[maemo-community] Imagine the MeeGo council (was Re: Encouragement to council candidates)

[From: Dave Neary]

Hi,

While we're hypothesising...

quim.gil at nokia.com wrote:
> MeeGo is a Linux Foundation project that is pushed initially by Nokia
> and Intel, who put a big amount of developers, infrastructure and
> work together to create a free Linux mobile platform. Other
> organizations and individuals may start contributing, get
> responsibilities, areas of ownership and eventually make it to
> leading positions in working groups and the Technical Steering Group.

Doesn't this sound a bit like the genesis of the GNOME project, or Eclipse?

How about a bigger council, say 9, potentially with an employer
limitation (no more than 3 from one company, say)? The real effect of
this would be initially a community council with 33% Intel, 33% Nokia,
33% community (ideally).

Of course, whether the council is attractive will depend on a number of
things - the role the council has, the demands it places on the time of
participants, and its power to affect change.

The danger is that the council becomes something to occupy the people
inetrested in rules and governance, but doesn't end up having anything
to do with encouraging uptake of the platform, influencing technical
choices for the platform, or anything in any way relevant to developers.
It's important that the council be relevant to developers - that stuff
the council does & decides impacts what they are working on & how. That
power to affect application & platform developers will be the motivator
for people to get involved.

> All this is a meritocratic structure, and it could benefit from a
> complementary democratic structure. For instance (and I'm improvising
> here) imagine that the chair of the MeeGo community council would sit
> in the TSG during the "mandate" period.

I'd love to see that.

> First why the middlemen like nowadays myself. Once bootstrapped,
> MeeGo will be an open project in a way Maemo has never been. No NDAs
> will be needed to operate in MeeGo and define the roadmaps and
> strategy. The role of the council in this sense needs to be
> repurposed.

There will always be middlemen as long as people withing Nokia and Intel
decide where to put resources, if those people aren't themselves active
in the community (and it's hard to expect that). It just may be that the
council itself becomes the middle-man.

> Second, why perpetuating Maemo and Moblin communities.

I agree with this. Let's build a good MeeGo community and make it a
place where Maemo people will of course want to work & hang out. We
still need to get to know the moblin community, and that's the first
priority.

Cheers,
Dave.

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