Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

...or wallpapers... They want to protect their butts if Nintendo decides to sue them for, say, use of their artwork in some classic gaming wallpapers...

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

I must be missing something. I don't see why an upfront, clear, solid signing disclaimer wouldn't cover such things...

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

What signing disclaimer? "You, the user, promise that Nintendo won't sue the developer and probably Ovi/Nokia for using its artwork"?

The insurance is for media-oriented apps and packages, which have a very high potential for (mis)using the intellectual property of (historically very litigious) big corporations.

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

Yes, I was thinking about this last night. It's obviously totally fair and I think that the right decision for myself and Nokia is for me to get liability insurance.

What's weird is that they've already pushed classic gaming wallpapers into Ovi/Maemo Select, without that liability insurance, or a disclaimer of liability. Go figure.

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

It is one thing if you are giving it away, and another thing entirely if you are selling it.

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

Right. So if I was to sell an application that allows you to download wallpapers for free then that shouldn't be a problem, right?

My application is 100% free of third party media. I would not be selling any sort of media whatsoever - only the ability to easily access such media.

With this in mind, from a technical perspective, there is no difference between Ovi and my application, they are both distribution tools.

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

No qole.

The sort of disclaimer where the uploader agrees to take on any and all indemnification/responsibility for all or part of the uploaded package.... thus releasing Nokia.

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

That is, in essence, what the insurance is for. Absent that you have a developer who may have no assets and the aggrieved party will come after the corporation with the deep pockets - Nokia.

Still, it seem excessively restrictive and excessively broad as written. For now it would seem that Nokia isn't interested in the small developer who might want to make a bit of money off their app.

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

Which would have been fine if Nokia had let say the maemo.org community know so a solution could have been worked on. Heck it would be more productive then sitting around waiting for the n900.

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

Well, the developers here could always try to raise money, incorporate (Fremantle Inc.?), buy one insurance policy for the corporation to cover all the member developers, and charge each developer a percentage of any revenue they realize off their app.

Even as a user, I'd be willing to chip in some money but it would be a big undertaking.

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

I might piss some people off but I'm a GNU kind of guy I don't feel sorry that someone who wants to charge for an application has to spend money to make it. Don't get me wrong I will buy some applications and have no problem paying for good ones but I kinda think that making people be a corporation and have insurance will keep the number of Fart apps on Ovi down.

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

This is a common misconception. Now that I've paid my dues to the various organizations I see no reason why I shouldn't make fart apps to recoup my costs.


Personally, I'm not going to, because I think fart apps are silly. But if I really wanted to sell out, I'd have absolutely no qualms about doing it whatsoever. People who think that putting an upfront cost will reduce the number of joke and pointless apps aren't thinking like people who want to make money.

If anything it will promote more people into pumping out second-rate apps in an attempt to break even.

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

At least they will be quality fart apps maybe.

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

That's pretty much how I see it. I have no problem with proprietary software (when it works!), although I prefer free software.

Potential sellers on the Ovi store will have to decide whether the cost involved in getting the required insurance is enough to make it less likely that they will make money at it. If not, so be it.

I understand Nokia's position. Requiring insurance is the only way to make the indemnification clause effective. The indemnification clause between you and Nokia has absolutely no effect on the right of a third party to sue Nokia. You can't contract away someone else's rights.

Smaller companies certainly don't have the financial resources to defend Nokia against an IP lawsuit, thus the insurance. Larger companies will already have general liability insurance.

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

But there should be reasonable limits to the charges. Why should individual coders be disadvantaged against corporations? That's something I don't like.

And besides, the issue isn't simply about money, but the sizes, numbers and complexities of the various barriers put into place here. IMO they're overly restrictive.

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

The problem isn't with the Fart apps. The problem is that it will keep the total number of apps down to below a dozen or so. Seriously, how many developers will go through all this trouble just to sell their stuff through Ovi?

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

Well, then we clearly have a different understanding of what Open Source should be. Let's call it free software instead. And that is where source code availablity isn't irrelevant.

As said, I do understand if people want to sell apps, but I'd rather see people going the free software route.

Again: I have no problem with that, but as said before: In case of free software the first buyer can put the software up somewhere else. So maybe we should stop talking about free software in the ovi store, as Maemo already has distribution channels for that.

I never said anything which doesn't agree to that.

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

Um, no, he doesn't really say that. And why should free software be in ovi if there are already is a community driven repository catering exactly to those people?

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

The original idea was that maybe it could be a (don't laugh) simpler and more streamlined way of collecting donations for open source projects than paypal.

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

Not very on-topic, bugt sincde it has been mentioned re Maemo Select:

About wallpapers with potential copyright issues, I did ask. http://maemo.org/packages/package_in...rs/1.3-1maemo3

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

This is just standard small business practice. You have to have general liability insurance. Sorry if this issue blocks developers. Maybe you should appeal to the president or congress to get a waiver for program writers. Good f'n luck on that.

