Greetings from OSiM USA
I arrived at San Francisco on Monday to attend the OSiM USA 2008. The first day was very interesting. I met partners and colleagues. I found many talks, such as the Access keynote by Kamada-san, and Bill Weinberg’s on communities very interesting.
I’ll give my keynote on Wednesday morning SFO time. Thanks Quim and Peter for helping me with it. Let me share the story with you right here.
What Mobile Users Need
We create mass market devices and services. This means that we must provide enjoyable quality devices and services that provide rich experiences. In order to do so, we need to tap into innovation and creativity. We must also manage our operations and cost by utilizing reusable assets, agile methods, and shared development. In all of this, the right use of open source can be a huge asset.
We at Nokia have invested a lot to learn. We participate in many open source activities, such as Gnome, Debian, Linux, Mozilla and WebKit browsers and so forth. We plan to increase our involvement there. We believe open source is a key strategy to create exciting devices and services.
Our role: Bring open source to mainstream consumer electronics
Our role as Nokia is to create a bridge between open source projects and consumers. We can provide integration, final devices and services, and help with distribution. We can also take care of such difficult things as warranty, legal, IPR, DRM, regulations, customer support, and so forth.
In my mind, our role and possibilities are clear. We can help end users and open source innovation to meet. I think we have a great role in helping my 70 something parents to communicate with their grandchildren over a VOIP client developed by a clever 20 something hacker.
We need to learn from each other. Both.
The theory is simple: We work together; the open source community and Nokia. We provide excellent devices and services to end users in large volumes with attractive terms. In addition to software and product development, we need great marketing, smooth distribution, and good manufacturing. We also need to support various business models that can deliver the devices and services to our customers. Excellent devices, available everywhere, with the right price. Simple….
…. not. It is not trivial to combine open source and corporate to benefit end users. We all need to learn.
We at Nokia are working hard to get it. We have to. We need to get better in communicating our strategies and plans. We need to be more open and get even more involved in various projects and communities. We must be better at articulating our views, providing information and code back, and supporting the community. We must be sure we support freedom and openness and do not try to limit anybody’s work. But at the same time, we must be better at telling what is OK for us and what is not.
And the open source community also has to get it. The community needs to understand the business realities; possibilities and restrictions. It needs to learn the business models and rules in order to participate. If a project or a developer wants to ensure the success and max usage of her code, she must understand the functional and quality requirements, license the work under a proper license, and make sure her work doesn’t restrict business models needed.
It is actually brutal out there. Customers are very demanding and they do not accept anything but the best. Also, partners and other players want their share and support for their business model. It is not OK to steal music or crack and resell a subsidized phone. As an open source developer this makes me think: the majority of the most interesting and successful mobile devices and software –excluding Internet Tablets, of course— are clearly not based a large use of open source, or developed in open source manner. So we all have some learning to do here.
Building upstream. Community rules.
We see Open Source upstream projects as a base of our industry platform for Linux-based devices. Upstream is where the thing really happens. Alignment with upstream. Share plans. No forks. Contributions back. Ignore upstream and you loose!
We select the best software components that make sense in our architecture. If we select an open source component is because we think it's the best. This also means that the team that developed it is the best. Then we intend to align our work to their processes. This is not always easy because we have internal processes and requirements, but we are working on it. In fact any big organization has things to learn from open source development practices, even applied to internal and private processes: agile, decentralized, documented, peer reviewed... and the very human aspects of it.
As an example, I’m very thrilled about the discussion with Trolltech. Trolltech knows about upstream leadership and community rules. Working with this brilliant team together with Nokia is an opportunity no open source enthusiast should ignore.
Beyond code and licenses: developers and projects.
Source code and its licenses are critical in the use of open source for a company like Nokia. But code is just an output -- the top of an iceberg. It is the people, developers and contributors, the projects, the organizations, the users involved that truly matter. These are what really make open source unique, good today and even better tomorrow.
