Re: The Lost Openmoko Community
On Sat, Oct 04, 2008 at 09:00:05AM -0700, Hire wrote: For me the solution is simple: improve fso, paroli, tichy and say goodbye qtopia. With my FOSS developer's hat on instead of OM employee's, I agree with what you said here. Our resource is very limited so it's better to focus on the same thing. The actual stack, om2008.* sux. I find it absolutely not functional. Om2008.* is actully working as my daily phone now, so for me it's okay. Instead, it will be cool to see SHR on freerunner because merged the power of new framework with the old stack ( 2007.4 ) that seems to be almost stable. Regards, John ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: The Lost Openmoko Community ( what's a community manager to do?)
On 6 Oct 2008, at 22:19, Steve Mosher wrote: Stroller wrote: One of the things that Risto was complaining about was the number of distros for the Freerunner, and they're all incomplete!! His words why don't the developers feel ok to contribute directly to 2007.x and 2008.x but 'fork' their own distros? echo my own complaints a couple of months ago in my message Community contributions to core apps features 9 weeks ago. ... It was clear that this too would cause division. I guess you could say we embraced fragmentation, well aware of the pitfalls. I think that it's easy for people to complain about the pitfalls without seeing - at the moment - how successful the forks are. The common complaint is duplication of effort - which then leads to a desire for one true distro - but considering how much the situation has improved in only a few weeks this doesn't seem to be a problem. When you start thinking about one true distro you naturally start thinking that it's Openmoko's responsibility to manage it, and democratic (or consensus based) community contributions, and I think this is 1/3 of what Risto was complaining about (bugs / distros / information). So the only answer to this IS to have more distros. And really, anyone complaining about the state of the current software stacks should have been here 3 months ago. Back then it was Openmoko shouldn't have shipped broken hardware with this GPS bug! Isn't that now all fixed in the kernel drivers? No-one who sees how much the situation has improved is complaining now. We actually like the fact that there are competing distros. The one unique thing we offer is the freedom to choose your distro and choose your carrier. Yes, indeed! And thank goodness! Otherwise we'd all be stuck with Sean's blue-sky vision. Thank goodness it's an unpopular one ;) since it has lead to all these other great distros! Build the product and the community will come to you! It already has, it's just a little too early for everyone to see the fruits of this. yes. my question is can we optimize the effort. Again, open question. negative feedback is as welcome ( in due course) as positive feedback.not to pat you on the back stroller, but when Sean and I talk we almost invariably discuss your perspective on things. I'll be glad to bill you for my time. ;) We already have Michael Shiloh providing weekly community updates (ahem) - IMO a community manager would just be a distraction from Openmoko's real business. You should be concentrating on the hardware, and if you're employing an additional member of staff then make it a kernel programmer, so that your hardware runs more smoothly for the distros that evolve around it. Or get FSO complete sooner, so that (again) all the distros benefit. Well engineering hiring continues day in and day out. As VP of marketing it's part of my job to find ways to make use of this wonderful asset, the community I'll give you an example. At linux world I faced a huge problem. Two booths. and a marketing staff of two. me and michael. And a sales staff of two. Whats missing? somebody with technical knowledge at the booth. Should I ask for an engineer to attend the trade show? Nope, I asked the community to step forward and man the booths with us. When the press came to talk to me, I pointed them at the community member who gave them the unvarnished truth. At first PR thought I was insane, later they changed their minds. Now, for example, I cant coordinate this kind of effort all the time for every show around the world. Is that a job for a full time trade show manager or a community manager? I don't know, I'm at the stage of kicking around ideas. Some of them should get kicked in the head, others in the butt. But its not a distraction. me dragging engineers off of projects to support trade shows is a distraction, to use a concrete example. From outside it's obviously difficult to appreciate how busy you are. I always assumed you spent your days drinking lattes playing fussball in the trendy corporate offices. ;) I don't know that this example - better co-ordination of PR marketing - actually resolves Risto's complaints. There definitely IS a place for users like him to report bugs and test daily builds, and I don't see how to make him - or others like him - see that if they can't already appreciate that from what's already out there. He asks I don't know what's the development status of the software or what's the general direction the community and/or Openmoko is heading to? - well, the answer to that is surely improving the software, and it's happening the same way that it happens in every other open- source product. People are writing their own little apps, porting others, writing blog posts and HOWTOs, answering questions on the mailing list. The community is like an avalanche - it
Re: The Lost Openmoko Community: Official newsletter?
As an example like the ones given above (Gnome, KDE, etc..), I would like to add symfony. Their developpement politic is discutible, but their comunication with the comunity is just awesome : see http://www.symfony-project.org/ and http://www.symfony-project.org/blog Thomas 2008/10/7 Kostis Anagnostopoulos [EMAIL PROTECTED] Excellent and creative post Alex about the resposibilities of an Editor! Just a thought along your lines: - We do not need a PR Manager to *insualte* the community from the enginners. - We need an Editor to ease communications among those 2 groups. Kostis On Mon 06 Oct 2008 11:11:20 Alex Osborne wrote: Steve Mosher wrote: Question: what functions do you see a community manager performing. Write his job spec. As I see it there's two main points that Risto and others have usually brought up on this topic, communication and leadership. Communication This is the big point that everyone always mentions. You can't have leadership without first a way to communicate effectively. In my opinion, the wiki is being covered pretty well now and is becoming a really good _reference_. So what is missing? News! News! News! The engineering updates are excellent once you've discovered them. The community updates by Steve leading up to the release of the FreeRunner were also good. The planet, as several people have mentioned is a mixed bag, now and then there's good blog posts by various people but there's too much off topic or personal stuff that shouldn't be there and it's in desperate need of a way to filter by language. Sadsammy also pointed out in a reply to Risto's Lost Openmoko Community blog post that these guys are doing fantastic job: http://onlinedev.blogspot.com/search/label/openmoko But they're not even in the planet! (I just filed a bug to admin-trac). There's also not enough stuff from within Openmoko itself in the planet, it should be a central place to look for news. How is news handled elsewhere? For small specialised projects a mailing list and the lead developer's blog is fine. But the Openmoko community is extremely diverse covering lots and lots of different bases and is rapidly growing in size. It's not just a single software package, heck it's not even a single distro! So lets look to the big diverse communities. For general Linux stuff there is the absolutely fantastic Linux Weekly News [1]. In addition to that, virtually all the large community-style projects have their own newsletters, either weekly, bi-weekly or monthly: Debian [2], Gentoo [3], Ubuntu [4], Fedora [5], Mozilla [6] and so on. GNOME [7] and KDE [8] have a continuous planet-style news rather than a newsletter, but they are edited by real humans and serve much the same purpose and have recurring feature articles. Lets look at what they have in common: * Visibility: If not directly on the front page, then a big fat link at the start of the navbar News. Not hidden away in some mailing list (although usually mirrored or announced on lists). * Well edited: Typically they have one *human* editor who puts everything together in a consistent easy to read way and filters out the rubbish. * Sections: The details vary a bit between the projects but in some form they usually have the following. Theses don't have to be particularly long. A paragraph or two on each section would do. - Table of contents with highlights of the most important stuff from the other sections. - Corporate news: What's happening in the core company (Mozilla), council (Gentoo) or core developers (Linux kernel). These decisions have been taken. This is the new policy for X. We're opening a new t-shirt store. We're looking to hire a community manager and two kernel hackers. We will be having an IRC or real-life meeting to discuss issue X at this time and place. John Smith has moved to the Foobar team will now be working on X. This should help a little to give a voice to the company, what are its interests and where it is going. - Special features: Two or three more in-depth articles on a particular topic. This could be a review of a new program, discussion on a debate about a particularly tricky technical problem or a round-up from a recent conference or event with a few photos. It would be good to have maybe one or two by the newsletter's editor and then some good-quality articles by guest authors. If there's a good article on some random person's blog, ask them whether you can include it. Offering some incentives (merchandise, gear or even a small sum of money like LWN) could help encourage people to submit good articles. - Development news: Digest of the more interesting commits to the repositories of core projects. Bug tracker statistics (list of fixed bugs, how many news ones etc). LWN has the mailing list quote
Re: The Lost Openmoko Community ( what's a community manager to do?)