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

Most people I suspect who see this thread look at the phrase "$1 million insurance required" and assume it means the developer has to have $1 million in their bank account. The actual cost of such insurance is closer to $1000 a year or something, isn't it?

And if someone was making money from their apps they could probably claim such costs back from the tax office, so it would cost them $0 in the end.

Not saying this is necessarily an acceptable situation, but it isn't quite as outrageous as the headline might suggest.

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

...and as many others have pointed out, you don't need to go through Ovi anyway. You can distribute apps to Nokia devices by third party channels or even set up your own distribution channel.

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

They can, but it would be rude if the developer has asked you not to, the price is low enough that everyone can afford it, and you didn't contribute anything of value.

Indeed, not just rude, but you might find if you keep doing that, that a promising project is abandoned, and nobody else takes it up. If that happens, you haven't done the community any favours. Of course it's hard to know the consequences without looking at the details of an individual project - which is why you should think before doing it, but be aware that you do have the right.

There's a difference between what's permitted by a license and what is polite/good.

The reason people use licenses which give you permission to fork and redistribute, even when they want you not to, is because they believe you should have that right if you need it, but would rather you choose not to exercise it without a good reason.

That's why when someone takes BSD-licensed code and wraps it in a GPL license, sometimes people get upset and say it's wrong (even though it's permitted), and other people say "but you explicitly let me do that!", followed by "if you didn't want me to do that, you should have used a different license!".

The latter people miss the point. Spelling out everything in a license cannot provide the subtlety of granting essential rights when needed while asking for thoughtful, mature discretion in deciding when to use those rights.

Yeah, it's permitted. Those rights are important. Developers choosing FOSS licenses know that; they aren't stupid. If you need to fork and redistribute, do it. Go ahead, it's permitted for a reason. But it's not always kind, smart or good for the community, so please be thoughtful when deciding whether doing it is a good idea in any particular circumstance.

If you do take a for-pay app which is under FOSS license and make it available gratis, perhaps because you know people who would benefit (perhaps it's too expensive), then at least have the courtesy to mention where it is sold by the developer, so that people receiving the app can make up their own mind about whether to reward the real developer(s) / fund it's continued development.

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

About open source software in Ovi, please check, discuss and vote the Brainstorm proposal

Open source software distributed via store.ovi.com

Discussion thread: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=385610

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

Well they had to pay 1000 for the insurance then they have to make 1000 to break even..... so after doing work valued at 1000 they have nothing to show for it.

Since the taxes are a percentage of the sales they would have to sell many times this cost to be able to get the original 1000 back from the tax man.....

It most definitely costs 1000 to get started. As code177 points out for him its about 500 still non trivial.

E

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

Ibelieve that is the point I was trying to make albeit with a tad more tact.

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

I'm sure I am not going to make any friends on this one but....

Welcome to the world of commercial development! All business ventures involve a level of outlay & risk: that is why corporations undertake some form of market research before investing in a project. I've seen plenty of ideas for projects come into my office but I've had to turn them down as not commercially viable. The occassional one we push through fully aware that it is a loss but one we calculated for.

Commercial development is about making money so that we can pay our bills which includes those of our development team. Some of these guys spend their own time working on community projects & I'm more than happy for them to use the facilities for this after sorting out rights waivers so no one can say the company has rights (or liabilities) for the project.

Basic summary is that if you want to charge for development then you also have to be prepared to pay for the pissed off customer that comes back wanting blood. They rarely have a reasonable moral case but often courts don't see it that way.

End Rant!

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

Sure. I was just trying to make people aware that there might not be a business model where they (try to) see one.

Very good post, by the way.

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

flames apart, real question, do you have to pay that insurance to sell on the apple apps store too? (in case they accept your software of course)
if not, why is it different with nokia?

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

I haven't read the commercials on the two stores but I believe that Apple takes quite a large percentage of the revenue: does anyone know if Nokia has a lower rate or maybe fixed percentage?

If Apple are charging more then they might be taking out a liability insurance on behalf of the developer from that revenue this would seem to me (not a lawyer though) a sensible route as damages awarded by courts would likely bear a relationship to the monies gained through use of protected works.

The other point I think seems to have been missed in this might be that Apple makes cash from every ringtone you use on your iPhone (please correct me if this is not as closed as I thought) whereas Nokia will need to cover it's costs on something smaller. Also I don't believe there is a legitimate (no hacking) way of installing software for the iPhone so they have to provide a route to gain numbers.

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

Call it a donation then, 'cause technically that's what it is - a monetary compensation you're legally not obliged to pay. I would have a very low opinion who would ask me what you say - using dubious moral leverage and people's uninformedness to finance development is something I will not condone, no matter how much potential that project might have.

