maemo.org - Talk - A significant day in community governance?

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- - A significant day in community governance? (https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=75431)

Re: A significant day in community governance?

Quote:

Originally Posted by vi_ (Post 1063166)

the invention of snake 2???

Is that open-sourced? Wait... Did they even port that to Maemo? :)

Re: A significant day in community governance?

Quote:

Originally Posted by gerbick (Post 1062993)

I just wonder how Intel is responding to this bit of news.

I'm guessing they are not entirely unhappy, as they would probably prefer everything to be on AppUp anyway.

Re: A significant day in community governance?

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Originally Posted by slaapliedje (Post 1063091)

Really meego.com is owned by the Linux Foundation and... WTF? They are supposed to be the ones who always fight for Open Source and all that jazz.

Seriously!?

Well... with a name like that you'd be forgiven to think so, but this is the same Linux Foundation that threw decades of good development, code reuse and packaging practices with their "compliance" spec, killed any community-led respins (Smeegol, Fedora) with their trademark policy (though "MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan" is alright for some reason) and is trying to remove all GPLv3 code from the distribution.

Quote:

According to Wikipedia (yeah, so it MUST be true!);

"The Linux Foundation (LF) is a non-profit consortium chartered to foster the growth of Linux."

Exactly, Linux. Not Free Software or even Open Source.

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Let's face it the only 'ecosystem' (I hate using that word...it's become dirty)

Another word for it is food chain, and of course anyone who talks about it really wants to be at the top.

Re: A significant day in community governance?

well it looks like it's really happening

microsoft and apple are so afraid of being moved out by linux on the mobile space they are going to sue everything open source.

i wonder if that even possible considering by being open source the code its distributed.

i wonder if LF have a real reason to do this, IE patent trolls already threaten them to.

Re: A significant day in community governance?

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Originally Posted by jo21 (Post 1063204)

How would we know? They're not very open. :P

Re: A significant day in community governance?

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Originally Posted by qole (Post 1063108)

Yeah, exactly. This is really shameful behaviour by the "Guardians of Linux" themselves. Honestly, blocking a community open source app repository because of supposed potential legal issues? Seriously? WTF?!

We got a big presentation at the San Francisco conference from the guys building apps.meego.com and honestly it was one of the only bits of the conference that didn't feel like vaporware pie-in-the-sky or, even worse, like flies buzzing over a corpse. There was a real feeling of positive momentum there in that talk, like things were moving forward and the pieces were fitting into place.

According to the post by lbt, they were just as blindsided and frustrated by the nonsense as everyone else. And my sense is that Nokians were in a panic as well.

This is actually a very sad and worrisome development for open source. If the Linux Foundation itself, on the 20th anniversary of Linux, is this jittery, what's going to happen to the rest of the Open Source world?

I agree that the apps.meego.com presentation was encouraging, and this news is very discouraging. But there were also indications at the MeeGo Conference that LF had made a compromise with MeeGo. It was clear from the TSG and other structural mechanisms that MeeGo did not exactly have the open governance that you see in many OSS projects, but that it was worth it to LF I guess because MeeGo pushes out a fair amount of OSS, including upstream, and generally advances the cause of Linux. It's not the first time a non-profit has collaborated with corporations on a project and perhaps compromised a little for the greater good.

But I would like this thread to get back to the themes in the OP rather than being a Nokia pity party or an LF criticism. I'd like people to talk about their views on maemo.org, and whether there is despite, the practical challenges, a certain "stability" to its community governance that I would hope attract developers to continue to support it because they know the rug won't be pulled out from underneath them. There is I think an advantage to doing your own thing and not have your future compromised by what's going on "behind those curtains", as you put it earlier.

Re: A significant day in community governance?

SD69 - Thanks for this - I saw your comment in the thread I posted. Allow me to add what I can:

Quote:

Originally Posted by SD69 (Post 1062830)

Well, now it is made public, after a brief period of secrecy, that - surprise! - MeeGo will refuse

So, to clarify ... MeeGo use LF to provide hosting. LF have been advised by their legal to refuse us. LF can't/won't say any more.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SD69 (Post 1062830)

The sad situation was rather unofficially described by lbt here:
http://wiki.meego.com/MeeGo_Apps/Problem_Statement

Wouldn't say unofficial - LF told me directly (phone call so no transcription) then followed up with mails cc'ed to Dawn and Quim and Ibrahim. I just volunteered to do the comms.

