To put this in context, the word "they' refers to experienced developers with over decade of professional experience (i.e. they have a family, rent, mortgage, expenses and mouths to feed).

I don't see the same problem with developers who are just starting out, eager to gain experience..

First of all thanks for the great contributions to the thread.
It was somewhat of a 'relief' to realize that I was at least not entirely alone in having concerns of the nature I expressed in the opening thread.

One of the more interesting paradoxes that I see is that even though open-sourcing offers a lot to the areas of continuity and support of applications with the source code readily available - it seems as if it is one of the areas that fails most often on the maemo platform.
As I've stated in the opening post I really do like the concept of open sourcing but the way it is executed on a commercial device like the NITs (I think it's too early to speak much about Fremantle) does not portray the platform as a viable option for many professional users that are not developers themselves.

Commercial applications also have a fundamental 'clash' with the philosophy of open sourcing (how do you give out the source code for an application that you also charge for, open source code means the potential of a variety of 'versions' of the app and that may go against the consistency that paying customers are expecting from it, 'free' versions appearing, etc, etc). In addition to that, open source is very much about community building and support - not about commercializing products and lock away the code out of sight.

It does however bring back the question to - how can this be managed in an open source environment that is small and where the interest is in much focused on individual development and not continuity/support of abandoned projects.

Is there a role for Nokia to step into here?
If an application has reached a certain degree of 'populaity' (sorry, bad choice in words) the application gets tagged for 'official support' and development resources from Nokia would get involved. I don't know. It's a tricky situation but, if un-addressed I also feel that the Nxxx's will never be viewed as realistic options for many professionals.
As I've said before, your opinions and experiences are most certainly different but this still remains a big concern of mine.

Phil, I of course understand what you imply about any software will continue to evolve and change. But I think that for the purpose of this discussion 'finished' includes areas like a level of support for bugs/documenations/help, a polished UI, finishing up feature implementations that have been discussed/announced, a level of continuity, etc.

Examples of that, for me, would be applications like the MS Office suite, Firefox, etc.
None of them are perfect but they would meet the, granted few and hastily put together, 'requirements' for 'finished'.

P.S: I was sort of hoping that we could stay away from posts about how the Apple appstore have thousands of 'crap-applications, etc - my intent was not so much to compare maemo with other OS solutions but rather to look at where we are, are there grounds for real concerns (and if you feel that there is not then that is of course a perfectly acceptable answer/contribution) and if so, what can be done to address them.

Edit: Unfortunately, in the end, I feel that this thread will disappear and nothing will really have been achieved from even starting it. I'm not assuming that one small posts will, or even should, alter such significant areas as discussed here but in the same way I also feel that the 'value' in raising theses concerns will mostly amount to me practicing my poor typing skills

Is there an official comment about any of this from Nokia somewhere?
I tried searching but couldn't find anything that was really applicable.
Is this something that the Maemo 'council' could/should works on (I plead both council-ignorance and also guilty to not read up on what they do).

Thanks for an interesting discussion.

Even those developers can potentially code for free. It just depends on the developer, for example how altruistic they may be might influence their likelihood to code for free (when they have free time). Or they might be working for a company but want to create something of their own where the program itself is free but services are at a cost.

I imagine, as has been pointed out all ready, that the user base and developer base for the N900 will be so much larger than for the previous tablets, that there will be more apps, more polish and more everything.

Maybe there'll even be commercial proprietary offerings, but I personally wouldn't care about that, since I'm only in it for the Freedom.

Obviously we won't know for sure for a while, though.

You're right in that we won't know for sure for quite some time.

Come to think about it, maybe this is part of a rather clever strategy from Nokia:

a) Concept-proof of NIT hardware (up to N810)
b) a realization that the NITs were too niched to attract the mass needed in maemo for community application support/continuity
c) development of a smartphone running maemo - increasing the community size to the point that it now is big enough to not have 'just' people developing but also maintain/continue application projects
d) back to develop a new NIT - now supported by a grown maemo community

Personally, I love to see an 'N820', running maemo6 coming out of all of this - so, 'Go point d!!'

Well... commercial software can be distributed as binaries only right ?
If really necessary, commercial developers can use serials and so on.
Of course I'd personally prefer free software, and won't be surprised if a commercial application comes to the N900 and there are developers who try to make a free version as well.

Maemo 5 and the N900 will rock, mainly due to consumer demand and the pressure Nokia will feel to support it in a big way. This device has broad interest from Linux techs to general smartphoners.

Maemo 5 will experience its own micro economy, with Nokia being the heavy investor in this economy. This in turn will create even more interest in Maemo and the N900 as well as devices for next year.

That is my take anyway.

Apologies for that one, my wording was unreasonably inprecise. Might be also due to the fact that English isn't my mother tongue. I would like to participate none the less though.

Thanks to silvermountain at this point for putting in more precise words what I tried to express. Of course I didn't mean finished as in perfected, feature complete as in nothing more exists which could possibly be added but I rather thought of a software having reached a certain level of maturity, quality, polishedness and shinyness UI wise, having the most severe bugs eliminated. So to say finished as for the state or stage it is in. I hope you get the idea.

