Will so much community involvement stifle official Nokia updates/implimentations?
 

Hey guys, I really don't mean to be a killjoy and such but I have a growing concern relating to hard working developers (such as many here) and Nokia official developers.

For example, take the independent developers who are working on getting MMS working on the N900. We all know it would be great for Nokia to have included it. Heck, I would LOVE to have MMS considering 100% of the people I know use it (while only 20% have e-mail configured on their phones). I digress. Here is my concern: Since some folks are already working on getting MMS working, won't this slow down Nokia's attempt to?

See what I mean? What if MMS gets up and going by someone not affiliated with Nokia, and Nokia discontinues (if they've even started) development on an OFFICIAL and more elegant solution? Why would Nokia bother continuing paying their developers to work on an MMS solution is some independent developer gets it going already? This is what bothers me. No, I don't toss and turn at night thinking about this but wonder if it is actually a possibility.

Anyone with me on this?

Re: Will so much community involvement stifle official Nokia updates/implimentations?
 

I don't see it as a negative.

Anything the community develops is available for Nokia to grab and use if they need it. If the MMS from the community goes live, and Nokia determines it functions exactly like they would need it to.. they would just then add the community one into the next firmware update I would think..

And then I'm glad at that point that they would abandon whatever MMS project they were working .. that way it'll free up those developers to work on something else instead of reinventing what the community already has done.

I think most often it would be the other way around.. Nokia would release a firmware sooner than the community would be able to finish a product as completely as what they have. The community develops for free in their spare time.. Nokia's people have a job to do it.

ETA:

Mostly, I think the community creates hacks and work around to do what people want - until Nokia's official one can come out and make it seamless and integrated.

Re: Will so much community involvement stifle official Nokia updates/implimentations?
 

Because most people don't know about talk.maemo.org nor necessarily know how to even install things from extras much less testing, devel, or even outside of repos.

Much better to take care of it in an official over the air firmware upgrade.

Re: Will so much community involvement stifle official Nokia updates/implimentations?
 

it would be nice if the community released software as solid as nokias. i can think of a handful of folks.

Re: Will so much community involvement stifle official Nokia updates/implimentations?
 

I doubt it the developers will like it if their programs are stolen by Nokia...:)

Re: Will so much community involvement stifle official Nokia updates/implimentations?
 

BTW, why you think there will be MMS in an official upgrade ever?

Re: Will so much community involvement stifle official Nokia updates/implimentations?
 

Well, I'm already "stealing" some programs by Nokia... this is what free software is all about after all.

Re: Will so much community involvement stifle official Nokia updates/implimentations?
 

Not if it's GPL'd.. they would have no say.. and they would have intentionally done it that way when they licensed it GPL.

Unless the developer is *charging* for their app - which I don't think anybody here is, since you can't charge someone to install from the maemo repositories - then this won't ever be an issue.

Now when Ovi goes live and there is a "pay" apps through that then sure.. but that isn't the "community".. thats another company or person selling a complete app. If what they are releasing is something Nokia determines should be standard on their phone, they can code their own and release it. But this problem exists on all devices, whether iPhone, Android, or whatever.

Re: Will so much community involvement stifle official Nokia updates/implimentations?
 

What makes you think that Nokia would come up with a more elegant solution than an independent developer?

Re: Will so much community involvement stifle official Nokia updates/implimentations?
 

GPL lets you steal someone else's code/program for your own profit? I didn't know that....:)

Re: Will so much community involvement stifle official Nokia updates/implimentations?
 

Not quite the same - think of Maemo as a Linux distribution.

Re: Will so much community involvement stifle official Nokia updates/implimentations?
 

No. Any derivative of GPL'd work must itself be GPL I believe.

BTW, I am not a lawyer ;-)

Re: Will so much community involvement stifle official Nokia updates/implimentations?
 

You're right that a derivative must be GPL, but wrong if you were asserting that it's not allowed to profit by selling the GPL software.

However, having sold it, you have to provide the buildable source code too, and you can't prevent your customer from giving it all to everyone else if they want to... or even selling it themselves.

Anyways, it would be great if Nokia took GPL and LGPL solutions made by people here, and either packaged them as is or extracted the juicy bits to use in core Maemo apps and system services.

It goes both ways then, because we can extract the juicy bits produced by Nokia in those same apps and services. That's the beauty of the GPL and LGPL - they strongly support juicy bits being taken, improved, and used to make newer better software all round.

Re: Will so much community involvement stifle official Nokia updates/implimentations?
 

What they said ^^^^

Re: Will so much community involvement stifle official Nokia updates/implimentations?
 

jjx. Sorry about the brief reply, it obviously left a bit to the imagination. As you already clarified, I was meaning to infer (unsuccessful), that while Nokia could profit monetarily from GPL'd code, they couldn't profit exclusively. That is, they wouldnt' be able to take it and claim it as their own, and any modifications that they made would eventually be released back into the wild anyways.

Re: Will so much community involvement stifle official Nokia updates/implimentations?
 

I guess I should not have used "more elegant." What I should have said was: "well integrated into the N900." Instead of a stand-alone program, I was thinking of one that is, for example, integrated into Conversations.

Re: Will so much community involvement stifle official Nokia updates/implimentations?
 

They can always take the core functionality and integrate it in. :)

Re: Will so much community involvement stifle official Nokia updates/implimentations?
 

mms is just the perfect example that the commuity should take care of
because then nokia can spend those resources on stuff that I need ;)
(0% of the people i know is using mms)