Re: Business case.
 

Phoenix. *Cough*

Or NSS & NSU.

As for the rest, X-Plore with AllFiles, ROMPatcher,installserver, TRK, HelloCarbide...

Re: Business case.
 

Seems like you like hacking... Please take a look in /home/user/.bookmarks/

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

I think he means on symbian :)

(which is now hacked :) and has been for a long time. Those programs which I mentioned are only the tip of the iceberg)

Re: Business case.
 

Jerome, and how does this relate in any way to what Ari said?

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

Oh well, to err is human. Thats how it pays me for not using bookmarks at all :D

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

it's in the link i posted regarding licensing... basically ensures QT under BSD-style licensing if Trolltech is acquired and/or development is discontinued (a common move in the proprietary software industry).

this whole 'flap' might not have come about if Jaaski had been either more clear or perhaps not mis-quoted out of context?

Re: Business case.
 

I just explained the daily problems I have with closed source or with a device which is somewhat open, but has some locks built-in (the E51). I just explained why most open source activists are frustrated by locked devices.

In the end, it is about people who have unusual needs, whatever those are. The largest part of the market has needs which are relatively well served by what the industry cooks for them. For phones: call, sms, download top 50s music, buy the latest ring tune, play small games, watch football on DVB-H, use your camera for small prints.

However, there is a sizeable amount of the market who wants to do different things. For example: I rarely phone, never SMS, like unknown hard to find music, wrote my ring tunes myself, never watch football and use a SLR and hugin (free software) for wall-sized prints. I know free software activists, and they all have uncommon uses for their computers. This market wants machines which they can taylor to their needs. Locks get in the way when you need that.

Apparently, it is difficult to get the message across: open source is about building a machine which does what you want. And the industry can't really serve your needs when only you and 20 other geeks on the planet have the same needs. But add 20 geeks here, 20 geeks there and in the end, Nokia sold hundred of thousands tablets. It's a sizable market.

I am a pretty good customer. Altogether, I bought 9 (nine!) N800 (mostly distributing them to my family and friends). Another open source enthousiast I know bought 5 (five) and is using them to build some kind of robots. It's a sizable market...


@qwerty12

I know that Symbian can be jailbreaked, but that is not the point. I don't want a locked machine for which I have to break the lock, and then there is a firmware upgrade which solves important bugs, and I have to break the locks again, and then there is another upgrade, etc... I'm too old for that kind of games. I'm paying good money, I want good service.

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

- http://opensource.nokia.com/contributions.html but is incomplete. Hopefully we will have something better at the end of the maemo.org 100 Days action plan.

"You will have to accept this is what people think", you mean what some people think. Nokia is one of the most known brands in the planet and it raises all kinds of opinions, even inside the free software community. But yes, agreed that this is a perception a noticeable amount of people have. Not necesarely the maintainers of the projects where Nokia is involved, though.

a) Nothing to say to those thinking that global corporations are evil per se. I know the feeling myself, and I had to start evolving it when realizing years ago the role of big and successful companies in the development of free software.

b) What is the business benefit of "taking Qt away from the community"? And what this sentence means in the first place. As said, I still haven't seen any realistic example of what evil thing could do Nokia to Qt.

c) Why to wait for the answer of a marketing guy from Nokia when you can get an answer from the relevant sources. Ask the maintainers of the Linux kernel, X.org, the relevant projects at freedesktop.org and GNOME whether they think Nokia gives back and plays by the rules of the community. Seriously, they have public communication channels and email addresses.

Digging for answers takes more time and it's not always emotionally appealing, though. I take my part of the blame.

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

I really appreciate qgil and ragnar taking the time to participate in this thread.

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

Yes, that clause is well known. What I'm asking for are plausible examples of what Nokia could do to screw things up with Qt.

I think the flap wouldn't be the same if the community at large would be aware about what Nokia is doing and contributing in the free software community.

Of course is not their fault. It shows that we at Nokia have to improve on our communication to this community at large. I might feel uncomfortable about words, but I'm totally comfortable with the actions Nokia is doing in open source.

Re: Business case.
 

Actually, if they linked against LGPL libraries, they need to distribute their object code to allow relinking.

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

I believe what he is alluding to is if Nokia were to stop developing and distributing Qt under the GPL. It would then, under the agreement with KDE Foundation, KDE could then revert Qt to a less restrictive license, BSD.

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

One scenario is coming to my mind and was mentioned by Ari (although in another context): big dump of un-announced code into Qt codebase.

