Community Council/Council election May 2012/Candidate declarations

1 Candidates for May 2012 Maemo Community Council elections
2 Candidate declarations
3 Questions candidates might like to answer

Candidates for May 2012 Maemo Community Council elections

The following candidates intend to stand for election to the Maemo Community Council.

Candidate declarations

Iván Gálvez Junquera

Nomination made on the maemo-community mailing list at http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/maemo-community/2012-April/005043.html

We have seen hard times recently with Nokia change of strategy, aging Maemo platform and devices and lack of maintenance of Maemo.org infrastructure.

To deal with all these problems I think it's mandatory to have a Council with enough members to attend the community problems, developers needs and communication with all parts involved.

So, this is the primary reason I'm running for Council. We cannot afford to have again a one man Council, more people has to be involved.

My spare time is limited, but I'll try to help as much as possible even if not elected.

Regarding some questions raised in in the mailing list and listed below in the Wiki:

1. What are your thoughts on integrating Harmattan and potentially even Meltemi/other-open-Qt+Linux Nokia/other manufacturer devices into the Maemo community and maemo.org?

Indeed I'd wish to see more cooperation between different projects, specially Harmattan and Mer/Nemo or Mer/Plasma Active. For sure that sharing infrastructure (such as Community OBS and forums) would be a win for all the projects involved, moreover considering that none of them are really widespread.

It is unfortunate that Harmattan community is split between different places and is not using the same infrastructure than Maemo. This is in my opinion the root cause of a lot of the problems we are facing right now, such us lack of maintenance, fear for future support from Nokia, etc.

I would like to push for embracing Harmattan in this community. A shared repository infrastructure could be a second step to Community OBS.

I don't care about vapourware (Meltemi, Tizen) driven by private companies and prefer to align with real community projects such as Mer/Nemo and Mer/Plasma Active.

I have myself seen the lack of response from Nemein regarding questions about the QA process. However, it seems that communication has been re-established now and some of the problems are being solved, so I prefer to focus now on how to continue in that way.

3. Do You agree, that lack of devices (hardware) is one of major roadblocks for Open mobility we would like to have? If yes, which way should Council focus on supporting: a) Cooperation with big companies (Nokia?), hoping that they'll finally release "device of our dreams" (or thing close to)? I don't care/don't expect anything like that.

b) Starting hard, demanding and somewhat costly (without guarantee of success) path of creating own device via donations, which - if succeed - may result in totally, or almost totally open device (way of Open Pandora, Raspberry Pi, etc)?

I will support Mer/Nemo and Mer/Plasma Active projects and devices such as the Vivaldi or other 'real' community/open source projects.

Piotr Jawidzyk

Nomination made on the maemo-community mailing list at http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/maemo-community/2012-April/005019.html

"As for myself, I would like to try my best @ helping to organize infrastructure governed by community, without Nokia's roadblocks. Don't get me wrong - despite my personal opinion about our "Nokia friends", I don't plan to go into "war" with them. I realize, that "friendly divorce" is much better for both parties, and would like to negotiate best terms of it.

Here we come to another thing - despite common opinions, Council doesn't have any "special tools". Really. The only difference from regular users that we have, is community mandate to talk with Nokia at Community behalf, and respect'n'trust - or lack of - from Community, that helps (or not, in second case) to coordinate projects, find solutions, settle small argues etc."

Roadmap I would like Community to take:

1st priority Fix issues with infrastructure maintainership. I would like to hear Nokia position here - if cooperation between people maintaining infrastructure and Council is going to be so unsatisfying, is Nokia going to accept community will of changing infrastructure tech staff? IMO, problem of "hands tied" (Nokia paying bills, yet not demanding real work in return, Council not paying bills, so tech staff having Council in... *deep* respect, as history shows) is first hot potato to take care of.

2nd priority Determining, if cooperation with Nokia (overall, including tech staff payed by Nokia) is to Community benefit or not, in long term. This is going to be open question, answered again and again, as time passes and situation change.

