On Tue, 2011-03-08 at 16:23 +0200, Vitaly Repin wrote:
> - It does not work due to the fact that (sometimes) google responds to
>   our queries in the way which is not specified by the EAS protocol 
>   specs.
> - When Google was contacted, they rejected to answer any technical
>   questions of ours. My personal (!) opinion on the matter is that they
>   don't want to promote EAS, they want to promote the google data API.

Well the Google data API is *standard* protocols, isn't it?

So *I* want to promote the "google data API" too.

In fact, I was very disappointed that the N900 didn't ship with standard
sync protocols supported "out of the box". I played with SyncEvolution
briefly for Google sync, but there was too much work to be done on the
UI side and the automatically-trigger-a-sync-when-we-get-a-network side
and a bunch of other things that were already *done* for MfE but for
some reason even *those* parts didn't seem to be open.

(Or perhaps I just didn't look in the right places; I concede I didn't
look *that* hard. I do have a day job...)

> >  - Not open source so it can't be debugged and fixed by those for whom
> >    it *would* be a priority.
> 
> This is a request to legal and business people. I totally agree with
> this point.
 ...
> Could you or guys from Intel / Linux Foundation try to push the open-sourcing 
> of MfE? To
> bring this question on board? To make any kind of noise about it?

Is it really going to make any difference? Especially given that we have
internal deadlines which are *very* tight, for getting this working.

At this point it seems like it'll *so* much be quicker to reimplement
it, than it would be even to get a coherent discussion started with the
right folks in Nokia.

I'm painfully aware that even at the best of times, and even when there
haven't been legal hurdles to cope with, Nokia have been *very* slow to
open things up.

> > That sounds interesting; I'd be very interested to see how much we can
> > re-use. I assume that you'll never get anywhere with your lawyers on the
> > topic of open sourcing it? 
> 
> If we don't have support from outside - for sure. They need to see the
> business needs. Practically, the demand.

Which part isn't obvious? That we need ActiveSync support, to
communicate with legacy crap systems that can't talk standard protocols?

Or that a closed source implementation is a complete non-starter, since
it can't be debugged and well-integrated into the system?

> > But perhaps we could design the DBus API to
> > be similar to the one you're already using, and make the transition a
> > whole lot easier? Being able to use existing plugins to QMF and
> > libcamel, perhaps with some modification, would be *really* useful — is
> > there any better prospect of opening *those*?
> 
> Interesting point. I'll bring it on board internally. Sounds reasonable.

Can we focus on the bit about the DBus API first? There's no *licensing*
issue there, right? You could share that without having to consult the
lawyers? Or just implement DBus introspection in the next release... :)

> But after Feb 11 I personally  started to be really pessimistic about 
> open-sourcing
> of anything made by Nokia.

Pessimism is my base state. It's one of the reasons I *love* being
proven wrong occasionally :)

I've love to be proven wrong in my assumption that Nokia will never
manage to pull their finger out and fix the MfE licensing in a
reasonable amount of time. By all means, please put me in touch with the
right people and we'll see if we can make it happen.

-- 
dwmw2

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