Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

As long as the developer promises to report exploits instead of utilize them to further their gains, I'll support them if they come back. There is no excuse for utilizing exploits for self-gain and not being responsible enough to report them. There is also a great need to encourage developers to support Maemo with great applications.

It sounds like the developer learned his/her lesson, and should be given another chance.
If it happens again, ban them.

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

Hi,

User 'sio2interactive' has requested that I remove this thread as he is not going to provide any further updates to the applications. Even though I did receive and have considered his request, I will not remove or lock the thread considering there is an active discussion going on with regards to our application publishing system.

This being said, maybe this discussion would be better off in another thread, in order to respect the OP's wish? Please let me know if you need me to lock the thread or provide redirects.

Thanks,

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

That pisses me off more than his "breaking the rules". I paid for the apps and now, because of the same BS kneejerk reaction that is so common on this forum, I will pay the price of both the cost of the software and discontinued support.

I can't say I blame the guy. But its still shits me.

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

My condolences, dude..

http://begojohnson.files.wordpress.c...paper-over.jpg

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

Its not that bad dude check it out:

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=43202

If the platform gets more mature and customer ready give me a ping ;)

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

Close the thread and figure out how to charge this^ guy for advertising...

All for none and none for all I guess.

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

Only one thing I can tell you for now.
:p

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

A few small reflections from someone with a bit of experience in repentance and forgiveness.

What we have here is a clash of cultures. While most human beings seem to have a general sense of 'right and wrong' the specifics of 'how wrong' something is are highly culture dependent. To give you an example, a small African tribe somewhere was converted to Christianty by visiting missionaries. A few years later, they were found to be still practising their Christian ethic, taking very litle notice at all of sexual promiscuity while executing anyone who expressed any sort of Anger, as that was a deadly sin - which rather set them at odds with the ethic of either catholic or evangelical Christianity.

maemo.org is historically part of the FOSS system, with FOSS ethics. To the people who have invested in that, what SIO2 has done is a huge outrage, undermining the QA process for personal gain. We need to hear that sense of outrage. But we now have a growing number of people drawn from a more capitalist environment for whom exploiting a loophole for personal purposes is a minor peccadillo, unless you're a Brithish MP. What has happened here is a very specific example of that culture clash.

Given that Maemo.org is a FOSS system, SIO2 might be compared to a traveller in a foreign country: well advised to learn the local ethics and abide by them. You don't deal drugs in China if you value your life. You don't steal in Baghdad if you value your hands. You don't have sex on a beach in Dubai if you value... you get the idea.

SIO2 didn't research what was acceptable, and he got caught out. So what do you do then? If you are wise, you throw up your hands and say "I'm sorry - I didn't realise it was such a big deal for you guys. How do I make amends?" If SIO2 had done that, this thread would have withered at about page 3. What you don't do is try to justify yourself by arguing that your ethics is probably better than the local one anyway.

Which brings us to where we are now. Sadly, SIO2 appears to have thrown his toys out and gone off in a huff. That's a shame, as he could have contributed much, if he'd been willing to adapt to the local conditions. He needs to get off his high horse. But so does everyone else. Your ethical values are exactly right... for you. And no-one is suggesting (I hope) that maemo.org loses that FOSS ethos of integrity, honesty and generosity. But there are capitalists out there who feel very differently, and we have to work with them (and possibly more so as we move into MeeGo). And there are more and more of them arriving here having bought devices not because they appreciated the FOSS approach so much as because there are now some damned good devices. The people saying "What he did wasn't so bad" are the very people who want to purchase paid apps (as they can for the very capitalist iphone) in a free market.

The best we can do now is a 'Learning from experience'. This is going to happen again. Maemo is now mainstream, and not everyone involved is going to share the FOSS values. Certainly we can tighten up our QA systems to allow that not everyone will use them with the same approach as the locals. But we might also want to look at our 'discipline' systems. SIO2 certainly needed a dressing down, and a stern injuction that "That ain't how we do things round here". His apps needed to be pulled and made to go through the system properly. But neither of those things needed to be done publically. If we had had a system that said "If you believe an abuse is happening, please report it confidentially to the appropriate people" (in this case the downloads or testing teams) the whole thing could have been managed without the pitchforks. SIO2 might still have decided to leave, but we would have had a lot less drama, and could have felt at the end we'd handled it in a professional manner.

