I've just received a registration confirmation...

Maybe I'm getting approval process for this one confused with another event. Anyway, just follow their instructions.

Well, because of your encouraging words, I'm accepting YoDude's nomination, and I will run for the council.

To keep with the traditions, here you all have an old fashioned link to the maemo-community list archives ( http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/mae...ch/004109.html ) where you can see how I managed to fsck the number of columns on my editor! (and where I also try to answer Jaffa's questions... ).

More detailed plans should come latter...

See you and hopefully we get some late surprise nominations

Hi again!
Before I'm going to answer the questions I want to introduce myself.
My real name is Cosimo Kroll. I'm 20 years old.
Currently I'm a trainee to be a wholesaler and export clark. I speak fluently german, spanish, portuguese and english, and a very little bit patois (jamaican english).
After that (in january) I will start up my own company.
I fell in love with linux, when I was 10 years old. In 2007 then I was searching a new mobile device (after my love for mobile device was born and I was in the situation to buy everything I wanted because of some importing business I've done beside high-school) and a requirement was linux on it. So I bought the N810 in early 2008. I had to learn very much and I'm still learning. The community was very helpful and I decided to give that back. I startet my blog, but then something happened in my private life, so that I hadn't time for that anymore. After that was resolved the N900 was nearly annouced. I got that and restartet my blog and youtube-channel, on which I provide video-reviews and how-tos.
I see myself as an interface between the average user and the developers/advanced user, because I understand, what developers/advanced users say, and can translate this into simple language. I can't code myself, so this is the best way to help the community in my opinion.
Now to the questions.


Sprint process
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1) Do you see any flaws in it, and how do you think it can be improved?


Yes, I see some flaws. I think it's a bit cunfusing because of it's size.
I think every sprint should have it's own project site. In a overview every sprint should be shown in order of it's activity.
But I like the color-coding.



2) What are your thoughts on ongoing communication during the sprint?


To be honest, I wasn't involved in a sprint yet, so I can't really comment on that. But I think that communication is the most important thing!



MeeGo
~~~~~

3) As we move from "day zero" to "day one", what do you think the
priorities for the MeeGo community should be?


Show everyone how exiting meego is, and what possibilities we have with that.
Based of how you define "day one" there are different priorities.
day one as release of linux foundations meego: have a transparent developing overview, get the community involved.
day one as release of the first meego-based NOKIA device: prepare everything for the masses of new users.


4) Should leaders in the MeeGo community (whether from a Moblin or
Maemo background) try to move the existing communities with them to
form the MeeGo community; or should a new community form around the
operating system and its devices?


A big community is a strong one, if the management is good. We can't prevent divided communities, or more than one site for the community. But we should take care, that the real action take place in the most official one community, ours..
We can achieve that by providing rewards based on the Karma system. We also need more talented moderators like Flandry, who is doing a very good job. A example that we need more mods can be seen in Quim. He has so much to do in his job, but he comes often to tmo for his moderator job. But he can't to everything.
But sometimes one site for everything isn't useful. For example if there will be a washing machine running meego. There must be at least a subforum for this washing machine. So everyone have the right place for his/her device.


4a) If yes, what steps should be taken to prevent overreactions and
allegations of "take over" that happened when internettablettalk.com's
theme changed to match the rest of maemo.org?

There should be an official threads where decisions will be posted. Sometimes decisions have to be made with which not everyone is happy, like the so called "take over".
The communication to the community must be very transparent. For example server movings must be openly planned and announced well in advance. Nokia have to warn some responsible persons before important annoucments and so on.


4b) If no, how do you see the relationship between the Maemo community
which has been "left behind" and the MeeGo community? How does the
Maemo community stay vibrant if large portions are moving on to
Maemo's successor, or drifting away to other mobile platforms?


In german there is a saying: "Handel ist Wandel" which means "trading is changing". Everything is changing, new users are coming and old users are going. In my opinion many users are proud of being a dot org. But as meego 1 will be harmattan and maybe running on the same hardware as maemo, we must stay at the same community. The users need to understand that meego is just a different name, and for them nothing bad will happen. They will not be forgotten.



5) What are your thoughts about existing maemo.org resources (such as
Extras, auto-builder, Bugzilla) as Nokia, and the paid contributors,
look to the future?


These are very useful and should be maintained. Especially bugzilla.




Community
~~~~~~~~~

6) How can we encourage more, and higher quality, applications for
Maemo - and specifically through Extras?


Rewards based on Karma. Free advertising for useful applications. Application of the month/week/day rewards. Karma based on useful updates and bugfixes for existing applications. A transparent Q&A process. Sponsored devices.