Hi, Question: what functions do you see a community manager performing. Write his job spec. ( hint hint) how about that: * Work with Openmoko Inc. to flesh out a project structure and roadmap that encourages community participation * Work with Openmoko Inc. to enhance collaboration with the community * Work out a structure for the community (eg. Ubuntu-style teams) * Work with individual community members to lower the bar for them to contribute to Openmoko * Incentivize community participation (eg. Summer of code) * Enhance communication between Openmoko Inc. and the community * Enhance communication between Openmoko and other free software projects * Organize Openmoko presences at community events, conferences etc. Those are just off the top of my head, there is probably more to this job. And those are all topics Openmoko is already working on. But it seems to be done on the side all the while it could probably occupy several people full-time. I have mentioned Ubuntu above. It could serve as an example, although it surely differs from Openmoko at least in scale and maturity. There are however some striking similarities, like the fact that the core development and vision for the project is defined within a company. Jono Bacon, the Ubuntu community manager, seems to be making a good job, at least I have found the Ubuntu community to be very passionate yet helpful and friendly. Jono regularly speaks about his job and its challenges. I found his LCA 2007 talk quite interesting [1]. I am not convinced that a community manager is strictly necessary for Openmoko, but having one would surely be helpful. Kind regards David [1] http://www.linux.org.au/conf/2007/talk/173.html ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: The Lost Openmoko Community
On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 12:14 AM, Marco Trevisan (Treviño) [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: Angus Ainslie wrote: Wifi is working as well as any basic distro install. You need to edit /etc/network/interfaces and or wpa_supplicant.conf but it is working. Well, saying 'working' is too much imho. I can connect only to an AP at each reboot and after that the wifi chip continues sucking my battery also if it isn't associated neither it can associate (and also scan) with anything else. I really hope that the Andy's patch to make the wifi driver modular could workaround these problems... In the meantime, why not use the Services GUI mentioned here [1] and kill wifi when not in use? [1] http://freeyourphone.de/portal_v1/viewtopic.php?f=21t=295 ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: The Lost Openmoko Community ( what's a community manager to do?)
Stroller wrote: On 6 Oct 2008, at 22:19, Steve Mosher wrote: Stroller wrote: One of the things that Risto was complaining about was the number of distros for the Freerunner, and they're all incomplete!! His words why don't the developers feel ok to contribute directly to 2007.x and 2008.x but 'fork' their own distros? echo my own complaints a couple of months ago in my message Community contributions to core apps features 9 weeks ago. ... It was clear that this too would cause division. I guess you could say we embraced fragmentation, well aware of the pitfalls. I think that it's easy for people to complain about the pitfalls without seeing - at the moment - how successful the forks are. The common complaint is duplication of effort - which then leads to a desire for one true distro - but considering how much the situation has improved in only a few weeks this doesn't seem to be a problem. When you start thinking about one true distro you naturally start thinking that it's Openmoko's responsibility to manage it, and democratic (or consensus based) community contributions, and I think this is 1/3 of what Risto was complaining about (bugs / distros / information). So the only answer to this IS to have more distros. And really, anyone complaining about the state of the current software stacks should have been here 3 months ago. Back then it was Openmoko shouldn't have shipped broken hardware with this GPS bug! Isn't that now all fixed in the kernel drivers? No-one who sees how much the situation has improved is complaining now. We actually like the fact that there are competing distros. The one unique thing we offer is the freedom to choose your distro and choose your carrier. Yes, indeed! And thank goodness! Otherwise we'd all be stuck with Sean's blue-sky vision. Thank goodness it's an unpopular one ;) since it has lead to all these other great distros! Build the product and the community will come to you! It already has, it's just a little too early for everyone to see the fruits of this. yes. my question is can we optimize the effort. Again, open question. negative feedback is as welcome ( in due course) as positive feedback.not to pat you on the back stroller, but when Sean and I talk we almost invariably discuss your perspective on things. I'll be glad to bill you for my time. ;) We already have Michael Shiloh providing weekly community updates (ahem) - IMO a community manager would just be a distraction from Openmoko's real business. You should be concentrating on the hardware, and if you're employing an additional member of staff then make it a kernel programmer, so that your hardware runs more smoothly for the distros that evolve around it. Or get FSO complete sooner, so that (again) all the distros benefit. Well engineering hiring continues day in and day out. As VP of marketing it's part of my job to find ways to make use of this wonderful asset, the community I'll give you an example. At linux world I faced a huge problem. Two booths. and a marketing staff of two. me and michael. And a sales staff of two. Whats missing? somebody with technical knowledge at the booth. Should I ask for an engineer to attend the trade show? Nope, I asked the community to step forward and man the booths with us. When the press came to talk to me, I pointed them at the community member who gave them the unvarnished truth. At first PR thought I was insane, later they changed their minds. Now, for example, I cant coordinate this kind of effort all the time for every show around the world. Is that a job for a full time trade show manager or a community manager? I don't know, I'm at the stage of kicking around ideas. Some of them should get kicked in the head, others in the butt. But its not a distraction. me dragging engineers off of projects to support trade shows is a distraction, to use a concrete example. From outside it's obviously difficult to appreciate how busy you are. I always assumed you spent your days drinking lattes playing fussball in the trendy corporate offices. ;) I love being busy. I work out of the US, the corporate office is in Taiwan. I don't know that this example - better co-ordination of PR marketing - actually resolves Risto's complaints. There definitely IS a place for users like him to report bugs and test daily builds, and I don't see how to make him - or others like him - see that if they can't already appreciate that from what's already out there. The example wasnt meant to address Ristro's concerns. Ristro's concerns trigger me to thing about ALL the ways the community can help. And that triggered me to think about optimizing that effort. So, I look for ways to expand the role of the community in all corporate functions: engineering, marketing and sales remember the 10 pack? That idea was born out a question Sean and I
Re: The Lost Openmoko Community ( what's a community manager to do?)
