Re: Reminder: Comments for changing GPE hosting

Hi Florian, Mika and all,

I have watched this thread with interest, and have been dismayed by
the flames, rather than a discussion of the facts.
Those involved should know better.
Mika's post was a refreshing change. Thanks Mika :)

My guess is that the move and it's motives are all quite real and
genuine, however, some of the moves/announcements seem to have left
too much to the imagination.

I too would like more detail (to be posted to this list) regarding
these issues. I would also like a (verbose) summary of how GPE,
it's projects, and it's contributors would/will be better off
from this move. (ie. not a three line summary;)

A 2000 word essay on the subject probably isn't necessary :)))
however, a document containing all the detail (in essay form ...
ie. introduction, paragraphs, dot-point-lists, and a conclusion!)
would certainly make more sense to me than wading through a long
thread, sorting facts from flame.
(ie. like a business proposal?)

As a final addition, after allowing contributors/maintainers (and
whomever else counts;) to read all the facts, reasons and summary,
I would like to be assured that an _open_ vote will carry the wish
of the masses, rather than be under the impression that this move
is a foregone conclusion which could conceivably (further) fork the
efforts of the GPE community as a whole.
ie. "2 votes against, and 'numerous' others swinging or positive"
    doth not a ballot make :)

On that basis, along with the aforementioned gaps in information,
and also as a champion of the underdog (Aus. "Tall-Poppy Syndrome";),
I regret to cast a pre-emptive vote of "No thanks, I'm happy with
the project where it is!". Just jot it down in pencil at this stage,
though, as I might change my mind when I better understand the
consequences :)

After all that, who am I to ask? I don't even contribute to GPE
(directly). If I had an opinion would it count? Would my vote be
equal to a long term contributor/maintainer/admin?

... and last but not least, {"do"|"why should"} I care?


Kind regards,

Marcus.


Florian Boor wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> lamikr schrieb:
>>> Though until now noone else spoke up.
>>>   
>> I would be interested in to know a little bit more from this
>> linuxtogo.org and it's organization.
> 
> Sure :-)
> 
>> It seems that the technical issues are not behind the move, it's more
>> like some people are not happy with the
>> handhelds.org organization and want to instead move the projects to
>> their organization?
> 
> That's not completely true... we had quite some discussion about this lately.
> The most important technical reason is that we are free to decide which software
> we want to use for managing the project without the need to ask.
>>From the administrative point of view there are some additional reasons: The
> projects itself can manage access permissions for their projects so that they
> can decide who gets involved and who works on which part of the project.
> 
>> 1) What are the rules and plans in this linuxtogo.org? Is it independent
>> non-profit organization or commercial?
> 
> It is meant to be as free as possible - made by open source people for open
> source people. (See http://www.linuxtogo.org/about for details.)
> The current situation as long as we do not have a different entitiy for this
> purpose the legal "owner" of it is kernel concepts, Nils' company.
> http://www.linuxtogo.org/imprint has the details about this.
> Some legal entity like a German "e.V." would be nice as a "backend" for it, but
> so far noone managed to work on this.
> 
>> 2) I assume that there is some kind of management selected who takes
>> care from the daily issues like hosting.
>>
>>     a) How is the management team selected? Is it possible to vote for
>> it, or is that fixed.
> 
> Currently there is no official definition how to get involved, but everyone is
> invited to join. The idea is to have a similar structure for the development
> platform like we have in open source projects. Like e.g. submitting a patch to
> an open source project you do something for ltg and get more access permissions
> to do things on your own.
> The basic idea is that not a single person has the power alone, so we have
> several people with full access permissions to the main server from the very
> beginning (which in fact is the only "good" to administrate currently).
> 
>> 3) Who makes the decision from the people having write access to
>> repositories? Are there some kind of "code of conduct" rules to follow.
> 
> This can be managed by the project administrators completely unattended from the
> ltg administration.
> 
>>     a) If there is a decision to write some part of the apps to
>> libraries under LGPL and somebody writes new library under GPL v2 or V3 and
>>         refuses to license that to LGPL. Could that be a reason for
>> preventing the write access?
> 
> No, license selection is a matter of the projects.
> 
>>     b) If I would continue to write code to original "Gomunicator"
>> repository in Xanadux just like I have done from the last summer, would
>>          that be a reason which could prevent me to participate to other
>> project with write access in linux-to-go?
> 
> No, that would be a decision of the project members. Just apart from the fact
> that this would be a really bad behaviour if someone would forbid you to
> contribute to an open source project for such a reason.
> 
>>     c) How is it ensured that there does not happen a "sitting in 2
>> hats" situation, where some parts of the project are slowed down, or
>> write to them
>>         is hard because there are some commercial interest for similar
>> work or sad licensing problems.
>>        (I have heard some sad legends why it is very tought to get arm
>> v6 support to qemu...)
> 
> Thats the decision of the project leaders again, it would be quite stupid for a
> free platform to influence this.
> 
>> I hope I was not too hostile with my questions. I think there is a need
>> for linux-to-go, because it is made, but I also feel a little bit
>> suspicious when existing projects are started to gathered to new
>> location with high volume. That's because I kind of feel that the
>> diversity of projects
>> is very important think in the Linux world that ensures that too much
>> things are not lying in the single basket preventing the progress and
>> innovations.
>>  (handhelds.org, htc/xanadux, openembedded, kernel.org, gnu, o-hand-com,
>> kde, gtk, ...)
> 
> Answering these kind of questions is much better than answering to rants :-)

Flamebait is not necessary.

> I agree diversity is important - it is one of the forces that motivate projects
> to listen to their users and work on improvements. Both handhelds.org and gtk
> are good examples for this.
> 
> Greetings
> 
> Florian
>