Task:Motivating people

Recently there has been some discussion about what motivates people, how more people can get involved and how to encourage people to get involved.

While the discussion is certainly very lively, and people certainly have come up with a lot of ideas, the forum may not be the best way to organize potential solutions. For that reason, this wiki page may be used to brainstorm some ideas about what could motivate people (could be you, could be other people) to get more involved in Maemo-related (not necessarily Nokia!) projects. There is one twist about contributing to this wiki: Anyone who contributes a problem or something that keeps them from getting involved, must also try to offer a solution. It's ok to be optimistic, but also try to be realistic. Also, there are sometimes more than one solution to the same problem. Don't stop brainstorming about ways to fix problems just because someone else has brought up a solution!

  • Problem: Some people are worried about sudden API breaks in the future forcing them to rewrite their code.
  • Possible Solution: Nokia could commit to giving a certain amount of warning before breaking public APIs.


  • Problem: Some people aren't motivated to code for Maemo because they're not making money off of it.
  • Possible Solution 1: Would it be possible for Nokia to put up some bounties for projects that they feel are suited to the community and that they aren't working on internally?
  • Possible Solution 2: Nokia (or maemo.org?) could setup a centralized bounty system so that users could post bounties for certain projects.