Linux on the LifeDrive and T3

If Access doesn't deliver, Palm should panic.

Marty Fouts

I survived PalmSource '05

From the maemo web site:

(http://www.maemo.org/platform/docs/maemo_exec_whitepaper.html)

In many ways maemo could be compared to the GPE (http://gpe.handhelds.org) project that aims to provide Free Software GUI environment for palmtop/handheld computers running the GNU/Linux™ operating system. What makes maemo different is the ease of development it provides to the handheld application developers and a new user interaction design based around task based usage referred to as the Hildon User Interface and Hildon Application Framework.

Believe me, HUI/HAF are not at all like GTK+ ;)

Marty Fouts

I survived PalmSource '05

Well, those two options are actually very similar. IE integration into Windows goes far beyond just quick browser access. Trident (the IE layout engine) is an integral part of rendering the Windows desktop. So in a sense Windows is a browser-based OS.

Surer posted this link a while ago which gives some insight into ACCESS's plans:

http://www.access-us-inc.com/pdf/access_in_news/LinuxWorld_09_04.pdf

but there was talk a long time ago about how SUN was going to make the OS into "An Insufficiently Debugged Collection of Device Drivers ... "

Surur, wasn't it Netscape who said that? (about Windows)

Why would you want to say something that wrong?

Maemo and GPE aren't related. They're competing approaches.

Marty Fouts

I survived PalmSource '05

Since one of Linux's big problems is a lack of device drivers, I don't think I'd agree with you there.

I seem to recall the quote was by Marc Andreesen, co-founder of Netscape Communications, boasting that Netscape browser and Java would reduce Microsoft Windows to a "poorly debugged set of device drivers". Ironically it was this quote that finally led to Microsoft deciding Netscape as a "threat" and crushing them. If Andreesen had kept his mouth shut Netscape might still be around today. Such is the price of hubris.

As for "the network is the computer" slogan, yes Sun have dropped it. I think these days it's implicitly obvious.

They're not? When did they stop?

November 14th.

PalmLinux is PalmOS on top of a Linux kernel. Access adds Netfront to that -- something they've already done for PalmOS, anyway.

I think you're being disingenuous, Marty. Bundling NetFront with Palm OS would be easy, but that's not what ACCESS are doing. They're integrating NetFront's layout engine into the OS itself, which is much more ambitious.

So different, in fact, that there's really no reason for ACCESS to have acquired PalmSource at all if that was their plan for Palm OS.

David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog

So different, in fact, that there's really no reason for ACCESS to have acquired PalmSource at all if that was their plan for Palm OS.

Beersie, I would love for you to explain to me how ACCESS could integrate NetFront into Palm OS without acquiring PalmSource?

Regarding the Netfront OS, Netfront would be the window manager / launcher etc, not the actual apps, hence the ongoing need for developers. I wonder however how useful most Palm apps would be in a set top box.

Surur

They said I only argued for the sake of arguing, but after an hour I convinced them they were wrong...

> That makes no sense. If ACCESS are introducing a new API then
> they should care a lot about the existing base of Palm
> developers. They should care about migrating them to that API.

Therein, imo, lies the rub. Palm{source|one} has catered to developers who don't want to cope with changing APIs. The famous support for 68k aps, has left PalmOS in a situation where many of its "developers" are still living on the past API. Supporting the 68k developers on a new Access API makes no sense. Getting those thousands of APs to migrate to a new API when most of them won't even migrate to the OS5 APIs seems unlikely.

Meanwhile, the cynical view is that Sturgeon's law is optimistic when applied to the Palm economy, and that there are probably only a tiny handful of aps that are worth porting to the new API anyway.

Marty Fouts

I survived PalmSource '05

http://www.access.co.jp/english/ir/ir_shiryo/s040915_03.pdf

This slide should be illuminating. I've added the arrow (to the very small box) of course.

http://surur.sytes.net/netfrontplan.jpg

Surur

They said I only argued for the sake of arguing, but after an hour I convinced them they were wrong...

> Maemo uses GPE's X-Server, Window Manager, toolkit, message
> bus system and file system abstract. How is that not using
> GPE in any way?

None of those things are from GPE. You may as well say mameo uses GPE's kernel as say that, since they both run on Linux.

Look, for instance, at http://gpe.handhelds.org/projects/ where they even point out that the GTK+ widget toolkit is "not maintained by the GPE project" and don't list an X-server, widnow manager, tooklit, message bus system, or file system abstract as GPE projects -- because they're not.

Since you've managed to confuse Gnome and GPE, and don't realize that things like D-Bus don't come from GPE, I can see how you could misunderstand what you've read about Access' plans for NetFront in a PalmOS context.