Nokia can do a lot more to get really involved in the community and make a good contribution as well. We keep working on this. In my dreams I see Maemo (open source innovation) playing a useful and exciting role bridging OSS upstream products and regular owners of Nokia devices.
Image: Alex Graveley presenting “Gimmieâ€, by Tuomas Kuosmanen. CC Attribution-NonCommercial LicenseUntil now we have decently supported the projects directly related to the source code we use: Linux, Debian, GNOME, Mozilla and so on. We are moving to a wider support to those really smart upstream projects. Help them pushing their vision forward, shaping their ideas into alphas, betas and final products. Help them getting visibility in the mobile industry and the Nokia channels.
For instance: why not helping Qt and its software ecosystem fitting in the GTK+ based Internet Tablets.
Diving in: deeper involvement
A few years ago, Nokia started from zero. In summer 2005 we announced the Nokia 770 internet tablet and started the journey.
Now, I claim we are a good open source citizen – we’ve got our feet in the water. We are shipping Linux and open source based Internet Tablets, our S60 phones have many important open source components, and we use a lot of open source technologies in building our new services. We participate projects, contribute a lot of code, sponsor GUADECs, Debconfs, buy services from hacker companies and projects and play our part pretty OK.
And next, we’ll start swimming and dive into the community. We want to help and influence the open source community to succeed with Nokia. We provide channels to markets. We work as community participant playing Nokia’s own role. We’ll educate and help the best we can. And we try to constantly learn more.
This all is actually very selfish. By doing so, we can provide better devices, services, and experiences to consumers – and make a buck or two.
Meeting open source community ethics
Life –even a corporate life -- is more rich and human that just “profitâ€. As long as I remember, Nokia always had values; statements that we used to direct our work and operations. Because Nokia is made of people, we want values to guide our behavior. And we’ve always wanted to make the values explicit.
Last year we felt we wanted to revisit and renew our values. The process was most interesting. We organized several big workshops – Nokia Cafes – with hundreds of participants all over the globe. These workshops discussed what is important for Nokia and how we as employees want to see Nokia and its values. The workshops then continued in various on-line activities and projects. Eventually, we came up with four new Nokia values: engaging you – passion for innovation – achieving together – very human
If you are part of the OSS community these value will sound very familiar to you. Also, the process of developing these values must sound familiar.
We are not that different after all, are we?
posted by Ari Jaaksi at 1:47 AM 
37 Comments:
Hey Ari,
thanks for this, well essay!
Just to capture a quote out of it:
"...and services that provide rich experiences."
Well, that is what i developed last
week and put online yesterday.
Something that, in my opinion, fits exactly into your projects-nokia-consumers facts.
You can view it at http://www.mojocafe.de
Mail me at endorphinum@googlemail.com if you have any questions or would drop me some critics.
Greetings from Hamburg,
Carlos
Hi, Ari!
Any chance for Qt version based underline on GTK instead of plain X? IMHO, this would greately simplify porting Qt application to N800.
Now you can listen the keynote.
Ari, you say "The community [...] needs to learn the business models and rules in order to participate. If a project or a developer wants to ensure the success and max usage of her code, she must [...] license the work under a proper license, and make sure her work doesn’t restrict business models needed."
I think this view a a bit distorted. After all, its not the free software community that begs Nokia to use their code. Its Nokia that benefits from the community. (At least at an abstract level; I know how Nokia does support free software projects in return.)
So: No, I dont see any necessity for any developer of free software to take into account Nokias business models when choosing a licence or making other decisions. Its Nokias business models that have to adapt if Nokia wants to benefit from their work.
Ossi,
Good point. Not very well explained by me. What I mean is that each and every developer can of course choose the license she wants to use and the project etc she wants to participate in.
But the same goes with Nokia and people who work for Nokia. We can also choose.
