You're absolutely right about software development being a process, nobody will disagree with you there caco3. I feel sorry that 2 of your 3 submission will be removed, but I hope I can explain to you a little more about the competition because I think there may have been a misunderstanding.

Originally the competition was set up 3 years ago as i was fed up hearing people complaining there was no apps for the N900. I got sick of hearing it, so I decided to try and do something about it. So the spirit behind the competition was to encourage people to create some new applications and get started with developing for the Maemo platforms. Which is why we brought the rule in about apps released during the competition time frame. It's been that way now for each of the last 3 years. I'm very sorry this wasn't clear to you, but I hope you will understand the reasoning behind the rule a little more now

Certainly there is scope to move the competition into one which will take into account applications created throughout the year. At the start of every competition, when we're working things out, we're always fairly open to ideas I think. And if enough people push for something then we do try to accomodate it. So absolutely, please raise it at the start of the next coding competition and let's see what we can do. But obviously there's very little we can do about it 4 days before the close

If you think back to when we were discussing the eligibility of submissions and categories, that was really the time to bring this up. For example, we could probably have had a separate category for year round entries if someone wanted to discuss that and I would have backed that as a pretty good idea.

As another example, in previous years we kept the new applications and updates together in the same categories. Because of feedback this year, we have separated the updates into it's own single category. At the same time we also had feedback that only new applications within the time frame should be eligible. So it can be tricky to get the balance right that suits everyone, but we try to get something together that most people will be happy with.

lol I still remember that, we try to be a friendly competition but yes sometimes it can be a bit mean But just think how that brutal experience helped turn you into the man you are today

Truthfully it always feels bad when you can't accommodate a developer or an application. We really want everyone to take part and share in the competition as much as possible. But as helex says, sometimes there's a line. And sometimes that line is fuzzy, we'll do our best to find ways to accept most things, but dates are hard to work around.