Freerunner's Future

[Dave Ball]

Risto H. Kurppa wrote:
> Thanks Sean for this announcement!
>
> It's appreciated to get a status update from OM of things we've heard
> rumors of. I'm very happy that OM got this far with the phones: we
> have some tens of thousands (better guess anyone?) of Linux phones
> around the world, various open/free distros to run on the HW and means
> to communicate to make it better. I think OM was decent on the
> hardware side, it's a great achievement to have manufactured a
> open/free Linux-phone. Thank you for that, thank you everyone who
> worked on OM for this!
>   

ditto!  :-)  And also thanks for the commitments to opening up further 
details, designs and marks in support of the community, and providing 
the om.org infrastructure we're using.

> Now as the community will go 'wild', I'd now, more than ever, like to
> see good leadership practices to organize and guide the community. If
> you ask me where OM failed, it's this: managing and leading the
> community. So I think we'd need some direction where to make people
> go, who don't know where to go. We have around 20 distros and phone
> apps - I wouldn't like to see this all break in small sub-projects
> that all do the same work and don't communicate, but one single big
> project that'd actually take us somewhere.

Diversity has it's advantage, though focus on a smaller number of 
projects has it's own benefits too.  I think it's great that FSO has 
resulted in a stable platform that most of the current distros rely on 
and benefit from.

While there remains interest in the current (or future) distros, my 
personal feeling is that we shouldn't try to kill one, in favour of 
another.  They currently all have strengths and weaknesses, and the 
community as a whole gets strength from their diversity.  We should 
collaborate on any common ground (kernel, fso?, illume?), and allow 
distributions to differentiate where they see appropriate.

I think you are spot on though that we need to be better organised, and 
as individuals, communities and 'leaders' (if that's appropriate) have 
clear asperations and achievable objectives.

Overall, I think clarity and sensible organisation will allow the 
community(ies) to flourish, while supporting as much diversity as the 
different sectors of our community want.


Dave