One of the things that Risto was complaining about was the number of distros for the Freerunner, and they're all incomplete!! His words why don't the developers feel ok to contribute directly to 2007.x and 2008.x but 'fork' their own distros? echo my own complaints a couple of months ago in my message Community contributions to core apps features 9 weeks ago. You Sean have said that you want to follow your own vision in the software side of things - developers can't supply patches for power- user features (that make the UI more complex) and expect you to include them in the core distro, if you're trying to produce a phone software suite for grandmothers. And I really understand where you're coming from with this - you have to sell loads more volume if you want your hardware business to be successful. So the only answer to this IS to have more distros. And really, anyone complaining about the state of the current software stacks should have been here 3 months ago. Back then it was Openmoko shouldn't have shipped broken hardware with this GPS bug! Isn't that now all fixed in the kernel drivers? No-one who sees how much the situation has improved is complaining now. I appreciate there's some room for compromise between grandmothers and power-users on the state of the software. You can start with a basic interface and have a framework so that extra features are only shown once installed configured by the advanced users. But there is no one true way - if we look at the state of desktop window managers, we see that. This is a relatively mature market - Gnome KDE have both been around and stable for several years. When Risto or some other newcomer looks at Openmoko the Freerunner, you cannot expect them to see a path as clear, directed and well-signposted as that space. I applaud your effort - you're responding to criticism and asking how you can fix the problem - but I can't see how a community manager can change anything. You can't exactly deny there are several Freerunner distros, or that they're all works in progress! Build the product and the community will come to you! It already has, it's just a little too early for everyone to see the fruits of this. We already have Michael Shiloh providing weekly community updates (ahem) - IMO a community manager would just be a distraction from Openmoko's real business. You should be concentrating on the hardware, and if you're employing an additional member of staff then make it a kernel programmer, so that your hardware runs more smoothly for the distros that evolve around it. Or get FSO complete sooner, so that (again) all the distros benefit. Running a business is all about customer satisfaction, but you can't keep EVERYONE happy. There will always be 1 or 2 who don't get it, and they just happen to be vocal about it. You've already satisfied 99% of us with your open-source mobile phone platform - already so many people are bringing their own ideas and (more importantly) work to that. Ignore the whiners! I don't include Risto in that characterisation, but I don't see how you can please him. In 6 months time you will have some amazing community distros for your phones, and at least then the incomplete complaint will be satisfied. Those that don't get it, meanwhile, will have found something else to complain about. This is the nature of open source. Stroller. On 6 Oct 2008, at 03:37, Steve Mosher wrote: Stroller let's assume it is Possible. I had a long chat with Sean today. We both read the community list daily and our number one topic of conversation was the Lost community thread. Sean asked me what I thought of having a community manager. ( he was reading my mind again) On one hand, I said, Stoller has some good points ( as always). It would be a bit like herding cats, and in someway we want interesting cats, wandering off to do things that A) we didnt think of and B) we disagree with. basically because we don't know everything. On the other hand, we do recognize the benefit to be had from a little bit of structure. I have my ideas about what a community manager would do to organize and mobilize, But before I put those ideas down, I'd like to throw it open to the community. Question: what functions do you see a community manager performing. Write his job spec. ( hint hint) ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: The Lost Openmoko Community: Official newsletter?
Steve Mosher wrote: Question: what functions do you see a community manager performing. Write his job spec. As I see it there's two main points that Risto and others have usually brought up on this topic, communication and leadership. Communication This is the big point that everyone always mentions. You can't have leadership without first a way to communicate effectively. In my opinion, the wiki is being covered pretty well now and is becoming a really good _reference_. So what is missing? News! News! News! The engineering updates are excellent once you've discovered them. The community updates by Steve leading up to the release of the FreeRunner were also good. The planet, as several people have mentioned is a mixed bag, now and then there's good blog posts by various people but there's too much off topic or personal stuff that shouldn't be there and it's in desperate need of a way to filter by language. Sadsammy also pointed out in a reply to Risto's Lost Openmoko Community blog post that these guys are doing fantastic job: http://onlinedev.blogspot.com/search/label/openmoko But they're not even in the planet! (I just filed a bug to admin-trac). There's also not enough stuff from within Openmoko itself in the planet, it should be a central place to look for news. How is news handled elsewhere? For small specialised projects a mailing list and the lead developer's blog is fine. But the Openmoko community is extremely diverse covering lots and lots of different bases and is rapidly growing in size. It's not just a single software package, heck it's not even a single distro! So lets look to the big diverse communities. For general Linux stuff there is the absolutely fantastic Linux Weekly News [1]. In addition to that, virtually all the large community-style projects have their own newsletters, either weekly, bi-weekly or monthly: Debian [2], Gentoo [3], Ubuntu [4], Fedora [5], Mozilla [6] and so on. GNOME [7] and KDE [8] have a continuous planet-style news rather than a newsletter, but they are edited by real humans and serve much the same purpose and have recurring feature articles. Lets look at what they have in common: * Visibility: If not directly on the front page, then a big fat link at the start of the navbar News. Not hidden away in some mailing list (although usually mirrored or announced on lists). * Well edited: Typically they have one *human* editor who puts everything together in a consistent easy to read way and filters out the rubbish. * Sections: The details vary a bit between the projects but in some form they usually have the following. Theses don't have to be particularly long. A paragraph or two on each section would do. - Table of contents with highlights of the most important stuff from the other sections. - Corporate news: What's happening in the core company (Mozilla), council (Gentoo) or core developers (Linux kernel). These decisions have been taken. This is the new policy for X. We're opening a new t-shirt store. We're looking to hire a community manager and two kernel hackers. We will be having an IRC or real-life meeting to discuss issue X at this time and place. John Smith has moved to the Foobar team will now be working on X. This should help a little to give a voice to the company, what are its interests and where it is going. - Special features: Two or three more in-depth articles on a particular topic. This could be a review of a new program, discussion on a debate about a particularly tricky technical problem or a round-up from a recent conference or event with a few photos. It would be good to have maybe one or two by the newsletter's editor and then some good-quality articles by guest authors. If there's a good article on some random person's blog, ask them whether you can include it. Offering some incentives (merchandise, gear or even a small sum of money like LWN) could help encourage people to submit good articles. - Development news: Digest of the more interesting commits to the repositories of core projects. Bug tracker statistics (list of fixed bugs, how many news ones etc). LWN has the mailing list quote of the week, which often mixes a few funnies (whatever creative way Linus has told someone their code stinks this week) with rather interesting mailing list threads worth reading. - Software release notices: Generally submitted from the community, but edited, or at least with a policy of how they should look to be accepted. Kept short and to the point. One sentence description of what the project is (maybe a little longer if its a new project), list of big changes, link to the project's website or install instructions. - Community events/announcements: OpenMoko community get-together in Sydney. Upcoming mobile computing conference in Denmark. New users group in Italy looking for members. - Tips and tricks: This is not so general, but something I noticed in Gentoo's
Re: The Lost Openmoko Community
Angus Ainslie wrote: Wifi is working as well as any basic distro install. You need to edit /etc/network/interfaces and or wpa_supplicant.conf but it is working. Well, saying 'working' is too much imho. I can connect only to an AP at each reboot and after that the wifi chip continues sucking my battery also if it isn't associated neither it can associate (and also scan) with anything else. I really hope that the Andy's patch to make the wifi driver modular could workaround these problems... Going back to the general thread, I was saying that OM was lacking of comuncation also 4 months ago, but I know that developers should develop first of all (and I'm with them, I'd prefer that too), so to me it seems that there's a lack of people in Openmoko (they're too few for what should be done). -- Treviño's World - Life and Linux http://www.3v1n0.net/ ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: The Lost Openmoko Community ( what's a community manager to do?)