Thanks for your time in answering these questions. Your answers are
much appreciated.


My goal is to provide a united community with different language support. It's so much easyer if someone of your native language is helping you. Especially when there will be new users who had never contact with linux/maemo. Also we have to make it possible that there is a really easy way to help, taking part in the community for example in bugzilla. And again with rewards like user of the month, developer of the month, newbie of the month...

That was all I had time for at the moment.

Sorry for mistakes ,-)

Cosimo

Ok, so I will also post my answers here

1) Do you see any flaws in it [sprint], and how do you think it can be improved?

As I haven't been involved in the maemo sprints directly (yet) my answer is based on the description of the process on wiki pages.
The process seems reasonable and well structured. It works well when the tasks are defined and actual work needs to be done. The problem is with the tasks definition part.
An improvement I would suggest is having, possibly a series of non-compulsory meetings before the actual task definition. By that, the process of creating the tasks could be more brainstorm-like instead of lonely-wolf-like.
At the moment it seems that a volunteer has an idea, creates proposal page, after time X a reply is posted on the talk page... This is a slow process and does not encourage defining new tasks in any way. It works provided that the idea is already there.



2) What are your thoughts on ongoing communication during the sprint?

I haven't taken part in any of the sprints so far, so no answer here. However, the proposal pages seem rather forgotten.


3) As we move from "day zero" to "day one", what do you think the priorities for the MeeGo community should be?

The MeeGo community will (probably) be a bit different than current Maemo community; the priorities will also be different.
The most immediate priority for newly forming community should be establishing its identity. It is important to maintain vertically spread community from Maemo (users+experienced users+developers+council body+Nokia) and not to allow strong polarization (users+hackers) that is more common in more commercial systems (difference between .org and .com). It should be clear that, although MeeGo is more commercial system than Maemo, it is still important for the actual community to exist (instead of just noobs asking 'how to turn my mobile on' and hackers replying 'you need to flash it with XYZ cable, stand on left leg...').
In short, MeeGo community, from the very beginning, must become self-concious. An extremely important role here will be for experienced users, who will hopefully migrate to the new community from Maemo and Moblin and act as centroids of various groups forming (people interested in theming, development, games, hacks, moaning etc.).




4) Should leaders in the MeeGo community (whether from a Moblin or Maemo background) try to move the existing communities with them to form the MeeGo community; or should a new community form around the operating system and its devices?

This is a difficult question, and the answer heavily depends on the market strategy of Nokia&Intel. N900 is a pricey device and many owners may postpone buying a new device for quite a long time. In a natural way, the interest of people not owning any MeeGo device in MeeGo community will be very limited. We can assume that some key characters, even not owning MeeGo device from day one, will become the part of the new community; vast majority however will not be interested. Another factor is how close Maemo and MeeGo will be; we already know that a development version of the latter will be installable on n900, however it is uncertain if it will be usable for regular users. If not, the situation described above applies. Probably this will be easier on the other side of the Wonderland, as Moblin community is more developer-oriented: the transition to the new system will be easier for developers here (Qt+Linux in general, already being used).

It is my strong belief that the members of current communities should feel strongly welcomed in the MeeGo community, mainly for reasons described in the previous answer. I don't think that we should aim (or that it is even possible) into a 'fresh start', i.e. forming MeeGo community like the previous communities (Maemo and Moblin) have not existed. I see the transition of users as a positive thing that should be encouraged to the full extend.


4a) If yes, what steps should be taken to prevent overreactions and allegations of "take over" that happened when internettablettalk.com's theme changed to match the rest of maemo.org?

I do not see any real problem here, as the situation is quite different. As far as I understand, nobody is going to change or restructure maemo.org when MeeGo appears. An offspring is born (http://meego.com/) where all the willing shall go and the rest should stay at maemo.org.



4b) If no, how do you see the relationship between the Maemo community which has been "left behind" and the MeeGo community? How does the Maemo community stay vibrant if large portions on moving on to Maemo's successor, or drifting away to other mobile platforms?

