Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

So, today is almost half a year since I started as distmaster in maemo.org.

In this regard, I'd like to ask the community for a review of my work over the last half year (starting November).

Since seems to be a lot of sentiment against my work in Mer which seems to pop up in any initiative I'm doing, let's get it all on the table.

Please post about things I have done well and/or things I did not do well. In addition to that, state what you would like to see me actually do in the next six months (if I survive this review, that is and I don't decide to give up on technology and become a full-time monk..)

I'll be replying to your posts and either 1) admit I did a mistake and state why if I can or 2) defend myself with facts if I disagree with your view.

All yours for a beating or thanks in one thread :)

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

Great work, keep it up, no complaints! :D

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

For those of us who aren't familiar with your involvement and maybe aren't here every day, can you elaborate on your position of 'distmaster' and enumerate on your accomplishments?

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

Some subjective thought:

1) Project Management
Seeing how Mer went to Mer2 went to Mer2-for-N900 to MeeGo and how every initiative was touted as the way to go I cant help but to feel that there was a significant lack of proper project management and focus.
It is one thing to look at alternatives and options and it is another how to manage focus and how/when efforts are communicated to the public.
I feel that the ball was really dropped here and it has indeed impacted me in such a way that I have lost faith and interest in seeing more posts on this (Diablo alternative OS) topic from the op.

2) Bridging community efforts with Nokia assistance/resources
One of the 'benefits' that I assumed would come from Nokia sponsoring your position was, I thought, an improved channel to Nokia for resource/assistance on the distro work you embarked on.
It might very well be that Nokia have met any such request but the perception (read: My perception) is that not enough contacts/requests were made especially in terms of when working out what direction the OS development should go in. The whole 'missing driver issue' is another example of something that went on way too long and should had triggered a decision sooner.

3) Effort
I don't doubt for a second that a LOT of effort was poured into this so kudos on that.

4) Results
I read in another thread that the past months had taught you a lot personally and professionally and while that is great it doesn't take away from the fact that nothing has come out of the efforts and the perception (read: mine) is that a lot of efforts were wasted/thrown away due to the lack in focus and committment.

As mentioned a number of times above I am simply stating how I perceive things from being a simple end-user following the forum.
I am convinced that there might be results and accomplishments that I simply don't see/know of.

The above is not meant to be harsh or negative but rather an honest summary.

Using your own list of responsibilities, I'd grade my perceived value on each of them as follows (1-5 where '1' is poor and '5' is great)

* Developing collaboration spaces for developers of Maemo variants
Grade: 3
I think you did get some people involved and enthusiastic. I am not quite sure on names or numbers of them but there were posts where people chimed in.

* Mentoring and engaging developers in order to move the Maemo platform and variants ahead
Grade: 2
I am convinced a lot went on behind the scenes but I can't judge things I don't know of - and, I feel as if the 'enthusiasm' has lessened each time the project has restarted. I fear that this will in the end discourage future participation by people.

* Communicating with stakeholders (Nokia, distributions implementing the Maemo platform, users and developers)
Grade: 2
Goes back to the project management topic above. I don't feel/see that this was managed well at all.

Secondary role is serving as a paid system developer for the maemo.org community:

* Developing fixes and features for the Maemo OS & variants either on his/her own based on the input of maemo.org community council
Grade: 1
I haven't see any deliverable in six months. I may be wrong on this one though so please correct me in that case.

* or through activating, mentoring for and collaborating with community developer(s) in order to get it completed in collaboration with upstream developers.
Same as above (Grade: 1).

If I get my math right that gives a GPA of 1.8 out of 5.

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

Sorry, but I dont know what you do! or even what a distmaster is! Please eleborate for us newer peeps!

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

To me, you are one of the heroes of this site.

Still, Mer seems to have turned into the elusive pot at the end of the rainbow that always beckons but never arrives.

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

Subjective, indeed.

