Freerunner's Future

[Jeremy McNaughton]

On Sat, Jun 6, 2009 at 6:23 AM, Werner Almesberger<werner at openmoko.org> wrote:
> You can view the situation also as an opportunity to change some
> of the structure of the project. Openmoko Inc. had certain
> constraints due to the way it was conceived. Some of them looked
> good at the beginning but later caused problems - yet were too
> difficult to change.
>
> The good thing about a new start is that you can stop fighting the
> mistakes of the past and turn your full attention towards making
> new ones ;-)
>
> - Werner

+1 for Werner's way of looking at things.

Considering that Openmoko started as a project inside a major
electronics manufacturer, it's not surprising that once it was spun
off it kept a lot of "organizational legacy" from its corporate roots.
 While the old structure worked well enough to get us to this point,
I'm pretty excited about getting the development even more out in the
open.

Jon 'maddog' Hall's offer to incubate the community under Linux
International is also pretty exciting.  Eventually I'd like to see an
independent foundation that acts as hub and legal representative of
the community.

Organizing an Openmoko Foundation is something I'd really like to help
with.   Up till now I've not really had the skills to contribute any
sort of code.  The other activities open to me thus far (like bug
testing and documentation), well unfortunately haven't gotten me
involved in anything more than a casual basis (though I have learned
tonnes from my months of lurking).

But organizing is what I love doing.  Like I said above my organizing
experience isn't with free software but with local activist groups and
social services:
- co-founder of a homeless shelter
- sat on committee to rewrite all bylaws, policies and procedures for
the shelter after it had been incorporated as a nonprofit (I'm not a
lawyer, but I've been exposed to lots of policy)
- sat on the board of a coalition/network of social service agencies.
the coalition was unincorporated and hosted by an incubator
organization
- i've done trainings for groups on consensus decision making and
conflict resolution

Even though I'm from a different field, I think enough of my
background should cross over that I can be of some help.  I've also
used GNU/Linux on the desktop and server since Slackware 3.2 and have
been a lurker/occasional participant on many Free software projects in
that time.  So I'm pretty familiar with open source politics too.  I
just usually get active in more local oriented projects.

I don't want any sort of official position... give that to someone who
has already demonstrated a long term commitment to the community.  But
I would like to be kept in the loop.. if there's a mailing list
created I'll join it and be a part of the discussion as much as I can.

Depending on how things go, maybe I can handle some of the
organizational tasks that would previously have been done by Openmoko
Inc. and free up developers to do their thing.