Keeping the Maemo community vibrant after MeeGo hitting the market will be a difficult thing to do. It is important to make sure that all the cutting edge developers and early adapters will not just disappear one day from maemo.org to appear at meego.com. Nobody can be held with force, but a general spirit of the smooth transition should be created. Personally I will get MeeGo device when it is available but it will not be an overnight 100% switch. Maemo community will still be vibrant with universal ideas, packages needing maintenance, people asking for help. A quick exodus of advanced users is probably the worst thing that may happen to community (both Maemo and MeeGo, as it will create tensions).
After the day one impact is soften, a question to ask is how to keep Maemo community vibrant in the situation of Maemo being a legacy system. It is, of course, important to see that this community will slowly shrink and eventually cease to be, just as it is happening with communities of different generations of NITs.
An important thing to do will be to emphasize the common things of Maemo and MeeGo: general philosophy of the devices, very similar development environment, similar use cases (and probably problems). This should be widely discussed so the two communities are aware of their similarity. Ultimately, a cross-reference system could be worked out (referencing answer from MeeGo to question asked at Maemo and vice-versa).


5) What are your thoughts about existing maemo.org resources (such as Extras, auto-builder, Bugzilla) as Nokia, and the paid contributors, look to the future?

In the process of transition to MeeGo, those resources should be utilized as much as possible, as they are probably the best working parts of maemo.org.
I'm not really sure if those can be reused directly with MeeGo, but the general framework seems to be working very well so far (with some possible tweaks).
An important improvement should be a bit restructured layout of those systems. Right now it may get very confusing where the information about, for example, package is and where users can vote for it. Shortly: less pages to visit, less redundant information.


6) How can we encourage more, and higher quality, applications for Maemo - and specifically through Extras?

In my opinion the general quality of applications in Extras is quite high. An important step is to have requirement for testing team members to vote for application so it can make it to Extras.
Entirely different question is the general level of applications created for Maemo (and their quantity). N900 is a powerful device, with many development environments available, but still the number of applications and their iCandy factor is quite low. There are two basic issues that can be spotted here: lack of documentation and lack of payment content framework in Ovi Store.

The former is a dealbreaker in many cases: forcing developer to reverse engineering things that should be written in bold print in documentation is not acceptable. This moaning is mostly about platform-specific functions (sending sms, using camera, vibration) as soon-to-be-stable Qt 4.6 has very good documentation on its own. Still, being part of this community for a while, it is still not entirely clear to me, if it us who should write documentation (from reverse engineering?) or should Nokia deliver it? Something is not working in this department, which also results in many hacks used in applications and this has direct impact on their quality.

The success (commercial) of Apple Store shows clearly that good and simple framework for paid content is a must. N900 lacks it entirely and I do not see it being fixed before MeeGo arrives (if only then). This is an issue that may have a huge impact in the match among operating systems on the market.


Thank you for your attention

After much thought, I have decided to accept the nomination and am announcing my intent to run for Council.

A short introduction: I'm a software consultant specializing in OSS technologies by day and Open Source hacker/language geek by night. Formally, I hold a MSc in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, am a bilingual Hungarian/Serbian and get along in a number of other languages I joined Maemo community ranks in 2008 when I (almost by chance) acquired a N810, and was almost instantly taken by the possibilities, both of the Maemo devices themselves and the already formed community around them. I'm fairly active on talk.maemo.org (under the attila77 alias) but also follow the mailing lists regularly, with occasional visits to IRC. In developer waters, I'm mostly known for my activities relating to Python and Qt (which was also the object of my talk on the last Summit), but am also a member of the Testing squad and have a dozen or so applications and libraries in the repositories (like AppWatch, QuickBrownFox, PyQt, support libraries for Easy Debian on Diablo, etc). While I have a strong developer background, I emphasize general community involvement just as much, embracing and cherishing the unique mix the Maemo community is, and hopefully the MeeGo community it will become. More on that later.


Now, for the "questionnaire for council candidates"

I see the two points as one, mainly the question of efficient communications and information flow. Every council must find the way to address this, both technically (whatever is necessary to allow collaboration despite different time zones, schedules, etc). The exact measures to do this will depend a lot on the actual composition of the next council, and that's why I think it's very difficult to propose solutions for anyone without knowing how other potential council members and maemo.org staff or volunteers feel about them. If the interested parties can come to agreement, it will work, if they don't, it doesn't matter how good the proposition sounded on paper. The bottom line within the sprint itself (or the council, for that matter) is not simply about procedures, it's about having an overview of what's done, what's going on, what's feasible and what can be expected to provide the best possible outcome for the community.

