One last remark, and just thrown in a general direction:

I love Open Source and its developers. Heck, I wish all software was Open Source. OTOH, I don't really care that much for freeware (as in: no money down), and I still don't see why the "price==zero" checkpoint should be a point of evaluation other than: "Whoohoo! I can drink twenty more pints before turning on the freeware satnav!"

And if this thread means that I'm not allowed to shout "*****!" at a developer, just because he doesn't charge for her/his cr*p, then you'll be in for a treat (actually, no: I never shout that at developers. I often think it though...).

In fact, this subthread was never about the right to criticize freeware developers, it was about the right to be a jerk. And since I defended the OP's right to be a jerk, I've obviously become tainted goods. Well, so be it (Hades, it's not like I'm not used to that!); at least I know I've done my libertarian duty of defending the expression of opinions I despise...

Wow . . . umm. As a Libertarian myself, I'm really not sure where defending somebody's freedom of speech comes into this. Nobody wanted to censure his right to speak. They simply wanted him to do so in a less caustic and rude way. Besides, if it's all about the right to speak, why aren't you defending our right to object to his tone?

i do not disagree there, but its better then browsing garage...

perhaps we can put some money to get him a iphone, then he can install all the wonderfull software people are making for iphones?

As an added bonus, he could post his ignorance somewhere else.

Your tone is rude, you are complaining about the quality of free software? Dont like it dont use it? Maemo-Mapper is the best application ever made for mapping in Linux period. Do you know of some better software? I have been using MaemoMapper since Gnuite gave up on porting GPSDrive and created MaemoMapper. It does everything I need it to, and I might argue its the best software ever made from scratch for the Tablet.

I know everyone will think I am being a dick, oh well, its not the first time, and certainly wont be the last, not even today.

I think the poster deserves all the crap he is getting. Come on ITT and post that "MaemoMapper is a joke." and "Same thing with the rest of that collection of 166 software horrors." You say "having done some programing in the past I know how hard it is for any company to write good software" Then you come on here and rag on peoples personal projects that some have spent years developing? You installed or attempted to install all the 166 projects and not one was good? Perhaps I am not the one being a dick.

THANK GOD NOKIA IS NOT APPLE AND NEVER WILL BE.

APPLE SUCKS! GRRR!!!

Actually, that is wanting to censure him, and wanting it in a rather impotent manner ("can't kick him, can't ban him, so let's all complain about him being rude").

The correct way to respond to a troll without telling him what and how to speak is to address the matter of his flame bait in a way that will eventually lead him to understand his lack of purpose in life and commit suicide, nicely and cleanly.

There is nothing wrong with complaining about a specific app or feature. The forums are helping develop the software by giving the developers feedback that they can use. It also allows other users to help people without needing the developers time. Attacking the entire community and stating that every app made for Maemo is a horror, is uncalled for, and deserving of any flack the poster may recieve. I defend his right to say any ignorant thing he wants, I also defend my right to point out how stupid he sounds.

Wanting him to change his tone and forcibly silencing him are two very different things—complaining about tone has very little to do with the freedom of speech Karel is so set on defending.

I used censure incorrectly anyway, so any discussion of this point is really rather pointless.

Well, that's basically it; although I prefer to spend the savings otherwise than (presumedly ethanol-based) pints, that's very much the point. You're better off one way, worse off another; so it's possible that a technically inferior solution may be optimal considering price.

I don't feel any need to be respectful and grateful to someone just because they offered me something free (though it's a good idea, if you want them to keep on giving you free stuff), but I must take the price into account in any sane evaluation of software.

As long as the cry "*****!" is a technical criticism of the way they did something, that's sane. If it's intended as a criticism of the entire piece of software, it's typically unreasonable, as you're able to uninstall and be no worse off than before. (Obvious exceptions include if it damages your system; then you've actually suffered a loss.)
Yes, it's censuring him, perhaps there's some confusion of words?
(from http://m-w.com):
censor

• to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable <censor the news>
  also
• to suppress or delete as objectionable <censor out indecent passages>

censure

• to find fault with and criticize as blameworthy

As yet another libertarian, I'm cool with people running around censuring each other; I'm not cool with people demanding government censor each other, or with forums censoring posts.

Edit: Heh, the General beat me WRT incorrectness of censure; I'd forgotten where it started...

