[maemo-developers] Updating the info for Extras-devel non-free

[From: Stephan Jaensch]

Am 27.11.2009 um 11:15 schrieb Quim Gil:

> - Do you want non-free apps showing up in
> http://maemo.org/packages/repository/qa/fremantle_extras-testing/ ?
> 
> - Do you want non-free apps showing up in
> http://maemo.org/downloads/Maemo5/ ?

I'm relatively new to the Maemo scene and am currently developing my first Maemo app using C++ and Qt. I have also played with Python and PyQt which is quite nice. Just wanted to take this opportunity to say hi to you all and give you my humble opinion on the matter. :)

I don't know yet if I'll be releasing my app as open source, it could very well be non-free. So this issue is interesting to me both as a developer as well as a user.

First of all, my viewpoint as a user: I want as many apps as possible. Choice is always good. I own an iPod Touch, and I can say with confidence that my criteria for selecting an app is always functionality, quality (hard to gauge since there is no "try before you buy", so I'm judging by user ratings for that) and price. As a user, I don't care about source code availability. One of the main reasons I chose Maemo/N900 instead of e.g. the Palm Pre is that there are almost no apps available for their WebOS platform even months after release.

As a developer, I want users to be able to get the app as easy as possible, delivering as high a quality as I can. So obviously I would want my app to be in extras-testing. But if that is not possible / not wanted by the community, appearing on downloads/Maemo5/ would still be important.

> Testers with a strong opinion about open source might not be interested
> at all on this, but other users might be indeed interested in becoming
> betatesters of a non-free app in exchange of checking the lastest
> versions some days/weeks before regular users get them in Ovi or elsewhere.

I agree. I do understand that Maemo has a strong open source (or even free software) crowd. I am a big fan of open source myself. If people do not want non-free apps on their device, just don't add non-free to your sources.list. Problem solved. Same with QA. Nobody is forcing anybody to QA non-free packages, right? That doesn't mean that people who actually want to do that QA should be prevented from doing it.

Cheers,
Stephan