ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Alan Pope <alan.pope@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Oliver,

Thanks for the observations.

On Wed, Jul 16, 2014 at 6:45 PM, Oliver Propst <oliver.propst@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> As of now the the newest device that is officially supported is still
> the soon two years old Nexus 4, is not about time to consider support a
> newer device?
>

We are already working on new devices, those that will ship from BQ
and Meizu later in the year. It makes little sense for us to divert
attention to do the hardware bring-up of another 3rd party device
(with little or no help from the manufacturer / SoC vendor) when we
have these two devices being worked on, closely with the
manufacturers.

They will be available for people to buy soon, no doubt.

> I find the wiki [1] very scare of details on how to get involved, it
> seems not to be any real effort from Canonical to create a community
> around Ubuntu Phone in the same way with the Ubuntu operating system or
> maybe more relevant for Ubuntu touch, FirefoxOS.
>

I find this feedback very interesting. Building a community is
something we're constantly working on, if we're missing something, I'm
keen to hear about it.

We have frequent hack days, conduct our discussions in open irc
channels and mailing lists such as this one, and the code is all
available on launchpad. I spend personally spend a significant portion
of my day working with community people on Ubuntu, and I know many
others do too.

> Mozilla for example have a program where community members and
> developers can get testing devices[2] [3], is there any plans for for
> similar initiative around Ubuntu Phones?

We have already shipped a bunch of Nexus 4's running Ubuntu to various
developers all around the world who we selected and are hacking on the
platform and apps. We also have a community fund where people who are
keen on helping, but have no device can apply for funding for one, and
we've sent devices to some people who have applied.

>  When Mozilla launch FirefoxOS
> in new markets they tend to work very closely with the local community
> [4], I don’t get the impression that Canonical are doing any real
> efforts in area, (not yet at least).
>

Well, there's a significant difference here. We haven't shipped any
retail devices yet and the platform isn't finished. You're talking
about Mozilla with a finished device from a manufacturer, setting
aside budget to buy some of those and send them to people. We can't do
that yet.

While *we* are all developing on Nexus devices (which incidentally you
can't buy in retail anymore) the devices we'd expect developers and
users to actually use are those that will ship from BQ and Meizu later
this year, and devices from other manufacturers next year and beyond.

We're immensely proud that some early pioneering developers have
actually gone out of their way to flash the daily images on devices,
or port to new devices, but that doesn't work for everyone.  Most
developers want a reliable inexpensive device they can buy with the
software pre-installed, ready to hack on. We're not there yet, but
will be _very_ soon.

> I really hope Canonical and the phone team learn can some lesson from
> Mozilla and improve (this also includes communication which I think have
> been lacking), it would only increase Ubuntu Phone chances of success.
>

We're obviously keeping an eye on what all of the other mobile phone
platform vendors are doing, but right now we're 100% focussed on
getting our platform finished ready to get devices shipping this year.

Cheers,
-- 
Alan Pope
Technical Project Manager

Canonical - Product Strategy
+44 (0) 7973 620 164
alan.pope@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://ubuntu.com/