30 January 2011

another Maemo lesson - limit your trust to corporations

Open development/Licensing change requests has now interesting header which brings more light and relate to previous post:

Please note that this process is effectively dead. Please see http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=784443 for details. Summary: Nokia doesn't have a Maemo distmaster anymore to process these requests, and does not plan to allocate further resources for Maemo to change this, rather than just trying to make the corresponding Meego components open.

by Josh

and further

Note: *Nothing* was ever opened via this process.
by Jebba

with written aside "a sequence that might help you understand more the current situation" by qgil .

and quote from document on why closed things stay closed (and as you see, never become open, even if someone trying to master "process to open").

Reasons for closed packages

Open source is the licensing model preferred by Nokia in the development of Maemo. There are some reasons to have exceptions, though.

  • Brand: Nokia wants to keep a strong brand and identity avoiding any risks of dilution.
  • Differentiation: Nokia wants to gain competitive advantage in certain areas by keeping the related software closed.
  • Legacy: Nokia keeps some components minimally maintained - the work of opening them has an unclear outcome.
  • IPR & licensing issues: Nokia avoids serious risks brought by patents, copyrights or complicated licensing situations.
  • Security: Nokia avoids safety risks and liabilities that could be caused by freeing access to certain hardware components.
  • Third party: Nokia does not own the code and therefore does not decide on the license.

corporations rarely or never give up on own or peer's interest.

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