Jeff Rush wrote:
Mathew Davis wrote:
And I don't understand why we can't have both. I really don't see the
problem so if someone could explain why not having a forum would be
advantageous and not just personal preferance I am all ears, because I
could list a lot of reasons why forums could be advantageous.
I appreciate your viewpoint but here are a few reasons:
1. Our community is small -- spreading the discussions thinly before we have
reached critical mass will dilute the synergy. We are just now starting to
come together as a community, and I think we even have too many mailing lists
as it is (not always clear on which one to discuss X).
I completely agree. A forum at this point is overkill but necessity
should become apparent as more devices are sold.
2. The OpenMoko team at FIC are spread _very_ thin and lack the time/resources
to research and establish a forum themselves. They were overloaded just
getting a basic storefront up. I don't understand why a company the size of
FIC isn't providing more logistics support to them, so they can focus on the
hardware/software but that's the way it is today.
With the rampant ADHD of users here, how much of that energy has gone
into answering the same emails over and over. I'm sure they are
personally reading and responding to all emails themselves and that was
only with ~1-2k orders. I can only imagine the clusterfuck that would
result if the current structure and implementation remained as orders
ramp up to 10-20k for a mass release. I also question FIC's
organizational structure but for an open source project they have still
exceeded my expectations.
3. Because of #2 and the fact this is the world of free/open, groups are
welcome to establish a forum someplace and announce it here. In fact no one
can stop it. Then instead of debating it you apply the governance principle
of open source, in that if you build it will they come. If so, you were
right. If not, you were wrong. A very objective approach.
While I expect the openmoko project to fork as people seem to inherently
love to bicker over what is included, free vs restricted, and default
options, I didn't expect someone to suggest it so soon. Consumers
should be able to go to the openmoko site and get all the documentation,
source, products, and support from an official site.
I feel that most people here only look at the problems and solutions
from a developer's perspective. Sean has stated that there will be
other neo's and maybe even carrier sales/support. These devices are
aimed at the mass market and a coherent support network covering all
bases should be available. You are asking people to switch from their
comfort zone to a completely foreign manufacturer with an unknown mobile
OS. There is no real way for people to demo a neo in person unlike a
linux livecd for the desktop so this process will be riddled with
apprehension and problems guaranteed. Instead of hand-holding new
consumers, people are suggesting that the public can just deal with what
is available. I believe that thinking is a disservice to the adoption
of openmoko and embedded linux. Most of the new (windows)users will
have to go through trial and error to get things to work for them.
Having that new user explain to other incoming users how to replicate
their experience is better than any written documentation with that
process best shown in a recognizable forum format. I am realistic of
what support is actually attainable but developers and openmoko
employees don't need to be omnipresent.
And for those (another thread) who are looking for someone official to tell
them how this or that is going to be done on the device, I think we as a
community will be applying #3 above - teams will form and follow their (quite
likely divergent) visions. Those who (1) produce results that (2) some
significant portion of the community approve of will have their work
integrated into the core as required/optional packages. And some fraction of
those will be cherry-picked by FIC for delivery in the consumer distribution.
And perhaps other flash images will arise targeted at "the power user" and
"the gaming user" and "the multimedia user".
Being open source folks and time-constrained themselves, I rather think that
the OpenMoko team will be blessing running code and not managing the various
teams that form. And that is good, because they cannot see the future uses of
this device any better than we at this point. Not a planned economy but a
chaotic marketplace of competing ideas, where decisions are made in the
free/opensource tradition of "running code" and "rough concensus". Scary
sure, but also refreshing and very exciting.
-Jeff
_______________________________________________
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
