[maemo-community] Proposal for community firmware images

[From: Carsten V. Munk]

quim.gil at nokia.com wrote:

I've put up a wiki page on 
http://wiki.maemo.org/Task:Community_firmware_image_distribution
> Shipping an image of a Diablo community variant including e.g. the
> Diablo Flash player is already entering a grey area. Taking an
> hypothetical Flash player preinstalled in an also hypothetical device
> with Maemo 5 and making that binary work in a Maemo variant for the
> N810/N800 would enter even a darker area.
>   
The need for distribution of 3rd party items (so far) is mostly with 
bits that are required to get a wireless network connection going. Such 
as, the firmware (.arm/.bin, umac.ko) existing in initfs for wi-fi and 
bluetooth, which is of possible 3rd party origin. This is the technical 
blocker for community firmware images, as there is quite a lot of 
interest in community to alter initfs to fit user needs.

Skype, Flash and other 3rd party flashy bits are not required 
applications to be preinstalled in a maemo.org distributed image. 
Packages like that -could- (I don't know what your specific agreements 
are), be provided as part of a "Nokia repository" limited to certain 
models (your updates repository is already similar), though. From a 
technical point of view it is not a must-have to have community firmware 
images be possible.

I'm inclined to think there will pop posts/etc up on how to get the 3rd 
party applications installed anyhow from users though, which is why it's 
good to take this kind of discussion beforehand :)

/Carsten V. Munk