[lbt]

Over the past few weeks a few of us who have been involved in the MeeGo community infrastructure have been trying to solve a problem relating to MeeGo Apps : apps.meego.com

After a few weeks when it became clear we could not resolve this problem we asked for a deadline when the LF would announce this restriction to the community. Eventually I proposed that the community start discussing this issue with or without an announcement from the LF on Tuesday 2nd August - and here we are.

Last week I suggested that the following statement summed up my understanding and although I asked for an alternative, one did not appear:

"The Linux Foundation have told us in private conversations that they will not permit apps.meego.com to be served from the MeeGo.com infrastructure hosted by them. They do not have the resource at this time to provide a statement giving their reasons. We can not assess what other services may be impacted in the future."

Ibrahim, if you have anything to add we would be grateful.

I have tried to present a factual problem statement and some options at :
http://wiki.meego.com/MeeGo_Apps/Problem_Statement

Obviously, since we don't know what the problem is, it is hard to work out a solution - but I have proposed some options.

In the meantime we have moved ahead to provide apps.formeego.org (thanks to Thomas for acquiring that domain - see https://bugs.meego.com/show_bug.cgi?id=20531). There are plans being worked on to setup infrastructure to host apps there - the community needs to decide how to manage that infrastructure and domain.

On a personal note I am very disappointed by the Linux Foundation's response to this situation. There has been no open discussion, the verbal reasons provided were vague (although, I must emphasise, I am not doubting that there are valid concerns given the nature of the legal framework in the US) and insufficient effort has been made to assist the community in resolving (or even understanding) this problem - as I mention, since we're not clear about what the reason is we have no idea what other services may be impacted.

David

email cc: meego-community, meego-dev, Quim, Dawn, Niels, Henri, Imbrahim, Brian, Imad
cc: talk.maemo.org

[bergie]

This is obviously a setback if the MeeGo project is unable to host open source applications for the platform.

But on the other hand, having the Apps service under community control (as formeego.org appears to be) may give us more freedom to operate, for example in regards to hosting the same apps for platforms that are not fully MeeGo compliant.

[kyber]

Originally Posted by bergie

But on the other hand, having the Apps service under community control (as formeego.org appears to be) may give us more freedom to operate, for example in regards to hosting the same apps for platforms that are not fully MeeGo compliant.

+1 for apps.formeego.org

[bergie]

The Debian software patents FAQ may be of interest here.

[timoph]

Originally Posted by swift11

sorry for the stupid question, but couldn't we use MeeGo Central ?
http://meego-central.org/

It's not just about apps.. formeego.org is going host hardware adaptation images and possibly more. It also possible that the community build infra will move under that domain. Besides meego-central seems to be just indexing apps. Apps.* is planned to have community QA, etc. in it.

[milhouse]

It's a shame that joker still owns meego.org and uses it solely to cut & paste articles from meego.com - what a waste of what would have been the perfect domain for open source MeeGo app hosting!

[meegoexperts]

While this issue is resolved, I would suggest the best way forward is to have Apps.MeeGo.com forward to a different server that can host this sub-domain.

Wouldn't that suit ?

[wmarone]

On a personal note I am very disappointed by the Linux Foundation's response to this situation. There has been no open discussion, the verbal reasons provided were vague (although, I must emphasise, I am not doubting that there are valid concerns given the nature of the legal framework in the US)

I'm confused. If their concern is over software patents, then logically they can host nothing whatsoever.

Or a cynical take could be that the Linux Foundation is trying to wash its hands of MeeGo, and not being up front about it. Probably too early in the morning here to ponder this.

This only applies to individually contributed apps and not to corporate apps because there is a risk of 'dark corners' where an app may be published for many years without the hypothetical violation being discovered.

This strikes me as more anti-community bias. Unless they're suggesting it's impossible for a hypothetical violation to hide inside a (possibly closed source) "commercial" application for many years before a patent suit being filed. Not that an actual violation would matter for said suit to be filed anyway...

All that said, I do believe that any MeeGo-derived distribution should supply its own software repositories and application sources. But in that case it should shed all "MeeGo" branding from its name and domain, save a "MeeGo" logo somewhere and an explanation. IMO, anything "community" or distro-supplied should slot into a more standard distribution format instead of the crazy structure of "compliant" apps.

[shmerl]

So apps.formeego.com will host actual repositories (for Meego, Meego/Harmattan etc.)? I mean like apt repos, or zypper repos etc. So far even apps.meego.com infrastructure is pretty confusing (for example where are common FOSS libraries going?). All in all, we (new users and developers) are already confused as it is. This just makes it even more puzzling

I agree, that "fear for patents" sounds absurd. If something is proven to be vilolating patents, that can be pulled off from the repository, but if it's proven! Theoretical fear and concern means hosting nothing altogether, as wmarone said above.

[timoph]

Useless to start blaming LF for this and that or guessing what can or cannot happen. The decision was made and we have to live with it. Instead I'd like to see this as a wake-up call for making things happen. Most people who have been hanging around here more than a few weeks know that MeeGo from meego.com is not really aimed for individual end users and I don't think that will change nor it should (this seems to be the thing causing the most of the confusion around MeeGo). So...

I've been silently wishing for a MeeGo based end-user targetted community controlled distribution. Think of suse/openSuse setup or the N9x0 CE with a wider scope. First version of the community controlled MeeGo distribution would be basically stable MeeGo 1.2.something with applications and other things you expect from a Linux distro. The important thing about this is that it wouldn't be a fork and it would meet the compliancy terms. I hope this is a hard enough push to make this happen.

Having this would of course bring other freedoms like the ability to include different UXs like Plasma active, cordia or whatnot.

At least I would contribute to this effort.