> Try looking at some of Netfront's plans as they laid them out
> in the past.

http://www.access.co.jp/english/ir/ir_shiryo/s050616_03.pdf

is more interesting. While it predates the PalmSource purchase, it still points out that Access' intent is to keep NetFront OS neutral. (see, especially, page 19 and 22)

I wonder what the '06 supplement will look like, though.

Marty Fouts

I survived PalmSource '05

It's ironic that you accuse me of deception and then turn around and agree with most of what I've said, going so far as to expanding on comments I've made.

I am *not* being deceptive. There's stuff I can't say because of an NDA, but I'm being as up front as I can.

It is not, as far as I know, Access' plan to do anything other than what they've already said: Add NetFront to PalmOS on Linux in the same way they are adding it to a bunch of other OSes.

I do think Access is going to stay with that plan. I think the more experience they have with PalmSource, the less they are going to find of value in PalmOS. In the end, I think they're going to find nothing of value in Sunnyvale, move the Linux work entirely to Nanjing, and use Sunnyvale only to do maintainence on PalmOS compatibility and older versions of PalmOS. But even then, I don't think they'll completely delete PalmOS from "NetFronLinux", and I don't think they'll waste the time, money, or effort to rewrite the PalmOS aps to use the NetFront sdk.

Here's what common sense actually dicates:

Access gets no value out of buying PalmSource and then throwing PalmOS away. So they'll keep it somehow.

PalmSource has contracts with existing Access customers to support PalmOS. So Access will keep PalmSource/Sunnyvale around to do that support.

There's no real value in the PalmOS developer's community, but it's cheaper to just give them an emulator than write them off, and it's better PR. So Access will keep PalmOS, especially the 68k ap emulator, in NetFrontLinux.

But there's no real value in rewriting all those aps. So they won't. So, the plan will remain: "NetFrontLinux" will consist of NetFront -- which Access will continue to sell as its main product, plus PalmOS applications/sdk, which will be kept around as a lip service, all running on a Linux kernel, mostly developed by Nanjing.

Why bother to do it any other way? It's cheap to keep a PalmOS layer around. That layer doesn't interfer with the NetFront layer along side of it and is good PR with the Palm economy folk. There's no advantage to rewriting aps to the new model -- after all, all the aps they'd rewrite already have NetFront equivalents. Why support two versions?

Marty Fouts

I survived PalmSource '05

None of those things are from GPE.

OK Marty, I'll give you ONE example, just to make this REALLY simple for you:

Maemo's window manager, Matchbox, is developed by Matthew Allum.
A quick look at the GPE team members page shows one of the GPE team members is... Matthew Allum!

Keep up with the "Skippy" nonsense, Marty. It really reinforces your arguments here. The only "childish" one here is Beers who seems to be living in La-La-Land (if one makes the BIG assumption that he's not acting stupid on purpose in an effort to prop up the imploding "Palm eCONomy").

Give it a rest. Beers isn't BSing, he's saying what he believes. You disagree with his interpretation, but having a different opinion doesn't make the guy a liar, at most it makes him wrong - something you are, frequently, even if you never admit it.

I initially thought Beersy was just a naïve, overly-enthusiastic developer that took the failures of PalmOS personally. I now wonder if he has a much sleazier hidden agenda. I'll leave it at that. I'm rarely wrong and my posts are all here in black and white for anyone to rebut if they choose. Whether you care to admit it or not, almost everything I've said here at Palminfocenter has been on the money.

It's ironic that you accuse me of deception and then turn around and agree with most of what I've said, going so far as to expanding on comments I've made.

As you know all too well, the most effective deception involves mixing in some truth so that the lies will seem even more plausible. On the fate of PalmSource/PalmOS, we do in fact agree on many points, Marty. The difference is your posts seem to imply that you feel Access is a LOT more naïive than they are.

I am *not* being deceptive. There's stuff I can't say because of an NDA, but I'm being as up front as I can.

Bull. And I see the NDA hasn't stopped you from backstabbing your former employer. Is revenge sweet, Marty? Does PalmSource booting your a$$ out really warrant you making a mockery of the platform? It's one thing for anonymous individuals making posts here to point out the failures of PalmSource and that the OS might have no future. For YOU - someone intimately involved with the development of PalmOS - to do that here is unfair to your former company and undermines the entire platform. Shame on you. PalmSource's money put food on your table for a year. To turn around and stab them in the back (even though they had just fcuked you in the a$$) is crass.

It is not, as far as I know, Access' plan to do anything other than what they've already said: Add NetFront to PalmOS on Linux in the same way they are adding it to a bunch of other OSes.

The only difference in what I'm saying is the degree of integration. As I posted at the time of the Access deal being announced, NetFront as UI:

http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=8060#111823

"So NetFrontLinux (NFL) will become a new cellphone platform competing with Symbian, Windows Mobile, etc... Wow. That's bold. Nokia should have bought PalmSource just to put them out of business! Mircosoft obviously passed on PalmSource because of its fear of getting sodomized again by the DoJ for "anticompetitive" practices. But Palm on the other hand has no excuse for letting PalmOS slip from their grasp. If Palm seriously feels they have a chance to make it long term as just a handset supplier with no control over PalmOS, they're in for a rude awakening.