As you freely (and frequently) admit all of this is based only on your perceptions as a user of these forums, perhaps it'd be best to start out questing for information and painting is a picture of your own perceptions, rather than immediately jumping into an analysis based on incomplete information.

If you never get out into the wide world of Maemo, it seems awfully presumptuous of you to set out to grade someone performance based on such a thin slice of the community. Especially for the distmaster, whose work rarely directly affects self-described "end-users" (primarily because it is both platform-focused and long-term).

Seek first to understand, before you seek to judge. In judging first, you've missed an excellent opportunity to help educate yourself and others, and missed out on cutting directly to areas where improvement can happen while we first cut through your misconceptions.

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

To that end, Carsten, I'd love it if you could point specifically to areas you've worked in (hopefully with useful citations where possible/relevant), to help anyone wishing to provide feedback focus their own opinions. Especially since so much of your activity takes place out of the Talk sphere of the community.

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

As i keep in close contact online with Stskeeps on a regular basis, I feel I could not provide a complete review that was unbiased enough.

However, just saying this wouldn't be useful to the thread.

I do understand how some people feel about the subject of things not being brought to completion in some circumstances, however I feel Stskeeps has a good understanding of how and where things are going and that he is able to facilitate community action based on that understanding. For me, Stskeeps has shown that he can be counted on if you need help with pushing something out for community purposes.

Some people seem to be getting too hooked on what they believe to be non-deliverables rather than looking at the bigger picture of Stskeep's role as distmaster, the contributions that happen behind the scenes and the contributions that indirectly effect everyone.

Maybe a bit of understanding from both sides of the table needs to happen? You know - like a community does.

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

For my own part, I believe you've been doing an excellent job. Nokia's thrown us a lot of curveballs over the two years since Maemo Reconstructed was started and you have to roll with them as best you can. The TI drivers ended up taking much longer than expected, Mer ended up being a much larger undertaking than expected, and things were all, generally, more difficult than any of us would've believed going into it. We all learn as we go along, and things rarely meet expectations in software (why does everything in Maemo always come back to managing expectations? . . .), but I've see some amazing progress so far.

Hell, there's an argument to be made for just how fantastic a job you've done given that MeeGo seems to fulfill many of the goals of Maemo Reconstructed, Mer and the distmaster position (whether you or any of us had a strong influence on that, I have no idea, though). ;)

So, to summarize, thanks for digging in doing all of the dirty work and doing your damndest to help encourage and coach other people to help to it, too. It's a tough job shifting the direction of a ship as big as Nokia's, but I think you've done admirably so far.

As for places to improve:

It's become especially tough to follow all of the information flowing around the Maemo Community these days, and, as always, communication is still key. I don't think a few self-congratulatory blog posts about progress would go amiss. As we can already see from some responses here, perception is a large factor and it will always suffer if things are visible enough (trust me, I know, I've been playing a facilitation role for nearly 2 years ;)). Some summarizing of both major and minor progress would make it easier for everybody to track and to appreciate that activity is, in fact, taking place, whether or not they set out to find it.

Proper management of expectations is always important. It's something that we've all tripped on with Mer, and something that I don't think will be an issue in the future, as, well, now we know. ;)

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

Gladly - keep in mind that I work 30 hours a week (and for 3 months of the time, 20), so I can't be everywhere or do everything, but here it goes (in no particular order, just as I find them):

