[maemo-community] Council Nomination: Arek Stopczynski

[From: Arek]

1) Do you see any flaws in it [sprint], and how do you think it can be
improved?

*As I haven't been involved in the maemo sprints directly (yet) my answer is
based on the description of the process on wiki pages.*
*The process seems reasonable and well structured. It works well when the
tasks are defined and actual work needs to be done. The problem is with the
tasks definition part.*
*An improvement I would suggest is having, possibly a series of
non-compulsory meetings before the actual task definition. By that, the
process of creating the tasks could be more brainstorm-like instead of
lonely-wolf-like. *
*At the moment it seems that a volunteer has an idea, creates proposal page,
after time X a reply is posted on the talk page... This is a slow process
and does not encourage defining new tasks in any way. It works provided that
the idea is already there.*



2) What are your thoughts on ongoing communication during the sprint?

*I haven't taken part in any of the sprints so far, so no answer here.
However, the proposal pages seem rather forgotten.*


3) As we move from "day zero" to "day one", what do you think the priorities
for the MeeGo community should be?

*The MeeGo community will (probably) be a bit different than current Maemo
community; the priorities will also be different.*
*The most immediate priority for newly forming community should be
establishing its identity. It is important to maintain vertically spread
community from Maemo (users+experienced users+developers+council body+Nokia)
and not to allow strong polarization (users+hackers) that is more common in
more commercial systems (difference between .org and .com). It should be
clear that, although MeeGo is more commercial system than Maemo, it is still
important for the actual community to exist (instead of just noobs asking
'how to turn my mobile on' and hackers replying 'you need to flash it with
XYZ cable, stand on left leg...').*
*In short, MeeGo community, from the very beginning, must become
self-concious. An extremely important role here will be for experienced
users, who will hopefully migrate to the new community from Maemo and Moblin
 and act as centroids of various groups forming (people interested in
theming, development, games, hacks, moaning etc.).*




4) Should leaders in the MeeGo community (whether from a Moblin or Maemo
background) try to move the existing communities with them to form the MeeGo
community; or should a new community form around the operating system and
its devices?

*This is a difficult question, and the answer heavily depends on the market
strategy of Nokia&Intel. N900 is a pricey device and many owners may
postpone buying a new device for quite a long time. In a natural way, the
interest of people not owning any MeeGo device in MeeGo community will be
very limited. We can assume that some key characters, even not owning MeeGo
device from day one, will become the part of the new community; vast
majority however will not be interested. Another factor is how close Maemo
and MeeGo will be; we already know that a development version of the latter
will be installable on n900, however it is uncertain if it will be usable
for regular users. If not, the situation described above applies. Probably
this will be easier on the other side of the Wonderland, as Moblin community
is more developer-oriented: the transition to the new system will be easier
for developers here (Qt+Linux in general, already being used).*
*
*
*It is my strong belief that the members of current communities should feel
strongly welcomed in the MeeGo community, mainly for reasons described in
the previous answer. I don't think that we should aim (or that it is even
possible) into a 'fresh start', i.e. forming MeeGo community like the
previous communities (Maemo and Moblin) have not existed. I see the
transition of users as a positive thing that should be encouraged to the
full extend.*


4a) If yes, what steps should be taken to prevent overreactions
and allegations of "take over" that happened when
internettablettalk.com's theme
changed to match the rest of maemo.org?

*I do not see any real problem here, as the situation is quite different. As
far as I understand, nobody is going to change or restructure maemo.org when
MeeGo appears. An offspring is born (**http://meego.com/*<http://meego.com/>
*) where all the willing shall go and the rest should stay at maemo.org.*



4b) If no, how do you see the relationship between the Maemo community which
has been "left behind" and the MeeGo community? How does the Maemo community
stay vibrant if large portions on moving on to Maemo's successor, or
drifting away to other mobile platforms?

*Keeping the Maemo community vibrant after MeeGo hitting the market will be
a difficult thing to do. It is important to make sure that all the cutting
edge developers and early adapters will not just disappear one day from
maemo.org to appear at meego.com. Nobody can be held with force, but a
general spirit of the smooth transition should be created. Personally I will
get MeeGo device when it is available but it will not be an overnight 100%
switch. Maemo community will still be vibrant with universal ideas, packages
needing maintenance, people asking for help. A quick exodus of advanced
users is probably the worst thing that may happen to community (both Maemo
and MeeGo, as it will create tensions). *
*After the day one impact is soften, a question to ask is how to keep Maemo
community vibrant in the situation of Maemo being a legacy system. It is, of
course, important to see that this community will slowly shrink and
eventually cease to be, just as it is happening with communities of
different generations of NITs. *
*An important thing to do will be to emphasize the common things of Maemo
and MeeGo: general philosophy of the devices, very similar development
environment, similar use cases (and probably problems). This should be
widely discussed so the two communities are aware of their similarity.
Ultimately, a cross-reference system could be worked out (referencing answer
from MeeGo to question asked at Maemo and vice-versa).*


5) What are your thoughts about existing maemo.org resources (such
as Extras, auto-builder, Bugzilla) as Nokia, and the paid contributors, look
to the future?

