Guest somebody9 Posted January 18, 2011 Report Posted January 18, 2011 An Open Letter To Dell ( from the active Open Source Community for Android/Dell Streak ) Hello Dell, Let me start this letter by making it clear that we are not here to complain about your products or your services. In fact, if we didn't like your product – the community wouldn't have bothered to send this letter to you guys ( you can find most of us littered across freenode on IRC and on XDA, MoDaCo, Pocketables and CyanogenMod to name a few ). Secondly, let me state that I am not a developer. I am just a basic user. That's right. This is not a letter from some guy who stays up late for the joy of hacking your devices. I haven't coded anything in years, and I don't think I could make a Hello World program in Java if my life depended on it. Why am I telling you this? Because I want you to know that this is a plea coming to you from an ordinary customer who spent around $600 on your device. There's a lot more ordinary customers and potential customers out there like me who you can win over or possibly convince towards their next purchase if you start doing the right thing. This isn't a letter from just those pesky developers on those nosy websites. We love your products. In particular, we love the Dell Streak. At least the hardware component of it. The Streak is perfectly positioned between tablet and phone. The amount of success you've had in convincing consumers that this is so is debatable, but all of us definitely love the form factor and the hardware that you've blessed this device with. The SnapDragon 8250, the 5” screen and the rear speaker are all brilliant. Unfortunately, the software that comes with the Streak doesn't do it justice. Just today Stephen Hyde brought this device to register around 2300 ( nice and stable ) on Quadrant Advanced when it's not even overclocked ( 3300 when it is ). But we're not trying to show you how to do things. We're not trying to steal your developers' jobs and we're not trying to steal your work. We're asking you to let us help you, that's all; when you released the Dell Streak, it was running what appeared to be an arcane love-child between Android 1.6 and Windows 95. It was slow and behind other machines of it's time. The sad part was that the Streak's hardware was and is a beast capable of so much more. A lot of you at Dell whom we've had contact with will admit that our ROMs for the Streak are infinitely faster and better. Are we asking to be given jobs and a pay cheque? No. In fact, we are asking you to take our code and use it to make your code better. Go ahead, take it. What do we want in return? Nothing. It would be nice however, if you gave us some of the code to look at. We're not quite sure whether this code is GPL, Apache or whatever. We're the people who help your customers not just troubleshoot their devices but also upgrade them to cutting edge Android releases. All we're asking is for you to release the code in the spirit of Open Source cooperation. The point being, we're asking for your code to make your devices better. Isn't that a win-win situation? We do the work to improve your code to make your product better ! In return we get a brilliant device that works to it's full potential. What we want is libaudio, libmedia, libsurfaceflinger and libaudioflinger. These are all pretty simple things. It's not like we're asking you to divulge the formula for Coca-Cola ( kind of stupid since you're definitely not Coca-Cola ) nor are we asking for something dangerous. We just want to improve our audio and our input. What's the worst that could happen? So here it is. If you're a developer at Dell, do the right thing. If you're middle-management at Dell then remember, HTC and Motorola both have a developer community that's a hundred, if not a thousand fold larger than yours because you don't embrace us. Have you taken a look at Cyanogenmod's listed of supported devices : half a dozen HTC and another half a dozen Motorola devices. Dell : None. We love your device and we're hoping that Dell will do the right thing. - Manas Shukla ( Somebody9 on XDA/MoDaCo, @dont_panic on Twitter ) on behalf of Stephen Hyde (@DMonsterProd), Ian Fardoe (@fardsmobile) and hundreds of other StreakDroid Users online and in the Android Open Source Community Find our conversation on Twitter with the following hashtags : #streakdroid and #teamstreak ________________________________ If you would like to see continued support by DJ_Steve for future updates of Android, including Gingerbread and Honeycomb, please Tweet the link to this post on Twitter with the hashtags : #dellstreak, #dell and #streakdroid
Guest fards Posted January 18, 2011 Report Posted January 18, 2011 (edited) Maybe worth pointing out that the reason we're struggling with the audio its because of the really neat use of a separate dsp (digital signal processor) in the streak, which neither the aosp or code aroura forum code can deal with. It's using some patches specific to the streak, which means that it's not possible to get a fully working aosp or cyanogen build working without falling back on using existing dell binary files. (so what you may ask, which is fair enough. But with the source we can get the extra additions from cm working, such as the equalizer and can looking at fixing some of the bugs etc etc) dell have met their obligations concerning the gpl on the kernel, which Is fantastic, and a after a couple of bug fixes to their code the kernel builds really well.. we're asking them now to show us some faith and help out with the bits we can't get working, because we can't work out what its happening with that one aspect of the device.. I would be happier if they got involved with aosp development, (as htc and others have) there is obviously a huge amount of talent in the company, their linux pedigree is superb, and the commitment to android is obvious. By submitting their own patches to the google source we could all benefit. Edited January 18, 2011 by fards
Guest Tim6772 Posted January 18, 2011 Report Posted January 18, 2011 Excellent Letter. States facts not fiction. Hopefully someone at Dell will supply the required files to enable our devices to perform at the level we would like. Come-on Dell Guys/Girls, Help out a whole community of Streak users, help in giving us a Device to be even more proud of. RT'd
Guest degriz Posted January 18, 2011 Report Posted January 18, 2011 Any Reddit users here? http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/f...he_active_open/
Guest jeffrey2000 Posted January 18, 2011 Report Posted January 18, 2011 (edited) Saw it @dell uk consumer support page already, great work on the words [+LIKE] ;) Try a post @the dell fb page: http://www.facebook.com/dell so ppl can "like it" and share (@xda/modaco) the link as sort of signature in case u didn't do it already... cmon ppl @dell release the beast :) Probably not from dell itself but worth to spread the word: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dell-Streak/126030240750195 Edited January 18, 2011 by jeffrey2000
Guest Spike8585 Posted January 18, 2011 Report Posted January 18, 2011 +1 Well said. I hope this works.
