How to bring forward the community?

rhn omcomali.rhn at porcupinefactory.org
Mon Feb 27 21:30:10 CET 2012


> > Hi all,
> > while I am still fiddling with GTA04 production yield issues, I think it
> > is important to reason about the big view.
> >
> > So I would like to encourage to share what you are working on
> > (kernel? driver? user space?) and what you think would bring forward
> > the Openmoko community a small or big step.. Any idea is welcome
> > (even if you think we already know about it).
> 
> If anything is welcome then...
> 
> I've left OpenMoko commutiny long ago, but I'm really disapponted by 
> today's devices and I want to return. Unfortunately N900 changed my mind 
> and now I consider hardware qwerty keyboard not an option but a must.
> 
> I will immediately order any GTA04 successor that will have qwerty 
> keyboard.
> 

My personal view is largely the same, as is my story. A hardware keyboard is necessary for me, although I would be equally happy with qwerty or numbers only.

What kept me contributing to Openmoko was mostly lack of motivation. When I wanted to contribute, there was a lot of trouble with the basic services - GPS, WiFi, telephony. Those elements of the stack have high entry levels for contribution, and at the same time they drain a lot of patience when they don't work.
So instead of using my Freerunner for tasks like PIM, finding rough edges there and contributing back (or packaging programs that rely on base functionality), I was struggling with things like custom WiFi scripts and similar that are only of any use for me.

I think that a necessary prerequisite for community growth is to have a rock-solid phone stack, but everyone already knows that :) Having an easy way to build and share programs (without the need of an entire distribution checkout like SHR needed if I remember right) would also help. Native compilation perhaps?

Cheers,
rhn



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