GTK+ Hackfest in Berlin

We are proud to be one of the sponsors of the GTK+ Hackfest in Berlin. Whether it’s planning the vision and future of GTK+ (more info), the Windows backend (X2) , Cairo and fonts, gtk# and WebKit, or general discussion, it’s great to see such attention paid to one of the cornerstones of the GNOME and GNOME Mobile platform.

The hackfest also coincided with the 6th anniversary of the release of GTK+ 2.0.0 so congrats to all the GTK+ contributors. Also a big thank you to the organisers of the hackfest for putting together a successful event.

Poky 3.1 ‘Pinky’ released, and a new Poky website.

Poky, our GNOME Mobile focused platform build tool, has been receiving much love and attention with OH towers of late, which has lead to the lovely new Beaver powered Poky website which coincides with the latest 3.1 ‘Pinky’ release of Poky platform builder.

As always there are plenty of new features in the new release, but what I’m most excited about is the ability for Poky to generate standalone SDKs together with a plugin for the Anjuta IDE which integrates the SDK, QEMU machine emulator, GDB remote debugger, and OProfile profiling tool. This means that device manufacturers will not only get a superb platform builder to tailor a Linux system for their device but also get some great tools to help stimulate 3rd party development (or porting) of applications on their device. There’s a screencast of the plugin in action which gives a good demo of the features and more info at the project page on the OH Laboratories site.

The new website features a new logo, the beaver mascot, new screenshots and also the new Poky Handbook - we’re just putting the final touches to a printed version of the handbook which will be available soon.

Clutter 0.6.0 released

Just a quick note to point out the 0.6.0 release of Clutter. There is tons of juicy technical stuff in the release notes but some highlights include an new improved event handling system, scriptable interface definitions, and more GL features made nice in the shape of initial support for FBO’s and an abstraction of GL shaders. The Clutter Blog also covers the release and has some movies of Clutter in action.

World Tour 2008

The new year has only just started and it seems already OpenedHand folks have a pretty strong schedule of conference appearances across the globe. Currently the outlook is;

Linux Conf Austrailia, 28th Jan - 2nd Feb
Rob Bradford will be talking about Anjuta and Clutter
Done! - videos of talks: here and here.

FOSDEM, Brussels, 23rd - 24th February
Emmanuele Bassi will be presenting on Clutter - also in the GNOME Dev room catch OH related talks on GUPnP and GEGL, More info

GTK Hackfest Meeting, Berlin, 10th - 14th March
Emmanuele Bassi will be attending and OpenedHand sponsoring, More info

Open Source in Mobile, San Fransisco, 11th - 12th March
Matthew Allum will be presenting a Developer showcase on Clutter, More Info

Bossa08, Brazil, 16th - 19th March
Øyvind Kolås will be presenting about Clutter Internals, More info

OSCON, Portland, 21st - 25th July
Clutter talk submitted by Tomas Frydych - just hoping it will be accepted.

Q&A Page live

Our Q&A page is now Live. Its basically a posh FAQ containing answers to common questions we get asked about OpenedHand and what we do.

Open Source at CES

CES, the largest consumer electronics show in the world, held every year in Las Vegas, has just wrapped up. Sadly I’m wasn’t there, but luckily Doc Searls has been at CES keeping track of Linux and Open Source stuff at the show. As usual there are more Linux based devices that you’d realise or that many press outlets (save Doc and a few others) would let you know about. A smattering of devices from ‘Oh, so it runs Linux’ files; Motorola’s settop box and RAZR2 V8, iRobot vacuum cleaners, Dish Networks VIP722 PVR, a whole host of Intel MID devices.

What was interesting is that this seems to be the first year that truly open devices started appearing. Our friends from OpenMoko were there, as were Dash with the Dash Express a GPS based on the OpenMoko hardware. (NB, like Doc, I’d like to give kudos to OpenMoko for running Linux on the laptops on their booth).

Also it would seem Buglabs were one of the hits of the show (they were nominated for Best of CES by C|Net). Their hardware looks really cool with the BUBbase and BUGmodules adding near infinite possibilities for creative usage. I really liked this photo from Doc of Angel Roman’s setup (Angel is a Buglabs engineer), featuring a Lenovo X61 running (Ubuntu) Linux, a Nokia N810, and a Motorola (Linux based) ROKR phone, and the BUGbase and modules (on the left).

OpenedHand Christmas 2007

Its customary at OpenedHand that around the festive season we take some time away from the keyboards, get all the team togeather and spend some time indulging in activities that dont involve coding.