We at Nokia want to see a lot of good open source code in our devices. And, I bet many developer want to see their code in our devices because of different reasons. Some just for the heck of it, some because we pay them to develop open source software, and some because ... you name it.
For those developers who want to take Nokia's view into account and want to maximize the chances to get into Nokia devices (for money, for glory, for because it interests them, etc ...) I think it is a good idea to hear and understand Nokia's opinions. Those developers who do not care if Nokia or some other device manufacturer is interested in collaboration with them -- of course -- should not care at all.
It's a free world :-)
Ari, thank you for your article. It's nice to get some insight. Here are my comments.
For years now it has been a challenge to sync Nokia phones with a Linux system (Fedora in my case). My personal experiences are no IrMC over Bluetooth support and wobbly SyncML support. I would like to see Nokia help out the main Linux project in that area: OpenSync. I bought an N95 8GB (fw 15.0.0.15) to see if things had improved but reliably syncing my N95 was all but successful.
Secondly I would also welcome improvements in the IMAP functionality. On my N95 updating folder subscriptions just hangs when talking to a Dovecot server with a a bunch of nested folders.
I really would like to see both syncing and IMAP work properly on Nokia phones. For my work I need syncing/IMAP to work so I had to switch back to my SE K750i and eagerly await new firmware for the N95 8GB.
I would welcome some outreach from Nokia to better understand the requirements of the Linux community. Perhaps Nokia could even invite members of the Linux/Open Source community to participate in a test group so that when a new phone is launched it works equally well with Linux as it does with Windows (Mac?). I for one would jump on that possibility and would love to work with Nokia to make IMAP and syncing with the N95 work flawlessly.
The Sofia-SIP project is an excellent example where Nokia and the Open Source community have joined forces. For example Sofia-SIP is used by FreeSWITCH and it works very well. So thank you Nokia for initiating Sofia-SIP!
You can reach me at smplx@hotmail.com if you would like to further discuss this off-line.
Ari,
thx for the clarification. It makes sense this way. ;)
BTW:
You write "I think it is a good idea to hear and understand Nokia's opinions." - Yes. Most of us want to. But sometimes its hard. A good example: the ongoing frustration about missing OGG Vorbis/Theora support "out of the box". We know we won't get it any time soon, but it's hard for ppl. out here to understand why. No reasons given.
In such situations I wish Nokia'd make it easier to understand their strategies and business models. (And: No, I dont want to start the 62nd thread about OGG-support now, its just an example. *g*)
OK. So what license should we be using if we want to take Nokia's preferences and business models into account, to see our software on your devices?
Nokia took an extremely harmful public stance on media standards in HTML5 ("proprietary standards good; open standards bad").
This far outweighs any meagre benefit the community gains from the promotion of open source on Nokia hardware.
So if you want to be taken seriously in the community, fix the important stuff first.
Where should I begin? First of all we get the distorted corporate view with the graphic that says it all: Nokia positions itself to be the middle man, without which "open source" will never benefit "consumers". Well, I think products like the Eee PC have quite successfully sunk that particular argument.
Then we get the carrot and the stick: Nokia can be so helpful in providing shiny devices and that boring legal stuff. I find it astonishing that Nokia representatives can lecture me on things like regulations and warranties, given the squirming and veiled threats that have come up any time anyone tries to get their phone repaired, and any time regulators try to press for decent warranty lengths. In the end, Nokia has rightfully been punished for this in some countries, but I imagine it'd still end up in court if someone tried to actually get Nokia to honour a legally established warranty of more than two years, and we'd probably hear lots of spin from the paid "industry organisation" stooges about how making phones that last for more than a few months will only make them uneconomical to produce.
And on the subject of the stooges and regulations, Nokia seems to be quite adept at gaming the regulatory environment. Aside from the fact that the whole mobile telephone arena is one big cartel (Nokia buys Siemens' equipment division; Alcatel merge with Lucent: brown envelopes must be in short supply in Brussels!), Nokia has done its level best to lobby for extended patentability so that the company can just nuke anyone off their turf if they see fit.
