no drm means no good apps?
 

hi
i've recent read that n900 doesnt have a drm and wont have many paid apps and the guy's got a point
so we wont see any good apps/games from other companies?
good = not free
coz s60v5 had many apps in its first few months and honestly, all maemo has are repeated apps *different names, same features* or kinda apps not usually needed my many
how close am i?
is maemo a fail?

** edit
the point it the thread is, is no drm a good idea or bad one?
is it effecting the variety off apps?

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

Hi!

If good = not free

you're right!

That's why wikipedia sucks!

That's why the sun sucks!

That's why love sucks!

They are all free!!

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

Check out what apps are already available and what apps are in development:

http://maemo.nokia.com/maemo-select/
https://garage.maemo.org/

Nonsense!

If there are specific apps that you need before deciding whether to get the N900 then list them and maybe people can tell you whether they are available or not. Eg the iphone may have thousands of "apps" (the vast majority of them, 90%+, are hardly downloaded at all) but it doesn't have the programs I need.

For me the huge advantage of the N900 is access to the vast repository of "desktop" linux apps thru Easy Debian. That allows me to have full access to all my email using thunderbird, and to have a full featured office package in the form of openoffice.org.

It depends on your needs. I consider MS Windows an epic fail - but millions of people think otherwise (or don't know better ;) )

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

You are close...

In the final analysis Maemo may have attracted more wanting free beer instead of free speech. As a result all possible delivery options may not have been explored. New methods did not seem to develop from within the community.

To be fair, some of our communities best and brightest often found that the alleys that they did explore ended in a closed source dead end or barricade erected by Nokia its own dang self.

In many ways MeeGo is a "do over", IMHO.

Although MeeGo is being touted as step 5 of 5, some feel that the first 4 steps were heading North and that 5th step went East. At least that is the way these tracks look like to someone like me who must follow them instead of making them. :)

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

if ure really making a good useful app, why would u sell it for free?
would that make sense?

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

I think no DRM generally means = no 'exclusive' big budget apps/games.

Once the software have been created for other platforms and the producers have recouped their investment, then they have less financial burden and are more likely to take risks on distributing on platforms with no DRM.

See also: Rovio :)

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

Ask those people for example
http://www.openttd.org/en/

Yes you right, money driving this business. And at some point I agree, should be some non free market beside for wider choice.

Bud the big question is.. is Open Source community really wont them? Or if You as Open Source guy for ideological reason did you even start this thread?

If you do not understand genesis of Open Source movement (No as we know these days seen through the lenses of corporations) there is no answer for your question.

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

So tell me...
why is Linux free?
why is Apache free?
why is OpenOffice free?
why is Firefox free?
why is gcc free?
why is Python free?

http://www.fsf.org/working-together/

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

And imagine world where every single line of code or just programing method or language belong to some corporation. Our IT world exist because of free access to the knowledge and technology.

The day when US gov wanted to put patent restriction to the line of code was the 1st sign of the End of The World as we know. And symptom that people actually silently agreed to pay for freedom. I am only wondering why... better quality app called life? Show me :D

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

this isnt a debate about free or not free
ever studied business?
money is a motive
money provides resources
one person or 2 or even 4.. vs a whole company?
whats more efficient?
and there are basically 2 apps that i need
both were paid apps in s60 and both are absent in maemo

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

Free things can be good. But this society requires us to have money.
Without money, developers have less food, less motivation and less happy wives.

Some just have enough free time to share some things for free that's all.
or are geuninely nice, too rich already or have no wives. (or husbands?)

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

you are not even close.

[insertsomecoolsloganforexamplestep4/5ordoyourresearchhere]

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

Then go and buy an S60 phone.Maemo is not like S60 at all. And never was intended too. You have this great community, that delivers great apps and not demand a cent. All they demand is the respect they deserve. And you still moan?

Well then buy a phone with DRM! And next time do research. I always knew that Maemo will never have a lot of apps. I always knew that not many developers will flock to Maemo. I always knew about this incredible community. I always knew about the many great developers in this community that would create apps and games for the N900. Maemo is all about open source (even though it has bits that are closed source). Most apps and games here are developed with the source being freely available. This means that anyone with enough knowledge can help or improve it.