* I've helped to port Maemo5 to Beagleboard and Zoom2 (http://omappedia.org/wiki/Maemo_on_OMAP_Project)
* Helped push theme templates to the open and written guides how to deal with their packaging. This is shown in the themes people are developing today and how since Theme maker dev was kinda stalled.
* Ported Imagemagick to extras-devel related to that
* Helping to bootstrap the community SSU for Diablo (mostly spearheaded by lma though)
* Bootmenu on N900 + getting support for it into PR1.1
* Mer on N900 proof of concept (some might say this was a detour but up front: it was an avenue for more people to contribute to the core system as a lot of new coders came in with N900 launch who didn't have a N8x0)
* Mer development in general.
* Maemo Summit (two presentations)
* Bring out the toolchain for the N8x0 initfs
* Create a way for applications to be build against GLESv2+EGL apis without having to be built against the closed source libraries
* Mapping openness in Fremantle PR1.1 and Diablo
* Enabling OS porters to N900 how to use battery charging, RTC, etc
* Proposal for project management on maemo.org
* Interview: TheLinuxLinkTechShow 11-11-09
* Presenting Maemo-on-OMAP and Mer on TI eTechDays online conference to attract more people to the platform
* Loads of time getting the TI MBX drivers to a semi-usable state.
* How to approach a open sourcing queue in a way that makes it productive
* Dual booting another OS on N900 (Mer) and Making flashable rootfs's for N900
* Mer^2 prototype work, mostly OBS work - an experiment in how close to a Fremantle system you could get and recompile everything in Fremantle.
* The licensing change requests queue - a gateway to have better open sourcing process and evaluating these
* Work on making a OBS implementation of autobuilder and building towards Fremantle in this
* Fighting for public R&D in MeeGo
* The vendor social contract
* Help push out fiasco-gen in PR1.1 SDK so we can build own FIASCO images.
* MeeGo ARM bringup on N810 (thanks to the great kernel work by others)
* And a lot of random talk, work and poking internally - not very transparent, but I think it has helped.
* And a lot of talk and pointing in the right direction for people, which isn't that transparent but I've hoped helped people..

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

I shouldn't have been so flippant earlier, sorry.

I'm mostly impressed with the work of Stskeeps but then, I make a point of following what he does. As has been mentioned, most of that effort won't be immediately obvious to the community at large.

So I'd have to agree with GeneralAntilles that the one area of improvement would be in communication. Make strong use of the available channels, including twitter. Yes, there have been some good updates, especially here, but I think the visibility could have been just a bit higher.

Anyway thanks Carsten and I look forward to your continued efforts!

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

Not sure how more clear I could had made it that it was subjective opinion by an end-user. If those opinions are not requested then just ignore my feedback. I'm also pretty sure that Stkeeps can speak for himself so not quite sure why you felt the need to add your 2 cents.

Your comment "perhaps it'd be best to start out questing for information and painting is a picture of your own perceptions, rather than immediately jumping into an analysis based on incomplete information." is also rather contradictory as I said I was an end-user reading this forum and this is the channel he asked for feedback in. Not sure how much I would have to dig and what channels I need to go to in order to meet your expected level of analysis. I read the forum and quite a few about Mer.

I find your subsequent comment rather offensive with the above in mind: "If you never get out into the wide world of Maemo, it seems awfully presumptuous of you to set out to grade someone performance based on such a thin slice of the community. Especially for the distmaster, whose work rarely directly affects self-described "end-users" (primarily because it is both platform-focused and long-term)."

This was the channel he asked for feedback in. I don't utilize any other channels. If there was a pre-requisite for 'reviewing' him - as he requested - I wish it was called out in the opening post.

So please ignore my 'review' and replace it with:
"Great work, keep it up, no complaints! :D" as I don't want to be presumptuous and review something I have no idea about.

Don't worry, no more comments from me in this thread.

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

Just quickly answering this one - Nokia only pushed TI to do this, but the absense of a driver is not a fault of Nokias, it was not their driver to give.

I was quite surprised to hear that TI announced they had a working driver for N8x0 at Maemo Summit and started planning for this arrival.

Now, imagine my surprise when it turns out they (TI) did not actually try it on anything but their development platforms and not with the N8x0 devices, in fact, had not been developed wit N8x0 nor did they have any to test on?