And this is where the "good open source citizen" claim really has to be taken with a pinch of salt. Sure, Nokia has made some code available, but if their "intellectual property" brigade manages to get what they've been lobbying for, it doesn't matter if Nokia is offering code or not - at some point all it takes is someone to say that you're infringing on a software patent which isn't granted implicitly through any of the licences involved (and, of course, Nokia wants to tell you which licences are good and which are bad, so that could be a sum of zero patents), and that you either need to outspend them in court or to go away and stay there.
I'd like to believe that Nokia has seen the light, but then I'm more inclined to believe that while the left hand is showing everyone how nice and open Nokia is, the right hand is down in Brussels doing dirty things to shore up the company's position and to screw over the "open source" community (or at least the ones that don't play by Nokia's rules).
Perhaps it's time for Nokia to listen. The community of which you write is not some bunch of crackers who want to see their code everywhere and to be famous, like some 1980s Amiga demo scene, whilst sharing music over peer-to-peer networks. So I think that you at Nokia really have to "get it" in that department before any wagging of fingers can occur. And not all of the community defines success in terms of the number of people using their software, especially if most of them are end-users who have had their rights stripped away from them.
In fact, many Free Software contributors have a very thorough understanding of the legal and regulatory factors around their work, care passionately about freedom and openness, and demand that you respect the conditions placed on their work whether it works with your business model or not. How about the "very human" Nokia representatives reacquainting themselves with the actual legality of handset unlocking? How about respecting the community and building sustainable business models instead of perpetuating the seemingly never-ending ringtone-plus-MMS stagnation and threatening people with the stick if they aren't willing to prop up Nokia's margins? How about not lobbying for a convenient little veto capability (software patents) so that you can adhere to licences in principle but violate them in spirit?
I could go on about this. Nokia have a lot to do to earn my respect as a member of the community.
Some comments at Linux Weekly News:
http://lwn.net/Articles/273394/
"I claim we are a good open source citizen"
I disagree, for three specific reasons:
1) complete lack of code or documentation contributions to projects that aim to replicate PC Suite functionality on Linux.
2) Lobbying for software patents in Europe
3) Lack of support for Ogg Vorbis and other open codecs in any Nokia products. Pushing proprietary alternatives.
Fix these things first. Or at least offer a clear and honest explanation for why it's hard to fix them. Particularly number one is inexcusable - you have complete rights to the protocols documentation that PC Suite is using, publish it.
wow. if i were an expensive consultant, i'd say (from reading the postings here at qgil's): you have a credibility problem. and its not getting better.
maybe you folks at Nokia should seriously discuss your image. it doesn't seem to be compatible with values and ethics of free software.
Ari, Your intentions are all good.
Probably the first thing Nokia should fix is to enable all Nokia phones to be 100% supported on Linux. I own a N80 and I am not too happy about not having a PCSuite for Linux.
I hope your acquisition of Trolltech will solve the problem?
Don't bother about up/down streams, becoming a trusted middleman between OSS and users etc etc
Get the sync working first. So we (nokia AND linux users) can use the phone to its full capacity first.
-Anand who lives in Asia
Thanks for the feedback!
A few comments to mr anonymous who posted so many comments:
I tend to agree that we should always push for open alternatives in formats. It is in everybody's interest. But sometimes also customers want something else. They just want to access the content regardless of the format.
Then what comes to being an open source citizen. As I said, I claim we are learning and we have our feet in the water already now. Getting there little by little. I get more and more comments from people in GUADECs and other places that "please, tell us what you think and do not be too shy".
But, what comes to free software -- I'm explicitly talking about open source here! Let's not confuse the discussion. Our intention is not to be 100% free software. It is not our goal. I do not think it is realistic at all. This business requires a mix of several approaches. Whether you like it or not.
