Thread: A modest proposal for a direction for maemo.org activities
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misterc is offline misterc
2011-08-12 , 09:32
Posts: 1,625 | Thanked: 998 times | Joined on Aug 2010
#10
Originally Posted by tekki View Post
I have seen quite a lot of discussion about direction of maemo.org and I thought I would pitch in.[...]
tekki,

i'm afraid your proposal lacks one fundamental prerequisite...
a governing body.
you can see it for yourself with this thread you started with a clear proposal directed towards action (task forces...).
the outcome is some chipping on technical details, which may be interesting in themselves but are not addressing the issue at hand, the lack of direction, perspective, vision, call it whatever you want for maemo.org.

it has been repeated ad nauseam that the council is not a governing body.
before you can hope to get anywhere, you need to get a consensus as to where the community has to go.

i think NOKIA, the former governing body of sort for maemo has made a choice (moving on even though that doesn't mean they will not continue to support maemo.org for the sake of supporting customers who bought MIDs and are still using them). (having users begging for help with some trivial dpkg issues is not sending the right message here, btw...)

one option is to follow NOKIA and move on to the next thing which is probably going to accelerate maemo.org's demise.

another option would be look around.
debian...
found a paper that discusses debian's governance and its evolution over time...
Originally Posted by Scientific study about Debian Project governance and social organization
[...]
even in a community of open source programmers that espouses the value of technical contributions above all else, members’ conceptions of leadership change over time to increasingly value organization building contributions.

Democratic mechanisms enable the community’s governance system to adapt as members learn how to interpret leadership and authority in a community context. This suggests an evolving and context-dependent notion of meritocracy and that democratic mechanisms serve an important adaptive function. [...]

Phase II: Designing Governance (1997 – 1999).

The community drafted a Constitution to formalize leadership roles, rights and responsibilities. It was ratified using itself, as a test case.
[...]
good luck!