On 11/10/06, Igor Stoppa <igor.stoppa at nokia.com> wrote:
>
> Big Fat Warning:
>
> Please note that this is solely my personal opinion, not Nokia.
Understood, and thanks for the response.
> On Fri, 2006-11-10 at 15:14 +0000, ext Andrew Flegg wrote:
> > However the response has been typical of the well-known problems with
> > Nokia's development process. You'll garner more community
> > understanding if you don't just say "please wait", but explain:
> >
> > * what the issues are;
> > * how the community can help mitigate them in this case;
> > * how the community can help prevent them recurring in future;
>
> While you are certainly right to ask for the source code, what do you
> think that our interest in not provide it immediately would be?????
None at all, but the slopey shoulders of "well, it's the Legal Dept.
holding it up" could be seen to be wearing a little thin.
> On our side there might have been some naiveness in trying to push out
> the binary as soon as it was available, since it wasn't blocked by
> anything but the GPL constraint, whose _spirit_ we are trying very hard
> to uphold.
Indeed, and that's appreciated. My point was that "legal issues" is a
little vague and doesn't really help understanding of when the source
will be available. (Admittedly, the Maemo team may not even know)
> Ianal but frankly i doubt any of the community can contribute with
> speeding up that side. Simply because it requires somebody with an NDA
> with Nokia.
I thought as much, but in these circumstances there are three options:
* put up and shut up (which won't necessarily get anything done)
* politely (and then increasingly vociferously) ask for what's supposed
to be released, to be released.
* a copyright holder on the Linux kernel files a suit against Nokia for
copyright violation.
No-one wants to see (3), and (1) has been proven to not be succesful.
Indeed, Tommi's organisation of the "outstanding issues" emails shows
that constant pressure is sometimes needed.
> Certainly we would be happy to get some help =) But it's probably not
> feasible.
Ah well. Is there a project in terms of re-structuring the kernel to
make the non-GPL components (presumably the cause for the delay) to be
a more separate part?
> Said this, the only %100 GPL compliant option left would have been to
> delay the binary.
Yup. Which is why it's ironic that legal issues are holding up the
release of the source!
> Which is apparently what you are asking with all these whining.
Would you rather the whining was directed at lawyers, or here?!
> From our side there's all the possible goodwill to improve things, but
> sometimes coding is the easier part. This is the best that has been
> possible so far.
>
> Take it or leave it.
Nokia ain't a charity, they're a commercial organisation. "Goodwill"
only gets you so far.
You can't drip releases out occasionally, say "take it or leave it"
(not Nokia official position, of course) but then bemoan the lack of
community involvement.
Generally, people get involved with open source projects when they can
see results.
No-one wants to see another flamewar.
No-one wants to see Maemo fail.
No-one wants to see Nokia fail after its brave moves with the 770.
However, no-one wants to see Nokia slapped with a GPL-compliance suit.
That's why people are asking: after all, it's in Nokia's competitive
advantage to ensure that their competitors can't use their code in the
GPLed kernel to sue Nokia for copyright violation.
If you think about it, we're not trying to be unhelpful - we're trying
to be *helpful* (as you said, there's not much else we can do to speed
up the process).
Cheers,
Andrew
--
Andrew Flegg -- mailto:andrew at bleb.org | http://www.bleb.org/