In our products decisions are typically made in a very business oriented way. We create support for such formats, operating systems, codecs etc that our customers want. As an example, the majority of our PC suite users use Windows -- so obviously it is the most important OS for us there. But we are also hearing an increasing amount of requirements to widen our support.
As you can see from the figure there is an arrow between the OSS community and customers. I never said we want to controll anything in between. Please, do not twist my words ;-) I can do it myself baddly enough, eh ??
Then about the license. Apache is good. Mozilla. The current LGPL is good. GPL (v2) may also be OK in some cases but not always. BSD. But you know what I'm talking about.
Anand, I like you very practical approach :-)
so, ari, all the "give us time, we're learning" was wrong. you'r not. your choice of preferred licenses is revealing: you want to take, but not give. - you'd better make that clear: Nokia doesnt care about the community, they just want to reduce costs by taking whatever free code is available, nursing development a little here and there.
that doesnt change the fact that the tablets are great products. it only makes clear that Nokia never will be (and never intended to be) part of the community. no need to hope for any progress. pity.
No Ossi, you got it wrong. We want to give and we do. What gave you that funny impression? I've always said that licenses without copyleft are most often short-sighted. Hard to build a true community around them! Sometimes ok to use, though. So it depends. What's wrong with, say, LGPL, GPL etc?
And we care a lot about the community. I do not want to start to brag about it but I claim that in several areas we have contribute a lot and many projects have significantly benefitted from Nokia's involvment. Code contributons, people, money, publicity, ... But hey, I do not want to go down this path now. It is the actual work that matters, not the words.
Your claim that Nokia's push for proprietary standards is because "it's what customers want" is revealing.
It means your business model is fundamentally in conflict with the community. Unless you change the way you do business such that your customers' needs can not cause such conflicts, your credibility problem is not going to go away. It will just get worse.
The previous comment was funny! Are you serious?
Here we go again:
"But, what comes to free software -- I'm explicitly talking about open source here! Let's not confuse the discussion. Our intention is not to be 100% free software."
We're not talking about gratis stuff; we're talking about the four freedoms: that's what Free Software is all about. If it's copyleft-licensed then so much the better.
"It is not our goal. I do not think it is realistic at all. This business requires a mix of several approaches. Whether you like it or not."
The stick makes its appearance again. I suppose that according to Nokia this business requires the software patent lobbying and the full cartel experience. Well, we don't like it, and "consumers" are increasingly fed up with the side-effects of it, too.
"It is the actual work that matters, not the words."
Every time any Nokia person is confronted with the dirty dealings going on with our elected and unelected representatives, it's like nothing ever happened and/or nothing was ever said. Please keep your eyes on the left hand!
Well, promising and claiming to be good members of the community merely involves words. The actual work of Nokia's lobbyists is a betrayal of the community.
He previous person: Who are you to use the voice of the community?
I think people participate the community for different reasons. We are not all the same. We have different drivers and goals. I'm there for good software. So seems Nokia. Whats the problem?
Ari,
first of all: Its great to see you're still with us even though it gets a bit dirty now.
On topic:
From your previous post I got the impression that you'd much prefer non-copyleft licenses like Apache and BSD and accept GPL only as a last resort if absolutely necessary and only as v2, not v3. ("Apache is good. [...] GPL (v2) may also be OK in some cases but not always." does not sound like you're a supporter of the GPL.)
Now you say that choosing licenses without copyleft is short-sighted, which is exactly my point of view. (I don't feel comfortable about Android exactly for this reason... Apache is an awfully bad license to start with for a project that claims to be open.) - Maybe that was only a misunderstanding.
However, apart from the licensing thing:
OGG support. Yes, I understand market mechanisms. But LG, Samsung, iRiver and I dont know how many others never had problems to include OGG and/or FLAC support into portable players. So there is a market it seems. The code is also there, both for the Maemo platform as for most Nokia phones I dealt with recently. It seems there's something within Nokia that's allergic against these formats and all of the management there would break out in a rash as soon as they're exposed to such files. You have to admit that this is hard to understand for a customer. Nokia's role in keeping OGG out of HTML5 doesn't help here, either. All of this doesn't make Nokia appear as if they want to be part of the community at all.