Right now, everyone has lost. Can we learn from it please?

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

I'm not sure that this really is a FOSS vs proprietary culture clash. Does anyone really think a proprietary distribution channel would be OK with a developer cheating their way past a QA system?

Integrity may be a strong value in Free Software culture, but it should be expected of everyone.

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

Personally, I say good riddance. A while back I supported giving the guy a chance, but based on his reaction and continued comments, I find the guy really immature and disrespectful of those customers who bought his games.

Regardless of your moral guidelines, I believe this situation circumvents moral values. This is strictly about having robust, bug free software. He apologized, and that was enough for me. But when someone apologizes they make amends, otherwise you didn't really apologize.

Athough regarding morals... I'm glad I used paypal. Hate to see what he would do if he found a loop hole there.

(I jest, but you get the picture)

2d

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

I didn't say it was right. I said it was much less of a big deal. Just as some people don't regard software/vid/music pioracy a big deal. Or taking paperclips from work.

In the wider culture, the idea that "I didn't break any rules.... I just exploited a loophole" works perfectly well for offshore accounts, tax dodges and MPs expenses. It might not be how we want the world to work (which is why we're here) but other people's values are different.

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

The thing is that in the world of communications, computers and the Internet, exploiting loopholes is a very serious thing. If he had found a way to bypass the proper procedures to force his product into the Ovi store and willfully did it , he would likely be facing legal proceedings right now.

What he did is not acceptable in a commercial/capitalist environment either. The only difference is that different techniques can be utilised.

As a software author expecting people to run his code on their devices, you would hope that he would have a fairly good grasp on what is acceptable, whether explicitly stated or not. I don't think that the Maemo rules say that his code should not secretly send dozens of premium rate SMS messages either (I'm not claiming his code does that - just an example of what is, to me, obviously unacceptable behaviour)

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

I understand what you're saying, and it's clear from this thread alone that not everyone agrees that this was a big deal, but I disagree that that's a FOSS vs proprietary thing.

Take, for example, Apple's iPhone App Store; it's highly proprietary, and famously has an approval/QA process that many developers find inconvenient. If someone found a technical trick that allowed them to get their app into the trusted store interface on end-users' devices without going through the approval process, do we really think that Apple's response would be to accept that as something that happens in a dog-eat-dog capitalist world, or would they condemn it, drop the app and ban the developer?

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

If you wanna continue discussing the Q&A process, feel free to open a new thread. But by all means close this thread as it still is a SIO2-bash-thread. From a more mature point of view I'd even suggest to delete it.

- The files have been removed from the maemo repo - period as it seems.
- SIO2 has been publically tared and feathered for his behaviour.

Isn't that what some of you yearned for in the first coupla postings on this thread? C'mon, what else do you want?

If you'd ask me, the case is now out of maemo.org's bounds. If you no longer host any of SIO2's files leave him the hell alone! And cut disgracing him publically. He DID apologize and even explained the motivation for his behaviour! If some of you won't let that count - hey, make it up with your ownself.

[completely subjective mood mode]
Pardon my French: Congratulations for beating the first real 3rd party game provider out the house with a toilet brush.
[/completely subjective mood mode]

nuff said...

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

Seeing the thread this is going, I'm afraid you're right -- to a point. I'm going to pay close attention to this thread and lock it should people keep bashing SIO2 Interactive (quite a mouthful for a username).

A few things:

- From a moderator perspective, the whole thread will not be deleted, it would not be a mature thing to do. SIO2 has shown an issue with our process, and we need to keep a record of this problem.