Stroller wrote: One of the things that Risto was complaining about was the number of distros for the Freerunner, and they're all incomplete!! His words why don't the developers feel ok to contribute directly to 2007.x and 2008.x but 'fork' their own distros? echo my own complaints a couple of months ago in my message Community contributions to core apps features 9 weeks ago. Let me provide a little history. back in October of 2007 We faced a decision on software. From the schedules we knew hardware would be ready before software. So the following choices where available to us. 1. Ship the hardware with a bootable linux. Absolute bare bones. a number of people thought this would make the community happy. 2. Ship with Qtopia if it was ready. A number of people supported this. 3. Take the existing Openhand project. Cut back the features to a bare minimum ( dialer, sms,contacts) and ship with that. #3 (2007.2) won out for a variety of reasons.It was not a perfect solution, by a long shot. It was clear any one of these paths would cause some sort of division, some sort of complaints. In parallel, we would define a new set of applications with a different look and feel and some new and interesting applications. this would be a long term project. The design would be as simple ( empty vessel to use shawns term) as possible, and we would encourage developers to add to it improve etc. It was clear that this too would cause division. I guess you could say we embraced fragmentation, well aware of the pitfalls. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080918-openmoko-ceo-embrace-fragmentation-diversity-is-a-strength.html You Sean have said that you want to follow your own vision in the software side of things - developers can't supply patches for power-user features (that make the UI more complex) and expect you to include them in the core distro, if you're trying to produce a phone software suite for grandmothers. That's not the Goal of 2008.x The design philosophy is to create something clean and simple and then let end users clutter it up to their hearts content And I really understand where you're coming from with this - you have to sell loads more volume if you want your hardware business to be successful. Well, actually not. I measure success in terms of profitability. At the current volumes and the current cost of operations we are where we need to be. ramping to grandma volume is a careful process that does not happen overnight. Crawl walk run. The pesky in and outs of cash flow and building out process of bigger sales, marketing and engineering organizations. So the only answer to this IS to have more distros. And really, anyone complaining about the state of the current software stacks should have been here 3 months ago. Back then it was Openmoko shouldn't have shipped broken hardware with this GPS bug! Isn't that now all fixed in the kernel drivers? No-one who sees how much the situation has improved is complaining now. We actually like the fact that there are competing distros. The one unique thing we offer is the freedom to choose your distro and choose your carrier. In the US, for example you can choose Tmobile or ATT. I appreciate there's some room for compromise between grandmothers and power-users on the state of the software. You can start with a basic interface and have a framework so that extra features are only shown once installed configured by the advanced users. Yup, thats the plan. But there is no one true way - if we look at the state of desktop window managers, we see that. This is a relatively mature market - Gnome KDE have both been around and stable for several years. When Risto or some other newcomer looks at Openmoko the Freerunner, you cannot expect them to see a path as clear, directed and well-signposted as that space. Agreed I applaud your effort - you're responding to criticism and asking how you can fix the problem - but I can't see how a community manager can change anything. You can't exactly deny there are several Freerunner distros, or that they're all works in progress! facts are facts. The community manager cant change past facts. What can he do? That's an open question I pose to a creative community. Do I have ideas, sure; will some of them suck? most assuredly. Might some be good? I've had my lucky epiphanies. The one thing I'm sure of is that the community will think of things that I didnt. ( and yes, some ideas will suck and others will have merit) Build the product and the community will come to you! It already has, it's just a little too early for everyone to see the fruits of this. yes. my question is can we optimize the effort. Again, open question. negative feedback is as welcome ( in due course) as positive feedback.not to pat you on the back stroller, but when Sean and I talk we
Re: The Lost Openmoko Community
Hi Vasco, On Sat, Oct 04, 2008 at 04:42:02PM +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: To all, but especially OM. I felt a little cheated when I saw the FR I had bought was not ready to be used as a daily phone. This had in fact been the publicity by OM at the time - GTA01 was for tinkerers, and GTA02 was for the public. Then people said no, it was clear that GTA02 was also for tinkerers only... I experienced it the very same way. If you looked just at www.openmoko.com, you would think GTA02 was a ready phone for end-users. I can be blamed for not informing myself enough. But I think OM at least tolerated the possibility of users being misinformed. Otherwise they should have put a clear warning on openmoko.com. Dear OM team, such a warning is even missing today. Instead I read: ``If you plan on using your FreeRunner for everyday use, then we would recommend Qtopia. While it doesn't utilize all the the new hardware features of the phone, it is reliable and stable.'' May be that Qtopia is stable, alas the kernel and hardware are not. WSOD and GSM buzz is my everyday reality. But honestly, I still love this project. OM after all is providing the first free phone. It is about time that man reclaimed machine. And this is a very important step towards it. Still there is a lot of disappointment. And that certainly comes from a lack of communication and information. I experience an unopenness concerning things that don't work yet. When people complain about their FR not being usable as a phone, they get answers like this one: ``I appreciate that many of you purchased the FR to use as your daily phone. But I really believe that the magic of Openmoko comes from what we do with this platform that is different from, and way beyond, a mere phone.''[1] Exaggerating just a bit, it sounds like: ``My FR is not working as a phone!'' - ``Well son, it was never meant to be a phone.'' That's just one random example but to me it feels like the general direction of many OM staff postings. So to pick up my earlier point: Why does openmoko.com not explicitly state that the phone's software is not ready for reliable daily use? There should also be a note about the possibility that the FR with your provider in your region will be suffering from GSM buzz. Thus being unusable as a phone. Ole [1] http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2008-September/031063.html pgp0AGfBgnTdA.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: The Lost Openmoko Community
I agree with what you are saying. When I bought the phone I knew there were some issues, but I had confidence in the hardware. I also had the impression it wouldn't take much time to be able to use it as a very basic phone. Maybe I was wrong with my assumption. Even the so called reliable and stable qtopia had missing sms messages, picking up a call and no sound, lost pin enter screens, echo and resume not functional. Would be nice to have one basic image with a focus on these issues. Even if it slowed down development. I guess developers also need a phone, don't they? When people complain about their FR not being usable as a phone, they get answers like this one: ``I appreciate that many of you purchased the FR to use as your daily phone. But I really believe that the magic of Openmoko comes from what we do with this platform that is different from, and way beyond, a mere phone.''[1] Exaggerating just a bit, it sounds like: ``My FR is not working as a phone!'' - ``Well son, it was never meant to be a phone.'' That's just one random example but to me it feels like the general direction of many OM staff postings. So to pick up my earlier point: Why does openmoko.com not explicitly state that the phone's software is not ready for reliable daily use? There should also be a note about the possibility that the FR with your provider in your region will be suffering from GSM buzz. Thus being unusable as a phone. Ole ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: The Lost Openmoko Community
Minh Ha Duong [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On the whole, it's just that they are understaffed and spread very thin: how many people would a company need to totally rock from hardware design to community management, including production, sales, kernel development, middleware development, applications development, interface, packaging and distribution ? indeed! i just read on /. that motorola is expanding its Android Developer Team from 50 to 350 people!!! everybody working in a small software development company knows what OM has already achieved. my respect to the people from OM! clemens ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: The Lost Openmoko Community ( what's a community manager to do?)
