NB#666: My eyes hurt. About Nokia internal bugtracker.

Even if this is old news, after seeing the message of the last MeeGoTouch framework release in the mailing list, I wanted to write this post.

If you read the message, there are some keys before the description of the fixed bugs, for example, NB#190995. For the people not following the Nokia scene, these codes mean that the bug report is from the Nokia internal bugtracker, which is not public. Nokia uses a private bugtracker to handle bugs for open source projects.

My main concern about this is the fear that something similar to what happened with Maemo in the past happens now in MeeGo. The story is quite simple:

• Nokia announce Maemo and opens a public bugzilla at maemo.org
• 10 Nokia developers/architects (well, it isn’t the exact number) use the public bugzilla, the rest use the private bugtracker.
• The community feels that they’re spending the time talking to a wall, and report a bug so that developers become more involved in the public bugzilla and a true collaboration happens.
• This bug report is still open after more than four years. Of course, most developers weren’t never involved in the public bugzilla.
• Maemo Community members aren’t happy with Nokia.

I fully understand that Nokia uses an internal bugtracker for closed software or software that hasn’t been revealed yet, but I can not understand how they use the internal bugtracker for things like MeeGoTouch which is developed openly (or not?).

Robin already asked the reasons, and even wrote a bugreport in meego.com. But there isn’t any good excuse for this, an open project should be discussed openly (MeeGoTouch is) and the bugs should be managed openly too.

Meego is in a very early period of development, and of course we must be patient and give it time, but it is better to do things right from the start because if not it will be much more difficult to change later.

My next developments (for MeeGo)

After two months that I’ve taken a break from software development world, the new season is coming, and today I have written some code again so it seemed like a good idea to write the future plans. I will not have as much time as in previous years to devote to software development (I’ll begin to study a Master degree in September), but I will try to ensure as much time as I can because my goals are quite demanding. I hope to meet my expectations.

At first, just comment that I am not going to continue supporting the software I have written for Maemo. All this software was written in Hildon whose future is uncertain in MeeGo, and after several months there seems to be no one interested for change this future, even if Nokia donated $50,000 to Gnome, but apparently they still have not even decided what to do with this money. Cornelius did a very good suggestion here.

I am sorry for the users of my Maemo 5 applications, but you must understand that I can not keep spending time on something that is not going to have a future.

In other topic, my knowledge of Qt and C++ are increasing little by little, I’m writting working software, but surely the code is not as optimized as possible, something I hope to fix over time.

The main reason why I am writing software in C++ now is because I want it to be available at sites such as Ovi Store for Meego. The Ovi Store does not support applications written in Python, there is a request made by the Maemo Community for that possibility, but I doubt that Ovi supports it soon.

My plan is to market some of these applications, ie sell some applications, therefore the source code will not be available. I would love to sell an application and open the code, but if I open the code anyone can distribute the application for free. If anyone has an idea of how to do both without losing sales, I’m all ears.

Of course there will be free copies (and beta versions, etc.) for friends and people who help me to improve the software, testing it, reporting bugs, etc. and if the business goes well I will be able to give better gifts to these people and even create my own company (Yerga Mobile Solutions)

Without further ado, I will list the applications I’m developing so far with Qt and C++. There are more planned applications but those news will come when necessary.

Periodic Table

When I have to learn to program in a new UI platform, I always write a periodic table (I’m a chemist), and in the case of Qt has been the same way. If I fulfil the plans I have for this application it will be the most complete periodic table ever written for a mobile device.

Features working so far

• The Periodic Table itself, with data for the elements.
• Graphics of the properties of the elements.

Some TODO items

• 3D molecules from PDB files (with online search)
• Amino acids data
• Molecular mass calculator
• Hundred of small things

GTD app

This is the killer application I’m writing right now. It is a task management application using the GTD method (method I’ve been following for months). The application is written taking many ideas of Things for iPhone application, but in the end it will be different with different features.

Features working so far

• All task management (add, move, delete, complete, etc.)
• GTD *lists* (inbox, scheduled, next, someday, etc.).
• Projects support

Some TODO items

• Repeating tasks
• Improve landscape UI
• Attach files (audio, photos) to tasks.
• Desktop application (for Linux, MeeGo netbook, Windows and MacOS).
• Notifications.
• Search tasks.
• Synchronize with Remember The Milk, Tooedlo, Outlook, iCal, Evolution, etc. (yay, complicated).
• GPS integration (localized task).
• New, nicer icons.

Of course, I will continue writing open source software for Meego, for these cases the applications will be written in Python with MeeGoTouch libraries (when available). MaStory and CasualServices are the first applications that I will be porting to MeeGoTouch libraries.

PS. That are desktop screenshots for the Qt applications because launching a Qt app in the MeeGo Handset SDK it becomes a blank screen.