[maemo-developers] maemo developers: FOSS x $$$$

[From: Felipe Crochik]

Sivan, 

Thank you for your feedback.

Ideally I would prefer it to be free to all or, at least, to anybody willing
to participate and contribute to the community. If we can find other options
of revenue I am all for it.

For me it is more about figuring out a way to keep "open source" and live
than a way to keep it completely not-paid for. 

I assume anybody can see the value of good open source software and the
value of having "independent developers" spending their spare hours working
on them. Many of us can afford to do it for free but there is no doubt that
the possibility of generating some income would be a good motivator.

Maybe is less about having a mandatory fee and more about figuring a
"central" way to generate revenue with donations and ads that can be used to
maintain the website and sponsor/reward developers. 

I wouldn't have a problem "contributing" some money per year to keep the
community alive and developers committed to, at least, maintaining software
for the n900. 

I am afraid that the time may have passed for the maemo.org but I would love
to find a path that would conciliate open source/open community/open devices
with remunerating independent developers so they would have an alternative
to closing the source and selling on app stores. I believe this is will be
an issue for meego as well.

Felipe

-----Original Message-----
From: sivang at gmail.com [mailto:sivang at gmail.com] On Behalf Of Sivan
Greenberg
Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2011 11:38 AM
To: Felipe Crochik
Cc: maemo-developers at maemo.org
Subject: Re: maemo developers: FOSS x $$$$

Hello,

Without reading the entire thread, I don't think this is the way to
go. The Maemo OS and the N900 already went out as hacker's platform.
Turning the Maemo.org thing into a paying service would take away one
of the largest marketing points for the OS platform. That in mind, ads
and other monetary devices should be used without hesitation if that's
what we need to hold this community alive and kicking. We do have
rather unique audience that I am sure many advertisers would like to
reach.

I get people asking me for a recommendation to get the device still,
please don't make me have to tell them that they need to pay for the
maemo repos and the rest of the .org web presence offers.

The strong free ecosystem around it for some made the difference
between getting other platform or taking my recommendation and embrace
with love the rough edges.

Thanks!

-Sivan

On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 6:04 PM, Felipe Crochik <felipe at crochik.com> wrote:
> I wasn't aware of the discussion that happened on talk.maemo.org until
> "realsportscar"(FastSMS) told me about and, after reading it, found it
could
> be of interest to other developers.
>
>
>
> This is a link to my post on the thread but the entire thread presents an
> interesting picture:
> http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=927439&postcount=89
>
>
>
> Felipe
>
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>