I don't think the OP knows what he is talking about. I literally see a lot of B.S.

I was unaware that Nokia were trying to be like Apple. I see no BSD...

Well, you could have easily seen this one online. Not to say I agree with those points but a google for Nokia N800 - gives me wikipedia as 7th result. Ok, The word VGA tells me that the camera isn't going to be great. I mean if you have a bit of knowledge, it's pretty much a no **** sherlock.


Umm, I've installed a lot of apps there fine. hint, for the latest release of ITOS, you click OS2008

Don't use it. I don't think gnuite gives a **** if someone doesn't use it. For me, I don't use it. Not because I don't like it but I have no need for it.
So, if you wanted commercial programs, why buy the N800? It runs Linux (the quality that attracted me to it). The OS itself is open source! Or rather, why not stick to your perfect working commercial apps?

Wow, your detail is astounding :O . What non-gui apps? And last time I looked, Application Manager wasn't a command line application. Although saying that, Application Manager is the one thing I would love to see go. It has problems with a lot of things with application installing (openssh is one & also it cannot find dependencies for programs installed from deb file) & it is extremely slow with displaying detailed lists. It also doesn't feature resizable toolbars (very important as we saw a while back with with long version names). I explained why I didn't like it. Pretty hypocritical for me, not to say proper reasons why I don't like it.

A person who does a lot more for the community rather than just flaming. What have you done for this community? I'd like to see your port of OpenSSH.

As for me, I'm not the best person to talk. Maybe a lot of you think my points are ********.

I have my mapping utility (zmapper) which I'm trying to get to work with Kismet and it does load and run for being alpha quality (based off my Zaurus program, it uses Qt). It isn't up on Maemo, but that is part of the problem - I can get it into the garage, but not into any main repository. And I also have been posting the source archives at the same time. (And I think the original complaint comes from someone who said it took effort to package a .deb file).

The app installer is horrendous - it takes minutes to do an update of its repositories (even if unnecessary). And it displays the whole version string so I have several pages of oss|1.x where oss is short for osso-something. They supposedly have fixed that for the next release.

But pray tell where can I get Kismet or anything like it for a stock iPhone? Oh, I can't. Or the iPod touch. Or video. The really old ones will run linux, but don't have all the cool hardware. I can try registering for the developer program. I know, it will be wonderful in a few months (start singing, "The apps will come out, tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar, there'll be apps". Can I play ogg files? Doom? For that matter, browse to my favorite podcast sites and download the MP3s to the music library? Download (not merely browse) images? Video? Maybe all that will come or Apple will lock it out.

If you limited the Nokia as much as the iP*o* it could have lots of great applications too. They too would all be silos and rarely talk to each other as well (thus avoiding annoying bugs when programs have to work together).

Forks are wonderful, as long as you don't want soup.

We will see if the developers come up with anything useful - you can't even use the existing devkit on your existing phone if you aren't one of the higher levels of membership.

I think Nokia should get more serious about supporting the open source part of things. They are falling into the trap in thinking because they provide a website/repository everything will just work. But at least I can get things running for the platform without hacking the platform. And some information is available (So, how DO I turn on the GPS and gpsd? Some magic dbus incantation? - at least I've seen some things, I've no idea about anything on the iP*o*)

One problem I have is Maemo is for grand projects so has a lot of sections which are hard to maintain properly or use. I just ported "sox" so I could play a few files simply (for kismet). It is up at my site, not Maemo because I'm not going to bother with a full project. I might move my zmapper stuff there when I have time to play webmaster.

I think Maemo needs something more like a wiki than sourceforge - where I and others could just drop "ports in progress" and have them fixed and picked up by others if they want to fix something.

And the developers at the garage aren't as good about posting their sources - I have trouble finding GNUMeric in .deb form, and haven't found the source archives or I would already have patches or fixes or enhancements.

The platform is very good out of the box, and only gets better because I can extend and enhance it easily - maybe not as easily as one or two clicks, but there is a lot of stuff not on my Macintosh powerbook because there is no way to get it to work (challenge - create a virtual serial port - something that Google Earth or other closed mapping program could recognize as a serial port for a GPS NMEA stream, but takes data from a TCP (or UDP) port. I have all the dev docs, yet I've not attempted it).