Notices

Due to the lack of DRM and the poor security put in place on the OVI store, it just isn't possible to sell content without someone easily pirating and redistributing it at this time. However this issue seems to have been addressed in Harmattan with a special security layer.

I don't know what .pub is, but there are a few .epub readers. One of them is browser-based. The other is FBReader.

Ovi store is not ready yet AFAIK - that means there's no simple way to put your applications up for sale. And I'm not sure who would go for proper development before PR1.2 since you can't install some apps compiled with SDK 1.2 (current).

Lack of DRM has little to do with it. It's almost entirely to do with the difficulty of development and the lack of proper functioning of the Ovi store with respect to the N900.

Some you can, there are apps that install and some that don't. I don't really understand it myself (Linux is new to me), I think one can manually specify dependency on the old libs.

There's also the fact that some developers may do it just for their own enjoyment. Or to fill a niche that they felt the N900 lacked.

If you want to give back to developers I suggest that you

a) donate time helping the developer test bugs, or test releases
b) help the developer out in threads (if you understand the software enough) to help answer questions and what not
c) donate code (of course not everyone is a programmer)
d) donate money (if they accept donations). Some developers don't make it obvious though (don't be afraid to send a PM).

Plenty of ways to give back.

Thanks for the info! I will give FBReader and devs should mention and have a paypal donation link or something. I tell you, kind disapointed now cause it seems this phone will not have apps like at least the android.

Are there developers that don't get enough feedback on their apps? Including bug reports and feature enhancements? I never noticed this, in fact, I think that developing anything for Maemo is basically a full time job because of the pestering.

If there are devels that don't get enough help then we should help exposure. I vote for pinning underfed app threads in Applications. I'd install and test an app even if I didn't really care for it (minus things that require kernels or a Linux home base) if there were developers willing to push verions and features.

But thus far I think there are way more bugs and requests for features than there are developers.

One of the reasons would be that a lot of the applications on this platform is ported to and not developed for the N900. There is a whole lot of software that has been made available for free to linux over the last decades. It's one of the biggest software movements in history.

It's not quite as hard work to port a 20 000 line application as it is to write it. Thus, people are more likely to do it for free.

This is one of the Maemo advantages over... oTher platforms.

Many more apps will start showing up after the new firmware that also brings support for Qt4.6. Apps written in Qt will run on the N900 and newer Symbian phones like N97 or the upcoming N8.