Forum? (Was Re: Neo Sound and USB Questions)

[Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller]

Am 21.08.2007 um 12:46 schrieb Harald Welte:

> On Tue, Aug 21, 2007 at 11:19:57AM +0200, Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller  
> wrote:
>
>> Harald,
>>
>> please calm down. I know from your blog how upset you are from  
>> setting
>> up the new office location, networks and servers during Taifun time.
>
> in fact that was the most fun part.
>
>> But just one question to answer for yourself: do you want to have
>> community involvement or not?
>
> I am from the community ;)  And not in my 10+ years of FOSS community

It didn't look like that...

> development have I seen any project that had problems with properly
> using mailinglists.

By deciding not to have a forum, you will loose some participants.  
And those
who remain will have no problems. So, this argument is not a proof...

> Forums are for people who don't understand the technology of properly
> dealing with e-mails.   Of what use is something that's only available

Well, I don't know how old you are but I did send my first e-mails  
approx.
1984 and wrote my first UNIX programs at that time. Nevertheless I would
prefer a forum.

It is so easy to wipe away needs and requests from others by saying they
simply don't understand properly how to use it :-)

What would you do if you go into a shop where you want to buy a red t- 
shirt
and the sales agent says that red is out and t-shirts are not good at  
all and
that all those who want to buy a t-shirt simply don't understand why  
polo
shirts are so much better?

> online?  Of no use at all.  Try keeping a local copy of a forum on  
> your

I have never had a problem with not being online all the time.

> laptop.  Why should openmoko be any different?

For which purpose should I keep ***all*** these mails archived?

> We will most likely have a forum for _end users_ at a time where we  
> want
> to address end users.  But not for developers, sorry.

That might be an unwise decision - but you are the decision taker :-)

>> Now as your network appears to work again, please focus on solving  
>> kernel,
>> uboot, etc. issues that we as the "dumb users" can't solve ourselves.
>> I am for example still fighting the issue with short and long rootfs
>> flashing and NAND erasing, that leaves an inoperable OpenMoko device
>
> If you consider yourself a "dumb user", then you probably are not the
> kind of developer crowd  that we are addressing at this moment :(

Looks a little like Freedom and Openness has limits?

Look - I have a device now for 2 weeks. I have >20 years experience in
software development and a certain goal to achieve with the OpenMoko.
So, how should I know everything the core team knows that works on the
device for now 10 months?

Compared to you, I am of course a "dumb user" who has to learn a
lot of aspects of the OpenMoko system. Especially the flashing process.
But that is IMHO no argument to criticise my requests and needs.

But I do not want to open a new fundamentalistic discussion.

Nikolaus