Migrating to Community-driven Infrastructure - Step 1: Inventory
 

Alright, I think we all are/were more or less aware that sooner or later the day will come at which we need to migrate to a community-driven platform. Most probably the reason for this is that we are running out of funding like also mentioned, e.g., in the following thread:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=84933

Please, I do not intend to create a similar discussion as in the above thread. Furthermore, I don't want to interfer with qgil and kate who are for sure doing their best for our community.

The reason why I create this thread is that I think we should be prepared for the situation in which we finally need to take care of our own. This thread is not intended to discuss the reasons, motivations, or enforce the migration but to gather important information. This will hopefully help us to be prepared once the "big day" comes.

I think the most logical first step to prepare for an eventually community-driven infrastructure is to come up with an inventory of what we already have and what issues, legal, infrastructure, steering, etc. will be affected. This is the intent of this thread: to gather information about things affecting a community-driven effort.

For now I found the following topics to be relevant:

• Legal Issues (Names, Trademarks, Domain Names, etc.)
• Infrastructure (Web Site, Forum, Wiki, Autobuilder + MeeGo OBS, Mailinglists, Garage, etc.)
• Steering (How do we want to organize ourselves? However, please keep this thread on technical details and discuss political issues in a distinct thread.)

If you like we can create a Wiki page in which we document our findings.

What do you think about this? If you agree we should prepare please contribute what you think are important parts of *.maemo.org.

With respect to infrastructure: I propose that when we add an entry here we try to gather as much information as possible. We should also try to come up with freely available alternatives.
E.g., for garage.maemo.org free alternatives could be github or gitorious.


I'll start the list. Please excuse the currently very basic information. It would be great if we could strive for adding to this information as much as possible. So, I add the following:

Legal Issues
- What is the state about the name "Maemo"?
- Who owns "maemo.org"? What is needed for the community to run maemo.org? What are possible legal issues? What are the costs?

Infrastructure
- talk.maemo.org: alternative?
- wiki.maemo.org: alternative?
- garage.maemo.org: alternative: github, gitorious
- main web site at maemo.org: alternative?
- autobuilder?
- OBS at MeeGo?
- Repositories?

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

OBS should be integrated with MeeGo. Then we cut the costs.
garage.maemo.org: github/gitorious is a good thing.
Council should talk with Nokia about the patents and the SSU packages! It's a must-be. If nokia shuts the SSU repo down, no one will be able to install the SDK. So it's a high priority task.
wiki.maemo.org: there is wikia.com, maybe this would work. But I've not very much experience.
What's the difference between autobuilder and obs?
for repos: we need to reduce the amount of GB in the repos: remove from -devel the packages, that are already in -testing or extras.

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

it looks quite hard though .
between till we dont get the alarming warning,we shouldnt be proceeding too eagerly for such thing ,though yes alternatives should be kept ready in case of jiffy situation .

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

Wonko,

You are considering good points here. This is already an ongoing issue please check logs from last Council meeting (last one, and previous one) and feel free to participate (every Friday 18:00 UTC at #maemo-meeting).

This will also be deeply discussed by mailing list, if you want to involve, please subscribe. We will need all the help we can gather.

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

Afaik, MeeGo will run out of funding as well. So I think we should also consider OBS.
For now this is just the creation of an inventory anyhow. I think we can discuss priorities and costs later on. At first, we need an overview of what we actually rely on.

Yes, the main intent right now is to just create an inventory of what we have so we can see what we need to consider. Maybe we find nice alternatives like in the case of garage.maemo.org. This would ease the work quite a lot.

Thans a lot for the information. I will try to attend the meetings. However, I am very much scarce of time right now and can't promise anything.




In the meantime I created a first stub of a Wiki page. This is a work-in-progress and is intended to be filled and added to step by step. Feel free to add information as well. :)
http://wiki.maemo.org/Migrating_to_C...Infrastructure

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

Ivan,

where can one subscribe to that mailing list?

considering the situation & your position, i think you should get into the habit of providing links & all over & over again...
maybe add them to your signature, for the sake of it?

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

for OBS I guess will it be fine to cooperate with tizen project which is sponsored by intel samsung and others :-)

check :

https://bugs.tizen.org/jira/browse/T...s:all-tabpanel

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

We already started to discuss these in Council but didn't reach a conclusion because some members were absent. Community members are sought to volunteer to join a group based on their expertise. Unlike the situation where Nokia/Nemein provided support, we will need community members with a variety of skills.

Some (personal) comments on your list:

Legal - includes IPR and OSS licensing issues. Also includes creation of non-profit entity. May include governance. I have volunteered to put together this group.

Infrastructure - we called this Migration. We may need to streamline and trim down the infrastructure, and careful consideration must go into that.

Steering - I don't understand. Do you mean something like a TSG?

We also had an additional focus - Finances. We need money to start this and then an estimated budget to guide activities. Will people trust a community member to collect donations to start the community project and how should that be done - Paypal, bank account, etc? Also, request sponsorship from Nokia and other external entities, contracts with hosting company and other IT vendors. NielDk has offered to lead this focus.

I also think we need to decide on a mission statement, etc. If we ask people to donate, then they will want to know what they are supporting.

Maemo is currently a registered trademark of Nokia and the domain name is owned by Nokia. Our previous request to transfer the domain name was denied - I don't expect that to change. We have "maemocommunity.org" as a backup.

What is needed to run the community website is a non-profit and hosting, which depends greatly on what is migrated. Hosting something is relatively easy and inexpensive, but it gets complicated as we start adding some of the functionality. I would estimate the start-up costs for the most basic landing page to be something on the order of 600-800 USD.



It sounds like we will need a vbulletin license to migrate the forum content. If not, we can start all over again with a new forum.
Wikis are easy (I think).
I agree with not using garage any more.
we can use maemocommunity.org or some other alternative
I suggest a community OBS shared with Mer/Nemo (MeeGo OBS is going away soon)

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

are you in contact with Reggie?
if the funding for Maemo.org stops, if is more then likely that the funding for TMO will stop as well, no?

EDIT: actually, TMO is a service NOKIA is paying for; one would assume they give Reggie a little more time (or even have contractual terms?) before stopping the funding...
all the more reason to contact Reggie, i'd say...

is that official?

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

Yes, the funding for TMO forum will likely stop at the same time as the rest of maemo.org. Reggie has already addressed the issue:

http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...2&postcount=32

I assume because Reggie said "backup" that he is not going to transfer the license, just give us the means to transfer the data to a new vbulletin instance.