Re: Ask the Council!
 

The biggest problem we are facing is the lack of maintenance and support from Nokia.
We should, at least, try to move the OBS and package repositories to a somewhere else were we could easily do tasks such as promoting applications, upgrade the toolchain (compiler, binutils), manage allowed dependencies between repositories (allow applications to depend on CSSU), etc.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

[off-topic]
w3mir
the site is pretty well structured & any GNU/Linux familiar user should easily find her/his way around.
personally i use openSUSE on my workstations so i simply used YaST2 to get the package (& dependencies)
(as a matter of fact, it happened the other way around... was looking for rsync GUIs & stuff when i came across w3mir & decided it might be worse a shot :D)
i created a base directory & a sub dir for each repository
adding a .w3mirc file in each of those directories allows to pass w3mir a number of parameters / options;
personally i started with
as i'm not interested in games, themes or the like i also Ignored any such dir with more then a few MBs and ended up with...
by running following commands
i'll refer you to w3mir's MAN...pages for the gritty details ;)

extrax+testing is extras & extras-testing merged;
simply run the w3mir command with extras respectively extras-testing URL in /mnt/k/mameo/extrax+testing/pool/freemantle to get that (if a packet is already there, obviously, it won't copy it again)
this saves 900MBs from ~2800MBs
guess could do the same with extras+testing+devel and save anywhere close to 2.5GBs; considering devel is 14GB...

all those numbers are with attached /w3mirc file (had to add .txt for TMO to upload it...)
as i said, not interested in games, themes & the like (no offence to the folks who spent their time developing 'em...) thus merely an inspiration
the file can be named w3mirc.ini on win32

playing around with the URL: and FETCH: parameters it should be possible to download / update extras+testing (or even extras+testing+devel) with one run...
once an initial download is done, the refresh goes thru like a breeze only getting the new / changed packages

hth
[/off-topic] :rolleyes:

Re: Ask the Council!
 

That's why I also included the question for another name in my last post. Maemo is obviously a trademark or some similar construct owned by Nokia and can therefore not be used by a platform that has no official relation with Nokia.
To keep things easy one could simply move the name to an independent "internet tablet talk" site or whatever, but the problem is that this would require a transfer of the information gathered here at maemo.org, where I, as a layman, see legal issues since some of the contents here are the property of Nokia and there is no license given that allows the redistribution of the contents itself.

I don't even know if the content produced by the community (extras repos, forum content) could be copied. Of course every contributor can agree that his content can be copied, but some won't be reachable anymore others might not approve for whatever reason.

I thought of something like this myself, but never actually did it. The problem with these scripts is that even though you can download the contents for yourself, you can't redistribute them. Even if Nokia would like to give us the permission, they can't because they are bound to 3rd party licenses themselves. So it doesn't help to keep up the infrastructure.

...I'll stop here before this post becomes a rant about intellectual property. :confused:

Re: Ask the Council!
 

just to make sure i get this right...
are you saying we should just sit with our hands under our buts 'til next year and in the worst case scenario end up without packages? :confused:

the alternative to every single N900 owner (who wants to be sure s/he can keep using her/his N900 after this year...) to use w3mir (and / or Pali's script), download the base images (i.e. RX-51_2009SE_20.2010.36-2_PR_COMBINED_MR0_ARM.bin ) would be the collective server mirroring.
after an initial enthusiasm (on Pali's thread) the intention to create such mirrors was pretty much gone; one good reason is that a private person trying to make Maemo repositories available to the community is practically guaranteed to get disconnected by his provider / have his site blocked by the hosting company (unless s/he goes for a PRO site with according bandwidth...)

any ideas :confused: :(

& again, off-topic, sort'a :o
on the other hand, this IS community stuff we should really start to think about... (SD69's plan B?)

EDIT: Timopth, i'm not trying to start a flame war about the best way to handle the situation; just trying to broaden the discussion (we need to have anyway...)

Re: Ask the Council!
 

for mirroring apt repositories is better to use program apt-mirror. I created patch for apt-mirror to support also downloads.maemo.nokia.com see: http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...3&postcount=75

Re: Ask the Council!
 

as you may have noted i'm not a m$ fan
on the other hand, i haven't managed my foray into the .deb further then the N900, installing (but not using yet) a Trinity / Kubuntu VM and running your scripts on openSUSE

i don't like .deb (& related distros) but all this apt-* stuff only works on a .deb based machine :(
thus for all the others out there (mostly m$ user? but also Fedora, slackware, Gentoo...) not an option :|

Re: Ask the Council!
 

apt-mirror is perl script which does not support on any dpkg-* programs. So if you install perl on your m$ machine, you can run apt-mirror too.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

sed 's/support/depend/g'

Re: Ask the Council!
 