Guest Dogmann55 Posted January 18, 2011 Report Posted January 18, 2011 Hi all I no am no longer active on Twitter but do have what i hope is a useful suggestion put that letter in an e-mail and send it to [email protected] now i can't guarantee Micheal Dell will actually get to see the e-mail but it does go to his office and possibly stands a better chance of getting a reaction then anything else i can think of. I hope this may be of help. Marc
Guest somebody9 Posted January 18, 2011 Report Posted January 18, 2011 Emailed to [email protected] Maybe he reads it. Maybe he doesn't.
Guest rockymtnbri Posted January 18, 2011 Report Posted January 18, 2011 I've copied the letter and sent it off to some folks I know at Dell.
Guest nickshertzer Posted January 18, 2011 Report Posted January 18, 2011 (edited) In case someone wants to just copy and paste a tweet: @Dell An Open Letter To Dell from the Streak's Open Source Community : http://goo.gl/QLgTd #streakdroid #dellstreak #dell #mystreak Other accounts you may want to mention: @Dell @DellHomeUS @MichaelDell @DellCares @LionelatDell Edited January 18, 2011 by nickshertzer
Guest Spectre51 Posted January 19, 2011 Report Posted January 19, 2011 I posted it at the Dell Facebook page. Great letter. Hopefully someone at Dell will take notice.
Guest alert_bri Posted January 19, 2011 Report Posted January 19, 2011 (edited) Great initiative... I don't use twitter or facebook but I'm sure that Dell will be reading this thread too. I've upgraded from the iphone to the Dell Streak and thanks to the efforts of Stephen and everyone helping him with Dell Streak support have been increasingly happy. The Dell Streak is far and away the best form factor for a professional working away from home... I now have two of them, one as a backup at home since i couldn't bear to be without one for more than a day or two. The Dell Streak had to withstand severe criticism from launch due to poor Android 1.6 loaded. This community should be recognised and supported for not allowing it to fail and building some depth of pride in this unique device. p.s. Dell, please send Dj_Stephen a complimentary Dell Streak II with source support to have it ready for a perfect launch this time! ;) Kind Regards Brian Edited January 19, 2011 by alert_bri
Guest Fone_Fanatic Posted January 19, 2011 Report Posted January 19, 2011 I posted this over at xda and just thought i'd share it here as well for those of you that don't go there. I tweeted a link to the open letter and added michael dell's twitter acount @michaeldell along with @lionelatadell (who has helped me before with an issue with the streak) and @dellcares (which many dell reps have access to and can reply from) and within 5 minutes @lionelatdell replied with the following" @dont_panic Thanks for taking the time to write the open letter. Will share with the #dellstreak team. cc: @Fone_Fanatic @DMonsterProd So he got the msg, he's gonna pass it on, and my wild guess is its up to management whether to follow through with it or not.
Guest wgizmo Posted January 19, 2011 Report Posted January 19, 2011 Well done, where we can fill in our names? hehe ;)
Guest jeffrey2000 Posted January 19, 2011 Report Posted January 19, 2011 After talking to a Dutch Dell support agent (Samir_Hamsi) he advised me to sent this text to "[email protected]" so he would send the letter from his side to their main office and I've sent another mail to the above mail address. So my advise and ur Dutch ;) sent an email to this dept. After some logical "googling" I noticed there's an UK dept with almost the same mail address: [email protected] so ppl can send the info there aswell.
Guest kenjamin Posted February 8, 2011 Report Posted February 8, 2011 Well said, The work of the developer community has brought the software on the dell streak in line with the hardware. Here's hoping Dell will embrace the community and see the streak go from strength to strength. I would have lost interest in my streak months ago if it wasn't for streakdroid. Thanks to everyone who makes it happen
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