I can respect that. I understand that the Openmoko team is streached pretty thin. And I wish I had some skills to volunteer to build a forum, but I can't I am more software driven and have no experiance with web development. Maybe someone else can do this. I don't think opening a forum will dilute much energy, but I can see where you are coming from. We are not really a big enough community to launch another communication avenue. I just hope that the openmoko can see how this will help support a good customer base without much intervention on their part, hopefully. What I would hate to see is that when the phone is launched in 6 months that we don't have anything waiting for those novice users and they get turned off by the idea and it get's a bad rep from the start.
I want this project to suceed so badly. I think this is exactly what the communication world needs. I think it offers the strength of linux and the community, but bands it together around a common goal. I think that really emboldens linux and it's users to know that there is support for those who are a littly weiry about trying linux. Linux is a scary word to a lot of people, but if you say don't worry about it we have 1000+ people ready and willing to help with what ever you might have then I think they would be much more willing to accept. I think a forum would be a very easy and cost effective way to do this. I noticed the trouble they had with trying to open a store front end and I am worried that if they wait to long to get a forum up we could run into the same problem, and for a general consumer that could spell disaster. I am very impressed with the progress that the openmoko team don't get me wrong I just really think that a forums is necessary for the sucess of the neo 1973 and I am afraid that no resources will be devoted to this. So maybe what a solution could be is if someone can get a forum up. And let openmoko just route forums.openmoko.com to it. I noticed that openmokoforums.com has been snatched up and along with a few other domains. I would like to see a forum sponsered by FIC/OpenMoko team. Maybe I am jsut blowing smoke and irritating people, but I just really really want openmoko to be sucessful and for me I think that means forums. On 7/20/07, Jeff Rush <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Mathew Davis wrote: > > And I don't understand why we can't have both. I really don't see the > problem so if someone could explain why not having a forum would be > advantageous and not just personal preferance I am all ears, because I > could list a lot of reasons why forums could be advantageous. I appreciate your viewpoint but here are a few reasons: 1. Our community is small -- spreading the discussions thinly before we have reached critical mass will dilute the synergy. We are just now starting to come together as a community, and I think we even have too many mailing lists as it is (not always clear on which one to discuss X). 2. The OpenMoko team at FIC are spread _very_ thin and lack the time/resources to research and establish a forum themselves. They were overloaded just getting a basic storefront up. I don't understand why a company the size of FIC isn't providing more logistics support to them, so they can focus on the hardware/software but that's the way it is today. 3. Because of #2 and the fact this is the world of free/open, groups are welcome to establish a forum someplace and announce it here. In fact no one can stop it. Then instead of debating it you apply the governance principle of open source, in that if you build it will they come. If so, you were right. If not, you were wrong. A very objective approach. And for those (another thread) who are looking for someone official to tell them how this or that is going to be done on the device, I think we as a community will be applying #3 above - teams will form and follow their (quite likely divergent) visions. Those who (1) produce results that (2) some significant portion of the community approve of will have their work integrated into the core as required/optional packages. And some fraction of those will be cherry-picked by FIC for delivery in the consumer distribution. And perhaps other flash images will arise targeted at "the power user" and "the gaming user" and "the multimedia user". Being open source folks and time-constrained themselves, I rather think that the OpenMoko team will be blessing running code and not managing the various teams that form. And that is good, because they cannot see the future uses of this device any better than we at this point. Not a planned economy but a chaotic marketplace of competing ideas, where decisions are made in the free/opensource tradition of "running code" and "rough concensus". Scary sure, but also refreshing and very exciting. -Jeff
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