“We all have some learning to do”

“We all have some learning to do” - that was the core message of Ari Jaaksi’s presentation, which has turned into a massive shitstorm over the past few days.

Yet again, I’m amazed at a knee-jerk populist reaction to a news story, and completely stunned at the spin which has been given to this, and swallowed hook, line & sinker by a large group of supposedly intelligent people. It’s been going on for years, so perhaps one more time shouldn’t surprise me, but it does.

For the benefit of those living in a burrow, here’s the quote that started it all:

“We want to educate open-source developers,” said Jaaksi, who is Nokia’s vice president of software and heads up the Finnish handset manufacturer’s open-source operations. “There are certain business rules [developers] need to obey, such as DRM, IPR [intellectual property rights], SIM locks and subsidised business models.”

That’s the bit, since quoted without context, from an article which included the quote with little context in the first place. Look a little further, and you will see that this is the same message that Dr. Jaaksi delivered in San Francisco a few months ago: Nokia is learning how to interact with free software projects, but if free software developers want the software to be adopted further in mass-market products, then we need to understand the constraints that businesses work under, and address them.

In my mind, that’s a big “if”. Companies work under a bunch of constraints which don’t sit well with free software - DRM, the need for differentiation and a competitive edge. But also dealing with sub-contractors and suppliers who have their terms and conditions under which they’re prepared to work.

Some of the most outrageous things I’ve read these past few days:

“No more Nokia for me, I’m buying an iPhone”

Yeah, because Apple are a really free software friendly company.

 ”If Nokia can’t get the specs for chips from their suppliers, they should just build their own”

Uhmmm… do you really think that Nokia wants to go into competition with every micro-electronics company in the world? How much resources do people think Nokia really has?

Some people think that Nokia should use only free software in all their devices, regardless of the consequences of that (the consequences would be more difficult government validation of your phone with the GSM networks, no operator take-up of the phones, and thus no cheap phones subsidised when you take a subscription, and underpowered and outdated hardware). That may be fine for a user to have as an option if they don’t mind paying hundreds of dollars fora phone that doesn’t do as much as one that they can get for a tenth of the price or less - in fact, the Freerunner is aimed right at that market. It’s a niche market, not a mass market. One day, maybe…

In the meantime, the conclusion I draw from this is that the slashdot crowd aren’t as reasoned as I had hoped, many people who should know better are jumping to conclusions based on news headlines. What ever happened to critical thought?

Free software is great, a momentous gift to the world, but does not provide the answer to all questions. Sometimes, free software will not be the answer. Some sets of constraints will exclude us from the start. The battle is to change the constraints. But you cannot expect a business to lose money to satisfy philosophical arguments. If you’re ever talking to someone and trying to “sell” them free software, your starting point should be: “how will this (make|save) me money?”

Usually that answer will be easy to find - lower R&D costs, licencing fees, support costs you control better by deciding when to buy support, on what terms. But occasionally, there is no argument. There is no way to persuade Microsoft that releasing Office under the GPL would be a money-making move for them - it plainly wouldn’t be.

So if the answer to that question is “it won’t”, then wish them well, perhaps recommend something that will, and move on to another subject.