Generally Qt is developed in fairly open way, of course there is "secret" cooking before things are included into public tree but time between disclosure and release of stable version is relatively long so all open-source developers can test new features, develop for them etc. Also those new features are advertised before publishing so there is additional time for preparations. Big dump would break workflow of open-source working. Why? Because Qt packages in most distributions aren't coming straight from Trolltech. This is so called qt-copy maintained by KDE which are TT sources + some KDE specific tweaks. [1]

In case of such big dump KDE developers would have to make tough decision - work overnight and include unreviewed code (risking breaking of core KDE functionality) or shun it. Consequences of both outcomes would be grave. Such situation would really undermine position of Qt by Trolltech in open-source world.

[1] This is because Trolls rarely accept direct patches from outside world (copyrights). Usually they are coming with their own solutions but that can take time while KDE needs solution NOW.

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

Which leads again to the question: What would be the business reason to do that? What would be the benefit for Nokia doing so?

To those still concerned about Qt in the hands of Nokia: big successful businesses might be evil or not, but if they are indeed succesful is because the steps they make generate benefits & profits. When thinking about evil possibilities make sure you find a potential business benefit tied to it. If you can't, then perhaps that evil possibility is unlikely to happen.

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

Fair enough, it is sensible that some people not knowing what has been said and what is going on could be worried about this possibility. Let's look at it then.

Quoting the press release on January, when the acquisition process was announced:

And from the Open letter to KDE and the Open Source community:


That was the promise of Nokia to the Trolltech team and Qt users in the industry and the open source community. The current open development model has been good enough to produce this technology interesting to Nokia and many customers, in the commercial and community contexts. Break this promise, break this development model and... What would Nokia win? What would Nokia lose? What would be the business benefit?

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

I commented on AriJ's blog, but I'll put in my 0.02 euros here.

DRM *could* be USED fairly - i.e. a proper statement by the media author/publishers of how the DRM affects the customer, so that the customer can make an informed decision to accept the product or not.

DRM *could* be IMPLEMENTED fairly - i.e. so that the media data was protected or watermarked without impeding the customer's fair use, and using a standards based codec or open source playback software.. e.g. encrypt the data using a published/standard algorithm so that the consumer can back up the data and also back up the encryption keys. That would mean the consumer would NOT lose access to the media if they changed device (upgraded, replaced after breaking etc), nor could the publisher arbitrarily revoke access to the rightfully-paid-for media. Since the media data was keyed to an individual, that person would want to take care to not leak copies to the world!

So far all DRM schemes in real world use fail the above tests, many are astoundingly unreasonable! Worst of all, many consumers do not understand the situation - I am amazed Sony survived their various exploits with root kits etc, personally I will never touch another of their products. I see the situation as a time bomb waiting to go off!

sorry for the long rant.

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

@qgil

Problem with Nokia and Trolltech is that we don't really know why Nokia bought TT.

There are several possible reasons:

1) Qt will be Next Big Thing in Nokias ecosystem and company wants total control over toolkit - this possibility was mentioned on margin of some of press releases; problem with OS is - for that Nokia doesn't need open-source - completely irrelevant.
2) Nokia wants to buy company which is going well financially to improve its own profits - this one is impossible because TT had financial problems as was revealed by digging around Oslo stock exchange (nothing big but...)
3) Dive into open source while investing next to nothing (AFAIK it was ca. 1.5% of yesteryear profits - comparing with my 'finances': several bags of peanuts).

Third cause was mentioned in letters quoted by you but this doesn't hold. The biggest engagement of Nokia into open-source so far were things connected with Internet Tables. Overwhelming majority of contributions linked earlier are related to tablets (OMAP support for X, D-BUS, etc.). But Internet Tablets are done in GTK! Also there were quick assertions that ITs will stay in GTK land.

So, why Nokia bought Trolltech and what is long term strategy for it in its portfolio?

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

As with any complex system, the answers are never simple or obvious unless you make simlifying and sometimes invalidating approximations.

There is absolutely no debate as to the way Nokia is moving currently (or has moved in the past). I appaud them wholeheartedly for their vision and courage in trying to move the whole industry in a more open direction. It is also obvious that they are leading the pack in making these steps in a very concrete way. They also are heavily contributing (often without any fanfare) behind the scenes in key upstream projects (X, bluez and kernel in particular). For these reasons I am supporting them with my wallet.

However, the debatable thing is the direction they are pointing in for the future thrust. Ari's last several comments contain statements that indicate a mismatch between the direction Nokia's drifting vs. the direction it is pointing that is sending a few people into a panic. The reason that people are negatively vocal is not because they seek to damage Nokia but rather they want to make sure Nokia keeps steering the the more open course and does not cater to the likes of DRM/locking and instead steers around those icebergs (to completely abuse an analogy).

