[SailfishDevel] A kickoff meeting about SailfishOS, open source, collaboration, way forward @ 15 April, 15:00 UTC

[Carsten Munk]

On 04/04/14 19:39, Filip Kłębczyk wrote:
> W dniu 04.04.2014 18:00, Carsten Munk pisze:
>> Hi,
>>
>> There has been a lot of discussion surrounding SailfishOS, the open
>> source parts of it (incl. middleware within Mer and Nemo Mobile project)
>> and collaboration methods/practices -- and that we can do better than
>> how things are today.
>
> Hi,
>
> Your mail is direct reaction to this widely retweeted tweet today:
>
> https://twitter.com/fk_lx/status/452037379038408704
>
> and previous discussion that was conducted on Twitter. It's worth to
> notice problem was published long time ago at Together, before it became
> hot:
>
> https://together.jolla.com/question/680/co-creation-leading-to-co-development/#post-id-1214
>
> https://together.jolla.com/question/680/co-creation-leading-to-co-development/#post-id-6833
>
>
> Since that time, no significant actions have been taken to fix that, but
> that can be understood and justified considering other important things
> for Jolla like preparing to MWC and Sailfish going out of beta.
>

It's safe to say that we've been in a crazy race to conditionally 
deliver features, fixes and ensuring our existence.

We would probably have had more time if we didn't switch SoC and do a 
Qt4->Qt5 + X11/Wayland transition; it's been too busy and we've lagged 
behind in doing proper open development with roadmapping ('Do everything 
needed to deliver a working product' isn't a good roadmap item), 
explaining our actions, transparency around our open source components. 
It's a good time to something about it now.

The discussions you link to have been a big source of inspiration to do 
something about this topic, as there has been many valid points in them.

> We would really like to have constructive talk with the decisive people
> around Sailfish, that have real influence and can change how open source
> collaboration looks in practice (whoever those people are).
 > We also want
> for Jolla engineers who work on open source parts take part in that
> discussion, as it's a topic that is directly connected with their work.

I will do my best to make sure that the right people will be there - a 
meeting where nobody can take actions or act on the meeting results 
isn't a good one.

> I only have doubts that if it will be normal, uncontrolled IRC
> discussion, that it might result in chaos (like many of those that were
> made on this topic on IRC before).

> I wanted to give my own proposal how
> such discussion should look like from organizational point of view, so
> there would be a chance for it's results to be satisfying for both sides
> (Jolla & OSS community).
 >

I agree, we still have time to set up an agenda - first thing you need 
to do is set a date in advance to make sure people will show up, then a 
proper agenda.

I've opened an etherpad at http://piratepad.net/SailfishOSSMeeting - 
please add topics for discussion.

Agenda is intentionally left blank as to make sure proper agenda items 
are brought up.	

A background thing for this meeting is that (this is with my Mer and 
Nemo middleware hat on), there is an idea and/or intention is to merge 
the Mer and Nemo middleware repositories and infrastructure (bugtracker, 
git repositories, OBS repositories) together under the Mer project.

There has been a long unnatural split between Mer and Nemo middleware 
and a bit unclear one sometimes; causing also a semi-fork of Mer 
packages (Qt5) as Mer couldn't move fast enough. In the end, what most 
want from Mer is a solid mobile core and hence ended up using a 
combination of Mer and Nemo middleware anyway.

In that regard, there is a good opportunity to establish new practices 
and patterns of collaboration, hence why this meeting is a good thing to 
start with.

In the ideal future world from my point of view, if you'd like to 
contribute to SailfishOS open source middleware; you'd be contributing 
to Mer. Currently it is too confusing to contribute to - too much split 
information, different practices, different bugtrackers, even differing 
packaging practices, etc.

> I haven't had time to made it yet, because I
> had quite busy day, but I hope the fact that Carsten already took first
> step and proposed a meeting does still give me a chance for doing that.
> I think it's really important for the discussion to have proper and calm
> form and I think it's possible considering goodwill on both sides.

Yes, I think we can do this.

>
> Regards,
> Filip
>
> PS. Personally I really count that Marc Dillon (Head of Software
> Development in Jolla) will take part in it.

BR
Carsten Munk