Re: Council election
 

Didn't consider you worst, or best, just worried this is going to turn into beauty contest with personal frustrations being vented. Doesn't help anyone really. Just wanted to +1 Sourav.doubey's call for calm (maybe this community needs 'calmers'? People who voluntarily jump into over-heated debates to bring peace and cold-headedness(is that even a word?), multitude of WinPhone failing threads would suggest such role could be useful, candidates: any view on that? <- there, back on topic :P)

Re: Council election
 

Working on it now.

Re: Council election
 

moderation of TMO is out of Council's responsibility, as was discussed a few months ago on Ask the Council thread.
bottom line was that Reggie is administering the site with financial help from NOKIA (so far paid until end of the year) and the help of a few more people.
furthermore there are a few "super poster" (TexRat is one) who can delete posts.

guess those pretty much are the police and much like the real thing... where is a policeman when you need one, right? :D

thus, definitely off-topic as far as Council is concerned... :o
:rolleyes:

Re: Council election
 

we have now six candidates

• Iván Gálvez Junquera / ivgalvez
• Piotr Jawidzyk / Estel
• Joseph Charpak / jcharpak
• Craig Woodward / woody14619
• Arie Mark / Arie
• Nieldk (from candidate for council election)

thus more candidates then there are seats.

Re: Council election
 

Ah crap! I'm toast! :D

Anyway... Glad to see we have lots of options in the list now, though I can't help but notice there's still one missing. And there's only a few days left to make/accept nominations... <*cough*><*cough*>

Re: Council election
 

Removing personal exp/off-topic crap... seriously woody, nothing personal and none was taken, I am more than happy you are enthusiastic about CSSU development.

To get back on topic: Is council the best part to... how to say it, assuming lumiaman's predictions are lunatic and Nokia does end up bankrupt, ideas of maemo revival go into drain, would council be the ones responsible for... idk, starting kickstarter campaigns to get 100k$-1m$ to buy maemo components in order to opensource them? Would council as maemo-community-reps have a better negotiation-ground for such action?

Re: Council election
 

It seems that we may have "license" to redistribute parts needed in build process via community OBS. There is already brainstorm about that going in mailing list (with some experienced people donated their time to maintain OBS), and such people + SD69 (I wanted to say Council, but he is alone...) + qgil are working on it.

/Estel

Re: Council election
 

There's already been some actions around trying to make sure the ducks are all in a row, just in case. It's been a slow going thing, which I personally have not been involved in at any capacity beyond spectator (and that was just recently).

Frankly, I'm in the camp that strongly believes that we'll have a good amount of warning before the ship starts to sink. But I also believe that it will be harder to do things on a sinking ship than to do precautionary work as we sail into the Atlantic.

Really, what's the worst case? We line up things and then Nokia rebounds and everything is funded until free warp-power takes over and we can store/run a personal archive of all of this in a live mirroring VM that runs on a chip the size of a grain of rice? What's lost in that, minus some time and effort for those that want to put such things into this community? Now what's the other worst case? What you spelled out... Sounds like Pascal's wager to me. ;)

Re: Council election
 

It kind of is. Not that WP would be hell for me (I do believe more competition than 2 dominating brands would be healthy), but in best case scenario Nokia rebounds and once healthy continues work/investment in maemo/meego/harmattan (not exactly heaven too, but would be happy with such development), worst: gets to bankrupt and puts all maemo-related IP on sale and the price is right for community purchase (ok, worst scenario is Google buying it all out to keep its 'open' OS dominant, they don't need competition and the 'do no evil' line is long gone if someone hadn't noticed)

EDIT: actually, second scenario could lead to FREEmantle and constant updates (kernel 3.x, glibc, libglib all in newest versions, you name it), so it seems worst scenario might actually be best scenario. :/

Re: Council election
 

Woody,

your link doesn't work for me, so just in case, i assume this is what you meant...
Pascal's Wager
kind'a like the idea of having faith in NOKIA (NOKIA's future?) and think it pretty much corresponds to szopin's best case scenario.

