On Nov 27, 2009, at 12:03, Stephan Jaensch wrote: > Am 27.11.2009 um 11:15 schrieb Quim Gil: > >> - Do you want non-free apps showing up in >> http://maemo.org/packages/repository/qa/fremantle_extras-testing/ ? >> >> - Do you want non-free apps showing up in >> http://maemo.org/downloads/Maemo5/ ? > > I'm relatively new to the Maemo scene and am currently developing my first > Maemo app using C++ and Qt. I have also played with Python and PyQt which is > quite nice. Just wanted to take this opportunity to say hi to you all and > give you my humble opinion on the matter. :)
Welcome! > First of all, my viewpoint as a user: I want as many apps as possible. There are tens of thousands of debian packages in stable alone. > Choice is always good. I own an iPod Touch, and I can say with confidence > that my criteria for selecting an app is always functionality, quality (hard > to gauge since there is no "try before you buy", so I'm judging by user > ratings for that) and price. As a user, I don't care about source code > availability. One of the main reasons I chose Maemo/N900 instead of e.g. the > Palm Pre is that there are almost no apps available for their WebOS platform > even months after release. One of the reasons for this is surely the fact that they _rejected_ free software apps from their repos. > As a developer, I want users to be able to get the app as easy as possible, > delivering as high a quality as I can. So obviously I would want my app to be > in extras-testing. But if that is not possible / not wanted by the community, > appearing on downloads/Maemo5/ would still be important. > >> Testers with a strong opinion about open source might not be interested >> at all on this, but other users might be indeed interested in becoming >> betatesters of a non-free app in exchange of checking the lastest >> versions some days/weeks before regular users get them in Ovi or elsewhere. > > I agree. I do understand that Maemo has a strong open source (or even free > software) crowd. I am a big fan of open source myself. If people do not want > non-free apps on their device, just don't add non-free to your sources.list. > Problem solved. Same with QA. Nobody is forcing anybody to QA non-free > packages, right? That doesn't mean that people who actually want to do that > QA should be prevented from doing it. It sounds good, but there are some question marks. Firstly, will anyone know that it is free or non-free through the testing interface? But there are other problems too which largely stem from mixing free with non-free applications. Once this happens, it can be confusing to know where the line is - developers start to use proprietary software thinking it is open. In fact recently we have had situations where free software was in non-free and non-free software was in free. So already we are seeing problems with the mixing together. The consequences for Nokia can be non-trivial, it is them that a company like Nintendo will sue, not a random free software developer in University. I see problems with this sort of mixing both practical and philosophical. Jeremiah _______________________________________________ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
