Qt on S60 Open Source Project - Bluemapia

Sorcery-ltd — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 19:59:14 +0200

Do you like to work on the cutting edge of mobile technology? Are you interested in social networks or location based services using free maps? Want to get involved in an open source project on mobile phones?

If the answer to any of those questions is "yes" then maybe this post is for you.

Learn about Qt on S60, porting to Symbian OS and open source mapping solutions. Get hands-on experience with the latest Qt on S60 technology preview and help port a social mapping application while you're learning (I find you always learn more and faster when you have a real project rather than just playing with examples).

Qt on S60 is fantastic news for S60 developers, even more so since the revelation in the webinar (hopefully it'll be at that link soon anyway) today that Nokia intend to make Qt free for commercial S60 development. However, we're going to need some good examples of Qt on S60 projects on a variety of scales. I'm starting work on one of those now, incorporating the other cutting edge trend for mobile social location (N97 anyone?). Which will mean we also have an example of extending Qt with camera and GPS functionality.

Bluemapia is a location based social network for boaters. There is an existing open source client for Windows Mobile, that uses various free maps and other popular open source libraries. We're planning to port the application (and libraries) to Symbian OS/S60 and re-write the user interface using Qt. I say "we" because some engineers from Symbian (including Symbian Ambassador Lucian Piros, who you may know from the SDN discussion boards or NewLC), an experienced open source GIS developer, an experienced Qt developer and more, will be contributing to the project. If you want to learn from some experts then volunteer too and get involved!

The idea is that we combine with existing open source mobile efforts in this area and create some components that people can use to build their own (open source) location based apps that use free maps (and maybe also not-so-free maps if/when we've got some appropriate APIs and license terms).

The project will be hosted in Launchpad and to get things going quickly I'm planning a "code camp" for some of the developers in London on 17th January. If you'd like to come along to that and get involved, or can't come but would like to get involved, or just want to know more then please get in touch - either reply to this post (with a way of contacting you) or email me via the discussion boards (user name Sorcery-ltd), or just go to the code camp event site and register (if you don't have a Bantora account yet you'll have to email me first to get an invite) - places are limited, first come, first served - final numbers must be confirmed by 6th January.

Looking forward to hearing from you and working together!

Mark

P.S. Once we're done porting to S60, hopefully we can also port to maemo and other Qt supported platforms too.

Application Quality & Numpty Physics

Sorcery-ltd — Sat, 24 May 2008 16:28:42 +0300

In my last post I talked about a smart new S60 application and its implications for Symbian Signing and platform security. I said I'd talk about the other part of Symbian Signing, application quality, in my next post... so here it is already.

My personal opinion is that what is currently Symbian Signed should have absolutely NOTHING to do with application quality. It should be entirely about identity and trust. In addition to this I do believe there should be a signing program that is ALL about application quality. Here's why, the current system basically assumes that there are developers and there are dumb users and nothing in between. There is a quality gate that can actually prevent you from properly distributing many types of application. In the real world there is a sliding scale of user knowledge from the very advanced power-user to those who've never used a computer or smartphone beforeand have no idea what software really is or what it can do. Where those different groups of users discover content is likely to be very different. Software published in some places is unlikely to be found by anyone but the enthusiast - in this way the audience is somewhat self-selecting. On the other hand, the Download client built into Nokia devices and operator portals should only carry content of an appropriate quality - otherwise there are likely to be serious customer service issues.

For open source and freeware developers, very often it is the advanced users that are in fact the alpha and beta testers. You can't really rely on finding them all before you start testing - you just publish your first vaguely usable version and see who wants to play with it and what feedback they give. That's one of the wonders of the internet - it seems there's almost always someone out there who's interested. Release early and often is one of the major practices in the open source world. The current Symbian Signed program and criteria are incompatible with this practice.

Now, to illustrate my point I want to use the example of my new favourite application on the N800 Internet tablet - Numpty Physics. It's based on the concept for the amazing Crayon Physics, here's a video showing the gameplay for the upcoming commercial version of that, Crayon Physics Deluxe:

Numpty Physics is listed as "The pearl" on Maemo.org as I write this (which basically means it's a lot of other people's favourite too) and it's publicly stated that it's only beta quality. In fact I've had it crash so badly I had to take the battery off and also the only way to quit is via the 'q' key which is only available on an N810 - oops. Do I care about these issues - no. I love that I can play it now - I'll like it even more when it's finished. If I had the time and inclination I could get involved and help improve it. If I had to download an unsigned package and submit it to a signing portal would I have installed it and then got excited enough to think about getting involved in the project? Almost certainly not.

And that is really my point. What open source and free software projects need are motivated users and developers to easily access them and give them a quick try.

Signing an application just to enable it to be installed on any device should be both free and without restriction (except some kind of identity/trust chain). I'd be happy to sign other people's open source projects after fairly limited contact with them (because I can see the code after all - I'm not at all so sure about closed source freeware, I'd want to get to know the developer quite well first) if I didn't then have a legal responsibility for any harm they might do. That responsibility has to rest with the end users that choose to install them.

Application quality should be policed at the point of distribution. That can certainly be via a central signing program, it just shouldn't be the same signing program that gates whether on not an application can be installed on a device at all.

What about security for the end users? Well, I think my last post showed that Symbian Signed doesn't really do much about that anyway.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Mark

Mark Wilcox's Forum Nokia Blog

Qt on S60 Open Source Project - Bluemapia

Application Quality & Numpty Physics