Stroller let's assume it is Possible. I had a long chat with Sean today. We both read the community list daily and our number one topic of conversation was the Lost community thread. Sean asked me what I thought of having a community manager. ( he was reading my mind again) On one hand, I said, Stoller has some good points ( as always). It would be a bit like herding cats, and in someway we want interesting cats, wandering off to do things that A) we didnt think of and B) we disagree with. basically because we don't know everything. On the other hand, we do recognize the benefit to be had from a little bit of structure. I have my ideas about what a community manager would do to organize and mobilize, But before I put those ideas down, I'd like to throw it open to the community. Question: what functions do you see a community manager performing. Write his job spec. ( hint hint) Stroller wrote: Hi Risto, I think you depend upon Openmoko Inc. to provide the community. Or perhaps direction for the community. I don't know if that's possible. Community is, by definition, a bunch of different people, with different ideas and different requirements. Sure there may be some consensus, but there will also be plenty of people pulling in different directions, too. Additionally, I think most of us, as Linux geeks, disagree with Openmoko Inc. on what software for our phones should look like. Openmoko want to sell their next generation of phones to little old ladies and teenagers, and are prepared to sacrifice complexity to do that. And they won't be asking the community how we want our phones - they will be following their own vision to achieve this. I won't by any means be relying on official distros to do what I want. But what Openmoko HAS given us is wonderful, wonderful phone hardware which runs fully open-source software. I have realised that any criticism I might make of Openmoko must pale in comparison beside this - they're the ONLY people who have yet done so. (Perhaps we might mention the no-longer available Trolltech Greenphone, but that was only a run of 1000 units or so). I appreciate that if you're not already a Linux / OSS fanboi, then the above statement might not mean much. What good is fully open-source software, if it doesn't work, you say? Well, the benefit is that WE can make it work, and we don't have to reply upon Openmoko to help us. Considering that the Freerunner is only - what? - 3 months old, the community has made leaps bounds already. As others have pointed out, you can make a bug report over a spelling mistake, and I point to David Samblas' distro as an example of what the community has produced already. I think that your problems stem from looking at the Openmoko community from the outside in. Only 3 months ago the first 5,000 or 10,000 units of the Freerunner suddenly hit the market - of course the direction of development is going to be a mess. It's going to be impossible to look at just a wiki or two and try and get a handle of everything that's going on. And one shouldn't expect the impossible from Openmoko - to expect a unified direction of development you are asking someone to herd cats. Personally I don't want a single true distro, because we might end up with Gnome for phones. I prefer KDE and others here prefer Ice or whatever. Rereading some of your questions, I did feel the same way myself a couple of months ago. why don't the developers feel ok to contribute directly to 2007.x and 2008.x but 'fork' their own distros? I have to say that I asked this myself, and I came to realise that that wouldn't suit the Openmoko vision for their own software. Just as you can't submit patches to Gnome to add right-click options if it doesn't meet with their usability specification or ask KDE to remove options because they confuse my grandmother, some aspects of the Openmoko vision are indeed closed. But this free software lark gives us the CHOICE! I feel that software images from Raster David Samblas, the work being undertaken on SHR and the recent Qtopia release are all testaments to the community surrounding Openmoko's device(s), and if you appreciated how rapidly the situation with the software distos has improved in only a few weeks, you would realise that there are great things ahead for this platform. Yes, presently it may be frustrating for you, but even the person who makes a blog post about configuring their wifi under disto X, or changing the theme so that Navit displays better... those people are making a difference and improving the Freerunner environment for everyone. Stroller. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___
The Lost Openmoko Community
Hi! After my previous blog post [1] about Openmoko 2007.2 distribution and the Openmoko community I got some comments proving that like me, some other people feel that the community is lost and uninformed. This post is a follow up to the previous post and the comments I got. I've understood that 2007.2 still ships with the phones. As soon as one gets his new c00l Freerunner linux phone they need to flash the phone with a new distro (2008.x or Debian, FDOM, SHR, Gentoo, Qtopia, FSO.. [6]) since the software it ships with is obsolete. OK, so you get your 2008.x there and find that it doesn't really do all the magic and would like to report a bug. BUGS I don't know how others feel but I really don't feel like reporting bugs in the bug tracker [3]. OK, I'm running an unsupported distro (2007.2) so there's one reason but I also feel that it's okay to post kernel bugs only there, not anything that a normal user would see in his GUI. Is this correct or just a feeling or misunderstanding? Remember that all Freerunner owners and people here in the community are not kernel developers. I don't even know how to save back traces or hack the source code but I'm happy to report if something doesn't work and then when someone more skillful finds what's wrong and eventually fixes it, I'm again happy to try if the fix works for me. For some reason I feel that there's no space in the community for users like me. DISTROS So it's 2008.x now. No, wait.. there are FDOM [5] and SHR [2] around that are not far from 2008.x. Is 2007.2 still developed and lead by Openmoko or by the community? Do the community developers have access to the files so that new releases can be made or is SHR the closest to 2007.2 you can get to? My feeling is that there was a lack of information about why 2007.2 was forgotten and new 2008.x series was started and that something weird is happening in the official distros that creates a need for FDOM and SHR - why don't the developers feel ok to contribute directly to 2007.x and 2008.x but 'fork' their own distros? INFORMATION I think that what makes me feel lost is the lack of information about what's happening in the community. I don't know what's the development status of the software or what's the general direction the community and/or Openmoko is heading to? Having a better view on the general situation makes one feel much more comfortable and secure: now I feel that I just wait to see what the next release's like not being able to know what to wait for. NEXT STEPS People working at Openmoko and other software developers: * Please check 'Community Management as Open Source's Core Competency' by David Eaves [4] and have a good look at the the Openmoko community. It needs management! * Please write a blog post once a week or so to planet.openmoko.org and the community mailing list telling the community what's going on. Five to ten lines is enough to help the community feel better! * Please respect your community! Other community members: * How do you feel about the current situation? How happy are you with the community? * Do you feel well informed? Do you know what's the direction we're heading to? * How would you like to contribute? Thanks! ps. I posted this also in my blog: http://risto.kurppa.fi/blog/the-lost-openmoko-community/ r [1] http://risto.kurppa.fi/blog/openmoko-20072-distros-and-community/ [2] http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Stable_Hybrid_Release [3] https://docs.openmoko.org/trac [4] http://eaves.ca/2006/12/17/community-management-as-open-sources-core-competency/ [5] http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/FDOM_-_a_Fat_and_Dirty_OM_based_distribution [6] http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Distributions -- | risto h. kurppa | risto at kurppa dot fi | http://risto.kurppa.fi ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: The Lost Openmoko Community
