community Digest, Vol 36, Issue 45

Mathew Davis someoneinjapan at gmail.com
Fri Jul 20 19:57:21 CEST 2007


I can respect that.  I understand that the Openmoko team is streached pretty
thin.  And I wish I had some skills to volunteer to build a forum, but I
can't I am more software driven and have no experiance with web
development.  Maybe someone else can do this.  I don't think opening a forum
will dilute much energy, but I can see where you are coming from.  We are
not really a big enough community to launch another communication avenue.  I
just hope that the openmoko can see how this will help support a good
customer base without much intervention on their part, hopefully.  What I
would hate to see is that when the phone is launched in 6 months that we
don't have anything waiting for those novice users and they get turned off
by the idea and it get's a bad rep from the start.

I want this project to suceed so badly.  I think this is exactly what the
communication world needs.  I think it offers the strength of linux and the
community, but bands it together around a common goal.  I think that really
emboldens linux and it's users to know that there is support for those who
are a littly weiry about trying linux.  Linux is a scary word to a lot of
people, but if you say don't worry about it we have 1000+ people ready and
willing to help with what ever you might have then I think they would be
much more willing to accept.  I think a forum would be a very easy and cost
effective way to do this.  I noticed the trouble they had with trying to
open a store front end and I am worried that if they wait to long to get a
forum up we could run into the same problem, and for a general consumer that
could spell disaster.  I am very impressed with the progress that the
openmoko team don't get me wrong I just really think that a forums is
necessary for the sucess of the neo 1973 and I am afraid that no resources
will be devoted to this.

So maybe what a solution could be is if someone can get a forum up.  And let
openmoko just route forums.openmoko.com to it.  I noticed that
openmokoforums.com has been snatched up and along with a few other domains.
I would like to see a forum sponsered by FIC/OpenMoko team.  Maybe I am jsut
blowing smoke and irritating people, but I just really really want openmoko
to be sucessful and for me I think that means forums.



On 7/20/07, Jeff Rush <jeff at taupro.com> wrote:
>
> Mathew Davis wrote:
> >
> > And I don't understand why we can't have both.  I really don't see the
> > problem so if someone could explain why not having a forum would be
> > advantageous and not just personal preferance I am all ears, because I
> > could list a lot of reasons why forums could be advantageous.
>
> I appreciate your viewpoint but here are a few reasons:
>
> 1. Our community is small -- spreading the discussions thinly before we
> have
> reached critical mass will dilute the synergy.  We are just now starting
> to
> come together as a community, and I think we even have too many mailing
> lists
> as it is (not always clear on which one to discuss X).
>
> 2. The OpenMoko team at FIC are spread _very_ thin and lack the
> time/resources
> to research and establish a forum themselves.  They were overloaded just
> getting a basic storefront up.  I don't understand why a company the size
> of
> FIC isn't providing more logistics support to them, so they can focus on
> the
> hardware/software but that's the way it is today.
>
> 3. Because of #2 and the fact this is the world of free/open, groups are
> welcome to establish a forum someplace and announce it here.  In fact no
> one
> can stop it.  Then instead of debating it you apply the governance
> principle
> of open source, in that if you build it will they come.  If so, you were
> right.  If not, you were wrong.  A very objective approach.
>
> And for those (another thread) who are looking for someone official to
> tell
> them how this or that is going to be done on the device, I think we as a
> community will be applying #3 above - teams will form and follow their
> (quite
> likely divergent) visions.  Those who (1) produce results that (2) some
> significant portion of the community approve of will have their work
> integrated into the core as required/optional packages.  And some fraction
> of
> those will be cherry-picked by FIC for delivery in the consumer
> distribution.
> And perhaps other flash images will arise targeted at "the power user" and
> "the gaming user" and "the multimedia user".
>
> Being open source folks and time-constrained themselves, I rather think
> that
> the OpenMoko team will be blessing running code and not managing the
> various
> teams that form.  And that is good, because they cannot see the future
> uses of
> this device any better than we at this point.  Not a planned economy but a
> chaotic marketplace of competing ideas, where decisions are made in the
> free/opensource tradition of "running code" and "rough concensus".  Scary
> sure, but also refreshing and very exciting.
>
> -Jeff
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/attachments/20070720/ddea6f74/attachment.htm 


More information about the community mailing list