You know what I didn't know about the N900, and is disappointing me a lot. The number of guys like you that do not do their research well and then moan about not getting what they want. For me the N900 is everything I hoped it would be. I do not even think about getting Android or Symbian.

If you wanted a commercial phone, you should have researched the N900 better. You would have known that there weren't many professional developers outside this community interested in the N900.

If you wanted a commercial phone in a money sucking world, the N900 wasn't for you. Here developers share their work mostly to get a thanks and respect, which they deserve.

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

People thinking like that are the reason the world is such a shitty place.

Please refrain from downloading ANY of the free software packages from the repositories - but I guess that won't be hard on you, since there's only bad quality software to be found there, anywhere.

(Not sure what you should google first: humanity, selflessness or Open Source)

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

Cmon guys, you don't have to turn into trolls to respond to trolls.

Give your best answer, keep your composure, and if the guy just turn into a troll don't follow him down there...

@OP: No need to be confrontative if you're honestly looking for answers here... take it easy...

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

Sorry, ysss, while of course you're right, people who spit on the very principles of humanity just do that to me. Capitalist "money is everything and everyone who does something for free is an idiot" swines should really refrain from posting in Open Source communities.

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

@Nath: Yeah, I'm just tired of all the flame wars.. it turns potentially good discussions sour and it turns decent men annoying (not you, Nath)...

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

I personaly have found that there has been a free open source alternative to most of the apps ive missed from previous devices.
In an attempt to keep this discusion civilised what are the apps you require? maybe someone could suggest an alternative, if not a nice polite (Request) thread could well result in the app you need being created.
I love my n900 and this community is its best resource.

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

I don't consider any of these "free". You pay one way or the other.

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

Don't get us wrong. It was an attempt to answer your question

And you don't have to study business to get the same conclusion as you. So... my answer and probably most of us agree. Yes, would be good to have an option for wider choice. But that actually is not question to us (open source community) but company behind this party, to get their system working to support this. Ave Ovi.

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

Sometimes the "free" thinks are better than the "paid" thinks!
:D

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

Well... Windows does not have any DRM either. Does it mean that there are no good or/and paid apps for Windows?

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

This is completely disingenuous. The OP is talking about free and non free software on a mobile devices. You and the 6 people that thanked you need to get off their FOSS high horse and start thinking.

On the mobile platform I do believe that good apps take a lot of work to release. Lots of devs have the initial idea and motivation but then loose interest at the uat/deployment stage and fail to polish the apps - profit motive bridges this gap.

Until the mobile sphere develops much further, and we have polished applications like the equivalents of GIMP, Firefox, Apache, MySQL, etc floating around it's a pay software world out there.

Anyway, disagree with me if you like, but look at the facts. Comparing the App Store (heavily locked down), Andriod Store (pretty heavily locked down) and the Ovi Store (very few restrictions) and examine what's in them.

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

Doh... There is a BIG difference for publishers between App Store and Ovi Store.
You don't need to be business for publishing to App Store and you need to be business (VAT number requirement) for publishing to Ovi Store.

Show me those hobbyist programmers that are eager to register a company just to post his 1 euro app to Ovi.

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

I wish that every single person here has understanding of how commercial world motivates devs and that every OS lover needs to pay his bills as well.

With this in mind they should hit donate button first then thanks. I'm pretty sure you could see better results and more polished apps. But is hard to demand this behaviour from people that see only one side of medal.

Edit: Hey guys! What about put (1 Euro) behind Thanks button here? :)

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

Oh yeah sorry, the minimal fee to register a company and become sales tax registered (£25 or so in the UK + a few forms) is such a put off. This is certainly the reason why the App Store and Ovi Store are like they are.

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

honestly, before buying n900, i considered open source and good hardware
sure, keep em both
but ppl like getting paid for their hardwork
no drm means others use their apps for free..
this point of this thread was,
is no drm a good thing or bad?
and money is a motive..
this isnt about free apps
this is about the variety of apps
am i talking to myself here?