I would hope we could find a way to automate, but distribute, the mirroring in a way that doesn't approximate a DDOS attack or put heavy stress on their servers.

Yes, the idea of plan B is to put together a legitimate, viable, freestanding, community site that complements maemo.org. Something that won't get shut down. The idea is to not do this as a fork, but to try to get the infrastructure and control over it to better align with respective motivations of Nokia and community. More of a conventional pairing of an OEM official site and a second community run site since it's not working out anymore to try to "share" maemo.org.

Almost all of the content is CC. No problem with copying. The problem is making it available again in useful format.


Glad to see discussion. I might as well drop it here among friends that we have registered www.maemocommunity.org. With a disclaimer, and considering that Nokia hasn't branded a product as maemo in over two years, the domain name is among the least of our issues.

My suggestion is we continue and develop a solid technical plan for setting up repos at a new website to be released later. I am trying to line up some administrative and legal support. More on that later. And I also suggest we take some time to at least try to work out some areas of cooperation with Nokia.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Yes, I think that moving only the most problematic sections out of Maemo.org could be a good starting point. That in my opinion should be the OBS and repositories, the rest of stuff is mostly working OK and would be easier to move in case of shutdown.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Can you be more specific please?
The only place where I see any statement about licensing is the terms of use site [1] which merely says that there are contents on this site which are not freely redistributable. Unfortunately it neither says which parts of the contents are affected by this nor under which circumstances the rest (whatever that would be) can be redistributed.

[1] http://maemo.org/legal/terms_of_use/

Re: Ask the Council!
 

I was referring to the website content, which includes the wiki, documentation, forum, etc. This has been discussed and no one sees a problem. There is, of course, some code which is not freely redistributable.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that one can use "maemo" or even "nokia" in a domain for a community site without problems, e.g. allaboutmaemo.com or mynokiablog.com.

I wonder if this Plan B should have its own thread? There's probably a discussion already on the maemo-community mailing list, but a lot of people don't read that.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

The bad thing is that there is *no* discussion in mailing list. Not, that I don't prefer using forum, where it doesn't disappear so easily...

/estel

Re: Ask the Council!
 

I intend to make a posting when I get time this week. But anyone please start a separate thread if you get to it before I do.

I'd like to have a better sense of the cost of maintaining the OBS and repositories for 6 months. The OBS for harmattan may also go dark sometime. How feasible and advantageous would it be (technically) to have a single OBS with harmattan/fremantle(CSSU)/diablo targets and how long would it take?

Re: Ask the Council!
 

After spending 5 hours of my life trying to make the autobuilder build something that was already running on my phone in front of me (5 hours I would happily devote to bugfixing or adding new features) I started thinking, do we NEED the damn thing?

I could upload a .deb and a .tgz instead and save all the hassle.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Pali,

i'm as weathered (ksh) script guy & know how to find my way around a (*nix) script but...
spent the best part of the past hr trying to get apt-mirror to work on my openSUSE (12.1) machine
nada :(
thanks to some familiarity with .deb from Maemo i can see that apt-mirror expects to find all apt config files where they are supposed to be... not sure how m$ users are going to deal w/

/etc/apt/mirror.list :mad:

guess going to have to delve into my Tubuntu VM :o

thanks for your Maemo patches!

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Autobuilder makes sure, that program will run even on "clean" device, i.e. without any fancy things/tools/whatever, that developers tend to have installed in their dev enviroment/devices/chain ;)

Yet, if there is better way to ensure that, why not?

/Estel

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Yes that's true, but it should build with the same build-deps as madde anyway, but we are straying off topic so I stop my rant.

The other method is to use clean RDA devices, or have a script to create a clean scratchbox environment for testing.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

A comment on what I though the Council is NOT:

* maemo.org is an open community based on a meritocracy. People with especial permissions have got their merits somehow - usually being good and dedicated at something during a long time. The merit of Council members is to be elected for a period of 6 months. Any other merit a Council member has is because s/he has won it with hard work on something else.

* The Council is not the community driver, but a problem solver. When other drivers in the community get stuck on something there is no way to agree with between people, they try to find a solution path through the Council. But the Council itself is not assigned as such to any project - except to the "project Council" itself. Whatever projects are the Council members involved are their own projects and their own involvement.

* Being a Council member and getting especial permissions granted in the maemo.org server infrastructure are not automatically connected. Anybody helping and contributing to the infrastructure has the potential to get all permissions after going through the steps in between.

