Re: How well do you know your Maemo Council??
 

I'm confused by the negativity surrounding these discussions. We're all on the same side here, so there's hardly a need to be accusatory or nasty in your posting.

Re: How well do you know your Maemo Council??
 

I agree wholeheartedly. I only was pointing out a problem to the Maemo Community Council that they were apparently to close to it to see. I wanted nothing more that to help the council. To whoever added the apeshit tag on this thread, please remove it, as this is not cool. We are all trying to help in our own ways. Lets all try to set our emotions/ego's on the side, and look honestly at the work in front of us. viva la communidad

Thanks to Jaffa for taking initial steps to clarify the Council's roles and I am looking forward to further improvments.

Re: How well do you know your Maemo Council??
 

The two biggest problems (here, and as I see it) are incomplete documentation, and misconceptions about what the council is and what it does (which stems, in part, at least here, seemingly, from some people being unwilling to step foot outside of itT).

The documentation was something the first council had on our list for a very long time, but which was never completely finalized. Jaffa appears to have solved that to some sort of satisfaction, though and (hopefully) has largely addressed the second in the same step, but I'll add my part to it.

A lot of people seem to have the idea that the council is (or should be) the highly active administrative body of the community (and, far too often thanks to lingering trademark confusion, of Maemo*). My own vision of the council is of facilitation. Our job is not to administer all of the day-to-day goings on of maemo.org and the community, which would be a very visible and high-profile position indeed, but to help encourage community activity and make sure every element of the community (including Nokia) is aware of what's going on elsewhere (in this case, we've apparently failed).

Maemo's participation in GSoC is a good example of how this should work. VDVsx (get that man a t-shirt!) had a plan for getting Maemo involved as a mentoring organization for GSoC this Summer, so he went ahead a put it together. He asked the council for some input and help (a quick sanity check on the idea, some help in implementing the plan, a little copy-editing on the wiki, etc.), but the council's involvement was largely peripheral. The success of the plan wasn't dependent upon the council, but we helped it along a bit and made it a bit easier and just a bit more likely to succeed.

This is how I see the council's involvement working. Not the high-profile group that comes up with the GSoC plan and implements it, but the group that helps somebody else do so—facilitators. So, no, there isn't a huge amount of fanfare about what the council does, but there doesn't need to be. If the community is growing and improving (even if you don't know we're doing it), then we're doing our job right.

That said, there a few obvious things that the council has done that, perhaps, you've missed out on (which is why I recommend paying attention to the council blog). The debmaster hiring is probably the most high-profile of them.


*penguinbait, to address the correction earlier more helpfully, the reason why it's most certainly not the "Maemo Council" (which is the same reason why "Maemo.org" is inappropriate) is because when you say "Maemo", what you're actually saying is "Nokia". Although the community is involved with Maemo's development (Maemo the software platform, that is) the owner of the platform and the trademark and the holder of the final say-so is Nokia. So when you say "Maemo Council" you're implying that the council is of Nokia and has some real say in the development decisions about the platform. This leads to confusion and misconceptions and what the council is and what it does. Both of which we already have more than enough of (for instance, Linux Devices recently made the mistake of claiming that maemo.org was involved in the decision not to release Fremantle for OMAP2).

Re: How well do you know your Maemo Council??
 

This is as good a thread to ask than any... Where is Nokia the corporation in all this with regard to anything maemo.org, the council, or this forum?

Are there links you can provide me to better explain this.

I mean, are paid employees of Nokia directing maemo.org? Can a paid employee of Nokia be a council member? Will paid employees of Nokia direct or administer this forum in the future?

Just wondering...

Re: How well do you know your Maemo Council??
 

Employees of Maemo SW and Nokia are members of the Maemo Community just like the rest us.

Um, well, there's something about it in the election page on the wiki, but no, I don't think anybody's done an in-depth analysis of this or anything.

No more than any other community member might "direct" maemo.org. Of course, the "maemo.org four" have a lot of influence in the direction of maemo.org, but they're employees of maemo.org, and not really employees of Nokia (although Nokia is paying their salaries).