Variant a - positive effects of cooperation with Nokia

3.a Keeping to make infrastructure better and better for developers, overcoming existing problems with infrastructure maintainer's help.

4.a (same for both both Nokia-cooperation scenarios) Clarification of confusing statement from Nokia about community governance. SD69 was asking this via e-letters, quoting previous statements, and statements made my marias (Nokia representative) during last meeting with Council - results were totally opposite. He haven't got any answer from Nokia up to date.

Overall, I think that passing maintainership to Community - like it happened with QT - is most profitable scenario to both parties. Would like to negotiate that with Nokia.

5.a (same for both Nokia-cooperation scenarios) Working with other platform's teams - both hardware'ish and software'ish (Mer, Vivaldi, Spark, Raspberry Pi, to name a few) - to share their experiences and knowledge. Preparing plans for fund-raising and developing own, independent device (hardware), powered by OS of our choice. If desirable by Community, transforming Maemo Community to self-governed, independent entity (foundation). Last one would require a referendum, obviously.

Variant b - non-satisfying results of cooperation with Nokia

3.b Getting info about current resources used by Maemo infrastructure. Sounds trivial, yet, when SD69 asked it, Nokia's representative wasn't able to give more precise answers than "I have no idea".

4.b (same for both both Nokia-cooperation scenarios) Clarification of confusing statement from Nokia about community governance. SD69 was asking this via e-letters, quoting previous statements, and statements made my marias (Nokia representative) during last meeting with Council - results were totally opposite. He haven't got any answer from Nokia up to date.

Overall, I think that passing maintainership to Community - like it happened with QT - is most profitable scenario to both parties. Would like to negotiate that with Nokia.

5.b Steady preparing infrastructure migration, solving issues of creating legal entity (foundation), dropping trademarks, etc. At the same time, negotiating with Nokia about lifetime of closed source binary repositories (PR's, and so goes on), and possibility to allow us redistributing it (still in closed way), when Nokia decide to shut down Fremantle repos.

6.b (same for both Nokia-cooperation scenarios) Working with other platform's teams - both hardware'ish and software'ish (Mer, Vivaldi, Spark, Raspberry Pi, to name a few) - to share their experiences and knowledge. Preparing plans for fund-raising and developing own, independent device (hardware), powered by OS of our choice. If desirable by Community, transforming Maemo Community to self-governed, independent entity (foundation). Last one would require a referendum, obviously.

I think I doesn't need to add, that variant "a" fit's my liking much more, but in my opinion, it's council responsibility to be prepared for both scenarios.

Joseph Charpak

Nomination made on the maemo-community mailing list at http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/maemo-community/2012-April/005051.html

"I've been a maemo user from the N800 days, although I actually started with the 770 when it dropped in price due to the release of the N800.. I've been an avid follower of TMO since its ITT days. As a council member I would strive for more transparency in council actions. As a starting point I would ensure that announcements would be made weekly through the council blog, with a new post to the ask a council thread on TMO as well."

Craig Woodward

Nomination made on the maemo-community mailing list at http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/maemo-community/2012-April/005063.html

Statement on my priorities as a Council member

As an active Council member, my primary focus would be on communications and clarity, both in documenting/echoing what the community desires are to be sure we as Council understand issues in the community, and with infrastructure support (Nokia/Nemein). My primary concern would be to see that Maemo.com continues and that the infrastructure we enjoy is both preserved and maintained in a way that promotes continued development and growth in all project spaces.

Replies to questions posed

Thoughts on integrating Harmattan / Meltemi

Personally, I feel Harmattan users should be welcomed in the Maemo community, since in large part they can and often do identify as being part of the Maemo family. The N9/N950 discussion areas show a good deal of activity, and for the most part many are already well integrated. I would work toward finding a way to integrate the Harmattan community, and creating a stable home for that group here at Maemo.com.