- From a community perspective: Looking at how easy it was to do this, I'm surprised it didn't happen earlier. Actually, I think the next problem we'll face is having editors asking for votes in exchange of freebies -- that'll be quite different to handle. I think it's a shame that we couldn't both (SIO2 and the Community) shuffle our feet and apologise for having allowed this to happen -- just look at SIO2's threads to see how happy he's made some people; has all of that gone just because he plugged holes we should never have allowed to exist in the first place? We need to use these opportunities to further ourselves rather than spend so much time bashing a single individual. Over two hundred posts in this thread alone!

So I'll repeat myself, in case I wasn't very clear the first time:

Use this thread to discuss how this issue occurred, how we should handle it in the future (because we will have to go there again), summarise what we can learn from it. Use it for bashing again and it will be locked.

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

I'm STILL astonished about the "we-are-FOSS-and-so-much-better-than-the-rest-of-this-greedy-world" behaviour shown here. This thread reminds me of a communist mob. Stop dreaming and being naive. Very few of the available FOSS software came into existence for "free".

Most of the time, either a corporation (or some poor Venture Capitalist behind it :D) or an academic/research/military institution (with some poor citizens behind) financed the major contributions that really brought a project forward. They paid developers to do that work.

Very few major contributions come from people who work on it in their spare time for real "free" - simply because most people need to buy food and shelter and take care of a family. And as being a developer pays well in the real world, because it is a demanding profession that needs a high level of personal abilities, producing software for free sounds not really attractive :D

Just look at all my widgets and things stuck somewhere in between -devel, -test and the real extras. With comments abused as a forum with no moderation. With no established help/doc system. With Bugtracking abused as personal helpdesk. But I only have an hour or two per day for Maemo. If I have to spend this time battling the FOSS bureaucrats, my motivation quickly goes downhill.

Masses, have mercy upon your developers. For our sake, couldn't we just end this thread with something like "OMG shiz happenz LOL" and move on?

(And yes, recaller will get auto-recording, I have gotten com.nokia.csd.call under control yesterday evening :-)

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

And where is Quim Gil in all this? We might really need a moderating hand from Nokia taking up some responsibility here, too.
- Tame the mob
- Offer us a perspective in the Ovi Store
- Encourage the Maemo.org people to clean up the process
- Help find a productive solution

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

I can't believe this thread is still going!

Everything that has to be said has been said!

Let's agree to disagree and start thinking about something constructive.

I think locking this thread is probably a good idea.

voice of reason

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

I agree that this thread be locked from further irrelevant/unnecessary comments.

I get your point, and yes, dishonest behaviour might have scored some points in ancient Sparta (note: only if you got away with it!) but this case really isn't a culture clash. I'm fairly sure SIO2 would be just as outraged as the rest of us if he had followed the rules and then one of his competitors came along and broke them.

That was borderline fraud (the phrase "obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception" comes to mind), not capitalism. Calling it that is insulting to most well-behaved for-profit companies that wouldn't even consider that kind of tactic.

Sadly, true. I guess we all lost some innocence yesterday :-(

I think there was value in drawing a line very publically in the first case, if only pour encourager les autres.

A lot of people have invested a lot of time and effort to get maemo.org extras where it is now and convince Nokia to include and enable it by default in the application manager. This kind of thing could undermine all that work and the credibility of extras.

I'm very happy this instance was caught and dealt with early (thanks Venomrush, ossipena, X-Fade!), but next time we might get someone, shall we say, more capable in tricking the system so a clear and public demonstration that this will not be tolerated is useful.

No, this is absolutely NOT Nokia's responsibility. Nokia's involvement goes as far as deciding whether extras is good enough to include and enable in the sales package. It's the community's repository and it falls down to us to deal with it.

At the core this is a social problem and trying to solve it with technological means will only results in an arms race. If some holes exist that can be closed without causing problems for legitimate uses by all means let's close them, but they system will always be abuseable.

At the social level the things we can do/improve are:

• Communicate the rules clearly and unambiguously. Even if that means stating the obvious, like "votes from the same person/entity are not allowed".
• Formulate and communicate the consequences of violating the rules.
• Be vigilant and try to detect abuse early (again, kudos to the testing squad for catching this).