The MeeGo community currently reminds me of a confluence of two rivers where even though the rivers continue to flow in a single riverbed, but are still very coherent and have not mixed at all. There are technical and organizational tasks to do, but a many of these are still in limbo with a lot of people just feeling their way through the new structures. As we have very little of the tangible things to talk about, and the aforementioned community structures have yet to form, the MeeGo community priority is IMO to prepare a solid basis that can accommodate the existing communities. There are already mailing lists, and some budding cms/wiki efforts, but these need to be more coordinated and with a clear goal of how and when will they merge/take over the role of their original Maemo/Moblin counterparts. With still a lot of mystery over how MeeGo will actually function, and the fact that it's always difficult to start filling an empty page, this is no easy task, but needs to be done right in order to avoid wasted efforts, chaos and fragmentation down the road. This will require more (and continuous) involvement from all MeeGo stakeholders.

Communities are not formed around announcements. As exciting the news itself might be, the real tectonic movements in the community will happen when devices start appearing, until then, it will be mostly developers dipping their toes in the first builds. Knowing Maemo history, the community has been reborn like a phoenix from it's ashes several times, and in a way, this is what is likely about to happen again. Considering the Qt4.6 connection, and the N900 being a reference platform for MeeGo, this shockwave/change might be even smaller than it was in the N8x0 -> N900 step. However, the real magnitude will be reflected in the following:

I think we are maybe already late for this. I'm really sorry to see that even though we are in theory given a carte blanche, there are already some stones in motion which have already caused growing pains even before day one. For example, QGil stated they see meego.com as the "new home for this community" and that they are working on it (community participation welcome). While I have no doubt Intel and Nokia wish the best the to the MeeGo community, it does come across somewhat awkwardly (if it's our choice, our new home, and we certainly have a fair amount of very capable staff... participation sounds like an understatement). There have already been skirmishes on talk with regard to forum software and CMSs. I think it is of the utmost priority to come up with solutions that will preserve the community and do it BEFORE the majority of users gets caught up in the turmoil of new releases and devices. It's a very organic thing, and a new home is of little use if we never make it over there, or, worse yet, if the community gets ripped into two in the process. We need to find a solution that provides a stable migration path for everybody - users, developers, forum folks, mailing list folks, etc. The timeframe in which I expect this to happen will probably mean that this Council's role will be mostly preparatory, but I think that's just as important. Do not take me wrong - I have no intention of barging into the Moblin camp and tell them what to do (and I expect the same from them, even though a few things are already taken ad acta on meego.com), but we must find long term solutions that will not only accommodate but integrate both communities if we wish to keep and leverage what we had going on maemo.org. There has been already some collaboration with regard to OpenID and SSO, and that's IMO a good direction that should be continued and expanded on.

These resources are probably the most precious one (for the developers certainly, but I daresay for the Maemo platform as a whole, despite the occasional headaches caused by downtime). Extras provides 90%+ of all software available on the Maemo platform, and not only as a download center, but as complete infrastructure. Obviously, in some form, it MUST continue to live on as it is the lifeblood for generations of previous Maemo devices, and for the N900 in the foreseeable future, too. Things will certainly change as MeeGo means serious differences in build mechanisms (OBS, etc), but sadly we know too little of the details to make any serious migration path, which will certainly be an important point (I saw Jeremiah pushing for more info on this, kudos for that).

Two points in my short term agenda I wish to discuss further and hopefully end up with a result that improves on the current status of Extras-*:

1. Continue streamlining Extras-testing procedures. It *does* work, even Nokia acknowledged this by enabling Extras by default. It *isn't* as painless as planned initially, though. We must continue making this process as painless and efficient as possible for the developers. It's not about simply discarding faulty software or playing a game of exhaustion, it's about protecting end users, giving feedback, advices and helping development at the same time.

2. Explore the possibility of introducing PPAs, and push for introducing them if they prove a viable path. For those not familiar with the matter, PPA's are personal package archives. We already know from the pre-Extras era that a large number of scattered repositories are a recipe for disaster. PPA's solve this by building on top of the main repositories (Extras or Extras-devel in our case), having full sources and sharing the same procedures with Extras-devel without polluting Extras-devel with packages that are temporary or not intended for anyone not specifically interested in them. Less breakage, less wasted space and bandwith, less binary abandonware, less sad users.


That would be it, in short, I plan on expanding on the points mentioned during my campaign and hope to have meaningful conversations on these topics with other Council candidates in the upcoming period. Thank you for your attention !

NOW we have a decent slate! And by that I mean quantity and quality!

I've consolidated all the candidates announced so far, summaries of their declarations, full links to their declarations and answers to the various Q&As (only mine so far, AFAIK):

http://wiki.maemo.org/Community_Coun...for_March_2010

BTW, if any of the candidates feel their summary paragraphs have a better version in their declarations, I'd encourage them to change it. I'm now biased, although I tried to select the best section I could.

could you change the first letter of my nick to a small one?