[maemo-community] Council thread : who wants my vote - and why?

[From: Andrew Flegg]

On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 2:05 PM, Dave Neary <dneary at maemo.org> wrote:
>
> Thanks for starting this thread! I was wondering when someone was going to.

Heh.

> What do you bring to the council that no other candidate does?

The facetious answer is, "me" - I'm the only *me* on the candidate
list. I can say I bring over 10 years of professional software
development. I've worked in big, multinational firms like Ford and IBM
and smaller companies as well. Therefore, I can understand why a
company like Nokia can't be treated as one single entity with a
homogeneous mind. I can also understand the pressures facing a small,
agile team like Maemo Software within the much larger company.

I'm passionate about hackability, but also usability - and I don't
think these are orthogonal. I've used mobile devices from the Psion
Series 5, to the netBook; and others like PalmOS devices and more.
Small devices fascinate me and, although the Psion Series 5 best
suited my uses at the time; I was convinced in mid-2005 that the 770
and its successors were the devices which had the best chance of
becoming my ideal device. They're not there yet, and I want to bring
my passion to bear on others to help continue the evolution of both
Maemo, and applications for Maemo.

> What do you expect to achieve on/with the council? What's your top
> priority issue to resolve, and how do you plan to help make that happen?

The first priority of the council has to be analysing the reaction to
this election, and discussing on -community a new proposal; coming to
a consensus and that putting that forward for a referendum.

I have two other priorities which are more important, though:

   1) To help Nokia understand that professional software developers like me are
      willing to do design reviews, testing and - sometimes - development for
      them; effectively free of charge. However this is ONLY possible with a
      concerted effort on their part to open their internal processes
to the point
      where this is practicable. At the moment, the aim of a release is hidden
      and even the open source components like Modest are developed primarily
      behind closed doors, driven by hidden internal bug trackers.

   2) The council should also aim to promote the development of applications on
      Maemo, and participation in maemo.org. The aim should be to make it much
      easier for many more people who *could* be participating in this platform
      to share creative ideas in ways that strengthen mutual understanding and
      build lasting, and powerful, applications.

> Where do you want to see the council at the end of your term in 6 months?

I want to see the council represent the community in Nokia's planning
& decision making processes around Maemo (not, of course, their
proprietary hardware) and to ensure a two-way dialogue happens not
just in the community systems of maemo.org, but that application
developers feel that they're developing their applications in the same
direction as Nokia sees the direction of the platform.

If you've got any other questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

Hope that helps,

Andrew

-- 
Andrew Flegg -- mailto:andrew at bleb.org | http://www.bleb.org/
maemo.org Community Council candidate: http://tinyurl.com/election-jaffa