my thoughts on that:

• NOKIA has spent darn too much on Maemo to let it go & it never seemed to be for the money
  (maybe something the community here should take to heart?)
• it is still the ONLY R&D platform NOKIA has
  • (not an expert on Internet Tablets, but i think) 770, N8x0s & N900 were each in their way the bleeding edge of what could be done, at least as a "package" even though maybe not at the individual component level
  • NFC, Swype, no button... all things practically not thought of before the N9
  • wp simply isn't a good platform (for NOKIA) to explore ground breaking technologies; the NOKIA drive was hacked to run on an (any?) other wp device less then a week after the L800 was out...
  • Donna, Symbian^3's fifth iteration will support dual-core; what better way to explore this (& fine tune energy & thermal constraints) then a N10 or N960 or whatever running OS2013?
• considering PR1.2 & announced PR1.3, it seems obvious Flop has no way to stop the "R&D effort"; so far, Lumias only get crumbles of what N9 has introduced and RureView technology was introduced on a Symbian device :D :cool:

don't agree with szopin's worst case scenario; not that i don't believe it can happen but my understanding was that Flop already handed NOKIA's IP over to a IP Troll company which is, in essence, a m$ marionette... there is nothing left for Google (or any other company) to get, or is Maemo out of Flop's reach for this as well?
even then, would Maemo be a juice enough target justifying acquiring the rest of the wreck, just to get it?

i'm not a candidate, thus take this as a "metaphysical foray"...

Re: Council election
 

Not all Nokia IP has been handed over. For a test someone might upload Maemo image for flashing on android device and we will see who will send a cease and desist letter, Nokia or the troll (or MS???). For Google there is a lot to get. Quadcores burn a lot of energy, so if that is needed for smooth working of their system they have a battery-tech block (or 6h uptime devices, try to market those), so either reinvent Android (maemo IP would come very handy here) or go Apple way: we can run one app smooth at a time - multitasking is for geeks.
Would council be able to get into an agreement with Nokia that the community has preference (even over price as the opensource idea is worth more than money, of course to some limits) when it gets to selling maemo parts? Can we get the first offer, before big corpos that will buy it to kill it? I'd vote for someone interested in that direction of community-Nokia talks

Re: Council election
 

Google bought Motorola mobile.
they have money to burn, but... that much money?
who else cares about open source?
who?
Novell?
Red Hat?
the buntu crap company?
BIG (i mean, BIG) techno companies like IBM or Oracle invest in open source, but even then, it is only to better sell their actual products, not for the sake of FOSS...
same thing for Maemo, isn't it?

EDIT: my take on this is that some Chinese company would buy the brand, the factories & whatever IP is left and... bye bye Maemo :(
pretty much what happend with Rover (the car company; & it wasn't for the lack of big (car) companies (Honda, BMW) trying to save it; consumers simply had lost their faith in the brand even though Rover was once a leading edge company (Land / Range Rover))
i doubt however that Maemo is enough of a commercial success to hope for that...

Re: Council election
 

I thought this was a thread about "council election" but evidently it's another issue of "doomsday is upon us". please read the logs from the last council meeting (I posted a link to them in the ask the council thread) for the current response to the "hand the IP over" demand. Summary: not all IP in the FW images are Nokia's (read that as 'not going to happen') and what is isn't that likely to be handed over especially using vague requests.

