So apparently different parts of the community are having problems with the maemo.org infrastructure and policies? I'm starting this thread to collect the issues in a single place in hope of finding solutions. So in additon to the problem please also tell how you see it should be fixed or do you see a way to work around the problem. If you're just going to bash nokia, nemein, whoever go post somewhere else, please.

One of the problems is the community QA queue that has been stuck for ages (oldest packages are about a year old). I quickly went through the list yesterday and the situation seems to be (please correct me if I'm wrong) caused by multiple factors: 1) lack of testers 2) lack of automated promotion system 3) communication problems. The combination of the problems makes the community QA pretty much a waste of time.

Personally I'd start with something we can do without paid help as in go though the packages that can be promoted (do what the community QA is supposed to do) all clean the queue. After this it gets a bit more difficult without help from people maintaining the infra. But if we provide them a list of actions needed for each of the packages stuck in the queue instead of demanding root access this thing just might get solved. In any case the problem won't go away just be talking.

As a long term solution I'd like to see a fremantle target in OBS (apps.formeego.org). This would solve most of the problems (except the lack of testers). But this is also something that needs help from the maintainers. On the other hand this might turn out to be a waste of time since many of the fremantle packages are orphaned and would require work to move stuff into OBS. In the end of the day it comes down to how many peolpe are left that are willing to do work for fremantle stuff. This might phase out just like the older maemo devices did with only a couple of people interested in them. If that's the case it's not worth the effort.

One solution is simply to trash the community QA process by letting extas rot in peace and only use extras-devel and -testing where testing would the "stable" repo. this is the way out if it's not possible to get the automated promotion system, etc. working. This would be the solution requiring least work and pretty much already is the current practice.

As I said in the mainling list I'm volunteering myself to be one of the people who goes through the QA queue. I'd like to see at least a two more people doing the same. These decisions can't be made by a single person and it doesn't make sense to much before we get people to commit to put some effort into some solution. Also it would help in making the call to get an answer to what people maintainging the infra are planning/allowed to do.

So what do you say? Do we try to resurrect the community QA process, trash it or do something else?