* Being a Council member and approving or pulling apps in Testing are not automatically connected. A different thing would be a situation where the Testing team finds an app should be exceptionally approved or pulled, and they just seek a "community blessing" through the council.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Also, there seems to be a bit of confusion about who can access and who can fix the packages interface - http://maemo.org/packages . Again, you don't need to wait for a Council to help on that.

http://trac.midgard-project.org/brow...maemo.packages + find + fix + diff + patch... Old open development process applies.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Who got right to start referendum about changing core things related to Maemo community (i.e. voting process, transfer to self-governed legal entity etc). I always thought that it's Council, so it isn't entirely true, that Council mandate is to only manage "Project Council". "Project Maemo" get also influenced.

/Estel

Re: Ask the Council!
 

But if someone designs the patch will it actually be applied?

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Yes. the council doesn't have power to control the community like that. see http://wiki.maemo.org/Community_Council (somethings there might not be relevant anymore)

So I'd say the council's big thing for the near future is to keep itself relevant by communication, helping projects (not by writing code or fixing their bugs) and making sure that the community is a good place to be in whether one works on a small or big community project, is just an end-user or whatnot. These are things that anyone interested in the community's welfare can and should help with. This includes making sure that we don't end up in a situation like this anymore (QA and project problems).

I'd argue that the current technical problems can be resolved before the next election. One doesn't need to be in the council to participate in the discussions and offer proposals to how to get things on the roll again.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Code is a start, but code alone for something like this isn't enough. Is there also some documentation on how to set up a local environment for development (ie the whole maemo.org midgard scaffolding, integration with repositories, database schemas etc)?

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Wait. you're telling us, that some thing from wiki page aren't relevant anymore, cause Nokia changed it (i.e. "hiring personel to manage maemo.org") without asking anyone, yet, Council can't change anything even via referendum?

Sorry, I'm not buying that. Trying to arbitrary reduce Council from Community representatives to "walking telegrams" is just pushing Communtiy further into forking ideas. Unless I misunderstood what You're trying to say.

In my opinion, state of Council being relevant or not depends totally on Community support for it. If Community will be willing to take path, that Council is supporting, yet don't have (legal) right in current state, Maemo Community will just fork itself, into organization with steering group or whatsnot.

Similarly, Council can have upperpowa rights granted, yet, without Community accepting and following way the Council is doing job, there won't be any effect on Community.
---

For me, referendum is great tool to have, that should be used in case of important and path-forming decisions. No one have right to tell Community "no, voting what you'll do isn't Your right". Of course, tools (like voting process) need someone to manage it, and who should do it if not Council?

/Estel

Re: Ask the Council!
 

fwiw I was trying to remind about the original purpose of the Council, not trying to deviate it out of somewhere.

In any case referendums only work after extensive discussions not leading to consensus in the first place.

So the first question is: what power are you missing for the Council?

Re: Ask the Council!
 

that's promising :cool:
or is it? :confused:

anyway, i think the problem here is less technical (promoting stable packages from -devel or even -testing to extras or fixing packages which are not) then organizational i.e. checking which packages are actually orphaned (in whichever way) and communicating with Niels (or any other person able to change ownership if owner is not available anymore)
obviously, someone has to pick it up, but expecting individual developers to do that and getting anywhere is either disillusioned or complete naive :(

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Estel,

did it ever occur to you that Maemo is not -- repeat not -- a free software, but a (pseudo-)commercial project of a company?
they simply do not want to release it.
if the community supports it, no matter how messy and disorganized it is, fine.
otherwise... feel free to leave.

i'm not telling you to leave, but NOKIA is not going to let go of Maemo. if you don't like this idea and would rather create a FOSS project, you will either have to start more or less from scratch or indeed cause a scission of the community

along the line of what happened with Symbian... ppl are becoming unsure of the future and decide to leave it, no matter how good the latest iterations / efforts are

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Thanks for clarification, although my post was rather referring to timoph comment:
http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...&postcount=784

For now, I'm not missing any power for Council - I'm rather trying to figure out, what exactly Council can do (or not) from "formal" point of view. I.E. who is entitled to create referendum, if not Council?

After all, one of initial Council responsibilities, was to present Community ("azimuth") stance to Nokia, and to talk/negotiate about main Community concerns, that might be addressed by Nokia (often working in collaboration with Council or certain individualities).

This may seems less relevant now - unfortunately - due to limited resources Nokia is wanting to invest in Maemo Community - no one blames You here, it's just a fact.

Yet, to effectively use resources that we have - to Community best interest - it's important to have Council as true Community representatives, i.e. people that know about most important/potent projects going on in the community, issues found there, etc. This way, developers time isn't wasted and they can actually write the code, while having people that they trust speaking on their behalf about infrastructure, roadblocks etc. At least, this is how it looks from my point of view.

So, "project Council" is ok, but with much higher doze of "representatives". Do not confuse with "politics" ;)

/Estel

Re: Ask the Council!
 

