The Following User Says Thank You to eiffel For This Useful Post: | ||
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2009-11-18
, 11:54
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Posts: 445 |
Thanked: 572 times |
Joined on Oct 2009
@ Oxford
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#62
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The Following User Says Thank You to ewan For This Useful Post: | ||
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2009-11-18
, 12:04
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Posts: 341 |
Thanked: 64 times |
Joined on May 2009
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#63
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See the link "Publishing to Ovi discussion board on Forum Nokia". If you want to give direct feedback to Ovi as a developer that is the official channel for you. maemo.org is about community development, Forum Nokia concentrates in commercial developers.
"VAT / Tax ID" is a compulsory field in the registration form. What information did you put there?
Having a VAT / Tax ID is generally a good idea when doing business. In most countries it's cheap and easy to get one. And in most places the accounting gets complicated as your revenues grow, having to do basically nothing complicated for low incomes.
Some people are opposing "freelance" to "corporation". Let's not get lost in language and translation. Individuals can get a VAT / Tax ID and form a single person company. I have been a self-employed before joining Nokia, and it's not rocket science if you make your living out of it.
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2009-11-18
, 12:04
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Posts: 850 |
Thanked: 626 times |
Joined on Sep 2009
@ Vienna, Austria
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#64
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Seems like you did not read comment 52 in this thread.
Please go up there and read it.
Thanks.
The Maemo Devices team is discussing with the Ovi team about ways to accelerate the acceptance of individuals but, to be honest, our primary case are open source developers distributing free (as in beer and as in speech) software with liabilities defined in the license ("... AT YOUR OWN RISK", says the GPL and others).
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2009-11-18
, 12:09
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Posts: 1,111 |
Thanked: 1,985 times |
Joined on Aug 2009
@ Åbo, Finland
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#65
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if i read this correctly from a UK perspective:
I am registered self-employed and thus have a tax ID i believe.
I could also apply for and receive VAT registration from HMRC.
Having both of these things I would be able to sign up to Ovi, and commercially sell my aplications through the Ovi Store.
If that is the case, then that is entirely reasonable.
If being registered self-employed and VAT registered is not enough, then that is a pile of pants.
Have i read this correctly?
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2009-11-18
, 12:22
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Posts: 337 |
Thanked: 160 times |
Joined on Aug 2009
@ München, DE
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#66
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if i read this correctly from a UK perspective:
I am registered self-employed and thus have a tax ID i believe.
I could also apply for and receive VAT registration from HMRC.
Having both of these things I would be able to sign up to Ovi, and commercially sell my aplications through the Ovi Store.
If that is the case, then that is entirely reasonable.
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2009-11-18
, 12:27
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Posts: 1,111 |
Thanked: 1,985 times |
Joined on Aug 2009
@ Åbo, Finland
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#67
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So I'm this guy who is employed. In my spare time I'm developing some applications for the N900. As I am not into OpenSource, I cannot put those through Maemo Extras (or what it is called now).
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2009-11-18
, 12:31
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Posts: 337 |
Thanked: 160 times |
Joined on Aug 2009
@ München, DE
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#68
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2009-11-18
, 12:39
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Posts: 600 |
Thanked: 742 times |
Joined on Sep 2008
@ England
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#69
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If you're posting free software, what stops someone simply pulling the software from your 'premium' repo and reposting it in maemo-extras
In fact, other than charging 25 USD a year, how does this proposal differ from maemo-extras?
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2009-11-18
, 12:46
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Posts: 1,111 |
Thanked: 1,985 times |
Joined on Aug 2009
@ Åbo, Finland
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#70
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So let me propose something completely different, starting from these assumptions:
- 1. There are talented Maemo developers who have written great software that is commercially viable.
- 2. There are plenty more talented Maemo developers who would write such software if they had a simple way to sell it.
- 3. Due to our background in Open Source, we tend to have different values and interests from mainstream software companies.
- 4. Most of us would be (at best) small-time developers. So we need a commercial framework that's very simple and has a very low barrier to entry.
Here's what I suggest.We operate a service (which I'll call "Premium Maemo Apps", just for the sake of this discussion). It's a subscription service - let's say $25 per year, the same amount as a Flickr Pro account.
In return for the subscription fee, the customer gets unlimited access to the "Premium Maemo Apps" repository, and to a set of support forums.
The Premium Maemo Apps repository is filled with open source apps. There's no DRM. Personalization of the apps is allowed (e.g. the title bar could say who bought it) but because it's open source there's nothing stopping people removing that.
The service comes with a Premium Apps Manifesto which is a list of things that make the apps trustworthy: open development, no trojans, no spyware etc. This is the unique selling point of the service.
Of course not just any open source Maemo app would be accepted into the service, so there would need to be a review process.
And where do the subscription fees go? Some is used to operate the service, and the rest goes to the developers. How is it split up? Obviously some algorithm must be worked out, which should be kept simple and transparent so that people spend their time developing and supporting their software (and therefore growing the size of the monetary pie) rather than arguing endlessly about who gets what share of a smaller pie.
Regards,
Roger
PS: This is not just empty waffle. I operate uclue.com, a paid Q&A/research service which aggregates the services of individual researchers and pays them 50% to 70% of what the customer pays to Uclue. I can see many analogies to how a Premium Maemo Apps service could operate, paying a proportion of the subscription fee to the app developers.