Re: Council election
 

Council election is going to rely on candidate's pov on IP debate (sure, scare-tactics, but it seems like the last council that will have a chance to change something, add to that 'in-transition' point in Nokia evolution, best point to demand/make changes), views on Kickstarter campaigns or such (skipping the white-knight "FOSS will make you end up in heaven" argument and down to business negotiations instead) by the council actually do mean something for me in the upcoming election. If this is off-topic pls delete my posts from this thread. I would love to hear what candidates plan, or just want the title to their scout-medals collection (beauty contest trophees whatever)

Re: Council election
 

does the Council operate in a vacuum?
what are candidates ideas about this?
or is this "too fare away" to be worthy the Council's (candidates) attention?

afraid of answers?
so far, the only one who stepped on the floor is Woody; again, he gets my vote :cool:

Re: Council election
 

Not for all it isn't. Personally I don't care about that side of the story that much. Actually I will most likely not vote for a candidate that seems to be running for the council just to be able to shout to Nokia to hand over it's IP and painting doomsday scenarios. I'd like to see constructive doers that do not get their head stuck on these doomsday scenarios.

btw, why are candidates' views on kickstarter programs, etc. important? I don't see how that has any effect on the council's work. Also did you read the logs (they are quite long but worth the read)

edit: @misterc I didn't get what you are saying so don't know what to answer you

Re: Council election
 

Not yet.

From my perspective (before reading the logs, will stuff those words in my mouth if something gamechanging is included there, sorry in advance) all maemo community did was asking/hoping/begging a company, corporate entity that is not interested in moral ideas of freedom/opensource. What we lacked was monetary argument (any corpo argument really). Negotiations with Nokia if we proposed to them: instead of killing maemo/harmattan offer a price for that team, work, code, we will raise funds; instead of: pls Nokia you said you love FOSS, why you not releasing??? (insert angry rant when no reply is given) - would be much more frutiful (hopefully of course). We need negotiators as speakers for the community, not people endorsing this or other community project. This community deserves better future. And understanding what is needed to achieve the goal (open source Fremantle/Harmattan in my opinion is THE goal), not sending email reminders/followups to people who ignore you every two weeks to put an X on todo list next to 'Try to open source maemo'

EDIT: reading through the logs, just a disclaimer: SD69 I have nothing against you (especially seeing you alone as the council, kudos), my rambling is about community-mentality not finding same language with corporation in general. We need people with marketing/PR experience (maybe even sales, we need to sale/buy this idea). As much as I love programmists, they do not make the best persons for selling an idea to people (or company)

Re: Council election
 

ah. I'm not agreeing but now I understood what you're after.

Actually there was an effort to do an open version of maemo some years ago here. You even might have heard of the project "Mer". Of course Mer does something different nowadays but anyway :)

Re: Council election
 

i know my posts are way too long for an average forum (social site :eek: :mad:) reader to bother with
still i would expect a Council election thread to break the 1 liner rule :confused: :rolleyes:

one liner (overly simplified)
Maemo's fate lies with NOKIA; NOKIA dies, Maemo dies; NOKIA survives, so does Maemo.

short enough?

Re: Council election
 

Yeah, in the middle of the logs, but that discussion is hardly relevant. Sure would be cool to have autobuilder for all maemo devices, but considering how Diablo now is almost forgotten... Fremantle needs another 'e' or it will wither like diablo. For council, I'd rather see either trying to achieve the free state, or coming up with possible solutions, or starting new threads for solutions ideas once all they came up with failed. Pro-active approach, not endless emails to contact@nokia.com just to write in the report: we did our best, sent 365 emails in this year for maemo-open-sourcing(366 as it's a leap year).

Re: Council election
 

Personally, I do not believe that getting 100% "open" state of Maemo is possible via any "transfer" of IP from Nokia, even if they would like to. Simply put, they're not owners of many parts, so no ammount of begging/business prroposals is going to make it happen.

^This doubt include ideas of buying IP from Nokia in case it went bankrupt - I hardly can imagine this being possible, and even if, the price would be insane for FOSS community. Not to mention, that even *if* we would miraculously have millions of $$$ available, I would prefer to use it for re-writing replacements/designing own device from scratch, instead of paying for opening "decades" old code
---

So, overall, such ideas seems a little abstract to me.

Also, even if we put aside current positive boost in cooperation with Nokia, I'm perfectly sure that - in case of "doomsday" or separation scenario - all Council/Community can do for current code is to keep it available, both psychically and legally (OBS repos etc), then, we would be in position where we *must* go our own way into future. Not much to be scavenged from currently closed bits, anyway.