Same goes for the company's role in the ongoing struggle about software patents.
Please don't get me wrong: I'm not going to say what you're doing is wrong. I see the output, I see the products and I love them. I see Nokia supporting free software projects, and I love that, too.
But: You're building up expectations by saying you want to be a good citizen, part of the community etc. - These expectations go beyond exchanging code. They include taking a stand against irrational software patents, a strong stand for open formats like OGG, they include making users of free software first class citizens in your ecosystem (you know, handling all the features of my new 6110 Navigator from the GNU/Linux desktop and such). These are the expectations you raise, at least for some of us.
And I now think you never meant to raise, let alone meet these expectations. You wanted to share code. So it might simply boil down to learning what to expect from each other and, most important, not to get fooled by phrases that simply don't say what you want to read. ;)
"Who are you to use the voice of the community?"
Someone who actually sees beyond the shiny devices being handed out. I don't pretend that I represent the community, but I don't need to in saying that Nokia's lobbying activities is a betrayal of the community; it's a statement of fact, unless you think the community is well-served by having the threat of patent litigation hanging over it. And since software patents threaten proprietary software developers as well as those writing Free Software, I think my remarks were conservative, since I could have written that the actual work of Nokia's lobbyists is a betrayal of the software development profession as a whole.
"I'm there for good software. So seems Nokia. Whats the problem?"
The problem is that should Nokia's corporate lobbyists get their way, they can claim that they support Free Software, but their participation in the community won't be on equal terms: it will be a feudal relationship with Nokia as the "community royalty" deciding which rules they have to follow and which rules everyone else has to follow, because all they have to do is to say that your software (even if it's based on their software under a Free Software licence which offers patent grants) infringes some patent that isn't covered by any patent grant on their software, and even though you're entitled to distribute the derived work under the copyright regime, they'll litigate if anyone obtains or uses that work.
In short, with the threat of software patents hanging over you, you can develop something all by yourself using common knowledge and still have people claiming that you are "stealing their intellectual property". Since Nokia have demonstrated time and again that they actively want this situation to apply in places where it currently does not apply, one can only assume that Nokia wishes to reserve the right to intimidate developers if the "good software" isn't being made available in a way which suits them. So far, I've only seen one Nokia employee even acknowledge the above contradictory state of affairs, and even then he seems to regard it as a mere image problem. Everyone else seems to be willing participants in the illusion.
If the "good software" is what matters, and you don't mind a feudal community model, you could quite easily participate in the Microsoft ecosystem. At least Ballmer and friends are relatively honest about what they stand for.
this is a really interesting conversation. as a non-progammer and non linux geek, and non-nokia fan (neither hater or lover :), something seems really clear.
there does not seem to be a unified "movement" for open source, which sounds good to me - each and every for each and every.
with that said, nokia is exploring ways to be competitive in the business realm by taking advantage of open source. if that means coralling aspects of the community and finding some compromises, so be it.
there will always be "free software" but really, this is going to move in baby steps until linux is a viable option for a desktop (sorry it isn't, don't kid yourself. and i use xubuntu.)
i think when linux can command a greater audience and user end, then you can start pressuring Nokia to be even more open.
but for now, don't look the gift horse in the mouth, even if its wants differ from yours.
Include screen pivot into the native firmware kernel and help get KeepassX or QT4 working with the onscreen hildon keyboard.
Development in the PIM area would round it out nicely including maemo native bluetooth phone support (See PalmOS SMS app for bluetooth phones) rather than as third party add-ons.
These days, that's my wishlist. I'm sure the community will produce these things eventually but QT, PIM and Bluetooth functions seem like they'd be a given for what the device does and what Nokia's other products do.