Comparing software to human or in a wider sense natural evolution is a bit far fetched though. While evolution per se can't or at least shouldn't be influenced, the evolution or progression of a software can. Or as it seems to me, and this is what I argue about, even should be influenced, directed, planned, thought ahead of. Speaking of thinking ahead: pick up the idea of stages or states in the paragraph above. I'm not that up to date on the developement of any of the big projects, but I do know that every major project formulates milestones or goals and a certain set of features or a grade of completeness which has to be met to reach the next version, to advance to the next stage so to say. So it is being thought ahead, planned and then executed. A lot of those little project's are missing out on that. Version numbers increment retrospectively, with the developer feeling that enough functions have been added since the last incrementation. The developement of Debian, Firefox or even Maemo itself at Nokia works more the way I described it, I think. Of course I stand corrected if wrong. So, to summarize what I tried to describe, it seems to me there has to be that critical mass I have been talking about or the commercial drive to keep projects evolving in a way finally useful to the end user, being again very imprecise and not very careful with my wording

Which I feel is just not true. Well yes, true, there is always and always will be something different around the corner. But it's not so much the case with finding that something useful and it being improved. It is in fact the key to it all, I feel. Imagine that this certain something coming around the corner is very appealing to a developer; he will most likely drop his current unfinished/unpolished/unperfected project, no matter how appealing, useful or why not even necessary it may be to a certain circle of people. An example will follow later. So the developer moving on will result in a once promising project being being left behind. A piece of immature software in a maybe more or less usuable state, but ageing quite quickly without further developement or care and thus being rendered obsolete very quickly. An imagined scenario could be vpnc which would be rendered useless in an instant if not looked after upon Cisco deciding to introduce alterations in its VPN servers altering the connection method. However, if vpnc would be a commercial product, it would be altered along with the alterations taking place in the servers. Of course this would also happen if the project would have gained so much attention that it wouldn't be abandoned. Bad example, I know, as vpnc is enough important to several developers themselves so it will most likely be maintained and end users can benefit from that. But if a developer only works for the users and not or not anymore for himself as well, the project will most likely be abandoned at some point.

Granted. But this doesn't pose a problem since most users will most likely or hopefully leave a sinking boat. But what about all those useful tools and/or utilities, far from being mature enough to be left alone? What if the perception of the developer and users differs in exactly the point what a dead end is and what not? I don't know. I seriously don't know. I just know that there is an awful projects on sourceforge which could be very very cool but are dead. Without any word from the autor in most cases.

Hmm... now having proof read my whole text, the idea of that critical mass seems to become strikingly clear. Of course once a critical mass has been met, enough developers which care about the project are following the project as well, as a part of this mass. I suppose it's them picking up the development once the original maintainers leave for something else. Now small projects, even if very very very useful, cannot profit of this fact. Which is, where mannakiosk comes into play:

While this is true as well, the userbase and thus the potential circle of engaged developers will be wider upon the release of the N900, this most likely won't change the way those small projects are handled though. I personally fear more developers will result in more single projects being abandoned after some time. Like the number of dead projects is somewhat proportional to the number of developers.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The Ubuntu professional products. SuSE. Mandriva. In fact any commercial distribution, no?
But speaking of commercial software, theres the DocToGo suite which will cost money. AFAIK the viewer is only functional for 30 days as well, right?

What a post. I need to go to bed, it's 4:30am and I have to get up at 5:15am. See my problem? I'm too dedicated, now if I only were a developer Thanks for the civilized discussion though!

One last thing:
Uuuhm... yes and no? Yes it will create more interest in Maemo, the N900 and the following devices. But no it won't put any pressure on Nokia. Remember: Nokia has laid out a business plan, all steps are carefully planned, budgeted and marketed. The N900 is just one small piece in a big puzzle and we the consumers are important in the sense of take out those bills, go to the next shop and buy a device with the Nokia logo on it. All this is not about Nokia being friendly to anyone, this all is business after all...

Like so many areas, much of the "free" development stems from someone simply wanting to build the better mousetrap for themselves and, once it is done, they share it. Certainly there are those who feel they can earn money on personal development, and they try (some are more successful than others)... but like all tinkerers, there are those who enjoy making, cobbling together or designing something which would be custom only for themselves. However; with today's method of aggregation those packages which are wanted/embraced by other users can easily be distributed at virtually no cost. More and more, this same idea is found in hardware -- just take a look at "Instructables" or Make magazine... resourceful folks giving us everything we need to make a project work... short of making it themselves. In so many ways, it is the same idea. We are entering very exciting times.... and with hardware like the N900 (and the others before it) people are being made enablers for one another.

I think with communities like maemo, certain packages will float to the top, for whatever reason (good "marketing", hype, etc) and some potential winners will wither and die... but so it is in nature too... this process of software acceptance is really a little Darwinist, but that spawns excitement. This is just the beginning, and from all the new folks joining these forums, some superstars will appear, and the entire community will benefit.

Thor

Nokia needs to maximize returns at some point. Their business model is beginning to show signs of erosion due to the same tactics and strategy for each device.

The N900 is their chance to maximize returns through the nice economic point of economies of scale. The more devices they make of the same device, the more money they will make to stop erosion (of course, they must be careful of diminished returns here too).

Their macro perspective of their business has truly reached the point of diminished returns, so they can fix this at a micro level by selling as many of each device as possible. This is facilitated through strong commercial and community support to sustain interest- beginning with the N900.

Again, just my take and my odd fixation with economics