That screws up things quite a bit when a small task of integration turns into a driver porting task. As it was a high priority of the community, I spent a -lot- of nights working on this, with some kind of workable result. Now, there is still some work to be done in that area, but it is out of my expertise. Maybe it returns now with the MeeGo for N8x0 port.

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

Yes, this never really came to fruition (yet) except in very few cases where I've pointed people in the right direction on where to do some fixes. We had a bit of a inactive council last session so there really never came any wishes for things for me to work on.

Agreed, but this also (as stated) requires some management to prioritize.

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

I would still like to see more discussion and explanation for how Mer turned from a crock of gold into just a crock.

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

Yes, I'm getting to your post - don't worry. I will answer posts but not immediately, just woke up an hour ago ;)

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

In the meantime, I have a bit more to say.

There were days, weeks, and months when I checked the Mer project constantly for new developments. I even installed it a number of times. It looked great.

Then you seemed to me to say that the only real thing holding Mer back was a couple drivers that needed to be released in non proprietary format, or something like that. There ensued one heck of a long period of waiting, in which it was said time and again that we were waiting for the two drivers or whatever.

Then finally, finally, the two drivers arived. And what followed was -- nothing.

That's the last progress I remember.

What ever happened to the Mer that was waiting for the two drivers?

My impression is that a usable version of Mer never came.

That means that the long period of waiting for the two drivers was what? Were the two drivers just a story?

Was I wrong to be under the impression that a usable version of Mer was almost ready to go?

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

As Stskeeps as already mentioned in the thread, TI severely misrepresented the state of the drivers to be released. Many months worth of volunteer community effort went into getting them into a semi-usable state. Then a series of game-changers came along (culminating in the MeeGo chaos) that ate up a lot of time and required shifts in the Mer development direction.

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

You have no idea how much that frustrates me as well.

Right, so, going all the way back. Mer started as a research project (Mer is Maemo Reconstructed afterall) between friends. We were not happy with the way things were in Maemo and didn't see their model of development and the platform to succeed if things were not changed. Things did change - very similar to our original ideas, in MeeGo, finally. We began to reconstruct Maemo from bottom up - taking the open source pieces and putting them back together in an interesting constellation.

To that respect, we started an iterative process, let's see how far we get if we churn at the problem. Involve more people, churn further at the problem. Now, a lot of work, discoveries and process was developed in this - much which is actually reused in MeeGo or exists in some form now.

The problem was however that the goal post kept moving. This is the same problem for instance GNOME suffers - the goal post of being a 'Windows alternative' keeps on moving as well - ie, what users want. Without day to day collaboration in a platform, we can never reach eachother. That part is too, changed now, in MeeGo. Tracking a mostly closed source distribution is darned hard.

Now, the things that really screwed up things and where we made bad choices:

A research project taking on the task as a Fremantle backport - there was noone else to do it. We had some goals with Mer and this did not always agree with the backport idea and staying close to Fremantle. Things we -should- have done, which I was trying to recitify with Mer^2:

* Ask Nokia to maintain a ARMv6+VFP build of Fremantle alongside the ARMv7 one from early on.
* Activate GTK+ developers in Fremantle alpha to make a look-alike of Fremantle in the old hildon desktop. People have made themes to this regard now, so it was possible.
* In the development process, engage Nokia very early on to get a redistributable binaries for Nokia devices. In that regard, we were perceiving Nokia as slightly more evil than they actually were. Imagine our shock meeting Quim in May in Copenhagen and discovering that they were actually rather relaxed about Nokia binaries for Nokia devices, when we had assumed there was a huge legal framework needed to get things accomplished.

We were operating with a huge bunch of enthusiasm and we developed a lot of things to support a open platform like Mer. Now, this didn't always accomplish the goal of a backport.. it was a hope to keep things maintained than just a backport. That your devices wouldn't go out of fashion. MeeGo's a way to do this, still - and our methods are being used there.

Another thing was the announcement that Nokia was switching to Qt as their main toolkit. It meant that most of our work on GTK+ tools and desktop was well, mostly wasted.

