I'm all for NDAs. I especially like NDAs that are very clear in their scope. An NDA is a legal document, and it establishes a contract between the people signing the document.

And I understand when employees must watch what they say about their employer (even beyond the scope of any NDAs they sign); they are being payed to be on a team, and they should be good team members by displaying solidarity with the team.

But, I think it stinks when community members, not bound by any such document, not on anyone's payroll, and completely unrelated to a corporation in any formal way (not appointed by the corporation, etc), are told by a corporation to limit their discussion and speculation because they are perceived to know more than the rest of the community. You either sign an NDA with someone that details what they can and cannot say, or you don't tell them sensitive information. Creating a perception that someone has inside knowledge, without providing any actual knowledge, puts a person in a really uncomfortable, unpleasant spot.

Not that I know anyone like this. Just thinking out loud. Speculating.

Talking about speculation, I hope Nokia releases the lead device at least several weeks before the Summit. If they don't, then any agenda involving anything other than the new device (for instance, Quim mentioned a desire to talk about Harmattan) will be lost in the buzz.

An announcement just before or during the Summit would really reduce the value of the event, and it would completely hijack the purpose.

On the other hand, waiting until after the Summit to release the lead device will make for a very dull and lackluster event.

Excellent post. My thoughts exactly.

I also believe the community should be involved, as much as Nokia will allow, in the launch of the Maemo device. This is an open source device, and open source is all about community.

What isn't mentioned is what influence, if any did Palm's agreement with Sprint have in this.

Will exclusive agreements with network service providers limit or otherwise restrict Nokia's involvement with the community?

What kind of limitations or restrictions come to your mind for a scenario where those agreements would exist?

For us its clear that the success and probably even the basic existence of Maemo depends on our good relationship with the Maemo and the open source communities. Better relationships = better chances of success.

Go on, you can tell us - what do you know?

Dave.

Well, I heard that the new Maemo 5 device will...

Wait, what's that sound? Sounds like a helicopter!

Hey, who are you guys? Get out of my house! Let go of

--
It's never what you know, it's who you know.

Thanks again.



And to answer your question...





Because of the types of contracts most cell phone service providers have with their customers in the US, certain transition periods occur where customers can change providers without incurring an early termination fee or are able to upgrade their handsets and benefit from new subsidy discounts.



Starting about the time of the Motorola Razor and then reinforced by the timed release of Apples iPhone, a large chunk of the US customer base are affected by these cycles.

An important transition period is about to occur beginning in mid June of this year. Any ideas that a marketer can plant in a consumers mind regarding the future availability of newer features, improved benefits, or more importantly, exclusive deals with the manufacturer could delay a consumer’s upgrade decision and affect the timing of the next transition period.



In this case it seems to me that Sprint may have had more to gain or loose than Palm. Palms reaction may have been influenced by an agreement with Sprint.



I would think that an NDA between companies that each has many millions of dollars worth of assets would be a tad more effective and also might trump any agreement between one of those companies and a dude whose total net worth can be found in the basement of his parent’s house.

(Reposted because for some reason color tags have been added to my posts. The colors make the text unreadable from a dark theme. I can not edit out these tags, I will delete or minimize the first post instead...)

If true, this would be a good example of this kind of influence exerted on a manufacturer to control user communities by a network provider...

>> HERE <<

I never noticed all the difficulties Palm seems to be having with a community (or the other way round), probably because the Pre is too far away from what I want a phone to be to ever enter my radar.

Reading the blog posts you guys linked to makes me smile. We did have our fights with Nokia, yes, but it was never that bad, was it? More important, as somebody who came here in 2006 I really have to say that it got a lot, really a lot better since then. We should all bookmark those Palm-articles as reminders. - Somebody at Nokia is doing a good job working with the community. Right?

Oh, about NDAs:
I'm not sure. Really. I'm not sure how NDAs and "community" go together. I can live with (or maybe would support) single developers signing NDAs so they can have a new release in time with a product launch or play with unknown hardware features. Yes I know, developers are members of the community, but still it's a different thing for me. You'd have to be very carful not to lose all the openness we have because, with NDAs in place and enough people signing them, you don't need it any longer. (Nokia could have chosen not to make Maemo5 SDKs public but have all current Maemo developers sign NDAs. Would have been easier.)

So I just advise to be very careful about this... It's not a bad thing as such, but it could have unwanted consequences.

What can be learned?

In short, and something that both parties didn't realize:

1) Keep a cool head (i.e. don't go Hulk on something you don't fully understand).
2) Realize you are treating with a entity with different rules than your own, and be patient, avoid being dismissive/contemptous/assume too much in a negative light and again, keep your head cool.