Sure, as long as they make it apparent that they're affiliated with Nokia (this applies to contractors like Igalia and OpenHanded, too).

Well, Quim is a moderator now and the recent forum reorganization was largely his idea. So, yes, but it's not anything underhanded or subversive (which is where it seems these questions are headed).

Re: How well do you know your Maemo Council??
 

Why is "Maemo.org" inappropriate? Right on the front page it says "Copyright © 2002-2009 Nokia Corporation". So it IS Nokia. If it is not Nokia, then perhaps MaemoCommunity.org (maemocommunity.org) would be a better web address than Maemo.org (maemo.org), since I doubt a lot of people will catch that "maemo" is something different than "Maemo". I also doubt that changing the case of a letter holds much weight in Trademark law.

Re: How well do you know your Maemo Council??
 

Because Maemo with a capital M is Nokia, and a lowercase m is a way to differentiate between it and the Nokia trademark.

Yes, I've filed lots of bugs about trademark and copyright usage on the website, so I know better than most. :) The footer will be changing when the new site goes live.

That's an artifact from when maemo.org was, in fact, the official maemo (with a lowercase m) website. Now we'll have maemo.nokia.com for the users and Maemo @ Forum Nokia for the commercial developers.

Aside from the fact that a lot of money and time has already been invested in maemo.org as the Maemo Community's official trademark and legal entity, and maemo.org is already an established domain with four years of history behind it, maemocommunity.org is long and (largely) pointless.

No, but this is why I've been correcting people when they make the mistake (it behooves both you, as a community member, and Nokia to have two strong, separate trademarks). Eventually enough people will catch on.

Right, which is why there's also a .org on the end there. Don't doubt that Nokia Legal has invested a lot of time in considering the current arrangement.

Re: How well do you know your Maemo Council??
 

GA, you seem to, as other council members, take offense of members not knowing what the council does or is for. All I was asking for is it to be defined in a location and give some information about what the councile is for. How to engage the council and what to expect from council. Its obvious people don't know, its not a bad reflection of council, but more an issue to be addressed by council. The reasons and example given are great, but put it all togerther in one location so people don't have to come here and ask.

You say:

"The two biggest problems (here, and as I see it) are incomplete documentation, and misconceptions about what the council is and what it does (which stems, in part, at least here, seemingly, from some people being unwilling to step foot outside of itT)."

Perhaps this is because the information is not easily found, so people end up coming back here asking questions. Or they are just confused from the "incomplete/old documentation" Which is exactly why I was requesting some clarification

Again people need to separate the feelings from the feedback. I was only pointing out it was unclear. If it was unclear to me, as a fairly resourceful member, perhaps it was confusing for others also.

Re: How well do you know your Maemo Council??
 

I'm not implying anything... Just wondering.

Um, the people who pay my salary have a huge influence in how I act. What role does the council have when, or even if it is felt that the direction maemo.org is going is in the best interest of Nokia... and not the Maemo community?

BTW, is this forum now part of Nokia marketing? Will there be a complaint department?

Will, for instance anybody be responsible for answering to the N800 people who felt ripped off by the Navicore application or is that stuff ancient history?

What will happen if, by an extremely small chance, Fremantle or the device that runs it has a fundamental flaw discovered only after it ships. Will this forum become a clearing house for customer complaints?

... again, just wondering. (and remembering the posts on this forum during RX-34_2007SE_3.2007.10-7)

Kudos BTW to Nokia for making this attempt and I hope they are successful in their efforts to help fund our community. I fear that no matter what they do though, a large percentage of the public (device users) will feel that Nokia is less than an arms length away from maemo.org. Many may use it incorrectly as a means to communicate with Nokia about all Nokia products, not just tablets.

I appreciate the subtlety between big M and little m but most spell checkers will change the lower case to an upper case. Some may become irritated because they only taught their checkers the word after having been corrected for transposing the dang "a" and the "e" on this board in the past. :)

Re: How well do you know your Maemo Council??
 

Along these same lines, not necessarily and org chart but some type of chart showing players. For example, not necessarily every person at maemo but players that are development facing, helping community members. some roles and responsibilities

Just a thought