We kept on churning, actually gaining some degree of functionality and usage - except that we couldn't possibly match Fremantle development and functionality with the people we had. And that we didn't know how Fremantle would look like in the end. With Fremantle release, we were not there yet either. And most of the things people wanted, was closed. And we couldn't easily integrate due to previous mistakes.

Now, on to the summit: 300 N900s to the attendants. Most of them the core of N8x0 developers. Bam. Attention to N8x0 dropped like a ball. Who needs N8x0 when we have a shiny new toy? For the rest, I tried to finish up things, but the influx of new contributions had dropped. Most contributions actually came from other device communities.

And then we get to where MeeGo is announced. Mer started like a research project and the experience we gained helps us to be first class participants with skill and merit in this project. Did I waste a year of my own free time and people's time? No, because we learnt things and produced a lot of know-how and tools. How a open mobile OS could be like. And how to tame the N8x0 hardware wise, which we can now use in the MeeGo N8x0 hardware adaptation. We got -really good- at porting to devices.

So, post-mortem of Mer. It's dead. Has no future. But our ideals, ideas, skills and experience still lives on. And has enabled us to be professionals in our own regard in mobile OS'es. Would we have been this without Mer with the situation of OSes on N8x0 before we came to town?

I don't think so. It's time to look forward now. I don't personally use my N8x0 anymore except for random tasks. Why do I still contribute to it and want to? Because I like the device and I know how to do things that others might find worthwhile.

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

I think you way overstepped your bounds General, Stskeep was asking what peoples perceptions (good AND bad) were of his own work.

Talk about shooting a messenger (you don't have to agree with him, but shut up about it). How many others do you think will now be honest with Stskeeps when you come charging in and just muddy the waters as usual. I might not agree with him and his ratings of Stskeep; but at least he was being honest.

A BIG Thanks for making people decide it isn't worth being honest. I'm sure that is exactly what Stskeep wanted. Good job!

If my sarcasm escaped you, I'll be really blunt for you -- you really blew it. I'm not even going to respond to the rest of your dribble since it was totally inappropriate -- given he was answering HONESTLY what Stskeeps asked for. A big two thumbs down on your responses. That will probably be the LAST honest response stskeep will get thanks to you.

Nathan

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

Ok, here is what I wrote before Stskeeps' most recent reply, but it still seems relevant to me:

Thanks for repeating the explanation. (Referring to GA's comment.)It is just hard for me to understand that Mer was in such bad shape when it seemed to be abandoned. You could actually use Debian programs, importing them with ease -- some at least, I did it. What a dream! All I missed was integrating them into some sort of usable menu system, and there was a crashing problem.

I almost abandoned the regular system and tried to go over entirely to Mer.

So the screwed up drivers prevented an integrated menu system?

My suspicion, which is not based on any knowledge, is that someone fixed their attention on the drivers and then the project was abandoned in a fit of pique, "well, if we can't have what I wanted there, we have to junk the whole thing!" even though there seemed to me to be a lot worthwhile about the project.

The above is probably unfair, sorry. My mind will just not accept that such a beautiful project could be junked, and then we are asked to believe that "oh well, we'll do something similar with Meego."

I give up, but the Dylan lines come to mind,

"I ain't saying you treated me unkind. You just kinda wasted my precious time. But don't think twice, it's alright."

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

The problem was that the old desktop was crashing left and right and did not support things like stackable windows, it conflicted with applications wanting to make desktop applets. I am not a GTK+ hacker and there seemed not to be people willing enough to dive into it.. So, we experimented with other desktops but returned to a lot of the technical specifics of the Hildon system.. Yes, the GL drivers were supposed to be a saviour but things really screwed up there as we all know.

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

I followed MER, and installed various versions on my N800 to test and play with, which is about as much as I can lend a hand with.

