Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

This is what worries me:

Especially since a lot of N900s are still under warranty... I have a couple myself that are warrantied into 2013. And as far as I can remember, the Maemo Council was going to push for Nokia to extend funding of maemo.org for that very reason. What came of that?

I am already as angry as I can be with Nokia (top-level management), so my "anger level" won't change - but if they pulled the maemo.org infrastructure rug out from under my devices, I would be looking into channeling my anger into any sort of legal action remotely possible. How about a class action by all TMO members? ;)

The cuts better not come until the end of 2013, since as I mentioned, devices will still be in warranty up to that point. I plan to use my N900s well after that too, but I certainly expect - and demand - that what I buy is supported throughout the warranty period.

Please note that this is not directed at you personally. I appreciate all your efforts, as I appreciate yours, kates and Reggie's contributions in this thread.

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

The can of worms has been opened up on this thread and i reckon it will be a huge one.

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

Don't see why you would and don't see why it would matter.

I'm just a user and I love to hack and tinker with my gadgets. I would like to keep using my Maemo/MeeGo devices as I do now. And that includes stuff like:
- looking up information on the wiki
- posting questions on a forum
- downloading applications from a repository
- selling/buying applications from a store
- uploading source to an auto building system
- using the application SDK (QtSDK)
- using the system SDK (Scratchbox SDK)
- re-flashing when I screwed up my device

information is scattered on a lot of differen Nokia site:
- maemo.org
- maemo garage, like http://pc-connectivity.garage.maemo.org/ and http://pluthon.garage.maemo.org/2nd_edition/
- Qt site
- harmattan dev site
- Harmattan SDK site
- meego site
- Nokia developer site
- Scratchbox is also Nokia sponsored
- Syncevolution also?

Possibly even more locations.

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

Also the apt repositories under catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com / downloads.maemo.nokia.com, the nokia-binaries SDK repositories etc.

And the wiki, garage, bugzilla, mailman...

It would be useful if the maintainers could publish some concrete usage figures (current and trends) so we could get a grasp of the size of the thing instead of some nebulous notion that it's too big to move elsewhere.

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

That's a question to Kate or Quim, but don't expect specific numbers, no phone manufacturer gives out detailed numbers (except when they sensationally tell the world that they sold N million devices in M months).

However I think I can say that the traffic originating from the N900s out there is something that needs some sort of content delivery network, or load balancing. The load comes from all over the planet and continuously.

The other parts of the system could probably be dealt with plain hardware. Of course the builder or OBS machines are pretty big, but not impossible.

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

OMG, you are MODERATOR :-O
what does it has to do with fact that you attacked guy who was complaining about management's statements?
so, you are moderator and you need to defend attacked qgil?
abill_uk just wanted to know what will happen with maemo.org because, seems like he is one who cares about maemo, unlike employee/spokesman
however, when you was attacking abill_uk, mr qgil was online, reading whole thread, so, what was your point?
unless you have some personal issues with abill_uk?

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

Not those kind of numbers, just relevant figures to determine the necessary capacity for hosting things. Ie, I'd like to see data like "Fremantle extras uses X GiB/month, rising (or falling) by Y%", "Diablo builder uses N hosts of such and such CPU/RAM/disk specs at M% utilisation rising/failling by whataver" etc.

Without actual data we won't know, will we? Also, what if someone wants to volunteer hosting the community repositories for the "internet tablet" (pre-N900) devices? I suspect those might be easily serviceable with a handful of machines or even less on any semi-decent hosting location (but again, without hard data we can only guess).

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

That would be the traffic to the repositories right? Since the amount of devices in use is only going to decline from now, that is something that would only decrease from now.
Is that difficult to setup/expensive?

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

Also; the community will in any case find out those numbers the hard way when we start hosting the reporitories on community servers[1]. Except by that time we'll most likely have guestimated wrong and either have a massively oversubscribed service that crumbles under the load, or grossly overspent to build capacity that no one ended up needing. Who wants that?

[1] Unless Nokia refuses to let us use the maemo.org domain for such hosting, which would be a pretty asinine thing to do but not inconceivable.

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

Isn't the name Maemo also Nokia property? In that case it could very well be that they don't want an outside project using a name that they own and will be connected to the main Nokia brand without having any control over it anymore.

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

Maemo is a trademark of Nokia Corporation. The maemo.org domain is currently registered in Nokia's name, but it was handed over and the community is supposed to have control over it (or perhaps just the content?). You'll have to ask someone else to clarify, I never quite understood what that meant.

