[Opl-dev-development] ER5 source

[<ktk...@hi...>]

Hello all,

sorry for keeping quiet for a while, I'm in a process of 
changing job and cannot spare much time for OPL development.

It seems that, so far, not too many people are reviewing
OPL codebase (OK they might be quietly reviewing it), and
my question is relevant to this point.

Do you remember (especially David?) that I asked about
opening the codebase for ER5 OPL? At that time it was
mere an wishful thinking of me, but this time I'd like
to seriously ask you the possibility of that.

The following is just to give you my view on this topic:

Probably some of the inside people in Psion and/or
Symbian would augue that there's absolutely no point
in doing anything on ER5, but if that's the case they're
very much mislead, probably because they don't know how 
opensource works.
Actually the point in opening the ER5 OPL is to boost
the number of people who look at the common OPL codebase.
As a large part of the ER5 OPL code should be identical to
that of newer Symbian opensource code (i.e. 92XX and Series60),
it is very likely that Symbian OPL would be benefitted
whenever ANY improvement is added to ER5 OPL.

If you're developing a cross-platform product like OPL,
you can attract more developers if you open the code for
more platforms, and one contribution from a developer who
is only interested in one platform would benefit the whole 
range of products.

Just to give you some example, I made the following questionair
in Psion-ML-J, the largest Psion-related mailing list in
Japan with 831 subscribers:
Are you going to review the OPL code when ER5 OPL is ever going
to be opensourced?

And I've got a positive response from 7 people (not including
me myself). They all said that they have never looked into
Symbian OPL code, but if ER5 OPL is opened they're quite sure
they'll look into that. Adding me, it's almost 1% of the user
base, which is actually a large number.

Please think of this. They might not be that interested in
improving Symbian OPL, but they're willing to help to improve
ER5 OPL, which will immediately turn into the improvement in 
Symbian code. Now we have only one Japanese contributor (me),
but we're going to have 7 more.
There're many skilled C++/OPL developers for ER5 who could
potentially help this project. 
And it is much more so in Europe than in Japan where Psion
products have always been minority. 
Are there any good reason to decide against using this huge
human resources?

OK, enough of my personal opinion at the moment.
Best regards,
Keita