*In the process of transition to MeeGo, those resources should be utilized
as much as possible, as they are probably the best working parts of
maemo.org. *
*I'm not really sure if those can be reused directly with MeeGo, but the
general framework seems to be working very well so far (with some possible
tweaks).*
*An important improvement should be a bit restructured layout of those
systems. Right now it may get very confusing where the information about,
for example, package is and where users can vote for it. Shortly: less pages
to visit, less redundant information. *


6) How can we encourage more, and higher quality, applications for Maemo -
and specifically through Extras?

*In my opinion the general quality of applications in Extras is quite high.
An important step is to have requirement for testing team members to vote
for application so it can make it to Extras.*
*Entirely different question is the general level of applications created
for Maemo (and their quantity). N900 is a powerful device, with many
development environments available, but still the number of applications and
their iCandy factor is quite low. There are two basic issues that can be
spotted here: lack of documentation and lack of payment content framework in
Ovi Store.*
*
*
*The former is a dealbreaker in many cases: forcing developer to reverse
engineering things that should be written in bold print in documentation is
not acceptable. This moaning is mostly about platform-specific functions
(sending sms, using camera, vibration) as soon-to-be-stable Qt 4.6 has very
good documentation on its own. Still, being part of this community for a
while, it is still not entirely clear to me, if it us who should write
documentation (from reverse engineering?) or should Nokia deliver it?
Something is not working in this department, which also results in many
hacks used in applications and this has direct impact on their quality.*
*
*
*The success (commercial) of Apple Store shows clearly that good and simple
framework for paid content is a must. N900 lacks it entirely and I do not
see it being fixed before MeeGo arrives (if only then). This is an issue
that may have a huge impact in the match among operating systems on the
market. *


Thank you for your attention :)


Best regards / Med venlig hilsen / Z poważaniem,

Arek



On 14 March 2010 21:14, Andrew Flegg <andrew at bleb.org> wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 14, 2010 at 20:12, Arek <arek.stopczynski at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm quite a new member to this community, I have done some things with
> older
> > NITs, but my real involvement started with n900.
>
> Excellent, fresh blood is always welcome :-)
>
> I've a few questions for the candidates, your answers would be appreciated:
>
>
> Sprint process
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> This is the main organised point of contact between Nokia, the paid
> contributors and the community, however the maemo.org sprint process
> is quite heavy for volunteers and it often seems to be a checklist
> affair; rather than a collaborative planning exercise.
>
> 1) Do you see any flaws in it, and how do you think it can be improved?
>
> 2) What are your thoughts on ongoing communication during the sprint?
>
>
> MeeGo
> ~~~~~
> MeeGo is, IMHO, the single biggest thing to happen to Maemo since the
> 770. In many ways, it's the opening up of the design processes that
> many of us have wanted in Maemo for so long. As Maemo as an operating
> system disappears, this will have a big effect on the community.
>
> 3) As we move from "day zero" to "day one", what do you think the
> priorities for the MeeGo community should be?
>
> 4) Should leaders in the MeeGo community (whether from a Moblin or
> Maemo background) try to move the existing communities with them to
> form the MeeGo community; or should a new community form around the
> operating system and its devices?
>
> 4a) If yes, what steps should be taken to prevent overreactions and
> allegations of "take over" that happened when internettablettalk.com's
> theme changed to match the rest of maemo.org?
>
> 4b) If no, how do you see the relationship between the Maemo community
> which has been "left behind" and the MeeGo community? How does the
> Maemo community stay vibrant if large portions on moving on to Maemo's
> successor, or drifting away to other mobile platforms?
>
> 5) What are your thoughts about existing maemo.org resources (such as
> Extras, auto-builder, Bugzilla) as Nokia, and the paid contributors,
> look to the future?
>
>
> Community
> ~~~~~~~~~
>
> 6) How can we encourage more, and higher quality, applications for
> Maemo - and specifically through Extras?
>
>
> Thanks for your time in answering these questions. Your answers are
> much appreciated.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Andrew
>
> --
> Andrew Flegg -- mailto:andrew at bleb.org  |  http://www.bleb.org/
>
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