[maemo-developers] [MeeGo-community] Open Letter/Proposal to allow Maemo on the MeeGo Community OBS

[From: David Greaves]

This issue has recently received some attention from this post onwards:
   http://bugs.meego.com/show_bug.cgi?id=615#c26
so I felt it worth re-posting this to remind people of the original request.

Summary : We would like to support the Maemo community in migrating to MeeGo by 
allowing them to build open-source applications that link against a mix of open 
_and closed_ libraries on the MeeGo _Community_ OBS.

Cross-posted again... please discuss on meego-community.

Thanks.

David
PS as an aside we have almost finished the OSU deployment thanks to a long weekend.

Details here:
   http://wiki.meego.com/Build_Infrastructure/Community_Builder/Installation


On 15/06/10 18:16, David Greaves wrote:
> This is an open letter to the whole MeeGo community and on behalf of the
> Maemo development community. The purpose of this letter is to ask the
> MeeGo community for their permission to bring Maemo build targets
> (currently Fremantle eventually Harmattan, Diablo, Chinook?) to the
> MeeGo Community OBS and to ask the Maemo development community for their
> support in this project.
>
> *Please discuss on meego-community mailing list*
>
> I would like to emphasise that this is a Maemo Community initiative and
> is not being pushed by Nokia.
>
> At this point we are not aware of any similar initiatives related to the
> Moblin community but we would fully support any that arise.
>
> The Maemo community has built up around Nokia devices which, in many
> ways, are amongst the most open devices available in their class. There
> is a passion for openness in the Maemo community and we know that the
> future for this family of devices lies with MeeGo.
>
> Many of us are looking forward to MeeGo and are keen to transition as
> smoothly as possible.
>
> However our devices are not fully open and developing for them has
> dependencies on vendor proprietary binaries which would need to be
> available on the build service. This would mean putting closed binaries
> on the MeeGo OBS and having a part of the MeeGo Community OBS
> functionality being 'restricted' to Maemo developers.
>
> Naturally we recognise and respect that MeeGo is an open source project
> and there may be ideological issues in allowing closed binaries into the
> ecosystem (even though they're just for build/linking). We also
> recognise the risk of "opening the door" to closed binaries and suggest
> that this arrangement could be agreed as a one-time "grandfathering in"
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_clause) situation for the
> Maemo community.
>
> However we also feel that the benefits of supporting a smooth transition
> for the vibrant Maemo development community would be worthwhile both for
> MeeGo and Maemo:
>
> * developers would be able to use the OBS' natural ability to target
> Fremantle, Harmattan and MeeGo from a single location. This would bring
> more developers and their applications to MeeGo sooner.
>
> * many of the same people in the Maemo and MeeGo community teams look
> after the Maemo Autobuilder and the MeeGo application OBS. Our limited
> volunteer time would be used more effectively on a single platform
> instance.
>
> * resources earmarked for Maemo could be added to the MeeGo estate and
> would naturally be used at peak efficiency as Maemo demand decreases and
> MeeGo demand rises.
>
> * new Maemo community Quality Assurance processes would evolve around
> the shared
> OBS and could assist the development of MeeGo QA processes.
>
> and perhaps most important of all:
>
> * users of existing devices could expect a significantly longer
> maintainable life from products built on a consolidated build service
> and could look forward to their applications being available on MeeGo as
> soon as devices become available.
>
> The maemo.org buildservice already has a 'proof of concept' instance of
> the OBS which allows the Fremantle target to co-exist with a MeeGo
> target and we already intend to use this as a basis for the MeeGo
> community OBS.
>
> The proposed solution *must* allow MeeGo community users to use the
> MeeGo Community OBS without any reference to Nokia closed binaries; this
> facet of the service should be entirely optional.
>
> Equally the legal issues around the closed binaries require an EULA
> related to demonstrated possession of a relevant device. This can be
> handled in a similar manner to the Maemo Autobuilder service; ie
> registration of a serial# to a developer account.
>
> The proposal therefore is:
>
> * To provide the closed binaries as a build-target repository (probably
> DoD for those who know and care) on the community OBS.
>
> * To grant ACL based access to this repository based on acceptance of an
> EULA
>
> * To *not* require any such EULA for 'MeeGo-only' accounts on the service
>
> I've run this by Tero Kejo in Nokia and he's very supportive of the
> idea.
>
> From:
> David Greaves / lbt
> Community Member and build systems guy.
> Niels Breet / X-Fade
> maemo.org webmaster and autobuild owner
> Carsten Munk / Stskeeps
> maemo.org distmaster
> Andrew Flegg / Jaffa
> on behalf of the Maemo Community Council
> _______________________________________________
> MeeGo-community mailing list
> MeeGo-community at meego.com
> http://lists.meego.com/listinfo/meego-community


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