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

I have absolutely no idea what you're responding to with this sort of thing. This has never been a free vs paid or Free vs proprietary dispute. This is entirely about there being a process designed to ensure a degree of QA of software released to the public repository, and that process being circumvented.

That's all.

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

vote for thread lock

with new threads to carry on "FOSS vs the world" and QA improvement discussions.

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

Hasn't the mentioned vetting process proven to be flawful to some extent?

By outcome I think there's not much difference in asking 10 random voters to vote for your repo-file (as suggested some 90'ish postings back) or to set-up 10 fake users doing exactly the same. Still, by outcome that'd be.

A hurdle not being a hurdle is, well.. not a hurdle...

As much as I do remember there would still have to be 3 votes from a "testers group" anyway (whatever or whoever that would be) to get the package actually promoted. Still there's not near 70% assurance that the package is really ready for a broadend number of users.

BUT even your (excuse the povocative word) hallowed vetting process can't seriously save our phones from harm. Being a huge supporter of the open-source idea and especially unlimited control over my device, I have to admit that as of now merely everybody could just gain the same powers...

Compared to e.g. the iPhone with its "limited" API access and sort of "containered" app-handling we're surely facing bigger security issues with the N900/maemo. This might be the time to think about a container-like API allowing only "unharmful" operations by future apps. I know this might offend a considerate amount of you out there, but still...

Not only to ease QA processes, by not having to look into every detail, but much more to really assure that apps can't break into your device. Also think in a couple of months time, when maemo, sorry meego, should become a fool-proof end-user OS.

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

It doesn't matter at all if he/she develops games or a word processing application or a browser. It also doesn't matter at all if the application is commercial, non-commercial, free, proprietary, 3rd party, 5th party or no party.

What does matter is it is the first known (!important!) case of a developer not playing by the rules. I wonder how the people feel whose applications decay in -testing because nobody is interested in testing them... And they still wait and hope. And now somebody comes along and skips the whole process. If we don't beat him out the house, others will follow his example... and tomorrow we'll have no Q&A process any more.

The whole thing is healthy because it shows where the limits are. It shows that there are consequences.

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

I don't think there's a flaw in the process. I quite understand that it's easy to be incredulous when faced with the idea that requiring ten votes from random people is any sort of worthwhile quality check, but the simple fact is that it demonstrably works. It's worked for Maemo up until now, successfully filtering a lot of interesting, but distinctly not-ready-for-the-masses software from getting from extras-devel and -testing into extras. Similar processes work for other community maintained software repositories, and there's a lot of them around now.

If you get ten votes from random interested people you do actually have a reasonable assurance that there aren't glaring howlers in the code. The case of getting ten votes from the original author of the software essentially means that no testing has taken place at all, and that's clearly a very different situation.

It is (obviously) possible to deliberately bypass the checks, but I'm not sure there's any way top prevent that a priori without also excluding would-be testers from participating. It is possible to watch for and fix abuses after they've happened, and that's exactly what happened here. I think it is worth having a more formal process for dealing with this situation, and that's part of what we're in the process of discussing.

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

I agree with the reason behind the outrage... but wasn't the cure worse than the disease?

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

I don't think so, no.

Because I don't compare two applications gone to one developer betraying the community and skipping the Q&A process.

I compare two applications gone to all developers betraying the community and skipping the Q&A process int he future.

What reason would you have to wait for people to test and vote for your application if you can do it yourself?

Well, I'm not going to help build any straw men... I just think some of the response has been disproportionate to the offense.

I'd rather first try to correct bad behavior, then burn a repeat offender at the stake.

On a side but related note: I keep seeing the word "open" thrown about here rather carelessly. Open in this regard should certainly not mean "open to abuse". It should mainly mean "open to inspection". A highly-visible process with reasonable safeguards.

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

This is great news, we can toast marshmellows and sing songs round the campfire.

or

Maybe we can build a wickerman instead?
We can then dance like pagans but we need to decide who will play Christopher Lee first.

