User:Stskeeps/Harmattan collaboration proposal

(work in progress, a proposal/idea and not complete at all)

Now: Mer-as-distro and Mer-as-upstream
We operate with the terms 'Mer-as-distro' and 'Mer-as-upstream' in the Mer project.

This refers to two views on Mer. Mer-as-distro is the distribution / the mix of packages + the hardware support packages which represents the open and portable OS developed by the maemo.org community.

Mer-as-upstream represents the target-agnostic set of software. It's the current set of Maemo Fremantle packages, modified to build on top of modern distributions and not rely on being compiled in Scratchbox, or installed on a Nokia Internet Tablet.

Future: Maemo Platform
Maemo Platform is defined as a set of software implementing the Maemo platform that is target-agnostic. This would be APIs, UI, reference themes, sounds, daemons, applications and data making together the basic Maemo platform that developers target.

Software in Maemo platform would be developed in the public. There would be a shared collaboration space (Gitorious, for instance) hosting the software, with clear directions in maemo.org web on where to find the DVCS repositories. The Maemo platform would have public roadmaps for development.

Each piece of software would have one or more maemo.org members (Maemo Devices developers are included in this set) as gatekeepers for what contributed patches gets merged in to the software.

Each piece of software would be considered seperately released and not focused onto specific releases of neither Mer or Maemo - when you have a fix and you consider the current state release-worthy, a release is tagged.

Each piece of software would have a roadmap determined by the gatekeepers based on the public roadmap. Gatekeepers would generate tasks based on this roadmap which contributors can choose to take upon him/herself to do (see maemo.org sprint process, Mer sprintweb) in cooperation with gatekeepers & mentors.

Each piece of software would have reference packaging (seperated in branches) to base distro-specific packaging on.

All bugs related to Maemo Platform would be maintained in bugs.maemo.org.

Future: Mer
The future Mer distribution (previously Mer-as-distro) would be based on Maemo Platform and be considered a mix of software with community-specific patches. It would be fully open source, usable and adaptable by any user or vendor.

Future: Maemo Harmattan
The future Maemo Harmattan would be based on Maemo Platform. Vendor differentiation for certain devices would then be applied on top of Maemo platform and distribution of choice (Themes, applications, services, added value software, icons, firmware, device-specific APIs, etc.)