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

[From: Jari Tenhunen]

On Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 12:15:57PM +0200, Quim Gil wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> ext Jeremiah Foster wrote:
> > I am hesitant here, some of the testing process may require source
> > packages, either now or in the future. I am not certain that non-free
> > packages deserve to get all the free quality assurance that the
> > community provides. I think they should be grateful that they are
> > included at all and if they want to go through testing, they need to
> > at least provide a source package.
> 
> So the questions is in fact non-technical:
> 
> - Do you want non-free apps showing up in
> http://maemo.org/packages/repository/qa/fremantle_extras-testing/ ?

Absolutely. If non-free apps can go to Extras by bypassing testing, that
defeats the whole purpose of the QA process. The average end-user
doesn't know or care about the difference between "free" and "non-free",
but if something he installed from maemo.org Extras did something bad or
didn't work, that's extremely bad for maemo.org and extras as a whole.

The other route you can take is to not accept non-free apps into extras
at all. 

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

Why not, if they have gone through the same quality gate as free apps.

> 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 perfectly understand this view but I hope this is also looked from the
end user's p-o-v.


Cheers,
Jari