IRC conversation with Mirko from the Paroli team

Jeremy McNaughton jeremy.mcnaughton at gmail.com
Sat Mar 14 06:04:25 CET 2009


I've got to agree that some more communication about Paroli would be a
good thing.

Arne's got it exactly right by saying "to be 'open to the community'
is at the core of their business model -- and, what's more, it
accounts for a huge part of their customer base."

After all, what was the point of selling the phones so early in the
development cycle in the first place?  Right on the main page of the
wiki it says: "Openmoko is a project driven by a community of
passionate and intelligent volunteers. If you have the ability, please
contribute to our cause. Openmoko's ambitions far exceed the resources
available."

It can't be both ways.  If Openmoko wants the community to help and/or
develop for projects like Paroli, they need to be responsive when
their volunteers ask for more information.

With Paroli in particular I can't see it being such a big deal to size
the window so it can be used with Illume.  At least for right now,
until more time can be dedicated to whatever mysterious way we'll
eventually use to switch back and forth can be implemented.

And while I don't know anything about the previous conversations
between Mirko and Paul, I really hope that I never get dealt with that
way by anyone with an openmoko.com email account.  Nobody's perfect
and I don't want to single Mirko out, but the conversation in the
above IRC logs are less than stellar.  Not a great way to deal with
volunteers whose effort you're hoping to benefit from, especially when
those volunteers are also paying customers.

In general however I think Openmoko is starting to do better with
communication, Paroli being a notable exception.  I'm still very
excited about the direction the platform is taking.  FSO is a very
good idea, and one day Openmoko phones will kick ass (as phones! :)


Jeremy McNaughton

On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 2:00 PM, Eldon Koyle <ekoyle at gmail.com> wrote:
> On  Mar 13 21:30+1300, Robin Paulson wrote:
> <snip>
>> true, but they can't have it both ways. if they say, 'we want input
>> from the community' on something or other, the likelihood of
>> disagreement/flames/arguments etc. goes up. then they either can
> <snip>
>
> They don't ask for input from the community on everything, though.  I
> was merely trying to point out that there shouldn't be any expectation
> of them telling 'the community' what they are going to do before they do
> anything.  Obviously they should still communicate with any significant
> contributors about anything they are doing that will affect said
> contributors -- but there is no reason to try to communicate it to the
> whole community; and it would be ridiculous to expect all of these
> communications to be public.
>
> --
> Eldon Koyle
>
> _______________________________________________
> Openmoko community mailing list
> community at lists.openmoko.org
> http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
>




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