Re: Migrating to Community-driven Infrastructure - Step 1: Inventory
 

Though we can't transfer data first and then ask permission after the fact. One way to do it would be to keep the old system running and set up some mechanism with which a user could initiate transfer from that to the new one. But then again, if we can keep the old system running why not, you know, just keep it running?

Any public data may be fair game, but some data, for instance email addresses, PMs and various other bits depending on profile privacy setting, was given in confidence. I don't think Nokia lawyers will allow that data to be transferred elsewhere. We may only care for email addresses, but they are kinda important...

As for the content itself, the current terms say "you license and grant Nokia and its affiliates and sub- licensees (or warrant that the owner of such rights has expressly granted) a non-exclusive, royalty-free and free of charge, perpetual, worldwide, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable right to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, communicate to the public, make available, publish" ((emphasis mine) which seems fine to me (disclaimer: IANAL). But what about users registered / content posted before this became talk.maemo.org? Have they agreed to similar terms (I haven't kept them unfortunately) or could someone appear out of the blue and say we are violating their rights?

Re: Migrating to Community-driven Infrastructure - Step 1: Inventory
 

@Reggie, you said earlier:

The implication is that you are stepping down. I don't recall anyone else asking so just for clarity are you interested in continuing in your current role?

Re: Migrating to Community-driven Infrastructure - Step 1: Inventory
 

Post #20 in this very thread suggests not :-(

Re: Migrating to Community-driven Infrastructure - Step 1: Inventory
 

OFF TOPIC
i guess just like me ,everyone will be confused and sad enough while being afraid of losing some great geeks over here and this lovely forum.I dont know whoever is controlling this maemo domain and if it is nokia then whats actually they are trying to prove ?people could easily advertise their products and new stuff here but what the **** is wrong with these monkeys ?
anyway its been about 2 years since i am keeping my lovely N900 and it is frigging faster ,newer and totally outlandish.And really without you guys ,without this forum it was never possible .And tell you what i grabbed iphone4s,sgs2,cheap chinese with ICS installed but really nothing really can be compared with this monster N900.They are so fking boring.
just saw gidzz today with this new game that he has managed to throw for our geeky N900,look at the brilliant minds over here ,look at the latest projects coming with every new day .
maemeemo,meecloy,nicolai's front camera app,ammyt's work on ICS release ,last but not the least,look at taixzo with his bloody damn good saera program.Where else we could have such brilliant people ?
i might have missed loads of names but truly every single person in this community means something .Never mind !some words were meant to be poked out in sucha dire situation,Sighs !
On topic
so if the decision has really made about the future of maemo.org,how the nokia is responding to the current situation ? Has any one asked about this from qgil? And if maemo.org is really not going to be funded after 2012 ,how the council is gonna respond to that ? beside moving the whole database from maemo.org to some other open source project site ,why not talk to any of nokians about the issue,we might able to buy a bit more time out of the equation ?
I would still recommend to be ready for whole thing in case of any prior,sudden alarmed warning .I hope we get through this easily !

Re: Migrating to Community-driven Infrastructure - Step 1: Inventory
 

I can't say for sure. There are too much uncertainties now on what the plan is for the community and where it is heading. If it intends to merge with some other community, or maybe gets relabeled, I might not be interested since things can be quite complex. If that happens, maybe the current TMO can just be archived at talk.maemo.org and launch a new forum where ever the new site will be -- it will be simpler.

Re: Migrating to Community-driven Infrastructure - Step 1: Inventory
 

Keep in mind there are over 60,000 registered members. We obviously want an archive of postings and to reserve user names. People interested in migrating and keeping their same username are probably going to have to take some affirmative action to do so. We will want to use the email address to verify identity. Cooperation from Nokia seems necessary to do that.

Re: Migrating to Community-driven Infrastructure - Step 1: Inventory
 

imo: Kate and I are already working on this and following. In fact this thread exists because we raised the topic in the first place.

One comment NOT as Nokia dude but as someone that has gone through forum migrations before, as user and as admin: I really don't think you want to migrate this big forum (in all senses) into something different. It's a lot of work to migrate, and a lot more work to whoever will be administering and fine tuning it in the future.

Unless other complicated pieces laying around, the forum is actually a simple piece. It lives in its own server, it can point to any domain and it can probably be sustainable with the right dose of ads, just like it was before. Reggie could decide the personal involvement he wants to keep in terms of time dedicated and whether he would still want to handle the hosting invoices (and ads revenue) or not. In any case, changing ownership while keeping the same infrastructure is peanuts compared with a whole migration.

You would also avoid the serious risk of seeing how a big % of users never makes it to the new forum. I have seen too many cases of communities never making it through a infra migration like this.

Re: Migrating to Community-driven Infrastructure - Step 1: Inventory
 

Let's see the lists of users in more detail:

- The forum has its own list, and actually I believe Nokia has little to do with it.
- Garage and Bugs have their own lists but do you need these services forward?
- The static website relies on the Garage users, but wouldn't be just simpler to have a new CMS and create whatever is needed? Maybe just a wiki, as many community projects do these days?
- About the wiki you could just copy whatever makes sense to keep, and we good with it. Or have a database dump of the content and export it to a new MediaWiki, starting with new users there.
- Users karma would be perhaps lost, but do you mind?

The part that looks more complex is the Autobuilder + Downloads. If a new infra is created based on OBS then perhaps there is a way to transfer all the existing packages and restart the list of owners? Or perhaps just a login prompt with acceptance of new Terms and Conditions for moving your data to a new database is enough. I'm sure Nemein can come with a proposal for this.

Re: Migrating to Community-driven Infrastructure - Step 1: Inventory
 

Who "owns" (ie is responsible for and can give access to it) that data though?

Maybe it's time to finally implement an SSO infrastructure like what was being discussed and worked on for ages but never happened :-b

In some form or other, definitely, source control and bug trackers for community projects are a must. Though perhaps something more tightly integrated and easier to manage than gforge, eg trac or redmine, along the lines of fedorahosted.org?

I think a dump would be the best starting point. Even if we don't go with mediawiki it should be able to be imported into most other wiki engines with relatively little effort.

Not at all IMO, good riddance :-)

Caveat: if I understand correctly (and I'd love to be wrong about this) OBS can't support anything earlier than Fremantle at the moment. So we need a plan B for those platforms, but that's a much larger discussion than package ownership.

Re: Migrating to Community-driven Infrastructure - Step 1: Inventory
 

Reggie owns the forum and all its data.

Sure, it is great to have bug tracker and what not. However, if you have to pay your own bills and admin your own servers and you don't have your back covered like e.g. the Fedora Project... then you have a problem. You probably want to cut as slim as possible. There are plenty of services for open source development out there, freely available and admin-free.

Someone proposed asking OSU OSL. Is a good idea, at least to know how they feel about it.