Mikko Rauhala wrote: > to, 2008-09-18 kello 05:45 +1000, Lorn Potter kirjoitti: >> Mikko Rauhala wrote: >>> Personally I'll be loathe to buy Nokia products anyway, they're just way >>> too inconsistent with their policies and have no commitment to free >>> software whatsoever. >> I would beg to differ. Trolltech is now part of Nokia, Qt and Qtopia >> certainly are open source and I can tell you for certain, we are >> committed to keeping them open source. > > Sure Nokia has some products which happen to be free software. That > doesn't make them committed to free software, what with being eg. > hostile to free formats, IANAL, but... (nor am I a spokesperson for Nokia) Nokia's position is that here are no 'free' codecs. _Everything_ has patents surrounding it. According to Nokia's attorneys, ogg/vorbis is encumbered by patents as well, regardless of what Xiph says about it. Nokia does not want to chance getting sued over patents, they are _very_ costly. They have very deep pockets. It's not just Nokia, it's other phone manufactures and mostly phone operators.
> a strong opponent of independent software Have you seen forum.nokia.com? or maemo.org? Know about 'Qt Everywhere'? > development in general through their patent lobby, very much clueless in > top level press comments about these subjects, > and in general not being > very consistent in what they're up to in this area. Nokia employs thousands of _individuals_, we are not borg, nor do we all think and act the same. > >> Maemo is quite good. That is pure Nokia. Qt and Qtopia are good, that is >> now from Nokia... > > The tablet OS has significant proprietary portions, both third party and > in-house - the latter having insiders commenting that it's difficult > (when at all possible) to get the go-ahead to free the code properly. > Not to mention the target hardware platform pretty much requires binary > blob kernel code and such (last I checked anyway). > > Not meaning to start a Nokia flamefest here, it was originally just a > side comment, but since we have a (paid) on-list representative here, > apparently a reminder of the other side of the coin is in order. Not sure if you are aware, but I have my roots from within the community, was the community manager for a few years and I am very aware of the community side of things. I am a fence sitter. It is part of my job to see both sides. I have done my share of complaining about Nokia's software patents (directly to the Finns too!), the closed-ness of maemo and (for a year or so) Qtopia. Change _will_ happen. But it will happen slowly. -- Lorn 'ljp' Potter Software Engineer, Systems Group, Trolltech, a Nokia company _______________________________________________ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