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

I believe Kate and Quim are doing their best to find answers and ways forward. They can't be having an easy time with the changes taking place, so a bit of patience is in order. As I recall, after a major announcement like last Thursday, there is quite a bit of chaos inside the organisation during which it is really hard to get any hard decisions out of people.

Give them a few days to find some information and talk inside the organisation to figure out what is really happening. Having momentum is good, but having a direction is better.

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

But what about Qt in general?
I mean, that framework, that HUGE development suite, it sinks way further down than just the mobile platforms.
Did I read the OP correct that even the Qt stuff as a whole will be orphaned.

It just can't be right. Qt is huge and is used and supported by a lot of companies worldwide.
It just can't be so that they are abandoning all that.
If so, then they have truly lost the minds and sold their sole to m$.

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

Do they need the help of a psy?

What they want to do is suicid.

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

I can't even imagine the mess in an organization after such a drastic change. I understand that that takes time to sort out.
I'm just voicing my concerns as a user that is effected by these changes. Stating that I would very much appreciate an orderly transition for the customers and users of Maemo and MeeGo products.
This is also in the interest of Nokia, since I am the type of customer that spends a lot of money on high-end mobile phones, and I assume most maemo/meego users are.
We may be small group but alienating customers with a sudden shutdown of the services the devices depend on should be avoided.
Of course Nokia knows this, but voicing my concerns as a customer may provide an extra incentive for Nokia to act accordingly.

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

This is why I don't expect a sudden shut down of the services. As discussed here, the topic involves warranties, trademarks, contracts and other issues that won't get resolved over a weekend.

The best contribution the community can make is to define a desired scenario. Kate and me can work on a better transition if there is a consensus fully backed by the Council on a community vision and plan.

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

I'm not part of the council, but I think the most important thing is that Nokia promises it doesn't shutdown any public resource related to Maemo or MeeGo without clearly communicating this well in advance (enough time so that people can prepare an alternative, 1 month? 3 months? 6 months?, depends on what is shutdown).

Secondly: Find a solution for the parts that currently can't legally be redistributed, so people can keep using the devices and SDK as they do now after Nokia pulled out. (But the cheapest solution is probably keeping the problematic files hosted by Nokia for a much longer time.)

Planning the actual transition is very difficult if Nokia doesn't help on these two points.

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

OK, assume at least a 6 month notice for maemo.org funding and the availability of the Nokia repositories for even longer. This is the basis Kate and me are working on. More details as soon as we have them.

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

I tried to find some information, who is currently on the CSSU council,
also to see if Reggie is there. But obviously I am too silly to find that information.

Reggie is ok, but he will need some help.

My suggestion would be that the council gathers the information about hosting costs, what has to be hosted (TMO, http://repository.maemo.org/ and so on).

Anybody here with connections to Intel?
Perhaps asking some of the big corps about some funding (except
MS, Google for the obvious reasons)?

What about the Linux Foundation?

P.S.: If I look at the PalmOS situation it shows a splitting into many different forums all over the internet.
We should avoid this as far as possible (I know that the forum part of TMO is only a small part).

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

now or 8 months later, they will pull the plug..

why not be smart and relocate... and use this time to redirect users to new/permanent address

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

anyone agrees with me?

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

IMHO a relocation should get the infrastructure and stuff to a place that is not dependent on Nokia. Given Nokia's rapid decline, I don't have much faith in servers dependent on Nokia in any way.

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

AbillUK is here so we can add him to the ignorelist....

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

Would it be possible for someone to check the amount needed to host this site for a year and maybe set up a collection form plus collection bar. Ok the form and the bar could wait for official statement, but the calculation of cost could be done.

EDIT:What is the cost today, anyone? Reggie maybe?

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

As Kates already pointed out it seems Qt is "in the same budget" so yes ḿy guess is QT is cut down slow inside Nokia. But then again Qt has support outside Nokia too (by companys)

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

The Qt Project discussion is a different one, indeed. Being discussed already at the Qt Project.

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

Quim is looking for the council to create some specific proposals for what they would like to achieve.

Personally, my priorities for a post-Nokia Maemo environment are (in descending order) device software distribution (and flashers, etc), nokia repositories (device software and development), documentation, community respositories, mailing lists, forum, wiki. The reasons for that are (i) we have to keep the devices usable as a top priority, (ii) tools for developers are important to allow future maintenance and enhancement, (iii) a community needs a communication infrastructure. Autobuilders would be nice but are certainly not critical and are likely to be very tough to maintain, and possibly expensive. Other things like promotion, community testing, application search tools, etc are lower priority still.

