The company that wants to contribute (was Re: [Duplicity-talk] Version 0.5.07 Released)

[Quim Gil]

Hi there,

I'm a member of the Maemo team at Nokia and I guess we are

> The company that wants to contribute does not want to tivoize
> Duplicity or to contribute patented code

Maemo is the Linux based platform powering devices like the N810
Internet Tablet. Currently we are developing Fremantle / Maemo 5 [1],
which will bring Maemo closer to mainstream users. We are also starting
to plan the following release (Harmattan) [2] where we expect to have a
consolidated mainstream platform and where Duplicity could be deployed
as official backup tool.

We have been analyzing the Duplicity code and all what we have seen
looks good. Congratulations for your good work! But we had more
questions about the project itself, and this is why we contacted Kenneth
and Ben [3] some weeks ago. The questions we had were the usual in any
approach to a community project:

- What is the current status of the project?

- Where are the areas you feel need more polishing and help?

- Thinking of mobile devices, do you have any thoughts of wishlist?

- Are there other companies collaborating with you?


And we also asked about the license: is the GPLv3 negotiable for e.g.
GPLv2 or later'? To put things clear, we didn't 'impose' a relicensing
and even less requested to have it immediately applied. We respect the
dynamics of the project and we are trying to be involved in a long term
plan.

We see the advantages of the v3 and we probably share the same opinions
behind it, but Nokia as a whole has still some concerns about it that
might become an obstacle for us to have Duplicity officially in the
platform right now. This might change in the future but it's quite out
of our team's hands.

There is no patent conflicts with the Duplicity feature set and this is
why 'GPL 2.1 or later' works fine for us. There is no tivoization in the
Maemo roadmap. Actually the legal team likes the GPLv3 in many aspects
but, as said, there are still some doubts about its interpretation and
Nokia (like other FLOSS friendly companies) is reluctant to play with
this license before the doubts are clarified. You can have a look to the
Maemo open source approach [4].

Our involvement in Duplicity implies our commitment to the success of
the project and our contribution testing and fixing bugs, and working on
new features discussed within the project.


[1] http://wiki.maemo.org/Task:Maemo_roadmap/Fremantle
[2] http://wiki.maemo.org/Task:Maemo_roadmap/Harmattan
[3] http://duplicity.nongnu.org/acknowledgments.html
[4] http://flors.wordpress.com/2008/09/20/how-maemo-approaches-open-source/

-- 
Quim Gil
open source advocate
Maemo Software @ Nokia