After a long time, Nokia enabled Extras for out-of-the-box on Maemo 5, meaning that users would see a large range of software when going to Application Manager.

I think this has been crucial to the success of the N900 - certainly, if I get a device and go to its "get more software" app/page and see only a few apps, I think the ecosystem is dead.

The community put in place a QA system to ensure quality; I think this has also worked (relatively) well to prevent major obvious breakages getting through.

So, the question is, should Nokia keep Extras enabled out-of-the-box on the MeeGo-Harmattan device later this year?

I think they should, just to show they appriciate the community

Yes, absolutely! If it's not enabled someone responsible at Nokia should be fired!

Thank you for starting this discussion. It is a good time to have this discussion.

Jaffa, you have pointed out the positive aspects, but let me remind you about other indirect consequences that brought some extra hassle:

- Having Extras enabled out of the box has put more pressure in the community QA process, that several times has been criticized as too heavy.

- Having Extras enabled out of the box has put more pressure in cases like emulators, FM Radio, Chromium...

I'm not saying this is good or bad, and I'm not even saying that these problems wouldn't exist if Extras wouldn't be not enabled by default. But there is indeed a link.

An option would be not to offer Extras enables out of the box but keep promoting great Extras apps in the official Nokia channels, like it has been the case in Maemo 5 with http://maemo.nokia.com/maemo-select/ and others.

Hmm.
Now when extras is enabled out of box in N900 it means that QA should interest Nokia also. End users do not understand where programs come. They only see that device is from Nokia and programs come also from Nokia. And if quality is not perfect then they blame Nokia.

So I´m not sure if Nokia should enable it by default. Maybe disable and give user option to enable it with warning and when installing stuff then also warning that Nokia doesn´t give any support or promises that programs work.

Currently for example widgets/im protocols and programs that install daemon to background seem to be high risk programs that should undergo much much stricter QA than single app or theme.*

*One way to decrease incompatibility of new fw and apps in extras is to release devel fw. And this seems to be case with Meego?

.edit
gqil's idea about promoting good apps to official Nokia channels sounds good to me.

Well, now that we've seen the Ovi QA process, it's perhaps time to loosen up the maemo.org one ;-)

I'm truly interested if there's a way we can find out whether having Extras enabled out-of-the-box had any bearing on the emulation and Chromium issue. The latter, I'm almost certainly, was found through some kind of regular Googling (or, given the suit, Binging) for "chromium download". That'd've led to maemo.org and a C&D.

The former (emulators) was perhaps something to do with the visibility of a *.nokia.com domain showing off a video of them.

All software has bugs, the FM Radio case didn't cause any longterm damage (wasn't it fixed with a reboot?). Would an Ovi Store developer trying to do something similar either a) have had the issue picked up during Ovi QA or b) had more access to Nokia engineers when designing the software? There were some Nokians helping yerga during the development on maemo-*, but it seemed a little ad hoc.

An interesting idea would be to look at the two classes of problems found there (major loss of functionality side-effect and C&D letters) are find other ways of mitigating them, rather than just turning Extras off. Perhaps:

1. Any application which integrates with hardware (microphone, FM radio, Bluetooth, GPS) goes through a more rigourous process; perhaps including some official Nokia input? (Or they go into a different repo?)
2. The maemo.org legal situation is, as you know, being discussed.

Are there other classes of problem which need to be looked at?

I'll do a survey of the two less-deeply-involved-in-the-community people who have N900s to see if they've even heard of Maemo Select; or even maemo.org/downloads/ - or whether they've just used the "Ovi Store" link and the Application Manager.

I really don't expect people in a more mainstream device to go Googling to find where to get extra software from, and - TBH - I think placing the bets that Ovi for MeeGo(ish) platforms will be a roaring success is, perhaps, a little optimistic. People are used to integrated experiences now, having Extras enabled out-of-the-box goes a long way towards that.

Shipped but disabled? If so, can we only have one single enormous warning rather than obtrusive messages on each install. Annoyingly, the code to do that was even available for the Diablo HAM (cos qwerty12 and I submitted the patch); but it's harder to do with the current UI.

Not enabling Extras OOTB in MeeGo/Harmattan/whatever it's called is, plainly, an insult towards the community.

The QA process that maemo.org has now was put in place to prove to Nokia that enabling Extras OOTB would be safe, that only tested software would make it through.

IMO, it's succeeded: The Testing Squad are good at finding issues re. optification etc. and Venomrush was quick to post about sio2interactive's gaming of the system.

Contrast this to the Ovi store, enabled by default, run by Nokia, where non-optified apps have gotten through a few times.

I am in favor of keeping Extras enabled. But I still retain that we need to perfect our processes for extras... especially including a way to remove apps that become broken after-the-fact by the maintainer, as well as a better testing system (or at least, some way for people to vote on testing directly from the device easily).

I'd like to see extras at least offered as an optional source for software if not enabled by default. I really don't want to see all the community effort hidden from the users. that said it should be discussed what can be offered to the users. personally I find it a bit weird that all the users are offered custom kernels, etc from extras. I think that kind of packages belong in devel.

about the community QA. I think the problem is not the weight of extras QA but the lack of community QA testers. time to live for packages in testing would be useful IMO. if package is not promoted within a month remove it from testing.