OK, so Access purchases PalmSource to get PalmLinux code as a foundation for a NetFront browser UI-based cellphone OS. But if that's the case, then Access may feel there's no urgency in delivering PalmLinux for PDAs and smartphones any time soon. Access is probably more interested in locking up a chunk of the "feature phone" (i.e. "regular" cellphone) market than they are in becoming a supplier of OSes to Treo 600-style high end smartphones or traditional PDAs. The REAL profits will come from being a player in the low end, so PalmSource's current licensees may end up getting fcuked now that Access is calling the shots with PalmOS development. Palm's failure to purchase PalmSource may have just sealed the platform's fate. PalmOS as a PDA + smartphone OS in 2007 may no longer exist. I seriously wonder whether Access will be willing to support development of both PalmLinux and NetFrontLinux for long... PalmLinux either will get canned or else NetFront will take over from Rome as the new PalmLinux UI.

This is NOT good. TVoR is NOT a happy camper right now..."

I do think Access is going to stay with that plan.

Riddle me this, Marty: Did "that plan" work for PalmSource? Why would Access want to continue to fund a business model that (BY DESIGN) was doomed to fail? Palm knew PalmSource would never be viable as an independent company when they orchestrated the bogus "split", but that was actually an (almost) brilliant, ballsy gamble by Palm's management. Do you REALLY think Access spent over $300 million to become the proud owners of cash-hemorrhaging business model? Get serious.

http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864

I think the more experience they have with PalmSource, the less they are going to find of value in PalmOS.

Way to backstab, Marty.

In the end, I think they're going to find nothing of value in Sunnyvale, move the Linux work entirely to Nanjing, and use Sunnyvale only to do maintainence on PalmOS compatibility and older versions of PalmOS.

Jesus. Get a grip, Marty. Here we have someone who was intimately involved in PalmSource's PalmLinux efforts saying he thinks the company is worthless? Wow. Wait until Access' lawyers get a hold of you, Marty. Not even Mike Cane's proctologist will be able to put you back together again. [By the way, your statement is probably entirely correct.]

But even then, I don't think they'll completely delete PalmOS from "NetFronLinux", and I don't think they'll waste the time, money, or effort to rewrite the PalmOS aps to use the NetFront sdk.

PACE or a PACE-equivalent is the only thing of value in PalmSource. Yet StyleTap managed to do something similar with relatively little difficulty. What I fail to understand is why Access would spend over $300 million to acquire a company who's assets consist of a dead end, obsolete OS (PalmOS 3, 4 and 5) a dead OS (Cobalt), a questionable OS that's two years away from being ready for Prime Time (PalmLinux) a rather weak troop of codemonkeys in SillyCON Valley (Legacy Palm employees + Holy Be Engineers), a ragtag group in Montpellier and (probably the most useful) a horde of Cheap Chinese Codemonkeys (derived from the China MobileSoft deal). Unless Access was clueless and got suckered into thinking PalmLinux was a LOT closer to going gold than it is, why pay that much money? As we both know, the PalmOS library of legacy apps and the developer community are both ridiculously exaggerated and of relatively little importance in the real world. Why didn't Access just graft their own 68K emulator onto their own NetFrontLinux if they felt the ability to run PalmOS apps was so important? I'm sure that for a fraction of the price they paid for PalmSource, Access could have gone to people like StyleTap, MarksSpace, Pimlico, Picard (TCPMP), Gavin Maxwell, David Kendall, etc. and put together a simple NetFront UI-based 68K-compatible smartphone OS that has MUCH better core apps than what comes with PalmOS. Imagine a smartphone OS that ships with the equivalent of 20 of the best PalmOS apps already integrated into the OS and yet retaining some compatibility with legacy PalmOS apps. As long as it came out before other OSes became entrenched, such an OS would be a guaranteed success. Palm/PalmSource made three tragic errors with PalmOS: first they were lazy/greedy and failed to evolve the OS, instead using the "Zen of Palm" and not wanting to compete with developers B.S. as excuses for shipping a decrepit OS year after year; then they stuck with that slow, buggy mess a.k.a. Cobalt long after it was obvious they needed to cut their losses and start from scratch; then they tried to salvage bits and pieces of code from Cobalt while maintaining compatibility with legacy apps, resulting in the FrankenPalmOS a.k.a. PalmLinux. Had Palm simply bitten the bullet in 2001 and created a CleanPageOS™ with a Linux kernel they would OWN both the PDA and smartphone markets. And this isn't a case of 20/20 hindsight either. There were many people within Palm that advocated for that very OS, but the dumba$$ execs ignored us and instead went down the pathway to doom.