As for other projects (Meltemi and more), I would say that has to depend on the group and how they are perceived, both by the community here and within their own community (if any). Without knowing the structure and makeup of both core elements of the platform and/or it's target community, that question is impossible to answer.

In short, I do foresee the possibility of other groups merging into the Maemo family over time, even those that may not have had a direct relational tie to Maemo. (OpenMoko for example, would be a reasonable fit.) But both communities would have to have a desire to be together in order for it to work, and subsequently to see support on my part for a merging.

Fixing communication between the community, Council, Nokia, and Nemein

While I do feel there's been a breakdown of communication over the past term or two, I'm not sure it's clear that any one party in particular was to blame. The view I've had leads me to believe that there were several factors in the breakdown, which are reasonably fixed with the following steps (now that there seems to be a rather clear focus from all parties because of elections):

First, we need to verify and record the proper channel used to communicate between parties, ad preferably at least 2 back-up channels per contact. Be that e-mail, IRC, a bug-tack system, pager number, etc. Those should be documented somewhere accessible to all Council members and contact points at Nokia and Nemein.

Second, we need to have in place a standard location where Council will post all communications (or attempts at communicating) at least in summary. This should include not just meeting minutes but external communications as well, including summaries of issues raised by the community, and summaries of any communications or issues raised with or from Nokia/Nemein. This will facilitate transparency for all groups involved, and allow for a single place where all parties can verify they're on the same page.

Third, we need to re-establish some form of regularity to the communications between the groups. Be that a quick 10 minute meeting once a month, or a semi-weekly e-mail ping just to make sure everyone is still in the loop. On-demand contact is great, but I feel that having a formal schedule, even if only a few times a term, will help prevent a total dropping of the ball by any group involved. I'd rather have an issue sit in a bin for a week before someone sees it and picks it up than to see one request get answered in a day and a follow-up sit for 3 months for lack of a regular check-in.

Finally, we need to get a solid commitment on level of effort from each group involved. We need to revisit that regularly, get feedback on effort required for each item in the work queue for each group, and establish priorities on those items. I don't think this needs to be a huge undertaking, but currently there's nothing in place to indicate what items are priority, and how much work is involved for any specific item to bring it to fruition. I feel that working out those two key bits of information may save lots of effort and frustration on all sides over the next several cycles.

On lack of future hardware and Open mobility

While I like the question as posed, I'm not clear that Council has the position or right to determine any of these paths for the community. The community at large should be responsible for choosing this direction. In some regards I see the answer to question one being reflective of this, since without new projects joining our family, there will be a fall-off over time. While I'm excited that some other communities I follow (like OpenMoko) have taken steps to renew their momentum with community hardware projects, I'm not sure it's as feasible for the Council to chose of invoke that here without direct prompting by the community. That said, I would be quite happy to see such efforts, and would be happy to facilitate both support and integration into the community at a social and technological level where feasible.

Arie Mark

Nomination made on the maemo-community mailing list at http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/maemo-community/2012-April/005175.html

Regarding questions raised in this forum:

1. What are your thoughts on integrating Harmattan and potentially even Meltemi/other-open-Qt+Linux Nokia/other manufacturer devices into the Maemo community and maemo.org? Regarding Harmattan, it is maemo and maemo.org needs to be treated for what it is - a hub for all maemo devices including Harmattan. It [maemo.org] wasn't supposed to end up the way it is today, but a lot of things have happened in the past year that weren’t supposed to. Maemo.org needs to adapt to the users, this means anyone that shows up, we need to be welcoming and accepting of everyone, from Mer/Nemo project users to even Iphone users. Another problem is we need to get all of the Harmattan users in one place as it is clear that forum.meego.com is slowly becoming a ghost town. We should help the migration from fmc to tmo be a user friendly and welcoming one. One major aspect of the Harmattan side that I’d like to change is how the Harmattan apps and forums are dealt with and used. Harmattan needs a separate forum for apps so it doesn’t get mixed in with other threads that have nothing to do with applications for Harmattan. In regards to other projects, I am all for having projects such as Mer/Nemo and Mer/Plasma Active being involved with each other. The amount of progress that these projects could have together vs. separately will make a major difference in their success. In regards to projects that I haven't mentioned so far, I am fully supportive of them (the groups and persons involved in the projects) coming to tmo, but before we do that we must be a welcoming community. TMO treats its own brother Harmattan like a child it didn't want. If this is the case with siblings, how will we treat people that aren't even related to us? This is the biggest change that needs to happen in maemo.org at the moment. I am sure with a little bit of time and effort we at tmo can be the welcoming community we were back in 2009.