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

Maybe the problem is that some people don't really believe the reasons Nokia is putting in clear words. They go down to conspiracy theories, don't find clear answers and end up saying that the move is unclear. But... what about just trusting the sensible explanations of Nokia? :)

Again from the press release:

So, what is this Nokia Software Strategy about? Quoting the press backgrounder:

You remind the fact Maemo has a UI layer powered by GTK+. Why not reminding the also obvious fact that S60, Series 40 and Series 30 have different, non Qt based UI layers as well. These platforms run the big Nokia numbers, so you better think of them and not in Maemo alone to understand the move with Trolltech.

Considering the size of Nokia and its business, and considering the role "Qt Everywhere" would play in this software strategy, adding the team that develops Qt to the Nokia software units makes a lot of sense. Is this so hard to understand or believe?

Think in the wider context and think in the long run and you will understand why acquiring Trolltech makes more sense than anything else. The code (open or not) is just a product, and if Nokia was looking only after the code then buying licenses would have been enough. What counts is the people and ways of working that were able to produce that code.

By the way, to make Qt work on Maemo in addition to GTK+ is a rather simple issue compared to that. In fact, the community has almost done it already. Two weeks ago we explained how Qt is going to enter in Maemo from now to Harmattan.

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

if this isnt a perfect of marketspeak, where much is spoken, but not much said, i dont know what is...

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

As I see it, Ari wasn't pointing to the future of Nokia but to the present in the mobile industry, highly conditioned to the operators and content providers business models.

The majority of free software developers know about the computer industry, but not necessarely about the mobile industry. The open source code might be the same, but the actors, business models and even legislations around that code are very different. Knowing about the differences can't be harmful for those willing to see open source winning in the mobile space as well.

Fair enough. Please point loudly to any product fitting in your pocket more open and successful than the most open&successful Nokia product, now or in the future.

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

If you have further questions about that joint press release issued months ago by Nokia and Trolltech, you can ask any of the contacts at the end of the page. Emails and phone numbers available.

For what is worth, my translation of that paragraph in plain English is that Nokia wants to keep Qt open, available to third parties and developed with the usual open source ways of working.

If someone is still reading between the lines that Nokia will close Qt and keep it for itself...

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

meh, just me playing buzzword bingo ;)

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

... but also no longer be protected by the GPL. I very much doubt that a non-copyleft-license like BSD can be seen as a bright future.

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

"developed with the usual open source ways of working" =! keep it under the GPL license.

So, is QT going to be kept under the GPL or not? There's no room for marketing speak in the answer, just a "yes" or a "no" will more than suffise.

(I'm betting I won't get either though...)

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

Keeping on quoting public information, this time again the Open letter to KDE and the Open Source community sent by Trolltech and Nokia last January:

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

I can't but wonder if the intersection of those upset by Dr. Jaaksi's words and those who use Nvidia's binary drivers is non-empty.

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

Just for the records: My original posting was not about what I think about Nokia and what I want you to do. - I tried to explain what I see going on around me and what I'd suggest as a possible way of correcting the public image. I do know how to get information about where and how Nokia contributed (although i have to admit I don't use these sources because I'm too lazy and I believe all of what you say anyway. Personal trust beats facts :D ). My suggestion was to do real marketing about it. Be loud. Make sure there's no way people can not hear it. It might be necessary because while I'm only too lazy, others might really not know the sources and are even more lazy.

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

Is there any particular webpage or article to read for the open source users to be 'educated'? Preferably with the modified socratic method as mentioned by Bruce, so that it won't bruise their ego so much in the effort to understand things..

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

Being open

Just slightly off topic... well, not really, only adding an additional aspect:

I work for a public company with roughly 12000 employees and the biggest market share in my country. In terms of public perception, it's on the same level as Nokia here (the difference is that we are on the national market only, while Nokia operates worldwide).

Some time ago, our management decided to join the blogging scene and started to do corporate blogs very much the way Ari does except that comments were always filtered to avoid any kind of negative reaction.
About 6 months after they started it, one of the posts in our CEO's blog stirred a mild debate in the media about the way our company would handle a certain problem in the future. It was far from what we have here, no bad feelings, just a little irritation. (And, to be honest, it was probably the first time anyone noticed he ran a blog at all.)

The consequence was that a few days later they closed the blog, deleted all entries and re-directed the page to our corporate homepage. It never existed.
We discussed this decision inhouse a lot (afterwards, of course). Most of us said it was a shame. The explanation was: As a profit oriented company, we simply cannot risk having any other channel of communication than the official one. Whatever any of our representatives writes has to be checked and double-checked until in line with our official marketing campaigns (=read: until there's no more content at all).