I love the device and will be happily running my N800 until it's worn out and force the upgrade or the N810 enter's my budget range. It's replaced my T5 in all but the area of bluetooth related needs.
kincaid said...
"but for now, don't look the gift horse in the mouth, even if its wants differ from yours."
Even if it's a Trojan gift horse?
Linux does not have a problem as my desktop OS.
Maybe it is operator error?
The problem with licenses and Nokia business model are that the only license that ensures the communities rights stay entact, is the GPL. Which businesses don't like because they _must_ release source code that links to it.
Any other license does not give as much rights to the users - the community. Which is why the LGPL is named Lesser GPL.
The community would believe you more if you released more code as open source. So much of Maemo is closed, it's hardly open source. Sure, the Hildon API might be open, but even simple apps like the battery applet code is no where to be found. dsmetool? good luck - better crank out the hex editor.
Not to mention the documentation on the underlying processes in which Maemo works. Where's the dbus interfaces documented? dbus-monitor?
The code talks....
lpotter,
You said: "...he only license that ensures the communities rights stay entact, is the GPL"
You are wrong. There are vibrant communities around Apache, FreeBSD, GTK etc. Are you saying that the members of these projects are "lesser citizens" and they have "lesser rights". These projects selected the kind of license that fits into their work. And they have all the rights they need. You sound like a religious person who accepts one truth -- yours. The people like you are the biggest obstacle for open source model to really win out there.
Quoting another anonymous person:
"You said: "...he only license that ensures the communities rights stay entact, is the GPL" You are wrong."
Yes, but he then said this:
"Any other license does not give as much rights to the users - the community."
In other words, he regards end-users as being part of the community: people who may one day decide to contribute to the project, but who are in any case regarded as equals. With copyleft licences it's not "the developers' club" versus everyone who didn't get the source because someone closed it up and shipped binaries to "the consumers".
"There are vibrant communities around Apache, FreeBSD, GTK etc. Are you saying that the members of these projects are "lesser citizens" and they have "lesser rights"."
Someone who gets a binary-only version of a modified version of Apache does have fewer rights, yes. The more active developer members of the community tend not to do this around permissively licensed projects because of the risk of having to maintain a fork (and probably looking bad among their peers), but there's nothing to stop them from doing so. I've seen binary-only stuff like this in the wild, and it's not a good thing (especially when it doesn't work).
"You sound like a religious person who accepts one truth -- yours. The people like you are the biggest obstacle for open source model to really win out there."
Play the ideology/religion card, why don't you? Besides, what's the point if to "really win out there" you end up with a bunch of end-users with no rights who can't get involved in open source? It sounds like you're happy putting up quite an obstacle to open source participation yourself.
It's bad enough that there are people and organisations (like Nokia) lobbying for software patents, in order to build a feudal hierarchy on top of Free Software by giving themselves special veto rights over everybody else in the community (both developers and users), without people supposedly within the community dividing it still further.
Ari,
I'm working on an HR scorecard for Nokia as a business school assignment. I would really appreciate it if you could say a few words about Nokia's culture. I know about the values and the code of conduct but I'm looking for more of a personal viewpoint of their culture.
Thanks,
Sonya
Hi Ari,
A good key note. But we need our new tablets to have some cellular connectivity.
I don't want to have an n8xx and an iPhone in my pocket. They don't fit.
The same thing happens in their market segment.
Internet Tablet is not a phone, as you say, it is a device to bring internet
experience. Yes, but the traffic medium that gives this Internet experience may be different for so many use cases.
So, fit a cellular modem please, before it's too late!!
Otherwise this Internet tablet will become a fiasco of its own.
Happy Easter!
To comment about phonne functionality; don't you think these tablets are just too big to hold to your ears? If made smaller they loose internet apeal?