My brother feels exactly like you. he's not really a techie and depends on me for most stuffhowever i tought him how to report bugs and watch the tracker, but he gets dissapointed that whenever he tries to report something its either already there or he doesnt have the logs required. Thing is, he packed his freerunner in the box and saved it for when its more developed (aka, ready). I'm more of a tinkerer so im happy to have a half-assed phone, with lots of noise and echo and not a good alarm (i had to buy something else to wake me in the morning reliably), and usually flash every other distro every other day and test stuff. However, I do believe that there's lack of community communication with openmoko...we dont know their plan or priorities (ie, for many many users, first and foremost we need a phone without noise or echo, but there seems to be little done by openmoko in that area). Also showing lack of focus is the releases. There have been some patches that dont appear to be implemented in 2008.x but FDOM has had it since the beginning (gtk fix, dns resolv, or the infamous keyboard debate) I think that's it for now, sorry for the long post, but it's 2 users around here. Tom Risto H. Kurppa escribió: BUGS I don't know how others feel but I really don't feel like reporting bugs in the bug tracker [3]. OK, I'm running an unsupported distro (2007.2) so there's one reason but I also feel that it's okay to post kernel bugs only there, not anything that a normal user would see in his GUI. Is this correct or just a feeling or misunderstanding? Remember that all Freerunner owners and people here in the community are not kernel developers. I don't even know how to save back traces or hack the source code but I'm happy to report if something doesn't work and then when someone more skillful finds what's wrong and eventually fixes it, I'm again happy to try if the fix works for me. For some reason I feel that there's no space in the community for users like me. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: The Lost Openmoko Community
Risto H. Kurppa wrote: Other community members: * How do you feel about the current situation? How happy are you with the community? * Do you feel well informed? Do you know what's the direction we're heading to? * How would you like to contribute? Hello Risto Thank you for your post. I think you wrote something that a lot of person think. I can only add my personal point of view: I don't know what Openmoko is working for, for me their work is a dbus interface. It seem to be a very good work! For the rest I don't use 200*.* I am using Debian and I am happy with it. I use the programs from Debian and I am trying to supply what still not exist. According me we must to try to develop the missiong application for 200*.* to make it usable. I tryed and I saw that is not too much complicated, there are very usefull dbus interface. So... In the end, I don't considerate myself unrespected. There is only a lot of work to do, and who can must to try to help on the accessory part that trasform a normal phone, in a super phone. Best regards Michele Renda ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: The Lost Openmoko Community
To all, but especially OM. I felt a little cheated when I saw the FR I had bought was not ready to be used as a daily phone. This had in fact been the publicity by OM at the time - GTA01 was for tinkerers, and GTA02 was for the public. Then people said no, it was clear that GTA02 was also for tinkerers only... well, whatever; I decided to ignore that, be positive, and contribute with bug reports while waiting for a decent basic distro that would control the device as expected and serve as a development platform. But just like the others, I don't know what OM (the company) is doing. I know it is keeping FSO on track, which was always the real objective of OM (the project) and this is a Good Thing. But I don't understand why there are so many distros, and none of them works as a solid basic system. OM (the company) should have only sold the GTA02 when the hardware and kernel and drivers where tested and ready. Or, if that was not possible due to time-to-market constraints, then it should have called for the community's help for doing just that: getting the device to work. Instead, it went ahead telling us the Neo is a blank slate, a canvas to paint on... and the people who have painted, have lost many of their paintings, and even the will to paint. At least, they won't paint with OM brushes. It is too frustrating and time-consuming. Enough ranting. Personally, I need a working device. Kernel, drivers, daemons, system scripts, all of this must be in place to allow the device's hardware to be controlled at the flick of a software switch. GPRS+GSM muxing must be included by default. WIFI must work correctly by default. Bluetooth must work as well as in any other distro by default. And for god's sake, AUDIO must work as intended by default (it IS a phone after all). Only after OM guarantees these minimum requirements can it ask the community to go ahead and innovate... Don't waste your time on GUIs or eye-candy apps; give us a device with a rock solid subsystem and a command shell, and we will fill in the blanks and build from there. Vasco. Citando Michele Renda [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Risto H. Kurppa wrote: Other community members: * How do you feel about the current situation? How happy are you with the community? * Do you feel well informed? Do you know what's the direction we're heading to? * How would you like to contribute? Hello Risto Thank you for your post. I think you wrote something that a lot of person think. I can only add my personal point of view: I don't know what Openmoko is working for, for me their work is a dbus interface. It seem to be a very good work! For the rest I don't use 200*.* I am using Debian and I am happy with it. I use the programs from Debian and I am trying to supply what still not exist. According me we must to try to develop the missiong application for 200*.* to make it usable. I tryed and I saw that is not too much complicated, there are very usefull dbus interface. So... In the end, I don't considerate myself unrespected. There is only a lot of work to do, and who can must to try to help on the accessory part that trasform a normal phone, in a super phone. Best regards Michele Renda ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: The Lost Openmoko Community
For me the solution is simple: improve fso, paroli, tichy and say goodbye qtopia. The actual stack, om2008.* sux. I find it absolutely not functional. Instead, it will be cool to see SHR on freerunner because merged the power of new framework with the old stack ( 2007.4 ) that seems to be almost stable. -- View this message in context: http://n2.nabble.com/The-Lost-Openmoko-Community-tp1143809p1198538.html Sent from the Openmoko Community mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: The Lost Openmoko Community
