simply put i am not aware of the licence imposed by Nokia when software was uploaded to them, unless it explicitly allowed Nokia to pass on the distribution rights to a 3rd party it would be costly to even investigate the possibility of doing it.

- What are your interest regarding harmattan platform?

I haven't personally used Harmattan, since I installed Nemo Mobile on my Nokia N950 very quickly. However, I would be happy for it to continue being supported.

- What's your attitude towards the role of Council in the Maemo Community e.V.?

Council should be kept, as it is more accessible and community-oriented body. Board aka e.V. deals more with legal issues, bank account and such.

- What can we as a community do in preparation of the soon to be shut down Nokia store, or whether a community response is even necessary?

Make sure that useful applications from Nokia store are mirrored in community repositories. Source, too, if possible, not only binary.

Best wishes.

That's quite a dismissive stance to take considering we don't yet have a good solution to the problem. I'm not asking for a costly investigation, just a simple enquiry. I'd like get a better understanding of the situation with Opera and how it is that they have been granted distribution rights to a large part of Nokia's software catalogue.

It might even be worth contacting Opera to ask why they will not be hosting Fremantle and Harmattan applications but have agreed to host applications for other dead platforms such as S60/Symbian. After all, they are one of the few companies who actually bothered to develop for our relatively obscure platforms.

[EDIT]
I asked the question on this Opera blog. Let's vote it up.
[EDIT]

I read up on the opera app store - from the little information that i could gather it is replacing the nokia store, but not transferring the apps, instead it requires the apps to be re-submitted by the developers.

for example a quote from that blog:
so to duplicate the opera deal would be essentially encourage the app developers to upload to openrepos.net (no need for us to duplicate and maintain yet another repo system) and co-ordinate with openrepos.net and nokia to try get a deal to redirect the hatterman default store to openrepos.net.

I consider this feasible.

but in my view we do not have the financial resources (to pay the legal costs ) on had to pull off a full transfer, i do not see this changing any time soon, and i am aware (now) of an existing request to nokia that has been already turned down.

I ++ this question :

http://blogs.opera.com/news/2014/11/...ent-1751291859

seems the photo is showing a NokiaX device right ?
on current firmware it's a microsoft store .... awww

OK. Still not quite clear. I've edited my post here:
http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...&postcount=124

to clarify it a bit.

Repeatedly. Council and HiFo proposed at least 6 different ways of doing this at different times throughout the negotiations. Each time the answer was pretty much the same: They could not and would not be able to legally transfer the rights to even distribute the static blobs Nokia was already hosting. If they could, I really believe they would have, if for no other reason than to make us shut up and go away faster.

At this point there's really nobody left at Nokia to ask. The division has been entirely assimilated now by MS, and I doubt they even are aware that half the things out there are still running, or about us. (Which frankly may be a blessing...)

As for the idea of asking authors to move their app store items into the open repositories, I think that's a great idea. We'd need at least a few people to help do that, by coordinating an effort to find the apps in the store, contact the authors, make the request, and possibly help move the items in (and maybe even find someone willing to help maintain them, also an important item.)

I guess I should add my answers here then since I need to act all council-y and whatnot...

What are your interest regarding harmattan platform?

Harmattan was, for me, the closest to a mobile platform mirroring what I'd want in a workflow for maximum efficiency and visual aesthetics. Mind you, I'm a UI/UX guy first, tech lover second, designer third... programmer and whatnot perhaps fourth.

I've the unpopular opinion that I don't think it needs to be supported; a more modern approach with refinements and advancements needs to be in the near future. Looking backward for so long will disable your ability to move forward.

For that matter, I was a lover of BeOS. I now still keep Haiku OS as a VM, but it's not something that I would boot on it's own computer.

Harmattan, too much was closed. But much can be updated. Or replaced. And on a device that's not as much of a deadend as my beloved N9.

What's your attitude towards the role of Council in the Maemo Community e.V.?

It's far too complicated. No need to dumb it down though.

What can we as a community do in preparation of the soon to be shut down Nokia store, or whether a community response is even necessary?

I've honestly no clue. Prior adjustments and people involved have a good course of action; however I'd be honest to admit that I've not followed this closely. I've handled transitions of technology, projects and even problematic projects between different countries, cultures and even agendas.

I'm quite sure there can be a solution that doesn't leave the lights off for good.

I'm quite sure there's more to be answered, said or thought... but I've been here since the days of ITT. I've honestly not liked how things have gone lately - nothing personal, but there's projects I've handled for the US Gov't that were probably handled as bad and they're no longer funded or regarded any longer.

I'd not like to point fingers. I'd not like to be drawn into petty squabbles nor do I want to endure things moving further downhill. I do believe in the meritocracy of open source, I've been known to play devil's advocate more than needed (perhaps) and if anything, I do believe that tech should be made to make our lives more efficient and productive. So I have no patience when the otherwise happens.

And I've been known to admit when I'm wrong; that's one of the best ways to learn something.

Here are my answers to the remaining two questions that have been put forth (apparently and ironically, one of those questions seems to have been asked by me):

In the end, the community at large will (or should) decide the fate of the Community Council. I agree with a few others here that before we rush to dissolve the council, we should allow the council to remain in place for six months to a year. Hopefully, that will help determine whether the council is redundunt under an e.V., or whether it is a useful complement.

I think that the Community Council has shown itself to be quite valuable over the years, especially behind the scenes with keeping the infrastructure alive and in negotiations with Nokia. Perhaps being more consistent in driving community initiatives that are less "behind the scenes" and more public would also help to demonstrate the Council's tangible contributions to the community.

I remember the coding competitions of years past as an example of something concrete and high-profile that helped to drive development and community participation forward in a meaningful way. I hope that we can organize another effort like this again. We should do this not only to encourage new development, but to encourage maintenance on valuable but potentially orphaned projects.

I agree with some of the responses that Opera Store would be a no-go. From what I've seen, it is my impression that this makes sense for Symbian because its user base is larger, the app signing policies are more restrictive, and a larger percentage of worthwhile applications are commercial.

We already have Open Repos and the Maemo repositories for Harmattan and Fremantle, so asking developers to upload again to Opera seems redundant.

It seems to me that most of the developers who still care about the platform have already migrated their applicatins out of Nokia store and into Open Repos/maemo repositories. But I agree that it would be a good idea to identify the remaining Nokia Store applications that are of value to the community and ask the relevant maintainers of their interest in migrating. I suspect that many will have long since moved on or are commercial entities with little interest in "giving away their stuff for free".

On that last point, there are a few commercial applications available on OpenPandora's repositories and on Symbian's independent "AppList". If there are enough commercial applications that the community is interested in, then perhaps investigating what OpenPandora or independent Symbian developers are doing to offer commercial applications might be a useful exercise.

Candidates, What is your main phone now and over years ?

maybe adding short answers to questions on wiki page will help members to decide who to vote for...

like for myself to put on my wiki's user page :

* harmattan : I think this is my favorite OS , I use it every day
* maemo4- : the one that get me in
* mameo5 : never really used it , I missed the train , but took meego one
* sailfishos : i got one but I dont use that much because harmattan fits my needs
* bb10 : qt+cascade is nice but OS is closed
* neo900 : got all my support , oshw matters to me
* android : well community images are interesting and Qt on it is good


ps: please update your signature to get attention for the coming election ...