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

wikiwide messaged me,
his words were "3. And in mixed world of free and non-free apps the developers who make free apps don't have to trouble themselves about courts, piracy, etc - and can occasionally get some contributions and thanks for free app. While developers of non-free apps have to think about consumers, competitors, advertisement, DRM, etc - and they occasionally get some pirates and loathing from consumers. "

i prefer piracy then lack of variety..

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

So.. is my English so bad? :( Or I'm talking to myself either.

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

But you can run GIMP and Iceweasel on the n900 if you want to take a little bit of interest/effort to do so. We still have not been told what applications you are missing. The n900 has one application no mobile has - a full LXDE install of Debian. With that you can do so much more than any mobile phone - you could manage a corporate network if you needed to, from a device in the palm of your hand.

But, if you want to pretend it's a Nintendo or Playstation thingy. Nah.

I did post-grad business studies, as well a masters in IT, and the only good things I have seen come out of the industry are free. The rest tie you up so you can hardly use the things you already paid for, and then you have to keep paying to use what you have already. DRM? That is a brick wall you end up throwing your device at to try and get it to work with things you already paid for, but it won't unless you pay more to use them. Unfortunately, instead of boycotting this crap, people fall for it and it becomes a fact of life.and ending up with some Jobs-worth telling me what I can and can't do with what I have bought. Hell, you don't even get a copy of windows with a PC any more - it is on a partition on the HDD, and you have make your own recovery disks, and if that fails to restore after a crash you have to pay to get your system back. What you get is permission to use a piece of software.

Open means 'you can use this any way you want to' and 'you can send some money if you want to support this' and 'you can even improve this if you like'. Problem is, we do tend to think it is free. It isn't, but we enjoy making use of other people's work without paying for it, so haven't paid for it yet.

The worst thing that happened with linux-derivatives like OS-X and mobiles is the way distributors take the work and corrupt it by locking it all down again. That is because they are not interested in the product, or the software, or the customers - only the money they can derive from these.

I have found there are mainly two things I need to use non-free software for. One is MS.Word, because Endnote is the de-facto referencing package, and it doesn't ship for linux. The other is Adobe Elements, which although I prefer Gimp, can support higher bits and allows me to use astronomical plugins (also, most of the commercial astronomy programs only ship for Windows/Mac, and cost a fortune). Stuff like CS4 is seriously overpriced. It is quite refreshing that Orrorery runs on the n900, and if that isn't good enough, you can just about run Stellarium for Debian (albeit tiny and slow - it is a hungry application that comes with its own database).

Rant-off.

Mish

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

for almost a year on having 2 s60v5 devices and a 6 months owning a maemo, i have not thought of this.....

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

Maybe we are mixing two facts that maybe cant be mixed.

1) The money, the motivation and the apps
2) The DRM

PalmOS, GarnetOS and the pda's world several years ago had more than 19k apps (wikipedia source), for LOT of them you need to pay and each one take care for their own locking methodology, usually a serial key based one

that was the DRM of 2000, we all make money with this system, and we all were happy.

but Today, its like if we can't get a complex encrypted os-based drm system that can wipe your personal data if someone who we dont know wants, then we cant do business.

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

The reason for this is to make the handset manufacturer money.

Under the 2000-Palm model you describe, Palm were making little to no money from 3rd party apps - and didn't realise they could. I guess for bigger software vendors you could have licensing arrangements, but I think the prevailing thoughts at the time were that this approach didn't work. Remember it comes off the back of a period when things like Amiga, Acorn, Apple were all dying and the IBM PC/Windows open approach to third party applications was seen as the way to go.

Once a platform has superiority then you reign in the 3rd parties to get a cut of their profits. Apple's just been clever enough to lock it down from day 1, and sell a great device that is well marketed and cornered the market, where apps 'support' platform (and vice versa) in homogeneity.

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

We can separate two concepts again

1) The application distribution strategy, the technical concerns (OTA, usb), exposition to customers (ecommerce), and we can even put here the way that everyone makes money. For application developers, is all that you need. we cant put apple here, because apple dont make the apps. As a whole, this is called Business Model.

2) DRM, remote wipe, os lock, vendor lock, that makes real customers potential criminals from day 1.

We can have #1 without #2, because #1 and #2 are two different ways to make money, and two different companies get the money.

