Open sourcing Kompakt apps (not the OS)

Mudita Products
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I know that you won’t be making MuditaOS K open source completely, but that you are considering making parts of it open source.

One possibility I see here is to make apps open source, but not the core OS. I understand you want to maintain control over key OS features that make the phone what it is. Apps seem to contribute less to the overall identity of the Kompakt. They are, to some extent, more run-of-the-mill – this is a good thing, because it makes it in principle very easy for outsiders to contribute. And you’re probably less afraid of competitors seeing the code for your music app than that for the OS itself.

Looking through the forum, there are a number of first impression posts with minor wishes: better metadata support in the music player, multiplayer chess, a timer in the clock, etc. I call them minor because they affect a small portion of the user base. At the same time, they may be major for some, but are relatively straightforward to tackle for a somewhat experienced programmer. So, if you’d open source the apps, chances are that developers will help you fix and expand features that are most important for them. This would enable you to focus on larger features and the OS itself, without being distracted from these more minor issues.

Of course, you would have to invest some time in community management: helping developers find their way and reviewing outside contributions. And you may have to disappoint contributors when a new feature is, in your view, not minimalist enough. You may want to set up some basic guidelines for what kind of features you do / do not want in the product, and you could recommend contributors to settle on a contribution’s scope before they start implementing. However, in my experience with open source projects, you win this investment back very easily because you
(1) save on time developing new features;
(2) get less returns from users missing “that one feature” (because they can implement it themselves, or see others working on it);
(3) build a bigger and more engaged user base among developers, who will act as advocates;
(4) can roll out updates with more features more quickly to the entire user base.

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@anon1234 I’ve passed this on to our team & I will come back to this thread once they reply, so stay tuned.

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I support this proposal. The current apps are a bit too minimal. :sweat_smile:

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Just a little question. I don’t know anything about software development.
How long does it take to create a simple application(timer, alarm…)?

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It depends on how simple I suppose, but the actual implementation itself can take less than a day.

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This answer was troubling to me, and the principal reason I held-off on ordering the Kompakt (and the inverse, the reason I ordered multiple Pures–although I’d argue the details explained in installing-custom-build-of-muditaos-on-my-own-phone/6706 made descriptions of MuditaOS as it pertains to the pure misleading).

Core components, all though not all, of AOSP you are using under licenses which require you to make the source you’ve distributed (on phone, over-the-air, or for download) available; but I don’t see anything in your Github where you have previously published your source code.

Moreover, the source code needs to be “complete, corresponding, source code” sufficient to build and install all on the device. Am I to understand, based on the linked article, that Mudita is currently willfully violating copyright? Or are purchasers of the Kompakt able to download the modified versions of applicable code (kernel, modules, and utilities) and there associated build scripts sufficient to modify their device?

(apparently I can’t add links or URLs so I’ve had to reference rather than link the other post and link in the quoted text)

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