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

You're not legally obliged to pay for anything, if you don't want to buy what's on offer.

You seem to have forgotten that when you buy software, you're not just buying code (which is the part you can get elsewhere if it's FOSS). You're potentially buying branding, certification, testing, support - things which some people value and prefer to pay for.

Aside from those intangibles, yes it is basically a form of donation.
(And I'd be delighted to see a Magnatune-style "choose your own price, and it can be zero" option).

There is however a down to earth reason for not calling it a donation: Corporate buyers often cannot pay "donations", but they can buy something even if that thing (or the code at least) is available for free elsewhere. That's why you often see things for sale at several prices, where the differences are marginal and the significant difference is whether it's called a "Corporate Subscription", "Premium Subscription" or "Poor Person's Subscription" or something :-)

If a person says, truthfully, "I spent 2000 hours working on this, full time every day for 12 months; it cost me $30,000 in personal savings to fund myself (rent, food, etc.) doing it; feel free to give it to your friends but I'd appreciate if you don't publish free competing versions prominently all over the net without a good reason, but if you have a reason of course you have that right", do you think that's morally dubious - assuming it's true?

Would you really have a low opinion of someone who spent that much time, personal energy and their own money on a project, to make you some open source software, for which they give you all the freedoms but ask you to not jeopardise their ability to continue if the only reason you have is "because you can"?

Do you think it's wrong of Red Hat to sell Red Hat Enterprise Linux? Even though they pay the full-time salary of half the Linux kernel developers, a fair chunk of GNOME developers, and everyone knows you can get a free version, compiled from the same source, from CentOS?

Red Hat don't stop you getting the free one built from the same source from CentOS. They don't try particularly to hide this fact (though I admit it's not found in their advertising). They don't pursue anyone for it, or ask them to stop. In fact, they try hard to satisfy their GPL obligations and community expectations by making it easy for CentOS to do that. Red Hat are widely regarded as good citizens in the Linux free software community because they consistently do these things.

You may know there are several important but small differences between RHEL and CentOS: Testing, certification, and branding. To some people, those are worth paying for. To others, they don't need that, but they want a reason to pay Red Hat, so that their interests are developed for. Others are happy to use the CentOS community-built version, which is free. I myself have used both, depending on circumstances.

Those differences would probably apply to selling free software for the N900 too. Just because you can take the source and build your own version, doesn't mean you're free to put the original developer's personal graphic signature or their "I have tested this build" seal of approval on your version.

You may find a situation similar to Debian's Iceweasel vs. Firefox, or a situation that is similar to the difference between free users and paid users of shareware, i.e. access to extras like personal support from the authors.

It does not have to be uninformed. You seem to think that misinformation is the only way it could be done; that is incorrect.

If people were sold something without being told that it is based on FOSS, then I'd agree that is not ethical.

If people were given something for free, without being told who really wrote it or deleting what the people who wrote it say in accompanying READMEs, I'd call that unethical too.

Sounds to me like you have a particular idea about how these things are done, and aren't particularly informed yourself about the various ways FOSS is sold ethically (at least, by some people's standards ethical). Have you ever read the GNU Manifesto, or the FSF's position on selling free software?

You seem to believe that the only way a person would sell FOSS is by tricking people into it, that nobody would willingly pay for it if they knew they could get it (or something built from the same source but not certified by the original developers) from someone else for free. That is not so.

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

Don't sell attila77 short, jjx, he's much sharper than you seem to realize. Looks to me like you're taking some very short points and extrapolating the hell out of them.

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

It's not a moral problem, which you are trying to make it into. What you're describing is a lack of proper business model. If there IS added value there, through certifications, support, content, etc, great. But that's not the scenario here. We're talking about MyLittleApp v1.0 from the Ovi Store, published by mostly independent developers. If I can republish it to Extras without removing the appeal of the original, there is *no* added value there.

And if you DO open the 'is it moral' can of worms, what happens to contributors ? Are THEY not entitled for some compensation for their hard work ? What happens to the compensation of projects/libraries which our developer built on ? You'll notice a pattern here - and that is a pattern of proprietary software. You're trying to shoehorn an Open Source project into a classic proprietary business model, and I must say I don't know of a single project that pulled that off.

Hold it right there. By your standards, it's CentOS who is impolite as they take the bread out of RedHat folks' mouth. It's CentOS who is jeopardizing the community. Is it OK for CentOS to exist just because they can take RedHat stuff ? What you miss here is that the whole point of RedHat is not in the source, they are not AT ALL in the business of selling code. In those terms, CentOS is not a competitor to RedHat any more than a supposed 'impolite' MyLittleAppCloneInExtras would be.

I don't claim to be a lawyer, but I have been involved with Open Source for quite some time now, one segment of which are my activities in Maemo (mostly development, but feel free to check). I don't see how any of the documents you listed contradict anything I said.

