Task:Texts for maemo.nokia.com

maemo.nokia.com will contain two pages related to the current scope of maemo.org. Here we will draft the text for both. Quim has to deliver a first complete draft by 2008-11-18.

Software freedom, open communities and you

Maemo devices are all about choices. Users can choose to enjoy a variety of features and services that come out of the box. Additional software (in most cases for free) is always available to download and enjoy. This is how a device becomes a good product that satisfies demanding customers.

That said, if you want more... there is a lot more.

Maemo is an open platform running in open devices. It has Linux at its core, but also plenty more software components maintained by communities of open source developers. The platform is based on well known technologies widely used in the free software community.

"So what?" you might say. Well, all of this does matter if you wish to go beyond the role of a customer, of a pure user.

In 1991 a young developer called Linus Torvalds started a software project in Helsinki (Finland), coincidentally the same city where the Maemo headquarters are located. Yes, that project was called Linux and one interesting aspect of it was that the software created was free. Other developers could look at the code, improve it, adapt it to specific purposes, redistribute it...

All this process was and is done in a transparent and collaborative way, mostly via Internet. Freedom, transparency and on-line collaboration defined the way of working of this successful project. Free software had existed before Linux but then over the years became a global phenomenon, an industrial trend and a source of inspiration for many other projects around the Internet: Mozilla, Wikipedia, BitTorrent... Maemo is part of this tradition, and actually most of the software comes from several open source projects where Nokia is also involved.

You feel this as soon as you land in http://maemo.org. The Maemo community is a place for everybody to share, discuss, get help, improve and enjoy. No matter what is your background or your motivations, the chances to find peers to meet and have fun are high. This is how anybody can get involved in open source collaboration, even without having a clue about programming. Give it a try. Download and rate some applications. [Share your impressions in the forum. Propose one idea or two. At that point you will probably know what to do next.

Be careful, you might learn more things than you expect. You might get more excited and involved in than you think. Your community karma might go beyond your expectations. And one day you might find yourself meeting other Maemo peers face to face, till late in some city you had never visited before. Feeling happy for having gone beyond the role of a demanding customer of an interesting product.

Yes, all these things might happen to you after opening a Maemo box.