In a nutshell, an at-large elected council body of 5 people made it easier for Nokia to interface with the community. When the times called for it, 5 NDAs instead of thousands.

There's value in that alone.

Some of us, self included, tried to stretch into stronger roles of advocacy. In hindsight maybe not the best idea, since it led to misunderstandings among some here over what the council mandate actually was. "Oh, we picked you guys to make Nokia fix things!" Well... no... there was just a faint hope by some of us that a community representation role got us greater cache with Nokia. "Ah, you're maemo.org council. Sure, we'll listen to your concern about micro usb connectors falling out of N900s!" If only. ;)

Anyway I do understand the current confusion. With no active products, and the OS' future essentially shrouded in mystery, what is there to represent? Note that I ask that rhetorically, not as a challenge. I am interested though in everyone's honest answer to that question.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

yes, we all wanted the council to be the small local cadre who marched up to the big corporation and demanded to be heard, but really they are like the soldiers who come to your door:

"i am sorry to inform you on behalf of the president, your son has been killed in action by an oddly named wind"

the council is dead already or should be killed, or maybe they can bargain for the dead horse's tail and mane hair.

thanks to all who served, befuddlement to those who enlist now.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

thanks for the (historical) perspective :p

to develop on [...], maybe it is important to remember another thing; until a few years ago, NOKIA was selling devices like donuts with coffee in the morning... ppl just bought it without even thinking about it (at least in ROW ;))
days when a mobile phone was simply called a nokia in some parts of the world...
it was easy to support a hopelessly unprofitable project like Maemo back then...

in today’s situation, independently of the (management) choices made to address it, this is a whole different ballgame...

still, there seems to be more MeeGo / Harmattan devices coming and so far, i haven't seen anyone providing a concrete piece of info that NOKIA is not going to renew its founding...
i think Rob (SD69) (?) even mentioned that NOKIA would like to include Harmattan better in Maemo.org
that doesn't sound like "no future" to me :confused:

to keep in mind before taking any rash decisions, maybe?

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Well, Nokia let go of Qt, in the sense that it is now a FOSS project, and it seems that all parties are happy with the situation and no "scission"(?) of the community occurred. So why can't something like that happen with maemo? The way it is now doesn't have to be the way it always is.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Totally agree with both of You. that is why I see Council not only as volunteers to represent community to Nokia, but as volunteers to represent Community for other projects too (it's already happening - see meeting about OBS, where others projects, like Mer, are involved), and as force that eases collaboration within community itself - allowing to, for example, create independent (from companies) Community.

It it's going to be called Maemo or not is a less important thing - yet, of course, passing those things to Community as it was with QT seems reasonable and profitable for all parties involved.

/Estel

Re: Ask the Council!
 

I am not saying that the council's meaning, tasks, etc. has somehow changed - I was saying that IMO there are things that the council won't most likely bump into thus "not relevant" (at this time). They could but I'm a bit pessimistic about for example about us (the community) being able to hire new staff any time soon.

I don't get the "Nokia changed it" -part. btw, I somehow got the impression that some people think I'm somehow affiliated with Nokia. Dunno if I got that wrong but in any case I'm not.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Is CSSU clean device then? Autobuilder build of DCSS will run on CSSU device, but enter will not work. Built on CSSU device it will work on CSSU device, but not on 'clean'. Would OBS be able to address this? (this is also the case with VFU and recently same thing happened in audiophile thread with one of the proposed solutions, guaranteed to pop up again and again)

Re: Ask the Council!
 

(That is called sbdmock, and it is what the autobuilder uses. Not a breeze to setup, though)

Re: Ask the Council!
 

i'm not saying it is impossible, i'm just saying NOKIA is not going to let go of Maemo.
or do you have confirmation to the contrary?

NOKIA doesn't need to pay for Qt
in fact, making it FOSS (considering it is the foundation of KDE) allowed 'em to cut back the expenses while being assured it would live on on its own
Maemo? life of its own?
i know, i know, that's what the next Council will have to look into, still...
who on earth would be interested in Maemo, except NOKIA?
we?
anyone?

Re: Ask the Council!
 

There's a couple of false assumptions here. Being FOSS doesn't mean being on its own. Nokia can continue to support maemo as a FOSS project. It may even be better because there are people within Nokia who want to kill maemo/meego/linux and getting some of it out of Nokia might be the best way to let it grow. There are ample precedents for companies using FOSS, and here the chance of someone using some derivative of maemo from FOSS is definitely higher than them using Nokia's maemo. Of course, there are other advantages I will not go into.

I'm not saying FOSS is the best solution, just pointing out that it's not a binary black/white decision - there are shades of gray and should not be precluded as a possibility because of the few things mentioned.