Even from the developer/hacker pov the AppStore is a total revolution. It actually allows others to earn some money along with Apple and make some independent business around the platform.That's a good point. The AppStore allows rapid purchase and downloading of applications and warehouses free applications as well. For the Internet Tablets, maemo.org offers warehousing, application search, and one-click downloads but does not offer any way for developers to monetize their applications. There's also no central source control for these applications: If Nokia decided to make a developer application store, they'd be at the mercy of user charge-backs to credit cards when applications stopped working. In ecommerce, too many charge-backs means you lose your merchant account and your ability to accept credit cards.
There are many potential applications for which Nokia Internet Tablet owners would pay if the applications worked properly. How can maemo developers turn a dime on their work?
14 comments:
Whi should we need to pay for maemo linux applications? Nokia made a open-source platform for a reason, to gather a community of developers to create fun, FREE software for all and to improve the mobile linux platform. maemo is a international progect that is amed at making the mobile open-source platform more usable and reliable.
b-man: The point was to offer a way for third-party developers to make money writing software for the maemo platform. Nokia would still manage the platform and OS but developers like the maemo-mapper team could come up with a commercial GPS suite to compete with Navicore. Competition drives innovation and lowers costs.
A maemo software store featuring non-buggy, easily installed software that is useful to a more mainstream consumer would be a big selling point for the tablets. I personally chose an iPod Touch over the N800 at Christmas because I wanted the "it just works" experience, and NONE of my previous Linux experience (much of which involved late nights on message boards dealing with "free" software issues) indicated that I would get such a thing with an N800.
I'm not knocking the platform--I think they're a great idea. But for Linux to be widely adopted and developed for, I think it needs to have more mass-market appeal. A central, Nokia-sponsored store would help build that appeal.
BTW, please don't flame me for choosing an iPod Touch over an N800. That discussion belongs somewhere else, I think.
Eric
Eric, for the most part maemo.org software really "just works" - one-click download and so far I am very impressed with quality of the apps I am seeing.
As for the Apple App Store - I am a bit sceptical about what Apple will accept to its store. I bet we will not see ScummVM there (one of the most used applications on my N810) - I could be wrong and Apple happily will accept all the Open Source projects and freeware apps, but something tells me they want to maintain a certain image which leads to commercial apps which fit to Apples "vision" about what is acceptable on iPhone.
Application store is not a necessity for big players (which a better GPS / map software would be) - in fact I think popular and "expensive" (over about € 10) applications would be better served directly from developer. If the "App Store" takes 30% cut of your € 60 mapping application which everyone knows and wants anyway it might upset the developer.
"App store" type of central stores are great for cheaper, smaller applications which you might not know even existed if you did not have a central repository. And for the most part I believe F/OSS and maemo.org can deliver this. If you create a killer closed source / non-free app for tablets I believe you can get the publicity needed to sell it without a central "store".
Right now, Maemo is not an attractive enough platform for commercial developers. There are too few users and it is not clear whether these users are ready to pay for commercial software.
a donation option for free software developers on the maemo.org app catalog would be nice.
right now, i'm popping up a question once a week in gpodder that asks for donations. works fine, but not much response so far... maybe people arren't willing to spend money in the free sw world?
Forum Nokia is supporting maemo developers (http://www.forum.nokia.com/main/platforms/maemo/index.html#services)
A maemo developer can sell her applications in the Nokia software market (http://www.softwaremarket.nokia.com)
Just commenting, perhaps you missed it.
Heck, I am throwing down $100 dollars to any developer that can make and be the first for a strong 1.0 release of any linux based cc software and keeps it that way for a twitter app.
No takers so far.
Kari,
For a mainstream user the "most" part of your comment is the troubling part. As a user, I would happily pay $5 for a program that was "guaranteed" to work, and I'd be much more likely to invest in an N800/810 if I thought I would spend more time actually using my device than tweaking it.
I hear what you're saying about the quality of software; I just think that a little more hand-holding on Nokia's part would encourage more users to jump on board. Quality control for the main Nokia "app store" would be helpful, perception-wise.
About happily paying $5:
Well, let us say you and another 99 tablet users each pay $5 for a commercial application. This will total to a whopping $500. $500 does not buy you much nowadays and it is certainly not worth spending development time for.
The problem is not only an organizational one but also a technical one. The maemo platform is not very stable -- so far every release of the OS (with the exception of the lastest minor upgrade I believe) was breaking ABI/API stability rendering a lot of apps useless and introducing versioning chaos... In the environment where people base on the platform and make money on it such situation creates a totally unacceptable risk.
Apple on the other hand has a brilliant engineering tradition (OSX) of maintaining platform continuity introducing great new technologies without breaking backwards compatibility. On OSX, with the latest development env you can still produce great apps that run on the last three or four releases of the operating system AND several generations of previous hardware (intel vs. ppc thing). IPhone seems to be going in exactly same direction and it gives a huge assurance to indy developers that their user base/customer base will be growing steadily.
Interestingly, if you look at S60 you'll see it's plagued with exactly same problems -- apps having different versions for different N-series phones, some apps being available only for certain (usually latest) phones, etc. That's why developing for S60 is a pain in the ass and the only developers who can pull-off something relevant are big companies (ie. Google) who can afford huge testing/Q&A efforts.
It's also worth noting that the app-development parts of the maemo platform are based on open-source projects with a fairly good record of maintaining stability (GTK, GNOME), so this problem was introduced rather than pre-existing.
Sigh. $5 was an arbitrary amount. The point of my post was that some users (like me) would be more likely to a) buy a Tablet and b) buy software if the Tablet had software that was vetted by Nokia and "guaranteed" to work. Free software has its place, but people in the mainstream place convenience over price in many cases. Just look at the feature set of the iPod vs. so many other MP3 players--there are devices that do a better job more cheaply, but still Apple sells iPods like crazy.
And in the case of $5 vs. $0, at least $5 is something.
Why would I spend a dime on software for my N800 if Nokia won't even maintain OS2008?
I agree about linux being open source and programs built on it being generally free of charge. The idea that we all stand on dead mens shoulders and should work together to make things better is essentially a great idea. People like Linux partly because it's free. Apple are all about consumerism. If there is an add on to make an Apple device work better then there will be a charge. Hardly anything is given for the common good.
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