Disclaimer - I do not believe in any doomsday soon. Yet, I think part of Council's responsibility is to have failsafe/plan B realistic plans at hand.

/Estel

//Edit
SD69, could You finally accept nomination? ;) Pleeease?

Re: Council election
 

Yeah.. and that didn't turn out so well--not for lack of community effort, though. What DID manage to work was severely crippled by the lack of fully functioning drivers and a lack of documentation to make all-new drivers from scratch that worked reliably. I remember it clearly. I was there and I tried it and followed it closely with much anticipation and hope, yes. It's not much different today though, no. I find it ironic and a little funny that you chose to hold that up as an example--it only proves szopin's point and weakens yours. Strange argument.

If that is true--which I always feared might be the case, then it makes Maemo that much more of a scam for Nokia's choice of less and less open hardware to base it on. It still doesn't answer questions regarding closed-sourced, completely SOFTWARE portions like the calendar, media player and other tools that support the operating system but cripple it if you try to separate it from the OS.

But, I think we already got our answer a few pages back: Too bad.

What the heck is 'psychically'? It SOUNDS like 'psychic'...mind reading? But I can't tell if you meant physically or psychologically or something else. :P

Re: Council election
 

yeah, intentionally chosen example. The thing is that I don't believe we'll see those blobs open sourced, ever. thus I think focusing one's energy into that battle is a waste of time. Not saying that it isn't worth asking every now and then but to put that much energy in it... You've been here a long time and seen how many times and for how long different people have tried to get those blobs opened. What I'm saying is IMHO it would make more sense to concentrate more on present day issues that we can solve.

As a side note: from a n900 users pow meego was a good thing for at least one reason. the n900 was a reference device so some binary things were relicensed in order to get meego running on it. So without meego it would be even harder to boot alternative stuff with it :) back then Nokia had a business reason to relicense those which is not really the case now, is it?

Re: Council election
 

No idea of legal status of this proposal but whatevs:
I'd vote for candidate that is willing to try different approach/strategy in Nokia talks to get the source. Whether monetary/diplomatic... hell if we can gather 100k with kickstart campaign once all Nokia-community talks bring nothing new, use that money to hire reverse engineering guys and do the work ourselves. If in US it is illegal we surely can find a country that allows it and hire people there (or pay for transport/housing to the greatest minds from here if they are willing and have time for it)

Re: Council election
 

I don't think those ideas are bad but I think they are in the wrong direction. Qgil stated clearly that any more code will not be opened. And maybe there is no need to. After the time it will take either to raise the funds and close a deal with Nokia (assuming that is ever possible) or to reverse engineer the drivers for the N900, most of the N900's will be dead and the device itself will be pretty much obsolete. So we might just as well code new drivers for a device of our choice. What's the most open device out there? How much blobs can we scavenge from the android kernel to work unmodified?

Other than drivers do we really need anything else opensourced to go along? Of course the more code is open the better, but the most valuable of programs are open or we have nice open alternatives, the drivers are at least redistributable so the things that remain closed are device specific like mce etc. They won't do us any good in the long term anyway...

We do have a mail client, application manager, browser, telepathy, phone client (from meego), camera app, text editor, office suite, file manager media player.
We are missing a calendar (maybe free, alternatives exist, it's just a calendar after all) messaging application, gallery and all those IIRC exist on meego, so it's a matter of porting.

So much for the user applications.

Now for the core, we lack drivers, mce, battery management and more. But I don't know how much effort we should put in those as they may be have to be developed again if we ever move to a new device (in some time it has to happen)

Re: Council election
 

Fair enough, still have a feeling opensourcing would give us best benefits. Once you have all the apps/parts you mentioned open, CSSU would not be new killer-feature like portrait, but update to the latest kernel with all core components in up-to-date state. All libs out there in 2012+ state. We could then throw maemo on any device out there (assuming driver availability of course) and we'd move this forum from being N9(x0) specific to OS specific - open sourced operating system that was the idea they sold us some point in the past.

