<div>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.
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<div>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.
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<div>So maybe what a solution could be is if someone can get a forum up. And let openmoko just route <a href="http://forums.openmoko.com">forums.openmoko.com</a> to it. I noticed that <a href="http://openmokoforums.com">
openmokoforums.com</a> 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.
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<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 7/20/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Jeff Rush</b> <<a href="mailto:jeff@taupro.com">jeff@taupro.com</a>> wrote:</span>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">Mathew Davis wrote:<br>><br>> And I don't understand why we can't have both. I really don't see the
<br>> problem so if someone could explain why not having a forum would be<br>> advantageous and not just personal preferance I am all ears, because I<br>> could list a lot of reasons why forums could be advantageous.
<br><br>I appreciate your viewpoint but here are a few reasons:<br><br>1. Our community is small -- spreading the discussions thinly before we have<br>reached critical mass will dilute the synergy. We are just now starting to
<br>come together as a community, and I think we even have too many mailing lists<br>as it is (not always clear on which one to discuss X).<br><br>2. The OpenMoko team at FIC are spread _very_ thin and lack the time/resources
<br>to research and establish a forum themselves. They were overloaded just<br>getting a basic storefront up. I don't understand why a company the size of<br>FIC isn't providing more logistics support to them, so they can focus on the
<br>hardware/software but that's the way it is today.<br><br>3. Because of #2 and the fact this is the world of free/open, groups are<br>welcome to establish a forum someplace and announce it here. In fact no one<br>
can stop it. Then instead of debating it you apply the governance principle<br>of open source, in that if you build it will they come. If so, you were<br>right. If not, you were wrong. A very objective approach.<br><br>
And for those (another thread) who are looking for someone official to tell<br>them how this or that is going to be done on the device, I think we as a<br>community will be applying #3 above - teams will form and follow their (quite
<br>likely divergent) visions. Those who (1) produce results that (2) some<br>significant portion of the community approve of will have their work<br>integrated into the core as required/optional packages. And some fraction of
<br>those will be cherry-picked by FIC for delivery in the consumer distribution.<br>And perhaps other flash images will arise targeted at "the power user" and<br>"the gaming user" and "the multimedia user".
<br><br>Being open source folks and time-constrained themselves, I rather think that<br>the OpenMoko team will be blessing running code and not managing the various<br>teams that form. And that is good, because they cannot see the future uses of
<br>this device any better than we at this point. Not a planned economy but a<br>chaotic marketplace of competing ideas, where decisions are made in the<br>free/opensource tradition of "running code" and "rough concensus". Scary
<br>sure, but also refreshing and very exciting.<br><br>-Jeff<br></blockquote></div><br>