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Posts: 189 | Thanked: 121 times | Joined on Oct 2009
#101
Originally Posted by ewan View Post
The topic is non-free, closed-source, dead-end proprietary software. The point is that it's hardly a loss to the (free, open, community, etc.) Maemo if app developers are pushed in the direction of submitting to Maemo, rather than casually carrying on with proprietary business-as-usual.
In the real world developers will just go sell their "dead end" software for Android and Apple devices instead and people will buy those devices to access those applications.

OSS is complimentary to not hostile to commercial software. There's nothing contradictory or inappropriate about publishing an entirely OSS application for a fee.
 

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#102
You mean my post? What I was thinking is that there would be an application (basically just a fancy web browser that is the web store) that people can download and install from maemo extras. Then it is a program that can be launched to download commercial applications. The application itself would just be a fancy front-end for consumers since they may not know of maemo.org
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Originally Posted by ysss View Post
They're maemo and MeeGo...

"Meamo!" sounds like what Zorro would say to catherine zeta jones... after she slaps him for looking at her dirtily...
 
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#103
Originally Posted by sharper View Post
OSS is complimentary to not hostile to commercial software. There's nothing contradictory or inappropriate about publishing an entirely OSS application for a fee.
Sure. But the first person buying it can then push it into the extras repository.

I'm not saying that I don't want to have a market for developers who want to sell their software, but I hope that some developers see that opening their software might be the better route, as I seriously don't believe that there are many developers making some sort of income from the apple app store at the moment - and same goes for the android store.

I think Apple really buggered up expectations of developers with their app store.

Last edited by range; 2009-11-20 at 13:40. Reason: expections really looked wrong :)
 
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#104
Originally Posted by range View Post
Sure. But the first person buying it can then push it into the extras repository.
People pay real money for lots of OSS products for various reasons. I could, for example, take GIMP and make a simply QT UI for it so it runs on the N900, publish the source code but also put a nice productised version up on the Ovi store. Is it unreasonable of me to ask people to pay for that? Am I to be lambasted by the OSS community? Some perhaps who don't understand the relationship between OSS and commercial software.

I'm not saying that I don't want to have a market for developers who want to sell their software, but I hope that some developers see that opening their software might be the better route, as I seriously don't believe that there are many developers making some sort of income from the apple app store at the moment - and same goes for the android store.

I think Apple really buggered up expections of developers with their app store.
"Opening their software" is irrelevant to this discussion. People can do publish fully open sourced applications which still sell for a fee.

Right now "free" is pretty much the only way developers can get their work onto an N900 in a convenient way. That puts it way way behind the other platforms when it comes to attracting talent and innovation. Instead of being able to pay someone to make applications for me according to my requirements I have to make-do with whatever people happen to donate for nothing.
 
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#105
Well they couldn't push it into extras since it is a community reviewed approval process. But you are right, there's nothing stopping them from putting it on the internet for anyone to grab.

Piracy rates are high on every platform (even the iPhone). Having a closed app store system doesn't help you much, sure there may not be another way to get apps without jailbreaking, but look at the amount of information out there on jailbreaking and how many people were hit with that SSH vulnerability since most people just follow guides on how to jailbreak their phone without thinking about what the process is doing.

Though my concern more with the Ovi store isn't DRM at the moment (like I said it'll always be cracked. Try to use an IMEI #? People can change the IMEI #, etc..). But that it should be a setup system for handling transactions between the seller of the program and the buyer (regardless of what happens to the program after it's passed onto the buyer). And right now it's failing pretty badly at that if you can't afford to pay to go through their hoops.
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Originally Posted by ysss View Post
They're maemo and MeeGo...

"Meamo!" sounds like what Zorro would say to catherine zeta jones... after she slaps him for looking at her dirtily...
 

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#106
@Sharper: The rise of bounty systems, even within OSS communities, is another example of that point.
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Unofficial PR1.3/Meego 1.1 FAQ

***
Classic example of arbitrary Nokia decision making. Couldn't just fallback to the no brainer of tagging with lat/lon if network isn't accessible, could you Nokia?
MAME: an arcade in your pocket
Accelemymote: make your accelerometer more joy-ful
 
Posts: 337 | Thanked: 160 times | Joined on Aug 2009 @ München, DE
#107
Originally Posted by sharper View Post
People pay real money for lots of OSS products for various reasons. I could, for example, take GIMP and make a simply QT UI for it so it runs on the N900, publish the source code but also put a nice productised version up on the Ovi store. Is it unreasonable of me to ask people to pay for that? Am I to be lambasted by the OSS community? Some perhaps who don't understand the relationship between OSS and commercial software.
I just said that that won't keep anyone from putting the software into Maemo Extra, after he paid you for it - that is "the problem" (no, it really isn't) with Open Source software: The business model is not "selling software", but "putting services around software".

I don't see any lambasting there, just a business model where there really isn't one.
 
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#108
Originally Posted by range View Post
I don't see any lambasting there, just a business model where there really isn't one.
The "reasons" for paying for OSS software are numerous and the point is not that people will always publish the source code for their N900 applications - the point is that source code availability is irrelevant to this discussion.

Some are expressing the viewpoint that they don't care about someone's "dead end" proprietary software. Well this problem affects fully open source software too. Whether people are paying for support, a service or whatever else is again not relevant. People do pay for OSS applications and the limited ability to make software for the N900 and get paid for it by people who want to pay for it will hurt the platform. People will just go to other competing platforms and those applications and users will be there instead of here.

Nokia needs to figure out what the heck it's doing. As I wrote in another thread Nokia has all the appearances of an organisation in civil war. Different people are obviously trying to push it in different directions and what we end up is a compromise that satisfies nobody.
 

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#109
That's not a problem with open source software, that's a problem with a business model of trying to sell an application when anything digital can be infinitely replicated. You can do the same thing with Windows, OSX, etc..

Do I think the business model should change? Yes, but I rather give people the choice to try the old (and in my opinion failing) business model rather than not let them try at all. After all that's what the spirit of open source is about. Choice.
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Originally Posted by ysss View Post
They're maemo and MeeGo...

"Meamo!" sounds like what Zorro would say to catherine zeta jones... after she slaps him for looking at her dirtily...
 

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#110
Originally Posted by sharper View Post
People pay real money for lots of OSS products for various reasons. I could, for example, take GIMP and make a simply QT UI for it so it runs on the N900, publish the source code but also put a nice productised version up on the Ovi store. Is it unreasonable of me to ask people to pay for that? Am I to be lambasted by the OSS community?
You might get some stick from those who do't understand the GPL. The GPL allows exactly that, but it almost never happens ...

You must publish the source for the 'productised' version to those who bought it and it must be licensed under the GPL - you can't stop them buying it then publishing it on extras for free.
 
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