I wonder if we should abandon "maemo.org" as a hostname? In particular, the next release of the CSSU could force all references to "maemo.org" to be looked up as (say) "maemocommunity.org".

This would allow us to walk away from supporting all the Nokia customers who were not willing to upgrade to the CSSU -- they would be Nokia's problem, to do with as they wished (support, drop support, whatever). This would mean a much lower load on new servers (although it would increase over time, presumably, as Nokia dropped support and some small proportion of those people heard about the community and switched to the CSSU).

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

This would be a forced move to the CSSU.

I use my N900 without CSSU because I did not have the need up to now. I rarely see the point of such forced movements.
But maybe you have some very strong arguments for such a change?

In the case of such a movement the CSSU and the authors of the CSSU should give guarantees and I am not sure if this is possible (otoh I am not sure if Nokia will do this in the furure :-/ ).

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

Werent OpenMoko.org in a similar situation when FIC closed down ?

http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Main_Page is still here

Maybe we should contact them to know how they organized themselves ?

BTW, I also added that page http://elinux.org/Maemo

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

LOL I remember it wasn't the best looking device out there, but I didn't remember it was that but ugly :D

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

A lot of talk since the first post, but I don't still see any
good reason that Nokia should be given that easy exit from maemo.org, as they apparently seem to plan. Most of the N9s are still a good while
under the warranty, probably until the end of 2013 in
countries with a 2 year warranty period, depending on the date of purchase. Obviously Nokia has to cut their costs right now to survive, but first of all it is not maemo.org that manouvered them
into this situation and secondly with a warranty they also commit themselves to maintain the services that the people expect from this kind of devices to be fully functional during its lifetime. That includes also things like SDKs, app store and a place for users to collaborate.

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

It is all happening very quickly now, isn't it?

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

No it doesn't. You can only expect to get a new device with similar functionality / similar price.

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

I fear that is very much open to interpretation. There are a lot of examples where the online services and the product were discontinued very early on (Microsoft Kin for example, but also a lot of online games for PC and consoles like Dreamcast)

Besides if a big company like Nokia just happens to disagree, ultimately the customer will get screwed. Sure, you could take it to a consumer authority or even a court, but that will take ages compared to the lifespan of the average mobile phone. And what will it get you? Your money back? A Lumia in exchange? That isn't what I want, I want those services operational for at least two more years (Approximately the time I intend to keep using my relatively new N9 as my primary mobile).

Luckily shutting down these services also isn't in the interest of Nokia, since it would make a group of happy N9 and N900 customers very angry (and probably cause them to not buy a Nokia phone again).

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

N900 & N9 customers are, despite the sales figures of later a small minority
far less then N8 buyers :(
Maemo / MeeGo were always research platform(s), not commercial devices.
thus frustrated users from that (relatively) small group is alas not a big concern.
much more of interest is the potential for R&D.
m$ platform is totally useless for that, thus a platform NOKIA has full control over (like Maemo) does make sense.
alas, common sense doesn't seem to be management's primary concern now, does it?

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

Somewhat off topic but then again not. A what if scenario about half way into the podcast. What if Nokia sticked to Maego/Symbian/Meltemi

http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/media...roundup_an.php

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

If Nokia is removing funding and project needs to move to a new community run home, can we secure some kind of parting gift. Source code to as many remaining elements as is possible would be great.

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

I've seen 6 months from now being pulled out.

I thought that was already known? Nothing new. What needs to be addressed is what will happen after that date and what are the next moves in a more definitive manner.

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

You got.....
http://trololololololololololo.com/

Don't feed him, he'll go back under his bridge eventually, once he's worked himself into a lather of disgust with TMO/FMC again :D
It was funny following him in the epic N9 anticipation thread, good entertainment value I must admit, I do hope he sticks around longer this time.

Just in case you haven't bothered reading the entire thing (don't blame you with all the noise).
It's put best around the end of pg 3 for and start of Pg 8 IIRC, plus this latest update from qgil.

Re: It's official: maemo.org to be orphaned
 

What we knew previously was that funding was in place until the end of the year and very likely to be renewed (decision to be made sometime during the summer). The funding for 2012 is still in place, but likelihood of renewal has been reversed now.