Your esteemed colleague Mr Gil seemed adamant that the game of musical chairs be performed to the end. Hence I leave for him this message here, referring you to this article for context:
http://flors.wordpress.com/2008/03/27/digging-in-the-nokia-and-software-patents-topic/
"Is Nokia really lobbying for software patents nowadays?"
Given the history, is it likely that Nokia's representatives are going to be leaving a paper trail? What we can see, however, is advocacy about patents in standards from company representatives.
Organisations supported by Nokia are more blatant; EICTA being one example: who else would have a lobbying Web site called europe4DRM or would support sites like the astroturfing "Campaign for Creativity" and "Patents4Innovation"?
"Which countries are we talking about apart from the EU?"
I imagine that the WIPO seeks to cover the entire planet.
"What does “lobbying†exactly mean?"
It means asking legislators or regulators to act in favour of particular interests, frequently at the expense of the public good.
"What would you find reasonable about Nokia dealing with software patents?
That they actively oppose the introduction of software patents, campaign for their abolition where they have been introduced (or are recognised in some way), and do not seek to obtain them. If the latter is not possible because people are worried about patent trolls, then offering useful patent grants or pledges would be better than the smoke and mirrors that was the Nokia announcement regarding the Linux kernel. As Stallman himself wrote, "Nokia's announcement isn't nothing, but it is next to nothing." Coverage here:
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2137351/nokia-rapped-linux-patent-pledge
That patent pledge was mere spin from Nokia, covering only slightly more than what Nokia would be obliged to cover when distributing Linux under GPLv2. I imagine that it was presumably cooked up when people at Nokia realised that the company had a dirty reputation amongst Free Software developers.
So, is Nokia lobbying against Free Software? If people are happy to think that Nokia went all nice after being so nasty back in 2005, let's look at some slightly more up-to-date commentary:
http://wiki.ffii.org/patenthearing060712En
Yes, you're going to claim that this is all hearsay and doesn't represent people's actual positions, so perhaps it's best to ask the people themselves:
http://www.timfrain.co.uk/
The evidence would suggest that Nokia's representatives are quite happy to see patents as widely applicable as possible, especially since this would let the company "enforce" standards whilst earning comfortably from compulsory licensing:
http://www.sal.hut.fi/Publications/pdf-files/mhyt07.pdf
From the representative:
http://www.wipo.int/meetings/en/2006/patent_colloquia/11/pdf/frain_presentation.pdf
But let's return to what the individuals responsible have to say on the matter:
http://www.timfrain.co.uk/Experience/Experience.html
"Lobbying on IP issues, particularly in Europe... Computer-implemented inventions (software patents)... Copyright Directive implementation"
What were the company positions on those issues again? Are they really likely to be any different now than in 2005? Are any of the people responsible going to be honest about it, especially when it doesn't really fit in with the message? Meanwhile, the shadow grows longer:
http://blogs.gnome.org/jamesh/2007/05/31/stupid-patent-application/
http://www.ops.ietf.org/lists/radiusext/2007/msg00551.html
If Nokia didn't agree with the software patent game, it would help call an end to it, because that would eliminate the threat to them and to everyone else completely. But while Nokia keeps filing for software patents, and even if we could trust the company not to threaten anyone with them, there's always the possibility that dollar signs appear in the eyes of some "IP director" at the end of a bad quarter, and then we see how much that trust was worth.
I don't think it's unreasonable for people to have long memories of Nokia's actions. If the most recent European legislation attempt hadn't been a fiasco, I'm sure we'd have seen more of the same. Perhaps it's Nokia's turn to actually show us evidence of the company's supposed good intentions rather than be told that an absence of recently committed bad intentions is the same thing.
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hello ari
i hope nokia wont hurt qt (and kde)
with its greed.
drm, software patents, proprietary formats- are all means of oppression in my opinion.
nokia can do well without them.
(much better than with them)
there is this web site
you might have noticed it..
please read - http://www.fsf.org/about/what-is-free-software
Please check our site,thanks.
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