Why do I tell you this? Because whenever we discuss this "is Nokia really serious about being open"-thing (and it's not the first time we do), I notice how open Ari's communication is. Comments remain where they are (did anyone else find the "you're an aHole"-comment extremely embarrassing? I'm ashamed that this is the image 'my' community paints of itself), he keeps on explaining and explaining to people who probably can't even afford an N-series product... Remember the end-of-770-fiasco, he was in a similar situation back then, back against the wall. But instead of hiding behind marketing phrases, he continues talking on an eye-to-eye level to his readers. This is one aspect of openness. Openness in communications. As long as we have this openness, I'm fairly confident that we can simply trust his team that at least they try to do The Right Thing™.

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

:D you're being cruel to the kids.

but you're so right. - you know what? i'm finding myself on the wrong side here. i do not use the binary driver, i boycott skype and use SIP instead, use jabber instead of MSN, i don't play MP3 and i block flash. i firmly believe in free software as a political issue as opposed to so-called "open source" as a marketing buzzword. still, i don't see one single negative aspect in what ari said and what nokia does. all i can see is free software projects that benefit a lot from nokia's involvement. and i can't see what's wrong with that.

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

I wonder if nokia is trying to actually make the IT a phone now and running up against a wall trying to get US carriers to offer it, hence the statements at minimum about SIM locking. I don't think any phone in the US will take off that's not offered by a carrier, and the change in iPhone pricing suggests that subsidizing the initial cost of the phone is most effective (which presumably requires locking the phone.) And regarding DRM - I can't see how anyone likes that but at the moment it seems like content providers will only sell streaming content without DRM.

In my mind it's a shame how the original article was framed - you first need to very firmly establish the benefits of DRM for linux *users* under today's climate and what that allows to happen, and why that can't happen without DRM right now, before you even start to talk about developers.

Developers working for free will decide for themselves if they want to be involved with DRM. My guess is most probably won't, and almost certainly the "open source community" won't.

The original talk makes a lot of sense within the context of OS developers working on someone else's dime. Perhaps that should have been emphasized.

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

or it could be that they are forshadowing a move from symbian to qtopia on their phones, with all the issues that may come from that...

and if they can enable developers to run the same apps on the phones and the tablets...

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

Well, it's exactly because I suffered the pain of the binary nvidia crap (in a distant past, when I wrongly thought they supported linux) that I don't want any piece of hardware that only works with a binary only driver (like the wifi chip in my tablet).
You are right though: fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. There won't be a third time.

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

Ok, my turn now :-P

I wonder why people here got so excited and drooled forever over a leaked Diablo without noticing that it was running an out-of date kernel (yes, exactly, it's mostly the same stuff you got when you bought your n810) and without complaining that a lot of the kernel code is public (we make the tarball available) but not merged.

Now with OMAP3 you can just search the omap ml archives and check how many new contributions are flocking from either Nokia or people sponsored by Nokia.

But what catches on is instead the intentional misinterpretation of a message that probably could have been expressed better.

I'm disappointed, I would have expected some more intelligent reaction.

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

This is a very good point. See here and here. Any help is appreciated.

fwiw I wasn't mentioning you either but the generic "you", anyone.

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

I really enjoy being a mere dumb user who does not have to worry about all this stuff.

I realize that the Internet Tablet world will be vastly different in 3-5 years than it is now, and try not to get all worked up over how it is going to get there.

Right now, I have a great device (2 of them in fact) that does all I want it to do and am enjoying the flood of new functionality that continuously is released to this community.

Nokia is a smart company that understands the equation of the marketplace---if you fail to market devices that the users will love, then you will not sell enough of those devices. I trust that Nokia will operate in their best interests, which will result in devices that I will want to own.

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

My statement stands. In this case the answer really was a simple and obvious YES, as you indicate in your second paragraph.

Just because the overarching issue is complex doesn't mean you can't boil the essence of it down to yes/no paths.

His statements indicate no such thing. Again, that's just an extreme kneejerk, paranoid interpretation (EDIT: that's a general assessment).

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

What colour is the sky? Yes or no. ;]

Hey ... just because you're paranoid, that doesn't mean no one is out to get you. :]

Its unfortunate that you generally dismiss such negative feedback as extreme, kneejerk, paranoid, religious zealotry rather than viewing it through the same sympathetic lens you ask of others.

In any case, I think that Nokia has clarified its position a lot since Ari's easily misinterpreted statements. I hope that this latest tempest in a blogosphere hasn't discouraged Nokia representatives from keeping an open, uncensored channel to the rest of the community. It is pretty easy for people on both sides of a debate to hide behind the relative anonymity of the Internet and say nasty things about each other. It all has to be taken with a huge grain of salt though and in the end, these things are said because people actually care about the tablet and its future. It is a lot better than being ignored (and Nokia will likely get more sales as a result of all this free publicity ... the truly paranoid might think this was all a big marketing scheme ;])