[maemo-developers] Hello Maemo - CFSONID 2008

[From: Robert Schuster]

Hi!
(If some bits sound to serious for your taste, take them with a grain of
salt.)

I finally subscribed to this list because I think the time is right. I
attended LinuxTag 2008 in Berlin/Germany a few days ago. Quim Gil and
other people from Nokia and the Maemo community were there. In the first
Maemo talk Quim invited the community to speak out to Nokia (Btw: really
Nokia or just the OSSO team?) and I want to participate therein.

If you attended the first talk I was the guy asking to raise your hand
if you want to see the Nokia IT devices being freed of all proprietary
software in one way (install a different OS) or another (make IT OS 100%
free itself).

This brings us right to the topic: Free Software - free as in freedom,
you know. :)

I was *not* asking the question to show the Nokia staff that there are
more than just '5 free software' visionaries in Maemo but mainly because
I reported this[0] bug last year and was missing noticeable support from
other free software friends. I know that some really good people have
already given up on this topic and rest assured that this will also be
my last attempt to subvert this community. ;)

So the question at the talk was for me to find out whether I am really
alone with my views. Apparantly it also made all of you show that you
are not alone, too. :)

Ok, Quim introduced the '10 action days'. My impression is that they
would like to hear stuff like 'add feature X to the website', 'port
application foo to maemo' or something else from that category. I have
no suggestion like that because I strongly believe that a healthy free
software community can fix any technical deficiency on their own.

You are not a zealot like me and need an argument now? Ok. The free
software scene came nearly out of nothing. Although free programs
existed long before Linux was written, there was no organisation of
those. One of the early communities that rallied together to make a
change was Debian. It evolved from nothing to something that commercial
free software vendors *want* to base their products on. Debian is the
distribution Maemo was derived from.

Ok, let me state some stuff before it gets hairy:

- I do not consider someone/an organisation/company evil here. There are
just different fears, opinions, convictions, way of doings etc.
resulting in different behavior.

- I consider the OSSO team at Nokia to be more open to FOSS than any
other part in that company and that those guys are restricted by company
policies. If there is something to fix than it will have most likely to
do with that other parts.

- I am very thankful for every contribution from Nokia staff to the free
software community. However I treat every non-free part of the IT OS if
it does not exist when it comes to being thankful.

- If not said otherwise I speak in the name of those Maemo users who
know that FOSS is the way to go. Everyone is free to completely disagree
with my views & opinions.

Over time I learned about a few reasons why companies keep their
Linux-based operating systems closed or deny NDA-free access to
specification. Here are some:

a) treaties/contracts made with chipset vendors (e.g. ARM, TI) enforce a
certain non-disclosure of specifications
b) fear of being imitated/plagiated by ... well manufacturers that are
*specialized* in doing so
c) company-wide policies that enforce a certain working style or common
standards in different company sections (set up to make it easier to
cope with national laws/regulations from *inside* the company[1])
d) fear of appearing less unique to the customer (something marketing
people preach)
e) fear of 'eating away' market share from other inhouse devices
(especially from those where the margin is higher :) )

Without knowing anything from inside OSSO/Nokia in this regard I still
hope that those reasons apply more or less to them because I want to
base this year's "Campaign for Software Freedom on Nokia IT devices
(tm)"[2] on them. ;)

What the campaign is hoping to achieve is the following:

1) Users should be able to install any compatible OSes on their Nokia IT
devices they wish like one can do on their desktop computers.

2) It should be possible to port and put Maemo on other non-Nokia
devices like it is possible to e.g. port Fedora to any machine.

-

The means to achieve this goal are the following:

1) All software in Maemo should be licensed under free software licenses
(I do not care about Skype, Flash, etc).

2) Either specifications or free software drivers should be provided for
the components in the Nokia IT devices.

To achieve those goals the following things should be adhered to:

 * Tackle one bit after another.

Please prioritize important things (e.g. virtual keyboard/handwriting
recognition & battery management). If things start moving the
communities' reward is patience. Feel free to make a big fuss when each
component is freed. The free software community will party together with
you.

 * Future software/hardware releases should not add non-free components

Remember that there is always more than one way. E.g. the free software
community can certainly accept a proprietary GSM modem which responds to
AT commands or a GPS module providing NMEA[3].

-

On the one hand it would be totally cool to get the existing devices
freed and many people would welcome that BUT if all fails and non-OSSO
Nokia staff cannot be convinced that this would be a remarkable and
trust encouraging move THEN the fallback plan is to bring future devices
into a better FOSS shape. That way we will have fully free (as in
freedom) devices in say 2 or 3 generations.

The free software heart aches when saying that but I accept that at this
point in time Nokia's HW lab will already have designed the next devices
and there is no possibility to make substantial changes without causing
high re-engineering costs.

-

Benefits: I am not a lawyer, marketing expert, economist or else. Ask
them if you want advice. However a commodization of portable devices
like the ITs is likely.

Firms and communities could also more easily order a bunch of Nokia
devices and make use of them for special tasks (without having to sign
special contracts, of course).

-

This is really a long mail. I stop here and present the short plan: I
will distill the above stuff into an 'official' statement, put it online
somewhere (Maemo Wiki?) and let supporting users subscribe to it. The
final document is then given to Nokia/OSSO as part of the 'action days'
and if the interest from them is not zero ... well, then you will read
more mails from me. I also hope^H^H^H^H expect more people to chime in then.

	After all this our common goal, isn't it?

Well done if you made it this far. If you are thinking about replying
please use your time productively. I am not inviting to a discussion -
instead I presented a plan. You either contribute to it or let us go
ahead without your support.

Regards
Robert


[0] - https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1584

[1] E.g. in order to sell Nokia devices in some random country a number
of employees must be trained to deal with support and warranty
questions. Stuff like this is what customers expect from a
multi-national company.

[2] The acronym would be rather CSFONID but CFSONID can be pronounced
ziff-sonid and I like that more. Call it whatever you like. ;)

[3] Rest assured that one day GPS and GSM hardware will be produced as
open hardware.



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