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Posts: 3,105 | Thanked: 11,088 times | Joined on Jul 2007 @ Mountain View (CA, USA)
#49
Originally Posted by benny1967 View Post
I'd be especially interested in a listing of upstream-projects Nokia contributed to. (and a short summary of what was contributed and why)

The perception about Nokia is that
a) They're morally evil because they're big and successful
b) They bought Trolltech to take QT away from the community
c) They're experimenting (in niche markets) with open source, trying to use it only to reduce costs but not playing by the rules of the community

You can't change this just by saying "no, we're not evil. at least not all that much." - You will have to accept this is what people think. The only thing you can do is add d), e) and f) to the list, all of which showing good things you do.
- http://opensource.nokia.com/contributions.html but is incomplete. Hopefully we will have something better at the end of the maemo.org 100 Days action plan.

"You will have to accept this is what people think", you mean what some people think. Nokia is one of the most known brands in the planet and it raises all kinds of opinions, even inside the free software community. But yes, agreed that this is a perception a noticeable amount of people have. Not necesarely the maintainers of the projects where Nokia is involved, though.

a) Nothing to say to those thinking that global corporations are evil per se. I know the feeling myself, and I had to start evolving it when realizing years ago the role of big and successful companies in the development of free software.

b) What is the business benefit of "taking Qt away from the community"? And what this sentence means in the first place. As said, I still haven't seen any realistic example of what evil thing could do Nokia to Qt.

c) Why to wait for the answer of a marketing guy from Nokia when you can get an answer from the relevant sources. Ask the maintainers of the Linux kernel, X.org, the relevant projects at freedesktop.org and GNOME whether they think Nokia gives back and plays by the rules of the community. Seriously, they have public communication channels and email addresses.

Digging for answers takes more time and it's not always emotionally appealing, though. I take my part of the blame.
 

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