Future of ARM and Open Source

Some notes from the Ubuntu Developer Summit:

http://www.riscos.info/index.php?title=Special:AWCforum&action=st/id214/Future_of_Open_Source_and_ARM

http://www.riscos.info/index.php?title=Special:AWCforum&action=st/id214/Future_of_Open_Source_and_ARM to save copy/pasting.

Thanks for the update :-)

Hopefully if/when you get your Genesi Smartbook, you may be able to find a little time to contribute to threads like ARM powered notebooks?

Trevor, to be honest, and with respect to your many contributions, I do find the many “chatty” comments you make a bit of a distraction. I’m extremely short of time for anything RISC OS right now, and I’d rather focus on relevant issues.

The bottom line is that ARM Linux is now making very rapid progress – perhaps more in the next year than it has in the last 5-10. I don’t pretend that this is all relevant to RISC OS, and also the list I made certainly doesn’t name everything that is, but the remaining few developers I think would do well to at least be superficially aware of what’s going on, since some of the implications are important.

Hardly a new message from me, but RO would do well to leverage as much as possible from this world. The BeagleBoard is already old news, in the mainstream, I’m afraid. No, there’s probably no good solution for this for RO, there’s just way way too fews developers for that, but let’s not stick our heads in the sand once more.

I think if we want to attract new developers, or intice old developers back, or indeed just keep the developers we have, a friendly, “chatty” environment is exactly what we need. Personally, I like Trevor’s contributions to these forums and find his posts informative and straightforward. Just because you’re working on a higher level than most, I would think twice before discouraging a “chatty” approach in the forums, Peter. There’s nothing worse than feeling like you can’t post a “silly” question because the general tone of a forum is too formal.

...”chatty”... distraction…

Life’s full of distractions. Apologies for any trouble caused.

If you can bear to wade through the many distractions and stumble upon the relevant points where your knowledge and advice would be helpful, I’m sure any input you can afford would be greatly appreciated by all. Sorry but it’ll be a fair few years before I’m able to communicate in even rudimentary developer-ese. “I’ll get me coat.”

I think if we want to attract new developers, or intice old developers back, or indeed just keep the developers we have, a friendly, “chatty” environment is exactly what we need

No, there’s always been too much of this noise. Friendly is an entirely orthogonal matter, and there have in fact been several discussions about friendliness in the Ubuntu world and its forums at this conference and what is and isn’t effective. There are huge differences there compared to RO. The bottom line is that I can’t participate in a community where everyone is constantly on about their life stories. There are many good ways to thank people, but endless posts is, again a distraction.

rudimentary developer-ese

I never mentioned anything of the sort. I’m just asking to keep to salient points.

Let’s not descend into yet another pointless discussion. The original points I’ve made are pretty damn important if we care about RISC OS. Focus on those instead of endless introspection.

...ARM Linux is now making very rapid progress…

"[Linaro’s] work is currently focused on Cortex A8 and multicore A9 products. It will address software for A15 products in the future."

The link in this Twitter post by AI may be interest to some of you.

Beagleboard Super-Jumbo

ELC talk slides here.

Peter, are you around? What do you make of this claim that "ARM support is a mess in Linux land"? Thanks.

mobile09, are you around? Do you still think that "diversity in Linux seems to slow down developement"? I was wondering if you had any good suggestions on pitching RO to Linux developers.