Re: How can we encourage iPhone developers to develop on Maemo?
 

Yes. Progamming has to be also fun in order to be appealing to younger could-become-developers. If you are 15, you are more likely to enjoy developing fart apps rather than "serious" apps.

After that it comes down to being easy and I think Qt is a good move to get Maemo development a bit easier. You can get started with it quite fast. Then again there's always python..

Maemo also needs a working and easy to use modern IDE. The SDK should be a breeze to install and so on.

I guess my main point is that in order to attract masses everything has to just work without too much hassle.

Re: How can we encourage iPhone developers to develop on Maemo?
 

Sports Tracker, GMail and Google Maps in S60 are cool as well. These apps as free as in beer.

The Ocarina sounds like a type of app that could be conceived as open source project given that there would be enough developers interested.

With this I'm suggesting that you could continue listing apps and considering their business model in Maemo before getting too obsessed about DRM and jailbreaking.

Re: How can we encourage iPhone developers to develop on Maemo?
 

I feel dirty saying this, but until I can develop for Maemo in something besides Linux, I'm really not interested.

If I'm developing for the Pre, I can develop in Windows, Linux, or OS X.

If I'm developing for the Blackberry, I can develop in Windows, Linux, or OS X (although they favor Windows, it's just Eclipse)

If I'm developing for Symbian, I have to develop in Windows (and after using the N97 sdk for about two days, I quickly uninstalled it and vowed to sit this round of Symbian out).

If I'm developing for Windows Mobile, well I suppose I'd probably kill myself. But if I was forced to develop for Windows Mobile, Visual Studio is actually a really nice development environment.

If I'm developing for the iPhone, I have to use OS X.


So basically, with an OS X machine, I can write mobile applications for Android, Blackberry, the Pre, and the iPhone. That's without having to run a VM, or dual-boot. That's a pretty attractive proposition.

While professional software development studios will set up the tools they need, amateurs are much less likely to set up an environment just to write for a single platform (especially a platform which we've already identified is pretty nascent from a commercial app perspective).

This isn't a knock against Linux, it's just that I'm not willing to have a dedicated Linux machine for doing Maemo development. After freemantle is released, if I can get scratchbox working in a VM and actually debug on the device through the virtual usb interface, then I suppose I'll give it another go.

Re: How can we encourage iPhone developers to develop on Maemo?
 

In February of this year, Cydia estimated the number of jailbroken phones to be appox 450,000 - not 'millions'.

That would bring the percentage to approx 5-10% which I see as much more realistic. Not everyone out there is 'like us' and the VAST majority of iPhone users are either a) content with the device as it is and/or b) lack the skill/courage to jailbreak it.

So, taken the assumption above that half of those users pirate software (2.5-5%) I can't see how this percentage out of such an enormous user-base is enough to 'massively hurt' developers.

It's also not as if those 2.5-5% of users would had been 100% committed to purchase application X anyway. Say 1/3 of them would. Now we're talking about, what, a 2%ish drop in revenue.

Jailbreaking is overstated as a reason to applications not selling. The main reason is that the majority of all apps developed for the iPhone is shite and should't be sold at a cost to begin with :-D

Re: How can we encourage iPhone developers to develop on Maemo?
 

And a device with multitouch ...

Re: How can we encourage iPhone developers to develop on Maemo?
 

I had been thinking to this issue for some months; in particular, since I had my Symbian E90 forcefully reflashed and had to re-install everything.

I think that this deserves a new thread at all, where everyone can enlist those apps from other platforms he/she can't live with, wishing the developers will port them to maemo.

For me, I'd love having "audials mobile" (which I presented in another thread) and "shazam id", both symbian apps. I also like the full Foreca Weather, ultimate voice recorder and - of course - google maps mobile.

Re: How can we encourage iPhone developers to develop on Maemo?
 

i suspect this is one of the thing nokia is setting out to fix by switching to Qt.

still, i understand there was a virtual machine image made for the maemo sdk earlier, that would allow one to develop in windows, and then fire up the virtual machine to test.

also, this may be the reason that python have gotten so much interest. besides the gui bits that requires a understanding of gtk/hildon, python is a interpreted language that can be written on any platform where there is a interpreter available. I think there are even people that use the N810 as a development platform directly as they can rewrite the python code on the spot.

but thats just the impressions i have picked up by reading this forum...

Re: How can we encourage iPhone developers to develop on Maemo?
 

Here's the "bucket of money" strategy.. courtesy of Microsoft:

http://www.macrumors.com/2009/08/14/...s-for-zune-hd/

Re: How can we encourage iPhone developers to develop on Maemo?
 

Il ne faut pas seulement encourager le développement, mais aussi le développement de Logiciels Libres.

The problem is that it should develop a system of rewards for developers who want to earn a little money.
I posted an initial idea, based on the donation, on Brainstorm.

-->> See here <<--

One could also imagine a system of payment for access to the copy of a software (Free and Open Source or not). But we only pay to access the copy and no DRM.

It should also Nokia encourages the user to the contribution to Free Software to organizing competitions by category (translation, report bugs, writing documentation, idea in Brainstorm,participation in the community, etc... ) ans by periods (month, year, etc..)

For example:

- The biggest contributor of the month, translation, win a prize.

- The biggest contributor of the year, all categories, win a trip.
rechercher

Re: How can we encourage iPhone developers to develop on Maemo?
 

I wasn't talking about the big/important developers, I was talking about lots of small ones. The power of the crowd etc.

You've got more experience in this area than me, but I suspect there are lots of people who'd start playing with a platform with a micropayments system with the thought it could earn them some cash (whether they are right or wrong).