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

If I may add, in the Palm/WinMo era, there were already 3rd party 'app stores' that handled many functions that current appstores do:
- files hosting
- users registration
- billing system
- drm (serial #) upkeep.

Some of the differences that worked against their mass adoption by the customers:
- Not (technically, legally, financially) coupled with the platform
- Charged 50-70%(!!!) of the revenue (Current market is 30%)

I'd also like to add that all DRM adds is 'control' to the owner.
What they do with that control can be good:
- Keep out malicious codes
- Safekeep the information of all the licenses a user owns (paid or free)
- Make sure the developers that wants to get paid, gets paid
- etc

or evil:
- Keep out competitive codes
- Misuse the user's personal information
- Strong arming financial tactics
- etc

It's not automatically evil. But they're human.

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

= Stupid assertion.

Many good apps on the n900 exist - I suggest actually using your app manager and trying them out.

There is a lack of commercial interest in apps because:
1) a few months ago there was huge uncertainty about the future of maemo
2) Nokia were very, very quiet almost embarrassed to talk about maemo and n900
3) when Nokia did say something one particlular director said no free mapping software for maemo5 and n900 maybe next version of maemo
4) OVI store is an utter, utter fail
5) maemo5 has reached maturity and stability with PR1.2 update but Nokia thought "awwww f*** it!", moved away from maemo5 and decided to start all over again with meego
6) Nokia don't get this "app store" business and unfortunately lost any chance of being a serious competitor with iPhone and Android . (That genuinely is a shame).
7) Nokia are so busy planning and formulating stratagies then life is passing them right by
8) All theses points mean that Nokia is unable to compete with high-end smartphones and have hit their ceiling
9) Nothing will change until some serious management and director changes take place within Nokia.

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

There are several cases where giving app away "for free" makes sense. Some bullet points follow.

* You want to advertise yourself. Being able to point out at a job interview, "oh and I made this app for N900, just for the fun of it, it has about 100k downloads" is going to contribute on the positive side.

* Selling is a lot of work. Not all of us like to sell things, and when you do, your product must be excellent or you get a lot of complaints. Sometimes just giving away is easier, especially when expected sales number is not high. Skipping the selling part let's the developer focus on where he excels.

* Making a copy costs nothing. There might be a piece of software you wrote for yourself. But why not let anyone else to use it too, it's not like you lose something with that.

* Encouraging others to give their software away for free, too. This is my personal favourite. Imagine that your good free software inspires 10 other people to also share their work (or keep working on something they already give for free). You have just got 10 people to work for your good.

* Cooperation gets the best total score in the Prisoner's Dilemma.

* Raising the bar for non-free apps. Sometimes you find out you have paid for a piece of crap, and know you could do better. Implementing and giving away a proper implementation forces the for-profit guys to actually work for their profit.

* You just get your kicks from doing something good, and seeing other people enjoying it.

* Other. I'll use myself as an example. I wrote a piece of software called battery-eye. You can get it for free. When I got my N900 and stumbled on these forums, a lot of people seemed to have battery problems due to various software bugs. Worse, there seemed no way for people to communicate the problem accurately. The point of my app is to give the average user a way to see that something is wrong, so (s)he can complain, and hopefully force Nokia and other developers to fix obvious battery drains out of their software. Being an N900 owner, this is a direct benefit for me.


The above points really are just various realisations of that there's more to life than your bank account balance. Not every thing you do in your life directly translates to money, but it can still bring you personal benefit.

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

Very true.. but something even truer is the self satisfaction and inner rewards does not feed you (and the family) nor does it pay the constant bills.

This becomes an ethical debate of money. As much as most of the advocates in this forum is use to the idea of free Linux and ideals of Freeware/GPL, it really does not work in the real world of commercialism (which funnily enough, is what our society is based upon). In fact, what did we use to buy our N900's in the first place? or the constant phone bills that is associate with it?

Re: no drm means no good apps?
 

Quite wrong. Microsoft has DRM on Windows Media, Play Ready, and a method to sign/authenticate drivers, WHQL which now supports HDMI and Blu-Ray output to validated media displays, among other DRM methods, SDK's and options within that platform.

Windows is perhaps the worst example to bring up in a DRM conversation. It's downright saddled with them.