No desktop platforms. Maemo is not Android either. Quite silly to include Android in my opinion.

We will have to wrap this discussion up so that the competition can start.

Well, I didn't mean to ask for another one N950 from other competitions. Absolutely. It would be just annoying for other community members (is there any reason for us being better than them?).

I just noticed that according to your award plan, the only way to win (so much desired) N950 is to be the first or the second in some category, which would be hard for newbies because of experienced developers to compete with. And even being the best of newbies means no chance to win N950 (because there 0 of them for beginners).

To make it clear:
1. I've never really developed for mobile (so yes, I'm afraid of big wise experienced mature developers )
2. I think that I'm not that bad for a beginner (so no, I'm not afraid to take a part and I'm ready to compete!)
3. I want N950.
That's it

Let me clarify a bit why I think the mp award is good for the competition.

Firstly, I do not in any way want to push the competition to qt competition direction instead of maemo competition. BUT I have tried to port apps from one maemo platform to another (fremantle to harmattan that is) and if the original application wasn't written with multiple platforms in mind, even with fremantle and harmattan being similar, the porting was a nightmare.

In good faith and hope I assume that there WILL be more maemo derived platforms in the future and writing software today having in mind that they may have to run some time on other platforms is a benefit to everyone. Take for example Nemo. Nemo may well be the next best thing for our devices, or for a community device but lacks a significant user base today. We therefore need to give some incentive to developers to cater about portability of their apps so that we don't have more code locked to past platforms (when our current platforms eventually are a thing of the past)

This whole way of thinking came from a mistake I made on my early days with maemo. I followed a wrong instruction set and added diablo extras to the N900. To my surprise, 2-3 applications I installed from there (including maemoFTP and Gnumeric) worked fine on the N900 albeit with an ugly ui. I suspect that hundreds of older maemo apps can be run with no or little modifications on the N900 but we just don't know it.

On the other hand apps that support more maemo platforms can inherently acquire more votes because of greater user base so the MP award is not absolutely necessary but I believe it's for our benefit if it stayed.

About desktop platforms, I don't have a strong opinion, I just thought we should have as many categories as possible, and that is why I thought we should give double points to maemo platforms.

Anyway, please don't read the above as insisting. I am not insisting, in fact the MP award is not a major point in the competition. I just wanted to clarify why I am proposing the aforementioned system.

I am considering my first attempt at an app too, based solely on the chances of winning an N950 because they are not available for purchase anywhere, so any increased chance to win one is MUCH greater incentive for me personally.

I would have bought an N9 by now if I wanted one. Of course that is not meant to sound ungrateful and *if* I enter something and *if* I should happen to win "only" an N9, I would be very happy to give it a chance and try to adjust to no hw keyboard. I just love the keyboard on my n900 so much I am not willing to purchase an N9 and take a chance on not liking it.

You shouldn't be. The number of excellent developers far exceeds the number of excellent apps on the market. No every experienced developer is able to make a killer app In my opinion the idea behind the app makes the difference.

As I understand the proposed rules, apps which we've started (even if they aren't in the Ovi store/apps.formeego.org yet) aren't likely to be eligible?

I've a vested interest in that rule being relaxed so I could submit grrok.

At the moment that app (and some others around, aren't "existing community apps" as no finished version exists but they were created after the competition was announced but before submissions were allowed.

In development invested time is the most important thing, and proportional to the app quality.
It's the reason why the competition has a start and end time, so the developers can show what they can do in that limited time.
If apps started before start time are allowed, it wouldn't be fair to developers who will have less time to perfect their creations. Maybe we could take the delta time the competition lasts, add it to first commit into source control, as there should be a proof when the work was started, and we get the end by which the app needs to be finished for the competition. This would exclude apps, that were started, start time minus delta. But it would open a can of worms.

Then again, maybe there are those, that are developing already, but will submit that work into source control, slowly over time, to look like they've started after the start time.

If your app is not yet in Nokia Store, you could try: 2012 Device Program: New Apps for Nokia Store

Who would know if you've started the development of an app before the competition timeframe started?
With "new apps" I meant apps which weren't released before.
Why not submit an app which was on hold for years and now the developer decided to continue developing it and releasing it?
Or why not submit an app which was in development for years but now the time has come to release it?
Nobody can prove or disprove that development happened only in the competitions timeframe, so I'd see the timeframe as the "submissions timeframe" and not as "development timeframe". That means that the submissions have to be made in that timeframe. Anything released before or later can't be considered.
But of course the community has to decide...

I hope that this will be possible, I'm in this situation.
I have an application that I started to develop some times ago and now I decided to finish it and use it to partecipate to the coding competition...

Hello,

from my point of view the mp-award, in this contest, is pointless. We are arranging a maemo coding competition, so why we cares about other platform?
To be more clear, the mp-award would be really cool, but in another competition, not in the maemo ones.
We need to encourage people to create app first for maemo and I think that making a mp-award could be a distraction for someone.
Anyway in the new categories list I miss the 'porting' section, are we gonna drop this category? or it is included in the 'updating'?

Regards,
Daniele.