[maemo-developers] ... and QA of closed source applications?

[From: Jeremiah Foster]

On May 6, 2009, at 12:59, Attila Csipa wrote:

> On Wednesday 06 May 2009 12:33:21 Henrik Hedberg wrote:
>>    This is a very important question, and even if some members of the
>> maemo.org community may be hard core open source software  
>> enthusiastic
>> using only free software in their devices, the reality is that  
>> there are
>> even more opportunities to get very good software for the devices  
>> if we
>> allow also non-free software to be a part of our community supported
>> extras repository.
>
> I think one of the key issues is not if it is possible to install  
> non-free
> software, but rather to be in the clear that people *know* which  
> software is,
> and which isn't free and then decide for themselves if they want it  
> or not.
> In the spirit of recalling the history of the wheel, I'll mention  
> the Debian
> and Ubuntu families solve this by putting them in a separate  
> repository (just
> as available as the free ones). Since we already have a nokia/extras  
> split,
> this could be just as extension to that.

This is a good idea. I think the name needs to change though, to  
include a more specific notion of "non-free". Currently extras-devel  
or even extras-testing do not inform the user that there is a  
significant change in license and usability. The current naming scheme  
is unclear.

>
> In the same vein, Ubuntu solves the question of 'I just ported but I  
> have no
> clue how it works' with the main/universe/multiverse repo split, so  
> you know
> which package is really cared for and when are you treading more  
> dangerous
> waters with regard to support (this also defines where the  
> bugreports go ->
> for a universe package most of the stuff will go upstream -> unlike  
> packages
> in main which have maintainers/packagers who actually have the  
> knowledge to
> check/fix bugs and decide if a bug is worth sending upstream or not.

This is what I imagine will happen in maemo as well, so I think trying  
to maintain that every bug found in a maemo package go through the  
maemo maintainers bug triage is unrealistic.
>
> There is a downside, of course - dependencies get more tricky with  
> multiple
> repositories, but with a clearly defined procedure and repository  
> purpose
> that can be remedied in most cases. The alternative, shoveling  
> everything
> into a single giant melting pot repo (regardless of license, level  
> of support
> or origin) did not work for Debian or Ubuntu, so I'm a bit skeptical  
> if it's
> the right way to go in Maemo, either.

I too am skeptical, based on experience with debian. This becomes  
really tricky really fast.

Jeremiah