Re: Council election
 

I actually saw a real GTA-04 today. It actually looks quite nice and is based on a similar SOC as to the N900. It even has an FM transmitter, resistive screen and tvout through the headpohone jack. :D Unlike the N900 hundred it also has a magnetometer, USB OTG out of the box and 512 MB RAM. And basically everything is open (the 3D graphics driver isn't, but it can be used without it if needed). It has no keyboard & is a bit expensive though. :)

BTW - banner where ? :)

Re: Council election
 

512GB ram is a bit overkill, no?

Re: Council election
 

Re: Council election
 

Sure, will end up as Gates with 640kb... then again why not, I like Porsche

Re: Council election
 

I like my Porsche too!
http://pleco.org/vw/STARBEETLE.PNG

Re: Council election
 

szopin, don't You realize that all "let's buy it from Nokia or hire people to reverse engineer it" ideas are so expensive, that it's cheaper to design our own, 100% open device from scratch (with possibility of using existing open or mostly open devices as implementation references).

BTW, starting with less than 1GB of RAM is not worth the effort - seriously. Yet, it is totally off-topic here.

/Estel

Re: Council election
 

all this hardware seeking is exactly why i think NOKIA is Maemo's only chance
traditional GNU/Linux distros don't have that problem as they are running on a standard PC, as they are sold by 100s of thousands every day.
even a small project like Trinity Desktop Environment (the continuation of KDE 3.5.10 since KDE upgraded to KDE 4) can survive, only with one dedicated coordinator, a bunch of ppl helping directly and the open source community contributing... they know for 100% sure TDE will run on a standard PC, even with proprietary video card, as long as they remain in line with the x86 / x86_64 architecture.
this simply does not exist for mobiles or Internet Tablets, alas.
thus the dependance upon a manufacturer, in Maemo's case NOKIA.
for the better or the worse :eek:

Re: Council election
 

When can I vote?

Re: Council election
 

We're at the point where it's clearly true that you might as well go onto more open hardware ANYWHERE else with a new non-Maemo but Linux-based OS. Possibly something more Debian-like than Maemo was allowed to be.


This is why I'm particularly disappointed in Maemo! I was sold a device that was advertised over, and over as being OPEN SOURCE based and LINUX based... and the 'based' part was used as scamming term to protect themselves from the very OPEN SOURCE communities they were trying to attract into their platform instead of using it as a true BASIS for open-sourcing. Nokia bragged about how much they participated in kernel development and bragged a LOT about openness but, ultimately, they've proven to be an incredibly disappointing affair.

Once again, you saw the reply from Nokia-proper: Too bad.

Re: Council election
 

Right now, there are 4 valid candidates so if I accepted there would be 5 candidates and no vote. I think it would be best if Arie or Nieldk linked their tmo account to their maemo.org account so they would meet the karma criterion and then we can have a vote.

Re: Council election
 

I wonder how often karma is updated. Arie linked his talk account yesterday but it's not reflected yet.

Re: Council election
 

You can vote once you have received your token to vote via email, plus once elections have started. :)

Re: Council election
 

It takes a couple of days usually.

Re: Council election
 

what did you expect from NOKIA?
that they designed a graphic chip & a SOC & build and manufacture them?
even IBM in their heydays (PS/2 & OS/2 times) didn't manufacture everything themselves (for the PS/2 or for the PC & AT before that)
and in the last years before they liquidated the PC business, they were using parts from others, ATI, Intel & all.
in fact Intel is one of the notable exception among hardware manufacturer which provides open-source compliant code to the kernel team; except, there too, for those components (Wireless chips come to mind) where they used 3rd party components which are not OSS conform.

long story short.
NOKIA did as good a job they could making Maemo (& the devices on which it runs) as open-source compliant as they could.

if the Council is going to aim at getting code & what not from NOKIA, they are going to hit a wall, like all the Councils (members) who tried it before.

period.

don't copy that :confused: