[maemo-community] Council Meeting

[From: Craig Woodward]

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On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 1:17 PM, Quim Gil <quim.gil at nokia.com> wrote:

> On 04/17/2012 01:31 PM, Quim Gil wrote:
>
> From a legal point of view Nokia and non-Nokia binaries are two totally
> different categories since Nokia cannot grant any permissions for the
> latter on its own.
> [...]
> I expect convincing legal teams in other companies under the same arguments
> to be even more complicated.

---- robert bauer <nybauer at gmail.com> wrote:
>Thanks for the lists.  Sure, if it turns out there are 3rd party binaries
>needed for an OBS target, then let's pause the process and discuss the
>situation.

I agree if 3rd party binaries are involved we should pause to examine the possible impact.

One thing I want to keep in mind though, is that Nokia already has _some_ kind of agreement in place to redistribute these 3rd party binaries to end users as part of the existing SDK.  Those agreements _may_ in fact already allow for what's being asked, which could mean no further input or discussions would be required with that/those 3rd parties.

Having worked in the field, I can tell you that it's likely that Nokia lawyers took the _most_ restrictive component policy (which may in fact have been for a Nokia component) and blanket applied that to _everything_ for simplicity sake.  If the components that triggered the hosting policy are not in the sub-set needed for OBS, we may be able to ask for that sub-set to be specifically called out with a slightly less strict policy.  So even if there are 3rd party bits, it may not require additional input from them if the existing contracts, for that sub-set, are open enough.

In a nutshell: The mere existence of a single 3rd party element shouldn't automatically trigger a derailment the idea.

We definitely need to determine exactly what's needed though, and identify if (or how many) 3rd parties are involved.  I suspect it will be at most two or three, which could still merit a request of a quick re-examine of the existing terms to see if this is doable without changing anything with the 3rd parties. That feedback may also inform us of what structure could be used to do this without changing those terms (eg. would forming a legal entity to host them even be a legally viable alternative.)

Also, let's not forget this tech is aging.  Some components may have already been opened up more by the vendors themselves.  Some vendors may be willing to open part of their older tech in ways they wouldn't have several years ago.

-Woody(14619)