I have always felt, and still feel, that Nokia let the N800 and N810 camp down, and should have put out a "maemo 4.5" with as much of the good stuff from Maemo5 as could be mustered. Stuff like the photo editing/sharing/tagging, media player and tracker, calendar, and some of the IM stack. Personally I think diablo is good enough, but the apps needed development, and backporting, rather than a whole new OS. Granted there may be loads of dependancies within the core OS which may prevent this however.

Mer was a wonderful community effort, and I do appeciate the work that went into it, but it was a very tall order to ask and expect a handful of talented people to make it a viable alternative to Maemo5 on the previous gen hardware.

It is useful and enlightening to read about some of the work and effort which has gone on behind the scenes.

While this should not turn into a blame thread, if there is any blame to be laid, especially for the lack of an "upgrade" path for Diablo, then it rests with Nokia, and the Maemo council for putting too many expectations on Mer.

I should add BTW, that the work launched by STS, and carried on by others regarding the community SSU, pulling together "orphaned" bug fixes etc from Nokia and elsewhere and pulling them together into a update for Diablo is appreciated and is a positive step forward, and a whole lot better than Nokia's "fixed in fremantle" mantra, which really irritated me, especially now when it seems a lot of bugs were fixed in diablo, and would have never seen the light of day without the community SSU.

I would like to request that STS, and the council push to have some of the Maemo5 apps backported by Nokia if possibel, and not too late.

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

So, Mer is dead and you have learned something from it. Good for you.

I also learned something from it, I'm selling my n810....

A lot of the stuff you listed as done was actually wasted time, any normal company would have you fired. Hope you do better in the future.

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

Well, that was a bit harsh. Good luck finding a seller for the N810 - I hear they still go for a fair bit of cash.

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

Stskeeps, thank you very much for all the effort you have put in this, and thanks for being so sincere.
I was very dissapointed too with the (surprising for me) turn of events regarding Mer, but now I understand.
I hope meego can reach the n810, finally, but just the ongoing community SSU is great (I can't thank enough lma for the work he is doing). Given that the n810 has lost so many core community members to the n900 (in just a day), the work you (all) have done since is even more laudable.

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

I like to add stskeeps' pushing bme and especially USB-hostmode in direction to a open resp usable state.

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

The work you have done has helped me improve my work and inturn helped improve the community even more. When I first started helping on Mer most of my themes were lacking in many ways. When I started working on my Mer theme you helped me you really pushed me to turn out good products. I got to get more involved in the community and in turn wanted to do better work. For me the single best thing you have ever done is get the Maemo5 Theme Template opened up. It made it possible for me to do some really quality themes that I could not have done with the Theme Maker. If anyone is using just about any community theme on their N900 they owe Stskeeps a thanks for getting the template opened up. Keep up the good work.

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

Do you mean that the TI drivers are the only show-stopper and everything else (power management, non 3d display controller, wifi, touchscreen, virtual keyboard, etc.) is perfectly fine?
If so I'd gladly give up the 3d effects to have mer^2/meego/debian/fedora/mandriva running on my n800.

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

I agree too.

Please, people, take in mind most of us are guys who look themselves wiht aparently dead devices in their hands and that's make of us people a little too hungry.

I feel myself like this.

And even when I know the efforts of people here I can't stand to feel that.

Sorry in advance for the times I can't stand myself.

Keep the great, great good job.

And... THANKS.

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

Stskeeps, do you think there'll be a MeeGo for the N8x0? Or do we have all the same problems as with Mer? (Closed drivers, etc).

I think it could happen, seeing as we have recent kernels built for the N8x0 devices now.

I'm very excited about the SSU, as well. It is so good to get a system update that includes rotation and other goodies!

EDIT: I need to comment on this, as well:

UNBELIEVABLE. :eek: :mad: :mad: :(

That explains a lot.

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

There is a MeeGo for N8x0, though in it's infancy (http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=48929). My suggestion is to provide closed binaries RPM packages in a tablets-dev.nokia.com repository like the N900 project does it. So it's not that bad a situation.

