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Donnerstag, 20. Januar 2011

Interview with the german Guys of the CM Team!

Hey people,

für die Deutsch:
http://philippnoack.blogspot.com/2011/01/interview-mit-dem-deutschen-samsung.html

today i present the Interview with coolya and codeworkx, the german guys of the CM Team.

Here is the Interview, Have fun!
(In translated it from German to English on my own. I hope you can understand it!)

<Jim_Panse> Hello coolya and codeworkx. J
<codeworkx> Hi Jimmy
<coolya> Hi Jim
<Jim_Panse> Nice to Have you here, guys!
<Jim_Panse> Let's start with your Vita! How old are you, what do you do besides Android?
<coolya> I am 25 years old and I work as a software architect and development in a medium-sized enterprises
<
codeworkx> I am almost 27 years old and work full time. hmm .. in a large German electronics company.
<Jim_Panse> When did you have contact to Android the first time in your life?
<coolya> The real reason why I have contact with Android is a little unusual, my N900 was stolen and I needed a new phone because no Meego phone with the latest hardware was available. So I choosed an Android Phone. That was in August last year.
<codeworkx> At the CEBit I had a G1 in my Hand. Now everything was clear to me. "I'll take it." It didn’t take long until the original ROM was replaced by CyanogenMod. At that time I was only a "user" and I'm not gone deeper into the action. Since the purchase of the Samsung Galaxy S and the fact that there still was no CM Rom for it, I decided to have a closer look into development!
<Jim_Panse> Coolya, the Samsung Galaxy S was your first Android phone?
<coolya> Yes, not my first Linux phone but my first Android device.
<Jim_Panse>  So you both are really “new” to Android. Where did you start with Android Development?
<codeworkx> The Galaxy S made me feel again like a "newcomer". You had to get used again to a completely new environment. Odin was a foreign word, as well as RFS. By reading and trying I started to get a look behind and also started to give support on the XDA Forums.
<coolya> Android newcomer certainly, Linux on the hand rather not, I have previously bolted to the N900 and before other OpenEZX Platform. Certainly, in both projects is not as deep as now entered into the Androidworld.
<Jim_Panse> Very interesting. So you are not involved in Android for many years, like most people probably think? What tips can you give beginners who also want to get deeper into Android and already know what RFS is and how to use ODIN?
<coolya> First you should learn the Basics of Linux. How it works, what a kernel is and how it works together with the Userland. Then it is also depends on what you want to do, "modding" only existing things or really port. If you want to port, you really need “deep” knowledge. For example, how is the Bootloader working etc? In general you need the WILL to try something new!
<codeworkx> I think coolya explained it very well! Personal tip: First Read, then Try & Error! It is the easiest way to get started with Android Development!
<Jim_Panse> How did you both meet finally? And how did you get in touch with the CM Team?
 <codeworkx>The fact that there was no AOSP or CM Rom for the SGS was very annoying to me, because I enjoyed CM on my G1 since the first day! Therefore I decided to start making a CM Port on my own and started a little Thread on XDA. A short time later, I got a PM from coolya who liked the idea of the port. We are got really often into trouble but never stopped the work. At some point, the first successes have set. Now, Contacts on IRC where created and finally the contact to Temdouche and Cyanogen and his followers!
<Jim_Panse> In what way did the contact to the CM Team helped you?
<coolya> On the one hand you can benefit from the experience and from every now and then getting the info not everyone gets. And you get to know what is planned for the future with CM.
<coolya> And simple the probability is higher that the changes you make are actually used in the Mainline. So you don’t have to do a job twice. And how the changes can be used on other devices, for example the Recovery.
<Jim_Panse> You started to make fast progress with the port. I used the betas of CM7 and was really surprised how good they work. Was it an easy way or full of stumbling blocks?
<codeworkx> We were very inexperienced, we had to spend much time Googling, reading and with Try & Error. In some cases we thought, this is the end. However, we never gave up and always found a way. Stumbling blocks is probably an understatement. I am thinking about Obelix and standing stones. :-)
<coolya> Many problems have also been hard to find because the Source that Samsung published was not used in many cases. So it has a part of Open Source but in reality something else is doing the job.
<Jim_Panse> Did you met other people on your way who helped you or did you all the work alone?
<codeworkx> There are certain contacts with other Kernel Devs. For example, regarding the "Lagfix, we had contact with RyanZa, Sztupy and Supercurio. And with the CM Devs for the Vibrant, Fascinate, Epic and Captivate. And of course our secret collaborator "GuiPer" who helped a lot and contributed some things to CM.
<Jim_Panse> Why did you changed from CM6 to CM7? And was the work for CM6 worthless at this point?
<coolya> The change was really obvious for us. We slowed down the development of CM6 in the first weeks of December, cause Gingerbread was around the corner and we knew that there will be the Nexus S which is very similar to the Samsung Galaxy S.
<coolya> So we waited some time and started again with full power as Google published the sources of Gingerbread! We only could use our experience for CM7. Sources of CM6 where useless.
<coolya> The Samsung Galaxy S should be nearly the same in Open Source terms than the Nexus S, maybe even more open source. But that’s not clear right now!
<Jim_Panse> What's the point of the Nightly Builds?
<codeworkx> We have always collected several "fixes" before we have released a new beta build. For interested users was the possibility to flash Nightlys which has smaller fixes included. And we gut use the feedback for our work!
<Jim_Panse> What is the status of CM7? There seems to be only a few bugs already around?!
<coolya> Not a easy question… But yes, we made some progress and temporary very fast. But its hard to make a forecast. We have some problems which are not easy to fix and will still cost time and nerves.
<coolya> We put a lot of experimental things on the phone, for Example: MTD and YAFFS2 for the flash memory, with which we have no long-term experience. It may therefore be that we still encounter problems that we do not know now.
<coolya> Therefore you can’t say that with this Number of Bugs it takes this time. We know that many people are waiting but from the first day we said: “It’s done when it’s done!”
<Jim_Panse> Is there anything that you want to tell your fans out there?
<codeworkx> Have patience, it’s worth to wait!
 <Jim_Panse> This is a good final word! Thanks codeworkx and coolya. I hope we meet again soon and you keep me updated!
<codeworkx> bye :-)
<coolya> bye :-)

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Soon interview with Supercurio. :)

Philipp/Jim_Panse

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