We can still toast marshmellows.

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

That sounds fair, but there's still a risk of things going this way - if the developer reacts badly to being corrected and goes off in a strop, that's up to them. I'm not sure that there's any procedure that we could have that could keep that from happening.

I completely agree, but any process that's going to be openly visible is going to have the potential for people who are upset expressing their feelings. I think the transparency is more important that avoiding the appearance of unpleasantness in public, but I imagine not everyone will agree with that.

I do think that the substance of the response in this case (i.e. apps dropped, upload privileges revoked, explanation required) is the right response. It should just probably be written down somewhere.

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

The details that X-Fade added (developer stats) goes a long way toward improving visibility. We'll never have a perfectly foolproof app QA "firewall" but in this sort of process identifying people circumventing process and then doing as ewan suggests above is IMO good enough.

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

Please lock this thread. If criticising such slimey behaviour is forbidden, then there is no sense in having this thread at all.

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

criticizing != bashing

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

This.

I absolutely abhor what was done just to get apps into Extras a little faster. That's simply inexcusable.

But here we are.. 24 pages later.. seriously. Everything that's possible to say has been said regarding SIO2 as an individual.

The focus should be moving forward... and probably defining an official document outlying specifically what the "punishment" should be if someone breaks the rules again.

I disagree with you on one thing Tex: The cure was not worse than the disease.

The actual cure was:
1) removal of apps
2) temporary removal of developers upload rights.

This is a perfectly acceptable response to the crime. The whole "public apology" thing was a bit much - and feels more like a measuring of e-peens than punishment - however, a requirement to contact an Extras mod so they could explain to the Dev why their app and privs were Temporarily pulled and a request that they promise not to do again (for first offense), should have really been all that's necessary.

It is disturbing how many people seem to want to overlook that not only did someone "hack" the repo's (technically they exploited a bug, it's a hack.) but that they then said it was our fault they did it - is justifiable (It's your fault I stole your car-radio.. your door was unlocked! :rolleyes:). That does scare me, but again - this horse is so far down it looks like a dead Donkey at this point.

This whole thread was mostly unnecessary... The OP, upon realizing what happened, should have communicated via private channels so that the holes could be plugged. At the most... One of the Extras mods should have made an announcement thread that was immediately locked explaining that SIO2's apps were removed and why.

Nothing good comes from a public stoning. Ever.

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

The whole QA process is a joke as it exists and relys completely on the whim of erratic users who may or may not test your app, it is entirely possible that an app could languish forever in devel through no fault of the app. I write software for a living and in no way does this QA process even remotely resemble even the most basic of those I have encountered

Any process run by the users with no higher court of appeal will always result in good apps being overlooked and apps of a lesser nature moving on purely because they got lucky.

I would also point out that there is absolutely nothing stopping me from getting 10 friends together and having them vote up any app. Where is your QA process there.

The devs mistake was not that he skipped the QA process, if it can even be called that, but that he used email addresses from the same place. If he had used 10 random email addr then all of you holier than thou preachy buggers would be no wiser and be quite happy in your "I am more pure" than you lives.

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

I thought we were going to move past the provocation.

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

Maybe I missed it... but where was your recommendation for improvement?

That's what is needed.

There's a dedicated Testing Squad now whose purpose it is to specifically test apps to make sure that apps aren't forever left in limbo anymore. But, the Testing Squad is structured around the current process: If you believe this to be fundamentally flawed, fine - whats your alternative?

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

Not quite. The "cure" also incorporated the public stoning you decry.

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

I think what I, at least would have wanted to see is not so much a public apology as any kind of punishment, but simply a credible expression that the developer realised that whet they'd done was wrong, and an acceptance that it should not be done again. Without that I'd find it very difficult to trust that they wouldn't do the same, or similar, again were it to appear to be in their interests.

Re: SIO2 Interactive spamming votes to get his/her applications to Extras
 

That's true. And we are in agreement there... that was silly. Private Channels FTW and all that..