Yes, but if it is the only way you can distribute your app, it gets you started. Make money off your first app, then become more serious and establish a business entity.

I know it's not a brilliant idea, I'm just throwing suggestions in the air.

Hi, I'm about to jump on a plane to Maemo Developer Days @ Copenhagen. Short answer and see you later.

https://publish.ovi.com/login

See the link "Publishing to Ovi discussion board on Forum Nokia". If you want to give direct feedback to Ovi as a developer that is the official channel for you. maemo.org is about community development, Forum Nokia concentrates in commercial developers.

"VAT / Tax ID" is a compulsory field in the registration form. What information did you put there?

Having a VAT / Tax ID is generally a good idea when doing business. In most countries it's cheap and easy to get one. And in most places the accounting gets complicated as your revenues grow, having to do basically nothing complicated for low incomes.

Some people are opposing "freelance" to "corporation". Let's not get lost in language and translation. Individuals can get a VAT / Tax ID and form a single person company. I have been a self-employed before joining Nokia, and it's not rocket science if you make your living out of it.

Now, in many places you simply can't start selling limonade inside a mall. The problem is less about accounting (if you make 1M you will have to justify that income no matter what) than about liabilities: what if you sell fake Fanta as genuine Fanta? what if you actually are making limonade out of industrial soap poisoning your customers? The mall wants to make sure that it won't be them having to cover your liabilities because you can't yourself. A VAT code implies a legal framework about your commercial activity.

The Maemo Devices team is discussing with the Ovi team about ways to accelerate the acceptance of individuals but, to be honest, our primary case are open source developers distributing free (as in beer and as in speech) software with liabilities defined in the license ("... AT YOUR OWN RISK", says the GPL and others).

I'm happy discussing here further about how to connect OSS developers to Ovi, now and in the future. If you want to lobby for a lower filter for low income commercial developers then Forum Nokia is the right place to propose and discuss.

Fair enough, Quim, and many thanks for taking time to respond. Enjoy Copenhagen!

@qgil
Right, it's as I thought, and it makes perfect sense.

It's also about being legal and paying income tax I suppose. At least here in Finland you need to have a VAT / Tax ID to charge for your services legally. If you just want to distribute your product, and not make money, you can use maemo.org to distribute instead. Not VAT ID needed for that

Firstly thank you all for your replies - they've been very interesting and have continued to address - and echo, many of the concerns and sentiments I've seen.

My point of contention is not with the fact that Nokia is asking for a Tax ID, it is that in many other countries, having a Tax ID is not a mandatory component for doing business.

Apple has been able to offer this service to all developers, corporation or not, without requiring them to be a corporation. Even the comparatively small company I work for pays out thousands of dollars to individuals around the world every month without this requirement. Why this is a problem for a company as large as Nokia I do not understand.

The vast majority of developers aren't going to have a clue about how to register a business. Similarly, most developers aren't going to take on the annual risks and responsibilities of managing a small company unless they're damn sure that they'll be making enough to be worthwhile. Getting your foot in the door is a minimum $200 (Ovi registration + business incorporation).

I'm fortunate enough to have had many years of business in my background of development. Today I started the arduous process of registering a corporation. Once my business name request gets approved (time), I can then prepare my articles of corporation and shareholder assignments, etc, etc, ad nauseam. The vast majority of developers looking to get paid for their work are going to say '**** that' and that will be the extent of their Maemo Development.

Since Quim has made it clear that this policy is here to say, all I can stay is that I'm deeply saddened by Nokia's inability to keep up with it's competitors.

Evidently it's time to call it a day.

The way it looks to me right now, this is less about our inability to do business through Ovi than about Ovi not becoming a viable channel for app distribution, ever. As a developer, I will find a way to sell my applications, even by providing a private link to .install file. As an ecosystem manager though, Nokia is going to lose my business.

As said, this is work in progress and you can get probably frsher and more direct news from Forum Nokia.

Ovi operates in +100 countries and I guess some base legal framework needs to be found first. I believe your feedback about specific problems with specific countries will help them fine tuning the business model

I agree. That's indeed the problem here.
How Apple (and Google Android) do and why Nokia can't do the same?

don't forget to pay Christiania a visit

sad to hear that single developers aren't on the Ovi Publisher's radar. i hope the maemo team at nokia manages to change this soon.
otherwise i expect many "one app" repositories for maemo, fragmenting the whole ecosystem, and making this OS less and less enduser friendly.

Seems like you did not read comment 52 in this thread.
Please go up there and read it.
Thanks.