<p>When I first ran for Community Council one year ago, I did so because
of the challenges I saw posed by Nokia's embrace of WP7. While others
declared this community dead and encouraged people to migrate to MeeGo, I
was one of the loudest voices asking people to stay the course with
maemo. I am proud of what the community has accomplished since last
summer, and of the many people who have helped to build the momentum of
today despite the people who have left. The number of "doers" may be
drastically less than years ago, but I believe that most of the people
who are still here are dedicated to having maemo-related OSS available
in the future for mobile devices. The last council period was time
intensive for me, but I decided to run again because the turnaround is
unfinished and several of the other candidates have asked me to continue
to work with them.
</p><p>In my opinion, the most important thing for the community to do
is to decide and clearly state what it wants to do - a mission statement
- I suggest "to promote and progress the future availability of
maemo-related OSS for pocketable devices"; and then plan to accomplish
that mission. There are many hurdles to this and I realize that some
may believe that it cannot be accomplished, but the things worth doing
are rarely easy to do.
</p><p>I believe that the maemo community can and should organize itself
better in order to achieve its goals. The organizational structure
that the community had five years ago when Nokia was pushing out a
series of maemo devices is not the optimal structure for today. Maemo
is in survival mode and the idea that the community should just sit back
and let happen what will happen is dangerous. This is not to say that
every maemo project should not be supported, but that there should be
some management - nothing overwhelming but perhaps something like what
is seen in other OSS projects. And everytime something is proposed, we
ask ourselves - "how does the proposal further the mission statement?"
</p><p>I realize that there are those who are nostalgic for the old days
and want the Council to have a limited role of interfacing with Nokia.
But that won't work, at least not to accomplish the mission that I
propose, not when Nokia has made no indication that they will be
providing any more devices for maemo-related software. The various
comments about communication are a distraction from the real significant
challenges, such as how to deal with Nokia and its surrogates whose
goals are laudable and overlapping, but slightly different the mission
statement I have proposed. When there was silence or non-cooperation,
that was not for lack of communication skills, but because of
underlying, background concerns. The important thing is that the
challenges have been beat back over the last six months, maemo did not
die after all and can move forward again.
</p><p>As to other related projects and parties, I think they should be
viewed in light of whether they further the mission statement.
Obviously, projects like Mer/Nemo and Qt are complementary. There is
the problem that maemo is partially closed, and the next software step
is not maemo in a pure sense but some mashup of maemo with Mer or other
projects. Other projects and parties, such as Nokia, are not quite so
clearly complementary. If there is a new Nokia "meltemi" or other
device that fits well with the community goals, then that will be
something we work together to promote. I do believe that the lack of
maemo-suitable hardware is a big hurdle for the community. Council
should address this challenge proactively wherever the solutions may
lie, and not have a laissez-faire approach. <br></p><p>Rob (SD69)<br></p>