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Posts: 968 | Thanked: 974 times | Joined on Nov 2008 @ Ohio
#37
Aren't we all overlooking a fourth option?

According to the rules Nokia can "make available" the submission.

So potentially, the app being sold in Ovi, is being sold by Nokia, with all profit going to Nokia, and none to Fabien. Additionally, Nokia can give the source/app to whoever they want, including in PR1.3 if they wanted to as a default app.

In terms of encouraging developers, someone else distributing the source/app doesn't help. Any site/server owners are certainly free to prevent hosting it / linking to it on their site. That doesn't necessarily make what Matan has done "wrong", morally ambiguous, perhaps.

Not to excuse this, but let's not forget the Fabien has already gotten $25,000 for this app. Does anyone know if he shared any of these funds with the others that contributed portions of code to "his" app? If the app is being sold as GPL, then presumably at least one of the code contributors refused to re-license their part of the code, and apparently it wasn't code that could easily be removed. Draw whatever conclusions you want from that.

If it were me, I would've either insured that the code licensing was such that I could sell it without fear of others "legally" re-distributing it (and cutting into my sales) or I would've asked for donations instead. I'm sure that everyone here who purchased it, would've happily and promptly made a donation had it been distributed in that format.

Wouldn't it be better for FOSS in the long run if everyone donated directly to programmers instead of through app stores where part of the price goes to a corporation?
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