if this maemo.org dies one day (i hope it doesnt), there will be two contenders for the top reason...


1. Corporate world (Nokia, Intel, and whoever sucks its balls, aka LF)

2. you_know_the_troll

I really hope it is not #1

Could you all please stop derailing yet another thread?




Unfed troll is a dead troll.

The difference to Debian, Angstrom etc. communities is, that they are focused on the software and are working on the software. The hardware is only a mean to run the software and they embrace and welcome every single one able to.

This community is focusing on hardware. The software (Maemo OS) is only a mean to enable the hardware, which noone really cares of and accepts whatever the manufacturer of the device throws at.
With the presence of new hardware, the older hardware is abandoned en-masse.
With the absence of hardware, the community is dying or jumping ships.


Without changing the focus, this community won't survive.

This community should have been focusing mainly on the software side and its problems to do with Maemo.

Yes your right if it does not focus on the software issue then it will die i feel.

smoku,

i think it was somewhere on the Cordia thread that you pointed out the difficulty of building (& after that maintain) a distribution.
are you now suggesting that we should do that, nonetheless?
i think i have to comply with abill's doubt that the community right now is in any shape or form to pull off such a feat

funny we are back on this very thread were we already had this discussion, in a way....
what's needed here is leadership, not management, right?
(doing the right thing versus doing things right)

unfortunately, very few leaders are also good managers, so, starting with a a community like this one where there is no management to speak of (sorry, no offence to the council, but like Texrat pointed out on his performance sheet beginning of last year, the council doesn't even have a mission statement (i.e. manage Maemo.org ?))

@ Texrat: any improvement on that in, what, 20 months?

one could of course lead away & hope that the community will manage itself, but... let's be honest, it simply won't work.

two problems;

one, developers don't really care about administrative issues, as long as they can code away; as you pointed out yourself, the best coders already left b/c they don't want to invest in "govern" the ship out of this troubled situation; they prefer to go code somewhere else...

those who are not here to code, well, look around... flame wars, insults, anything goes. you'll never get a consensus out of this.
@ best agree to disagree

might save a new born with that approach ¦-)))))))))))
might :|

EDIT: like i concluded last time, maybe NOKIA got to the same conclusion a year & 1/2 ago and decided to leave Maemo to its own device and give it a new try with MeeGo
one may wonder what management NOKIA has right now, but leadership obviously couldn't care less about Maemo
or whether Intel provides more leadership? possibly for tablets, but obviously not for mobiles.
let's not even talk about LF, right?

Yup. Unfortunately I cannot offer a solution or direction for this community, as I don't have a clue.

All I can offer is a point of view and a hope that it may nudge someone to come up with a solution, idea, direction... anything.

Please put aside differences between communities, I did not propose any detailed plan, just some very, very rough ideas.

Your last statement is excellent description of the current situation.

So what now?

I have a strong feeling Council is unsure on how to proceed.

Now is the time for every clever boy and girl to show what they are really made of.

This is the real challenge, not the stupid code guessing game some/most of us were wasting time.

Do we fight for survival, or just change habitat?

Anyone got some bright ideas?

As sjgadsby has so clearly and patiently explained the Community Council has two roles:

• a representative body to facilitate communications between Nokia (and, I guess, other stakeholders) and "the community"[1]
• a facilitating entity within the community to ensure that people know what other people are doing (e.g. to prevent duplication of work) and help people find resources for big projects like CSSU.[2]

The Community Council is empowered to speak on the community's behalf when Nokia ask something like "who should we sponsor to the next Maemo/MeeGo summit/conference?" It was devised when Nokia were asking many questions on maemo-developers@ and maemo-community@ which no-one felt empowered to answer on behalf of everyone else. The Community Council is therefore a set of people selected from within the community who the community say "these people can speak for us" and largely meant that members like Texrat, javispedro, myself, timsamoff, GeneralAntilles, lardman, gcobb, achipa and the (grossly unfairly) unelected sjgadsby continue to do their normal behaviour and offer their usual opinions but with the collective voice of the community behind us.

However, the Maemo community has recently been facing issues which the background and ongoing activities of the council members was not sufficient. This is where the facilitation role comes into it. MohammadAG wants to spearhead the creation of a Fremantle Community SSU? The council helps with whatever he needs.

So, with the topic being the future of *.maemo.org (and as lma noted, maemo.org is far more than just another vBulletin instance), there are two concerns:

• What do we do about funding, infrastructure, resourcing of the websites & services on maemo.org?
• What are the possible futures of Maemo, and how can we achieve them?

Saying "the Council needs to lead us" is entirely missing the point. Someone needs to come up with concrete, viable proposals which can be discussed. The council can assist with the publication and collaboration of that, as - I'm sure - anyone vested in Maemo will also publicise.

Once there is a popular, actionable plan for either of these two items, the council's power is to say "this is the roadmap" and then assist with the publication and collaboration of that, as - I'm sure - anyone vested in Maemo will also publicise.

The big "but" is, as smoku alluded to, no-one has come forward with a plan, nor even a plan to have a plan. It's unrealistic to expect five volunteers to be super CEOs of an amorphous, unruly and - if this, and so many other, threads are anything to go by - increasingly ungrateful mob.

The sad fact is that there may not be an ultimate end-game beyond "let's move to COBS for autobuilder, consolidate and reduce infrastructure costs as much as possible; have funding drives; introduce adverts and assist the CSSU as much as possible". That's still a lot of work, a lot of planning, and a lot of coordination. Who's volunteering to do it?



[1] The definition of "the community" has always been a little contentious, but my definition is "if you think you're in it, you're in it". Admittedly, this makes external definitions hard which is why we fall back on maemo.org accounts.

[2] Of course, one doesn't need to be on the Community Council to do that, but one doesn't need to be on the Community Council to do anything. You don't need its permission. You don't need its sanction. If you have a good idea, JFDI.

Nice "ungrateful mob" jibe--because I'm sure people LOVE planned obsolescence, abandonment and secrecy.

This is just sad. After reading up to this point.. I'm just left crestfallen and hopeless about Maemo and even MeeGo now.