[maemo-community] My Perception of the Maemo/MeeGo Community

[From: Sivan Greenberg]

Hi Michael,


On Sat, Aug 13, 2011 at 10:08 PM, Michael Cronenworth <mike at cchtml.com> wrote:
> I feel I should explain my thoughts of the Maemo/MeeGo community from the
> perspective of a US resident. I realize my opinions are mine and mine alone.
> I welcome any response, particularly those who live in the US. My perception
> of the Maemo/MeeGo community is that those directly involved (Nokia
> employees, Maemo council members, Maemo workers) have a self-entitled,
> elitist attitude. I cannot recount any time I have had a warm, fuzzy feeling
> from discussions that I have been associated with or not. Yes, the preceding
> is a general, subjective comment. Let me break it down:
>

I on the other hand always felt very welcomed and I still do today in
both communities. Some of this elitist approach might look like just
out of the fact that those people involved really know what they are
doing (this is still my general perception) and in my own subjective
personal experience, when I followed them and listened carefully for
what they had to say, I wisened terribly.

I have been involved with two many many open source projects, and in
my personal experience, MeeGo/Maemo  (and a super set of the core
Nokia/subcontractor people on top of that that I am lucky to be in
contact with) communities are one of the friendliest I have ever been
part of. I feel best welcomed there, to be honest. The tolerance level
of the hard core technical people btw, in my again subjective
experience is much higher than other linux based communities that are
so specialized and hardware centric.

I had become quite appreciated and really valued in those communities
(at least this is my subjective feeling ;)), while concentrating
mostly on organisation, promotion, bug reporting planning and other
contributions. Most of them not directly related to app development or
hacking on the core platform. Maybe it is a thing of perception? Maybe
it is a difference in expectation ? I don't know. I'm sure that if you
give it a second try and try to keep contact with the people you did
manage to feel good communication with, your feeling would get better.
My feeling of welcome actually made me give this talk in the last
meego conf in sf , 2011:

http://sf2011.meego.com/program/sessions/we-want-you-new-meego-recruit

If this helps, around meego you can always contact me when you feel
you are not welcomed or you have questions that you think were not
answered to point, I will do my best to try and help.

-Sivan