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Originally Posted by SD69 (Post 1062830)

Unfortunately, the problem has not been succinctly stated and rather vaguely blamed on patents, so it is hard to address the possible solutions and effect. But it seems to a sucker punch to the kidneys.

Yes. It hurt.

snip of Maemo vs MeeGo.

OT:

Yes, IMNSHO Maemo is a dead platform (not community) now. MeeGo is where it is happening. IMHO the Maemo community should be extending to encompass MeeGo and not getting hung up over a name. Of course, by not doing so, MeeGo is being controlled by the only people over there ... corporates.

I have this not entirely positive image of all the maemo kids standing on one side of the playground and drawing lines in the dirt to differentiate maemo from meego.... it's a big open space and no-one is stopping you from being friendly and helping the new project work. Intel are not evil, they're just not experienced at doing OSS community. Nokia took years to get it ... (I was going to say "right") to where it is now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SD69 (Post 1062830)

The proposed alternative site (apps.formeego.com) seems to be a corporate-sponsored site from our own long lost friend, Nokia.

A maemo.org run by the community would never make such a decision.

ROFL - formeego.org/com (we have both) is more grass-roots than maemo. Currently it's "owned" by Thomas, Neils and I. Whilst we are contractors even we don't have the spare cash to setup all the HW needed ... so you bet your arse it's running on corporate provided HW :

THANK YOU NOKIA

(who we recognise still have an interest in making Harmattan apps work)

Oh. It also sits in the same rackspace as maemo.org .... for now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SD69 (Post 1062830)

To maemo and other mobile linux developers, to those of you who support open source, those of you who have said maemo is dead, and those of you who have accepted "free" N950s - think carefully, think twice, and please continue to support maemo.org

:)
To those in maemo.org burying their heads in the sand: MeeGo community is young and needs people who are passionate about ensuring it grows into a real opensource community. That won't happen if you don't get involved. If the name change bothers you then think of the new T-shirts...

BTW .. did I mention that Neils and I made a huge effort to make the MeeGo infra support Fremantle and Harmattan.... if that's not "continue to support maemo.org" then what is?

Re: A significant day in community governance?

This is certainly an interesting situation. So it seems like the 'meego community' may have to move to a different domain in order to insulate the LF from patent violations - taken from here.

That is an interesting scenario, because maemo.org is also at a crossroads as to where it's future lies - both spiritually and physically. Rather than create formeego.org could it be a possibility to re-integrate the 2 communities under a mobileopensource.org moniker or something and save the hassle of recreating 2 seperate infrastructures within a year or so?

Re: A significant day in community governance?

Quote:

Originally Posted by SD69 (Post 1062948)

There is not a problem with all the meego apps. The apps from corporations will still be accepted at meego.com. Apparently, it is the mere fact that an app is from an individual developer that will be the basis for its refusal. Nevermind that maemo.org has shown that there can be a effective QA process for such apps.

I wasn't entirely clear. The phone call was long and during it the justification was that individually contributed apps are not subject to the same review as those apps that end up in meego or the reference codebase. Individual apps will still of course be welcome in core MeeGo or the reference codebase.

I personally don't think any code undergoes any meaningful review wrt the stated threat. I do think that having a clear providence may mitigate the legal risk. Since LF won't comment I am speculating.

There will be no apps.meego.com at all - especially not for corporate apps.

apps.formeego.org is the successor to maemo extras and written by much of the same team.

Re: A significant day in community governance?

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Originally Posted by bergie (Post 1062988)

Yep, as I wrote on FMC, this will give us as a community more freedom on how to run the Apps service on long term.

But obviously the timing was still frustrating as everything was pretty much ready and done and now has to be transferred to new infra.

The patent situation across the Atlantic is looking worse day by day. I wonder if they'll have a software industry left in ten years...

Timely : http://www.economist.com/blogs/democ...ctual-property