A nice photo is http://www.daimi.au.dk/~cvm/meegoonn810.jpg.

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

Thanks Stskeeps,

I'm not staying up with the forums and the community like I used to; things in my personal life are a bit too crazy.

I can't say I have any regrets pushing Nokia to hire you. I'm just sorry I wasn't able to contribute more technically. Ping me if my work with shell scripting, chrooting, nested X-Servers, or LXDE can help moving forward.

That screenshot is hilarious, though.

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

Actually, before anyone accuses Stskeeps of not reporting about this fact previously, he actually did:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=21697&page=37
Note that I also give kudos to him in that thread because when I initially glared upon the drivers I was instantly depressed and believed getting them to do anything at all would imply unmanageable amounts of work.
After a few weeks he had managed to make the drivers do something (it was mostly coincidence that my N810 was the first to render anything -- due to my weird boot setup which seemingly used less memory).

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

Indeed, and I hope I didn't imply he's been particularly bad at communication. Far from it, I think he's been rather consistent about reporting and discussing his progress. What I think is missing are the friendly meta-summary blog posts explaining in approachable language what's happening and why.

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

Further discussion of the TI driver (and its future) should perhaps continue here:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=21697&page=61

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

I'm surprised by the defensive tone of Stskeeps in his initial post. He is one of the best guys around, picking some of the hottest potatoes few others even dare to touch and being constant on pushing the things he feels important even if they don't bring flashy short term results.

The principles and work he lead at Mer are now embodied in the MeeGo project, and Carsten holds his tiny but noticeable percentage of merit. I see why this is not evident for most people today, but the day MeeGo ships a full stack developed openly and released soon & often using an open build system this will be just self-evident. That day creating MeeGo reconstructed images for different types of hardware will be simple and doable in a way no Mer developer or tester could imagine happening any time soon, even less thanks to an official project pushed by Nokia itself and others in that league.

About opening Nokia proprietary components, there is a lot of source code seeing the light and again Carsten's work can take its own percentage of merit. The driver for this opening is mostly MeeGo and from there anybody can pull and improve that code for that or other purposes.

About the drivers, blaming Carsten about their performance is more or less like blaming Oprah because Obama is not delivering as expected. Still, he has probably done more for the drivers than Oprah for Obama's tough challenges. ;)

And many more positive things. Dude, I'm still reading that first post with that tone and wondering what's going on. You are doing a lot of work that is interesting for several people. You're exposed, and in such situations you will always get congratulations and flames, with plenty of silent backing in between. Listen to criticism but don't be too obsessed about it, especially when your instincts and expertise tell you that you are doing quite well considering all the conditionants. You bet I have learned this not by reading it in a book. ;)

Clear conclusion for Carsten and everybody: we are really happy funding his community work and will keep doing so without hesitation. He is working in pretty exciting stuff and it's everybody's interest to keep his motivations in good shape. If there are things you see that could be improved try asking him where could you help improving those things.

Re: Half-year review of Stskeeps's work as distmaster
 

Thank you for the kind words. I think the post should have more reference to the context it was made in. The problem was that a lot of frustration exists/existed in the community regarding how things went with the N8x0s and Mer.

I can understand those frustrations and I chose this medium to help getting them talked about, discussed, etc, instead of being re-iterated constantly in a lot of different threads where they are more noise than signal. In here, they're on topic.

Circumstances have changed a lot now, with MeeGo and all. And tomorrow I still have to work for and with this community - and it was time to clear the air so we can work together on making things better. My own role is also changing, so it was a good time to hear what is working and what is not to help shape future work.

My motivations are actually higher after all the comments as I feel like we have cleared the air, discussed things, reflected and sketched out what people would like and where and how to go. There might be more discussions to be had, but I'll gladly take them - kept in frustrations is never constructive.