Glad to hear it!

“I have an idea about the issue as it is perceived in the open source community, and lately I have been learning also how the very same topic is seen inside Nokia. I hope to see some progress here since a lot of the issue goes around lack of communication from Nokia’s side.”

Here’s a direct question, then: why are Nokia’s representatives lobbying for software patents in the European Union and in various other locations?

Many people in the open source community have a very thorough understanding of the impact of software patents, so I hope that we don’t have to sit through a lecture about suiting up for big business, learning to live with “real world” constraints, the “business climate” of today and/or tomorrow, and so on.

Awaiting a straight answer, but not ever expecting to hear one.

@Lexy: Ogg, DRM… sure, Nokia is not acting in all fronts as having a genuine and totally devoted open source spirit. Nor is the expectation people should have (in my opinion), at least not those understanding that Nokia has to deal with a commercial context that is radically different to, say, your preferred Linux distribution. But again, Imyself reckon that there is a lot to improve at least explaining why Nokia does what does, and does not what does not. Noted and hopefully we will be able to come back on the Ogg issue. In the meantime, it is also fair to say that making Nokia devices support the Ogg formats is not difficult, specially not the Linux/maemo powered Internet Tablets. Sure, the merit goes to third parties but well…

@MDK, sure internal processes can be changed and be made compatible, friendly and efficient with open source practices. But changes in processes are never easy: you need a clear need, will, a plan and, generally, a clear gap between projects to introduce the changes without introducing more risk on ongoing works. This is not a excuse for anything, just a message that we are trying to improve these processes and I think we will get them right… at some point. Again, I hope to see real progress even if it won’t come tomorrow, and I consider it as well an essential part of Nokia’s open source srategy.

My conclusion to this thread (and the comments in Ari’s blog) is that black&white doesn’t help nobody understanding what is going on and how to improve things. There is some people in the open souce community and inside Nokia willing to see pure black and pure white on things. Even if these colors are real and do exist, the reality we deal with everyday is in fact made from many gray levels and, even nicer, made also from many different bright colors.

@guim: “@MDK - not even ’show me the code’ is good enough. Show the code as soon as you develop it. Commit your changes asap. Share your plans. The goal is clear but the implementation is not simple.”

I fully agree, as always. Though, as somebody working for another big company, I must say that it’s *definitelly* possible at this level (sharing code, comming changes asap, developing in the open). It’s both technically and legally possible to allow your developers to do so without making it a boureaucratic PITA at the same time. Covering yourself (I’m not talking here about you explicitly) behind “not simple implementation”, “patents”, “trade secrets”, “ulgy mobile business world” is just an excuse for not trying hard enough (or not actually wanting to do so).

Having said that — as someone who’s trying to follow meamo development and wishing it all the best — I must say it’s pretty hard to follow you guys these days. Ie. look at maemo project stats/graphs on ohloh. The SVN activity is becoming smaller and smaller. Less and less commits in the open. The project even has “Decreasing year-over-year development activity” warning. This doesn’t map to well too the buzzwords, does it?

ALL the benefits of openness, community, volonteer efforts etc can end up completely eliminated by enforced software patents. It’s one of the few real threats against the open source model. And the danger is not so much with the big players like you, who NEED the open source community, but it is instead with various IP companies that DON’T need the community. They can use software patents for pure economic gain while destroying the community.

Nokia is in a strong position to help stop that from becoming reality, and at the same time win HUGE amounts of respect in the community. The other side of that coin is that you will never be fully trusted and respected as long as you don’t take a stand against software patents. This is not the last you will hear on this matter, I guess…. Please, take this issue seriously.

@rich, Ari was raising the collection of topics the open source community needs to take into account when thinking in the mobile & consumer electronics industries in general, as opposed to the computer industry. Note that the talk was done in the Open Source in Mobile conference, after a session about the LiMo Foundation and before Google’s Android, both focusing in mobile phones with open source inside.

@Michael, I always had this policy of letting any comments go to my blog unless being spam. zank showed a sexism and bad taste that spoke by itself. I find the picture so beautiful I never thought someone could go down to cheap comments that way. I guess some people still needs a normal & healthy relationship with women.

Clarifying the decision making processes would definitely help - as you say, people can disagree with them, but at least there’d be a common basis for understanding why Nokia’ve closed them.

Quim: The least you could do is remove the comment. Better yet, you could have pointed out the sexism and objectification when it first went up.