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

[From: Attila Csipa]

On Wednesday 06 May 2009 14:46:55 Jeremiah Foster wrote:
> > Universe
> > http://repository.maemo.org/extras/pool/diablo/free/
> >
> > Multiverse
> > http://repository.maemo.org/extras/pool/diablo/non-free/
>
> Hmmm. This looks interesting, I think this kind of layout might make a
> lot of sense.

Hm, I missed Quim's comment, but anyway:

Universe is not as close to Extras, nor Main to Maemo... Universe is 
officially "built automatically from a variety of public sources". Extras is 
headed to be much more than that. Also, Main contains *developer, user and 
community* selected software that the Ubuntu teams chose to accept to 
maintain/package/patch. From what I understand, going from Extras to the 
Maemo repository is not a common scenario and the Maemo repository is much 
more 'base-system' in approach. Fremantle stars is the only exception / 
example of budding changes in this - but I might be just missing out on Maemo 
inner policies.

IMO The part where Maemo does not fit into the outlined model is that there is 
a (growing) number of non-Nokia produced applications which are Maemo/NIT 
oriented. You don't have this on desktops, where apps are almost always 
distribution and hardware independent.

For example, if someone writes a Maemo aware/oriented/dedicated application 
(Does it use NIT hardware or Maemo APIs ? Is it hildonized ? Is it 
finger/stylus friendly ? Is the maintainer a maemo.org member ?), with a live 
community, it's still going to be in extras just as a somebody's 
fire-and-forget port straight from Debian would - and share the same 
procedures/channels for promotion, bug reporting/propagation, etc, which 
might not be ideal.