This year we spent a day putting 5000 pieces of Lego togeather:

…and the next shooting arrows, clay pigeons and driving 4×4’s and quad bikes around a muddy field in Kent.

Finally the evening was spent in the local pub enjoying a fine christmas meal.

A very merry Christmas to all!

Software above the level of a single device

Tim O’Reilly has repeated (the very repeatable) quote from Dave Stutz,

“Useful software written above the level of the single device will command high margins for a long time to come”

This line came at the end of Dave’s parting letter to Microsoft, after he resigned to become a winemaker. I’ve always loved the quote and struggled to understand what it might mean for (open source) software and device development. Tim’s canonical example is three way system of iTunes Music Store (web service), iTunes (PC based software), and iPod (hardware).

Of course the level of integration Apple are able to achieve is made somewhat easier because they control all three layers and have no interest in providing interoperability. In this light Dave’s quote always makes me stop and think about the many devices that are or could be in my home that don’t communicate or work together. Fileservers, laptops, PMPs, cameras, phones, PVRs, game consoles, stereos, all create, store, or consume various types of media. Yet they don’t all talk to each other or even use the same media formats. It doesn’t seem likely that consumers will get all these devices from a single company, hence cross device & manufacturer interoperability has to be the way forward.

For non-networked devices, such as typical PMPs and cameras the laptop will be the integration point, and for Linux, applications such as Rythmbox, Banshee, and F-Spot do a great job of storing, cataloging, and annotating various media. All three work above the level of one device by integrating with web services and using existing media sharing protocols.

Increasingly all devices will become networked and the problem gets significantly harder. I might want to browse photos on my camera via my the computer attached to my TV, or listen to a podcast I downloaded to my laptop on the stereo in the kitchen.

The UPnP standard is aimed to allow applications and devices work together with little or no configuration. We created the GUPnP project to help make software that uses UPnP as easy as possible. UPnP won’t solve all the problems - there’s always the danger that a manufacturer will have a bad implementation, or try to embrace and extend, and there is always DRM to raise it’s ugly head. But UPnP offers the most comprehensive system for connecting these devices together.

Already there are many devices that support the UPnP standard, and hopefully, now that GUPnP has stabilised, we start seeing more use of UPnP in Linux applications, so that one day my house might truely be humming to the sound of software above the level of a single device.

Linux for consumers

Havoc Pennington has a great post, Linux for Consumers, pointing out that it’s non-desktop devices that have the best chance of getting open source software, and in particular GNOME, into the average users hands; Nokia / Maemo Tablets, OpenMoko, OLPC and more tenuously the Kindle, and Android (neither of which are fully open source, yet).

“For years now I’ve complained about the term “desktop” - an evil word that blinds us to more interesting opportunities to use free software in consumer-facing products……..if a free software OS gets in front of a substantial number of consumers, it will be in the form of these new and different products, not in the form of a strictly traditional desktop operating system.”

I would recommend reading the whole thing, but, as you would expect, I agree with the main sentiment. As Havoc points out there is also the Zonbu, gPC, and EeePC, providing alternative visions of what a limited purpose, net centric, desktop client might be. The downside, as Havoc points out, is

“…they are all running one-off, hacked-up software that’s specific to the hardware……If this type of thing catches on, eventually there’s significant consumer benefit if the software is “hardware independent” and there’s a relatively stable platform used by as many people as possible.”

I think the challenge for Zonbu, gPC, and EeePC is that building from a common stable platform, rather than one off hacks, is just the first step. For long term success and progress, the contribution to and joining of the wider community is the best way forward.

I think this was the challenge that Maemo, OpenMoko, and OLPC platforms faced at the respective starting points and through their development. All three projects use the same underlying GMAE platform, but manage to provide a unique user experience for their target use and audience. And they all find ways of contributing back to and being part of the core GNOME project while each building their own independent communities and contributors. This is an inexact science and certainly there’s things we could all do better, but I think these projects are all on the right track.

GNOME Mobile and Embedded Initiative announced

Today at ELC, the GNOME Mobile and Embedded Initiative was finally announced!

“The GNOME Mobile & Embedded Initiative advances the use, development and commercialization of GNOME components as a mobile and embedded user experience platform. It brings together industry leaders, expert consultants, key developers and the community and industry organizations they represent. As an open development community, participants support the GNOME Mobile & Embedded Platform, a subset of GNOME’s proven, widely used desktop platform, focusing on software components shipping in production mobile and embedded products.”

We at OpenedHand are proud to have played a role in its creation and of course know a thing or two about the platform which contains key components developed by ourselves. Our ‘Poky Platform’ has full support for creating GNOME Mobile & Embedded based device stacks.

See our press release for further details.