Here's what common sense actually dicates:

Access gets no value out of buying PalmSource and then throwing PalmOS away. So they'll keep it somehow.

Of course they'll keep PalmOS. Who said otherwise?

PalmSource has contracts with existing Access customers to support PalmOS. So Access will keep PalmSource/Sunnyvale around to do that support.

Besides Palm, the revenue from licensees amounts to a pittance, Marty. It would be easy to justify shelving decent support of licensees it Access could find a different market for a PalmOS-derived product (like NetFrontLinux).

There's no real value in the PalmOS developer's community, but it's cheaper to just give them an emulator than write them off, and it's better PR. So Access will keep PalmOS, especially the 68k ap emulator, in NetFrontLinux.

Ouch! Vicious, but true. No doubt PalmSource will appreciate you saying this publicly... I hope for your sake that you're posting from Mexico, Marty. Since a PACE-equivalent is easy to include, there's essentially no downside to maintaining compatibility with legacy apps. As processor speeds increase, it will be easier to brute force some performance issues related to not hooking into the ARM processor directly. And lazy developers can keep using CodeWarrior (or my personal favorite: PDAToolbox ;-O) until the end of time.

But there's no real value in rewriting all those aps. So they won't. So, the plan will remain: "NetFrontLinux" will consist of NetFront -- which Access will continue to sell as its main product, plus PalmOS applications/sdk, which will be kept around as a lip service, all running on a Linux kernel, mostly developed by Nanjing.

I see things as Access being a bit more ambitious, Marty. Otherwise, why bother buying PalmSource at all? NetFront needs to become more integrated into PalmOS (even more than Internet Explorer is with Windows) for this to make sense. Again, refer back to the NetFront-as-OS Manifesto that Surur was clever enough to unearth. Having NetFront as UI should not require apps to be rewritten as long as a PACE-equivalent is included. Of course, new apps would be needed if developers were to write directly for ARM and whatever environment is sittin on top of the Linux kernel. Your services were no longer needed at Access/PalmSource because the Cheap Chinese Codemonkeys have now become the only ones that matter. PalmSource USA is now redundant - how hard do you think it will be to support PalmOS 4 and 5 for the few remaining licensees? Palm has already enacted its contingency plan in anticipation of this change in focus of PalmOS. PACE-equivalents may maintain limited app compatibility in the near future, but Palm can no longer influence which path PalmOS development takes. PalmOS as we know it is DEAD.

Why bother to do it any other way? It's cheap to keep a PalmOS layer around. That layer doesn't interfer with the NetFront layer along side of it and is good PR with the Palm economy folk. There's no advantage to rewriting aps to the new model -- after all, all the aps they'd rewrite already have NetFront equivalents. Why support two versions?

PACE obviates the need to rewrite many apps, but even PACE is a dead end. NetFont willneed to be integrated (as UI) with whatever is sitting on top of the Linux kernel (whether that's PalmLinux or a brand spanking new OS). Palm's problem is that compatibility with their needs is now an afterthought. Yeah, splitting Palm into two companies was a REAL smart move...

TVoR

------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

The Palm eCONomy = Communism™

The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038

NetFrontLinux - the next major cellphone OS?: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=8060#111823

> Maemo's window manager, Matchbox, is developed by Matthew
> Allum.

> A quick look at the GPE team members page shows one of the
> GPE team members is... Matthew Allum!

By that logic, since Pavuk is developed by Marty Fouts and one of the contributes to ARM Linux is Marty Fouts, so, therefore, ARM Linux is part of Pavuk!

Matchbox isn't part of GPE, Sam, It's a window manager that GPE happens to use.

You're making a domain of discourse error. You're confusing _social_ relationships with _technical_ relationships. Maemo doesn't use ANY part of GPE. Maemo and GPE use some of the same underlying components that aren't part of either. Matthew Allum happened to work on one of those underlying components (so there's a social relationship) but that doesn't mean there's a technical one.

Marty Fouts

I survived PalmSource '05

Get real guys! The best posts here are those that present interesting ideas, evidence WITHOUT demanding allegiance!

Access have room to surprise all of us yet and all I see is the vast potential for interesting new opportunities developing on the horizon. I for one wont even look at a WinMob device until Access's efforts are out in the open where I can check them out for myself. In the mean time, many of us have every reason to be optimistic about the Penguin-Powered future, especially since Access seem to be spending valuable R&D time and money on doing something useful with the platform - rather than just looking for a quick return on their acquisition.

Surur / Gekko / TVoR / etc - you remind me of Harry Potter in the first two books/movies... you might have been given fancy wands and are able to talk a good game, but when it comes down to it... you sure don't seem to be packing much magic!

;)

KultiVator