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

Let's look at the approximate economics of this venture. I'll use UK pounds, but multiply by approximately 1.1 for Euros or 1.6 for USD.

Form a limited company. The government fees are low, but realistically most people will use an accountant. I did this in 2008 and it cost £450.

Annual accountancy charges. This includes filing all the statutory returns as well as the tax returns. This costs me around £1000 per year, and my company is not even VAT-registered as it's trading below the threshold.

Other direct costs. These appear out of nowhere and soon mount up. Business bank accounts attract fees, and, for example, you might need to register under the Data Protection Act (£75) if you're keeping customer support details on a database on your computer. I won't try to itemise these costs, but I can't imagine any way that they will come in under £350 per year.

Then there's the liability insurance, let's say £200 per year.

So we're looking at maybe £2000 expenses in the first year.

Now let's say you put two applications on the Ovi store: a widget for £1 and a more substantial app for £5. (Yes I know Ovi uses Euros, but that's just details.) Ovi's headline rate is 70% to the application author, but that's after various costs. First they deduct returns (where the buyer "returns" the app). Next is refunds (where the buyer demands a refund for some reason). Next is bad debts. Ovi doesn't accept that risk on behalf of the app author, so if for any reason Ovi doesn't get the money, then you don't either. I actually think this is fair enough, by the way, because any other policy would be so expensive to administer that it would be impractical.

Next, Ovi deducts the transaction fees. Obviously I don't know Ovi's credit card fees, but I'm guessing they'd be around 2% on big transactions but proportionately much more on tiny transactions. I'm going to say 5% here, but I'm just pulling this figure out of nowhere and it might be lower or it might be much higher.

But if the app is sold through the phone company, with payment taken from the user's phone balance, the charges are much higher. From my reading of the Ovi Publisher Terms and Conditions the charge here is 50% for apps priced at £1 and 40% for apps priced at £5. And I presume you only get 70% of what's left. So from a £1 app you might get 35 pence, and from a £5 app you might get £2.10.

Now let's suppose you sell 100 of each app per month. In a year that will get you £2940 for a net profit of £940 (under £20 per week), in return for which you must maintain and operate your support website. Not to mention the time it takes to develop the software. Oh, and I forgot the 50 Euros to register as an Ovi Publisher (or 300 Euros if you want to sign the NDA and get early notification of API changes). And don't forget that Ovi's minimum accumulated earnings for a quarterly payout is 500 Euros.

And VAT? The rules for the international sale of electronically-delivered intangible goods are quite different from the VAT rules for regular physical goods. I find the rules quite unintelligible and wouldn't venture an opinion without consulting an accountant. But potentially you will have to hand over a chunk of your income to the taxman as VAT.

So I don't think it's an easy road. I fear those who do well will be the ones who churn out a lot of banal fart-apps and the like. And Ovi's stringent rules are less of a barrier to those people than they are to the individual who passionately develops one great application.

These are just some rough thoughts. I'm sure some of the details are wrong, but nevertheless I would be surprised if more than 1% of app developers could make a profit through Ovi.

Regards,
Roger

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

Red Hat does not sell RHEL. Red Hat sells the support around it. Red Hat sells services to its customers. That is quite a difference. And believe me, all CentOS people know, that they are nothing without Red Hat, which is one of the reasons why CentOS does not advertise any support or services, though there are people doing that.

It all boils down to "please don't try to see a business model, where there isn't one". And selling open source software without an additional service stack is no business model you should rely on or try to make people morally obliged to buy into.

But I think this discussion is becoming off topic a little bit :)

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

I think that prior to some of the breakdowns of cost and time it seemed that a developer should be able to write some code and get into business. There is a lot more work going into selling an app then just writing the code. There seems to be 3 distinct levels of code generation.

1. Give it away. You get nothing in return but thanks and you have very little costs but your time.
2. Donation tab. Put some tab in all of your programs that allows for a quick paypal or other donation, (you only loose 4% with paypal) its on the honor system so your return is going to be low.
3. Ovi or some other. The start up and yearly maintenance costs are high but if you have a good app the revenue stream has potential to keep up with large yearly costs.

For small businesses there are many hidden charges. If you working out of your home the homeowners insurance will probably go up for the newly classified business computers. There are many more

I have been amazed when I have spoken to FOSS developers that there are very little donations and not even that many thanks.

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

That maybe means that FOSS is so far in the mainstream now, that people don't deem it necessary to do so.

And giving back to a community also is a sort of donating or saying thanks. But yes, don't expect monetary wonders when you put some paypal button somewhere.

Re: Confirmed/CAUTION: N900 Ovi Apps require Corporation + $1M USD Corporate General Liability Insurace
 

Part of the trick of donations is to make it as easy as possible. The problem with Paypal is it requires going through several steps just to donate the money.