On Sat, 2008-10-04 at 15:56 +0300, Risto H. Kurppa wrote: Hi! After my previous blog post [1] about Openmoko 2007.2 distribution and the Openmoko community I got some comments proving that like me, some other people feel that the community is lost and uninformed. This post is a follow up to the previous post and the comments I got. I've understood that 2007.2 still ships with the phones. As soon as one gets his new c00l Freerunner linux phone they need to flash the phone with a new distro (2008.x or Debian, FDOM, SHR, Gentoo, Qtopia, FSO.. [6]) since the software it ships with is obsolete. OK, so you get your 2008.x there and find that it doesn't really do all the magic and would like to report a bug. BUGS I don't know how others feel but I really don't feel like reporting bugs in the bug tracker [3]. OK, I'm running an unsupported distro (2007.2) so there's one reason but I also feel that it's okay to post kernel bugs only there, not anything that a normal user would see in his GUI. Is this correct or just a feeling or misunderstanding? Remember that all Freerunner owners and people here in the community are not kernel developers. I don't even know how to save back traces or hack the source code but I'm happy to report if something doesn't work and then when someone more skillful finds what's wrong and eventually fixes it, I'm again happy to try if the fix works for me. For some reason I feel that there's no space in the community for users like me. DISTROS So it's 2008.x now. No, wait.. there are FDOM [5] and SHR [2] around that are not far from 2008.x. Is 2007.2 still developed and lead by Openmoko or by the community? Do the community developers have access to the files so that new releases can be made or is SHR the closest to 2007.2 you can get to? My feeling is that there was a lack of information about why 2007.2 was forgotten and new 2008.x series was started and that something weird is happening in the official distros that creates a need for FDOM and SHR - why don't the developers feel ok to contribute directly to 2007.x and 2008.x but 'fork' their own distros? INFORMATION I think that what makes me feel lost is the lack of information about what's happening in the community. I don't know what's the development status of the software or what's the general direction the community and/or Openmoko is heading to? Having a better view on the general situation makes one feel much more comfortable and secure: now I feel that I just wait to see what the next release's like not being able to know what to wait for. NEXT STEPS People working at Openmoko and other software developers: * Please check 'Community Management as Open Source's Core Competency' by David Eaves [4] and have a good look at the the Openmoko community. It needs management! * Please write a blog post once a week or so to planet.openmoko.org and the community mailing list telling the community what's going on. Five to ten lines is enough to help the community feel better! * Please respect your community! Other community members: * How do you feel about the current situation? How happy are you with the community? * Do you feel well informed? Do you know what's the direction we're heading to? * How would you like to contribute? Thanks! ps. I posted this also in my blog: http://risto.kurppa.fi/blog/the-lost-openmoko-community/ r [1] http://risto.kurppa.fi/blog/openmoko-20072-distros-and-community/ [2] http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Stable_Hybrid_Release [3] https://docs.openmoko.org/trac [4] http://eaves.ca/2006/12/17/community-management-as-open-sources-core-competency/ [5] http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/FDOM_-_a_Fat_and_Dirty_OM_based_distribution [6] http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Distributions I feel more or less the same way. I am a software developer but have no experience in linux development, not that I don't want too. My goal buying the neo was mainly to have a portable device with gps and different means of communication. Since in my work I have become more and more specialise in one area I wanted to expand my knowledge in a new area. The first I did was flash 2008.08 and get usb and wifi up running but I fast realise that the system software was to unstable to make it really useable. It crash to often and drain battery to fast. A week ago there were a call to get community to contribute in bug tracking and yesterday I struggled to figure out how to build everything so that I maybe could assist in bug tracking. until now I find it very confusing all the guides follow a general approach where I don't really know what is going on. I managed to build an image (took a few hours) but I have no idea what image and where to find the source code. Maybe it's me lacking experience from other linux projects I don't know but normally I easy can get source install required libraries ./configure and make change
Re: The Lost Openmoko Community
I think the guys from OM are really working hard to get us a great phone. I'm not always sure if they got the same priorities as we have. For me the most important thing right now is a working pone. Until I've seen some reports of more than 1 person that an image has got phoning, smsing and battery under control I'm not going to use mine. I'd like to file in bug reports, but hey.. these are so obvious I don't care about investing more time in the phone. It's collecting dust right now, and I'm using a phone I know I can count on. So instead of bringing us everything, bring us less, but stable. That said, I still have confidence in the team and I'm sure we will see something amazing in the (hopefully) near future. Other community members: * How do you feel about the current situation? How happy are you with the community? * Do you feel well informed? Do you know what's the direction we're heading to? * How would you like to contribute? ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: The Lost Openmoko Community
Hi Risto, BUGS: I think the TRAC is for everybody, not just high-level hackers. I reported totally cosmetic bugs in the tracker, like there is a spelling mistake in Assassin's package desctiption or xterm is missing an icon and they got fixed simply and quickly. Nobody complains. It works really smoothly for simple bugs. DISTROS: My understanding is that Om would like nothing more than community developpers take charge of the applications and distributions, so that they can focus on hardware, kernel and framewiork. But it's an egg and chicken think, it can' happen overnight. NEXT STEP: As a community member, I feel that Om showing us total respect. Developpers, managers, and other all read and write to the lists. Of course it there is room for improvement, I could name few Om staff who I hope are taking intensive evening English classes (but hey, many community members are not writing like Shackspeare either !). On the whole, it's just that they are understaffed and spread very thin: how many people would a company need to totally rock from hardware design to community management, including production, sales, kernel development, middleware development, applications development, interface, packaging and distribution ? As for blog posts: There is Mickey's blog on the Planet, but indeed it would be nice to read from Sean more often. The Weekly Engineering Report should be added to the planet too. I will try to issue a community update this week end. Minh ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: The Lost Openmoko Community
On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 9:42 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: To all, but especially OM. I felt a little cheated when I saw the FR I had bought was not ready to be used as a daily phone. This had in fact been the publicity by OM at the time - GTA01 was for tinkerers, and GTA02 was for the public. Then people said no, it was clear that GTA02 was also for tinkerers only... well, whatever; I decided to ignore that, be positive, and So the fact that you ignored it is OM's fault ? OM (the company) should have only sold the GTA02 when the hardware and kernel and drivers where tested and ready. Why there are plenty of people very happy to have a phone they can ssh into. Or, if that was not possible due to time-to-market constraints, then it should have called for the community's help for doing just that: getting the device to work. Instead, it went ahead telling us the Neo is a blank slate, a canvas to paint on... and the people who have painted, have lost many of their paintings, and even the will to paint. At least, they won't paint with OM brushes. It is too frustrating and time-consuming. If what you paint ends up being useful to the community it'll get kept. Personally, I need a working device. Kernel, drivers, daemons, system scripts, all of this must be in place to allow the device's hardware to be controlled at the flick of a software switch. GPRS+GSM muxing must be included by default. WIFI must work correctly by default. Bluetooth must work as well as in any other distro by default. And for god's sake, AUDIO must work as intended by default (it IS a phone after all). Only after OM guarantees these minimum requirements can it ask the community to go ahead and innovate... Don't waste your time on GUIs or eye-candy apps; give us a device with a rock solid subsystem and a command shell, and we will fill in the blanks and build from there. Wifi is working as well as any basic distro install. You need to edit /etc/network/interfaces and or wpa_supplicant.conf but it is working. Bluetooth also has all of the tools to make it work like dbus and hcitool. Again you need to edit a file here of there and do some reading. Alsa is working a designed as well. You can use alsactl or alsamixer to control every single part of the alsa subsystem. Again a little reading and tinkering will get it to do what you want. It sounds like you don't want to do any tinkering or reading. Why did you get a phone where that is a requirement ? Angus ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: The Lost Openmoko Community