I have seen a breakdown in communication with Nemein and Nokia in regards to different things. From what I understand channels have been opened and efforts are being made to rectify the situation. I understand that it was a turbulent time for Nokia, Nemein, and the maemo community for the past year. Now that communications have restarted again I want to leave the past as the past and move forward to do our best to make a difference by keeping these communications ongoing and helping all parties involved reach agreeable outcomes on all fronts.

3. Do You agree, that lack of devices (hardware) is one of major roadblocks for Open mobility we would like to have? If yes, which way should Council focus on supporting a) Cooperation with big companies (Nokia?), hoping that they'll finally release "device of our dreams" (or thing close to)?

This is not our responsibility, this is beyond our reach as a community and we should focus on what we do have vs. what we don't.

I am fully supportive of all open source projects. That aside, once again, it is not our responsibility to create our own devices.

My biggest goal for the council is transparency with end users of tmo (to the extent that we can give). We need tmo users to know what is going on so that they can voice their opinions and be involved with the council to help make tmo a more user friendly place.

Niel Nielsen

http://maemo.org/profile/view/nieldk/

Nomination made on the maemo-community mailing list at http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/maemo-community/2012-April/005178.html

My thoughts on "Questions a candidate might want to answer"

1. What are your thoughts on integrating Harmattan and potentially even Meltemi/other-open-Qt+Linux Nokia/other manufacturer devices into the Maemo community and maemo.org?

This community should be open to all Nokia platforms, and should work on creating better relations with Nokia on all of the platforms, I believe there is room for all.

2. There is a thread on TMO highlighting some of the problems the current council has had. Do you agree with the assertions in that thread that there's been a breakdown in communication between Nokia, Nemein and the council; and the council and the community? If so, how do we fix it? Actually I feel the community and council are quite open and accepting, but surely there is room to improve. Council needs to open ears, and listen to the community input for improvements or changes.

3. Do You agree, that lack of devices (hardware) is one of major roadblocks for Open mobility we would like to have? If yes, which way should Council focus on supporting:

Creating better connections with Nokia hopefully can make this better.

a) Cooperation with big companies (Nokia?), hoping that they'll finally release "device of our dreams" (or thing close to)?

This is needed, and what I will try to accomplish

I think this road is doomed for failure, better connections with Nokia, is the way to help.

Sponsoring is the only feasible way forward, either by Nokia supporting us, letting the community in the development process (design ideas, platform, HW etc), or by obtaining sponsorships by funding. Now second one may be harder, we need to think quite deep on where it is feasible and likely to get sponsored, there are many options. The most likely in my point of view, is sponsoring by Nokia. (please do start commenting LOL) as hard as this may seem, I do not think it is unobtainable. But we need to think out a win-win situation. I believe Nokia would likely be open to design ideas, and also input for a platform that would attract not only the devs of the community, but also, through unique UI ideas, the general user. now, in order to develop a new device. this is practically possible, without zillions of $$. Prototyping boards with all the necessary HW is available. Now, when it comes to finish the product (design, custom mainboard, chips, screen etc) to a smaller, usable device, this is where it will start costing, probably hunfreds of thousands $. THAT is where we need to look for sponsoring. Chip manufacturers, cell phone manufacturers or whoever would be interrested in sponsoring.

