby synthesizing them into a lead -free mobile platform.
Nokia is moving from GTK to Qt, but recently gave $ 50,000 to the GNOME Foundation, to help fund the GTK application for Maemo and Meego. Why did you do that?.
When we announced last year to move to Qt, we were told that GTK / Hildon can be maintained if there is sufficient community interest. After some discussions with meynteynerami GTK / Hildon on. BoF- session. Summit Maemo, we decided to organize a fund to support initiatives. Our idea is to promote the transfer or development of GTK applications to Maemo 5 and provide a compatibility layer for the next release.
This fund was discussed and agreed with the GNOME Foundation as part of Maemo 5 and the Nokia N900, the mobile device with a GTK UI, has received very good reviews. Results of the fund have not yet seen. Nokia has made large investments in the Hildon and GTK over the years and even now, when our team is totally focused on Qt, we have tried to find a reasonable way to go for the Maemo- developers. We hope that this fund will be useful to developers of GNOME and indirect users of Maemo and Meego.
How do you see the biggest problem the GNOME community for the next few years?.
How is GNOME in this context? .
What would you like to see Nokia and GNOME to work together in the future?.
It would be nice if GNOME has played an active role in the development of Meego, the project combines the most advanced design to provide an innovative open platform.
GNOME community has put forward a lot of brilliant ideas and concepts that have migrated into the key elements of the stack of free work environment. The process of consolidation of the major platforms and will continue next year. We believe, Meego will be one of them: what other alternatives are so close to GNOME?.
Do you think your alliance with Intel to develop Meego will affect your work with the community?.
Nokia and Intel are often mentioned as good examples of companies that cooperate with the free projects, and Meego only improve the current situation.
In addition to Nokia and Intel alliance includes the Linux Foundation. The aim is to build high-quality free operating system for mobile devices and computers. We chose the following approach: to start an open source project that combines the features of free software and professional development. Now the process of discovery continues, transparency and community involvement will take a prominent place in the near future. All cleared up within a few months after the release of the first version of the OS and increase the list of companies involved in the development of.
