[Community] ... (Organisation)

[Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller]

Hi,

Am 01.06.2014 um 20:03 schrieb wonderphone at posteo.de:

> Hi,
> 
> Am 29.05.2014 19:05 schrieb David Heath:
>> I am not in a position to help financially
> 
> That is not a problem. In order to keep the community in control we should try to finance our common plans in the already employed grassroots way.
> 
>> and I don't live near Germany
> 
> Germany was only a first guess. Maybe another legislation is much more suitable.
> 
>> but I do think reorganizing would help keep the project on
>> track. I am very interested in speeding up development, shipping
>> phones, and building out our niche worldwide.

Well, the key factor for speeding up all this is more demand for specific devices
as we currently see. The statistics currently say differently. Approx. 30 preorders
for GTA04A5 and ~370 for a Neo900 device. And this is the result of 6 months.

Big companies are producing and shipping these quantities in less than 1 minute.

In other words: the products are not attractive for the masses. Even the masses of
open source developers you can meet at FOSDEM.

What can we do about that?

> 
> @ Nikolaus, dos, jOERG: How do you see the relationship of Goldelico and Neo900 UG within the OpenPhoenux community?

I can only speak for Goldelico:

* Goldelico has founded this OpenPhoenux community (see history [1])
* and has supported it financially (e.g. by providing server space,
   presenting the community at events like FOSDEM or LinuxTag)
* Goldelico is seeing itself as a member of the community - side to
   side with other developers - contributing the best it can to the benefit
   of all. E.g. developing devices, having them produced and making
   them available (shop)
* Goldelico is listening to ideas discussed on the mailing list to decide
   for new products Goldelico wants to offer. So this list is sort of a
   user (and potential user) forum.
* Goldelico is helping (amongst others) to get the yearly OpenPhoenux
   Hard- and Software Workshop organised: http://www.ohsw.org

> Is there already anything scheduled that you want to do yourselves and do not want other guys from the community to mix with? Of course, the community has other things to do before, but what would you think if the community opened a shop that sells GTA04 devices?

What would that be good for? The community member Goldelico
already offers the GTA04 devices for sales

http://shop.goldelico.com/wiki.php?page=GTA04A5

and asks for donations:

http://shop.goldelico.com/wiki.php?page=GTA04%3ADonation

But of course there is plenty of room to increase the demand for GTA04 devices.

The key issue is to address reach new potential users. And find out
what they need, what the want, why they take something different
why they don't participate here...

> What would you think if the community managed to agree on a priority list of operating systems

I think this is not a good idea since it is contrary to the current approach of providing
devices that support multiple OS (which is quite unique).

By giving one of them some preference, this would run the risk to optimise hardware
for a specific OS and making trouble to others. OpenPhoenux devices have the target
to support as many OS as possible. Contrary to those throw-away devices of
${MANUFACTURER}.

One of the key messages (second line of left column) of http://www.gta04.org says:

"Runs Debian, SHR, QtMoko and whatever free and open distribution you like."

We should add Replicant there as well.

> and used its funds to support programmers to go in that direction?

Do you mean something like this?

http://projects.goldelico.com/p/openphoenux/page/PaidDeveloper/

BTW: some people did just recently give funds to further develop the kernel
and replicant. So there is already a little financing of activities, but it could
be much more!

> What if the community becomes demanding about the design of the devices, e. g. if people wanted /this/ module-something instead of another one?

Hm. This requires some mechanism to do arbitration since there is never
not enough money to pay professionals to do it in quick time.

Let's say it also this way: demanding something from somebody in an
open source community is difficult and usually fails.

So my approach to this should be: people who want something differently
should discuss their dreams here on the list. And those who feel more capable
of making dreams come true can comment on ideas t find ways to get them
really real.

> 
>> Momentum is important in
>> these matters. I am happy to advise on business or marketing
>> strategies if the project is headed in that direction. What is the
>> development timeline? What still needs to be done technically?
> 
> To keep track of these questions easily and continuously an enhanced website would be helpful.

That is what the Wiki is for:

http://projects.goldelico.com/p/openphoenux/doc/

Please feel free to create/maintain new pages with interesting content.

BR,
Nikolaus

[1]: http://projects.goldelico.com/p/gta04-main/page/News/
[2]: http://projects.goldelico.com/p/gta04-main/page/Events/