Le samedi 04 octobre 2008 à 13:22 -0600, Angus Ainslie a écrit : Wifi is working as well as any basic distro install. You need to edit /etc/network/interfaces and or wpa_supplicant.conf but it is working. Nope. No amount of scripting and tinkering will change the fact that the kernel driver is broken. It may work in some specific conditions, but it'll fail in others. That said, I admit people buying a Freerunner thinking it would work out of the box got it wrong. It's still a hacker's toy. Xav ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: The Lost Openmoko Community
or what's the general direction the community and/or Openmoko is heading to? Having a better view on the general situation makes one feel much more comfortable and secure: now I feel that I just wait to see what the next release's like not being able to know what to wait for. NEXT STEPS People working at Openmoko and other software developers: * Please check 'Community Management as Open Source's Core Competency' by David Eaves [4] and have a good look at the the Openmoko community. It needs management! * Please write a blog post once a week or so to planet.openmoko.org and the community mailing list telling the community what's going on. Five to ten lines is enough to help the community feel better! * Please respect your community! Other community members: * How do you feel about the current situation? How happy are you with the community? * Do you feel well informed? Do you know what's the direction we're heading to? * How would you like to contribute? Thanks! ps. I posted this also in my blog: http://risto.kurppa.fi/blog/the-lost-openmoko-community/ r [1] http://risto.kurppa.fi/blog/openmoko-20072-distros-and-community/ [2] http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Stable_Hybrid_Release [3] https://docs.openmoko.org/trac [4] http://eaves.ca/2006/12/17/community-management-as-open-sources-core-competency/ [5] http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/FDOM_-_a_Fat_and_Dirty_OM_based_distribution [6] http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Distributions ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: The Lost Openmoko Community
of information about what's happening in the community. I don't know what's the development status of the software or what's the general direction the community and/or Openmoko is heading to? Having a better view on the general situation makes one feel much more comfortable and secure: now I feel that I just wait to see what the next release's like not being able to know what to wait for. NEXT STEPS People working at Openmoko and other software developers: * Please check 'Community Management as Open Source's Core Competency' by David Eaves [4] and have a good look at the the Openmoko community. It needs management! * Please write a blog post once a week or so to planet.openmoko.org and the community mailing list telling the community what's going on. Five to ten lines is enough to help the community feel better! * Please respect your community! Other community members: * How do you feel about the current situation? How happy are you with the community? * Do you feel well informed? Do you know what's the direction we're heading to? * How would you like to contribute? Thanks! ps. I posted this also in my blog: http://risto.kurppa.fi/blog/the-lost-openmoko-community/ r [1] http://risto.kurppa.fi/blog/openmoko-20072-distros-and-community/ [2] http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Stable_Hybrid_Release [3] https://docs.openmoko.org/trac [4] http://eaves.ca/2006/12/17/community-management-as-open-sources-core-competency/ [5] http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/FDOM_-_a_Fat_and_Dirty_OM_based_distribution [6] http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Distributions ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: The Lost Openmoko Community
Hi Risto, I think you depend upon Openmoko Inc. to provide the community. Or perhaps direction for the community. I don't know if that's possible. Community is, by definition, a bunch of different people, with different ideas and different requirements. Sure there may be some consensus, but there will also be plenty of people pulling in different directions, too. Additionally, I think most of us, as Linux geeks, disagree with Openmoko Inc. on what software for our phones should look like. Openmoko want to sell their next generation of phones to little old ladies and teenagers, and are prepared to sacrifice complexity to do that. And they won't be asking the community how we want our phones - they will be following their own vision to achieve this. I won't by any means be relying on official distros to do what I want. But what Openmoko HAS given us is wonderful, wonderful phone hardware which runs fully open-source software. I have realised that any criticism I might make of Openmoko must pale in comparison beside this - they're the ONLY people who have yet done so. (Perhaps we might mention the no-longer available Trolltech Greenphone, but that was only a run of 1000 units or so). I appreciate that if you're not already a Linux / OSS fanboi, then the above statement might not mean much. What good is fully open-source software, if it doesn't work, you say? Well, the benefit is that WE can make it work, and we don't have to reply upon Openmoko to help us. Considering that the Freerunner is only - what? - 3 months old, the community has made leaps bounds already. As others have pointed out, you can make a bug report over a spelling mistake, and I point to David Samblas' distro as an example of what the community has produced already. I think that your problems stem from looking at the Openmoko community from the outside in. Only 3 months ago the first 5,000 or 10,000 units of the Freerunner suddenly hit the market - of course the direction of development is going to be a mess. It's going to be impossible to look at just a wiki or two and try and get a handle of everything that's going on. And one shouldn't expect the impossible from Openmoko - to expect a unified direction of development you are asking someone to herd cats. Personally I don't want a single true distro, because we might end up with Gnome for phones. I prefer KDE and others here prefer Ice or whatever. Rereading some of your questions, I did feel the same way myself a couple of months ago. why don't the developers feel ok to contribute directly to 2007.x and 2008.x but 'fork' their own distros? I have to say that I asked this myself, and I came to realise that that wouldn't suit the Openmoko vision for their own software. Just as you can't submit patches to Gnome to add right-click options if it doesn't meet with their usability specification or ask KDE to remove options because they confuse my grandmother, some aspects of the Openmoko vision are indeed closed. But this free software lark gives us the CHOICE! I feel that software images from Raster David Samblas, the work being undertaken on SHR and the recent Qtopia release are all testaments to the community surrounding Openmoko's device(s), and if you appreciated how rapidly the situation with the software distos has improved in only a few weeks, you would realise that there are great things ahead for this platform. Yes, presently it may be frustrating for you, but even the person who makes a blog post about configuring their wifi under disto X, or changing the theme so that Navit displays better... those people are making a difference and improving the Freerunner environment for everyone. Stroller. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