If you believe I am 'only talking' I don't really blame you. Those who might have seen me on other forums for other platforms will know this is not the case. As for Nokia as a registered charity company, no they are not, but they are one of two who are (somwewhat) open for input. In other platforms community have a great cooperation with the phone manufacturers. Allowing some openness, but surely not complete (other companies play the hinder here - Nokia can not release sources for eg wireless network cards). This does NOT stand in the way for a more open platform, but we need Nokia to be up to speed (Sony is a pretty good example here) and actively help us developing binary blobs for where it is needed. So yes, I still say it is possible. And I will do my best to take part of the discussions with Nokia (also my employment situation makes this the more likely place for me to participate) I will try this no matter the election fall-out. But surely to speak on the behalf of the community, this election is the proper way to go. Otherwise it would only be 'me' single person speaking, making it much harder (still, not impossible)

Rob Bauer

When I first ran for Community Council one year ago, I did so because of the challenges I saw posed by Nokia's embrace of WP7. While others declared this community dead and encouraged people to migrate to MeeGo, I was one of the loudest voices asking people to stay the course with maemo. I am proud of what the community has accomplished since last summer, and of the many people who have helped to build the momentum of today despite the people who have left. The number of "doers" may be drastically less than years ago, but I believe that most of the people who are still here are dedicated to having maemo-related OSS available in the future for mobile devices. The last council period was time intensive for me, but I decided to run again because the turnaround is unfinished and several of the other candidates have asked me to continue to work with them.

In my opinion, the most important thing for the community to do is to decide and clearly state what it wants to do - a mission statement - I suggest "to promote and progress the future availability of maemo-related OSS for pocketable devices"; and then plan to accomplish that mission. There are many hurdles to this and I realize that some may believe that it cannot be accomplished, but the things worth doing are rarely easy to do.

I believe that the maemo community can and should organize itself better in order to achieve its goals. The organizational structure that the community had five years ago when Nokia was pushing out a series of maemo devices is not the optimal structure for today. Maemo is in survival mode and the idea that the community should just sit back and let happen what will happen is dangerous. This is not to say that every maemo project should not be supported, but that there should be some management - nothing overwhelming but perhaps something like what is seen in other OSS projects. And everytime something is proposed, we ask ourselves - "how does the proposal further the mission statement?"

I realize that there are those who are nostalgic for the old days and want the Council to have a limited role of interfacing with Nokia. But that won't work, at least not to accomplish the mission that I propose, not when Nokia has made no indication that they will be providing any more devices for maemo-related software. The various comments about communication are a distraction from the real significant challenges, such as how to deal with Nokia and its surrogates whose goals are laudable and overlapping, but slightly different the mission statement I have proposed. When there was silence or non-cooperation, that was not for lack of communication skills, but because of underlying, background concerns. The important thing is that the challenges have been beat back over the last six months, maemo did not die after all and can move forward again.

As to other related projects and parties, I think they should be viewed in light of whether they further the mission statement. Obviously, projects like Mer/Nemo and Qt are complementary. There is the problem that maemo is partially closed, and the next software step is not maemo in a pure sense but some mashup of maemo with Mer or other projects. Other projects and parties, such as Nokia, are not quite so clearly complementary. If there is a new Nokia "meltemi" or other device that fits well with the community goals, then that will be something we work together to promote. I do believe that the lack of maemo-suitable hardware is a big hurdle for the community. Council should address this challenge proactively wherever the solutions may lie, and not have a laissez-faire approach.

Questions candidates might like to answer

The following questions have been asked of candidates, feel free to add to them.

1. What are your thoughts on integrating Harmattan and potentially even Meltemi/other-open-Qt+Linux Nokia/other manufacturer devices into the Maemo community and maemo.org? [1]

3. Do You agree, that lack of devices (hardware) is one of major roadblocks for Open mobility we would like to have? If yes, which way should Council focus on supporting:

a) Cooperation with big companies (Nokia?), hoping that they'll finally release "device of our dreams" (or thing close to)?

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