Actually, they are slowly releasing their older titles under an open source license (e.g., the Blades of Exile game). So there might be some hope. (Although they are also trying to re-release some of their older titles in a form that works on tablets, so there's hopefully still some commercial potential left in their collection.)

And yeah, I still have to finish the last entry of the Geneforge series myself. I just haven't had the time lately...

(Hmm. How would an open-source activation-code-based application work?)

Even the GPL doesn't deny actually selling your application - as long as you provide GPL'ed source code to every purchaser. So, in case of GPL, it's not much different than any other paid program - you sell it, and hope that people respect you and buy it, instead of getting "pirated" copy.

The only difference here would be that you hope that users respect you and buy it, instead of compiling from source posted "somewhere", released by prior purchaser.

IMO, compiling from source require (nowadays) even ma little more effort than downloading "pirated", "cracked" version and running it, so I would say GPL'ed payware is even better for distributor. Especially, considering the "target" Maemo user-base - I guess that 99,99% people here would preffer to support and respect developer like you and buy your piece of code, than get it from 3th hand.

/Estel

Hmm. You know, that really does kind of make sense to me. Perhaps I will give that a shot!

So, next question -- are there any restrictions on entering open-source apps into the Maemo Extras repository that are explicitly "commercial" in nature? I would imagine that an activation-code on an open source program isn't all that different from a request for donations, but I want to make sure I don't overstep any bounds here...

I also have my doubts. Take an eaxmple of a library we recently purchased at our company. It is open-source, free for personal use, paid for commercial use. Other than the licence terms, there is no difference between the free and the paid version.

So far so good.

I may be wrong but I think Copernicus was considering a different model. A free version with limitations, unlock full features by buying an activation code. I am not sure how this model would work if anyone could access tbe code and see how it works and how to modify it to bypass the activation.

The neo900 initiative if successful will provide more units to "feed" with software.

A bounty system might also work for apps identified as needed in the maemo repos.

This would work if the application is designed in a modular way, so that you could have the basic framework (and some modules) as open source and then you could purchase additional modules that could be closed (and maybe activated with a code)

There is no problem with this as long as the additional modules are compiled so that they contain no GPL'ed code.

I suppose it could also work for targetting the right audience: people without the know-how to inspect and change the code or honest people with such know-how. Dishonest people won't be stopped either way.

If you make your code convoluted enough, you might even say that those who crack it deserve to get the extra features for free

I'm not entirely sure just what I'm thinking right now. What I've got is yet another app like Pierogi, carrying with it a small dense database of info. The source code is simple (and I see no problem with releasing it open-source), but the database is going to take a lot of effort to create and maintain. (And yeah, I don't expect I could live off selling apps to the Maemo community alone. I'll also be trying to squeeze this app into the iOS and Android worlds.)

As Estel noted, in today's world it's just about as easy to distribute a "cracked" closed-source app as it is to distribute a modified open-source app, so there's probably no real security advantage to closing certain modules in the app.

So, I can see both having a sample database for people to first play with the app, and an activation code to enable the whole database; or simply an activation code for the whole app. (Or, if nothing else, just the standard request for donations...) In any case, I don't see how I could stop folks from just tinkering with the app to bypass the payment system, so asking folks to act honorably would probably be the best deal...

That sounds like a straightworward case. Free open program, paid closed database.
Presumably the database is not GPL so you should not run into any upstream licensing issues.

For their panel plugin the Xfce project used weather.com in the past, currently uses met.no and plans to switch to openweathermap.org in the future.
I have no idea what sources Gnome and Xbmc/Kodi use, but it seems to me there are enough free sources for weather data out there.