Re: Re: Building a new home for GPE

Hello all,

In attempt to defuse this situation, that is turning into a needless flamewar
I hope the following will help people to look objectively at this. George, to
be honest I don't really see why digging up what happened to/with Koen has to
do with this GPE move. I understand it stirred up some emotions and that some
GPE people seemingly don't agree with how things where handled then, which
might influence their opinion, just as it influences yours. In the end however
Koen has nothing to do with the GPE project as he is not a contributor (in the
direct sense of the word). Anyway playing with emotions is not the right thing
to do. If people want to do that they should do that privately and not assume
everything the other party does is to hurt, descredit, ... others involved.
Let's take an objective look at this. In one hand we have handhelds.org that
has been hosting GPE (along other projects) for years. Which definitely has it
merits. However handhelds has had it problems, which often were related to the
fact, that despite your brilliant work, it has only one administrator. Which
means that it often took a while before somebody could get access to
contribute (as was the case for me where it took 3 weeks if I remember
correctly), or that some services where unavailable due to you being on a
(probabely well-deserved) holiday and nobody else had the necessary powers to
fix it. Also there is the issue of the hosting itself which has caused you a
lot of trouble, due to troublesome firewalls if I remember correctly. Despite
all this you have done us (as GPE project and everybody involved) a very
valuable service, for which we owe you a lot.
On the other hand we have linuxtogo. New and fresh, and community driven
hosting. People can get extra powers based on their merits. This avoids the
bottleneck we experience at handhelds.org. Being new and fresh it might suffer
from some issues (just like handhelds in the past), however due to having
several administrators this might be solved quicker. ATM kernelconcepts is
paying the bill, but after initial comments on that fact they saw no problem
in moving the hosting etc to an independant organization when somebody would
step up to manage all the paperwork etc that would be involved.
Also let's take a look at who initiated the move. Firstly we have Nils which
is one of the project founders, also we have Florian which is probabely one of
the single biggest contributors of the moment. I think they have every right
to propose such a move and eventually go through with it. However they are
also trying not to fork the project (however it seems that in this thread Nils
actually expressed in anger that it might something they could do). Looking
around at linuxtogo we also have the openembedded project which has as
contributors some other major GPE contributors as Phil Blundell. My guess is
that if there was any issue for him we would already have heard something from
his side, and guessing from his presence on linuxtogo he would not be
objecting. Of course this last part is pure speculation...

Let's also take into account the benefits/disadvantages for GPE. First of all
a move would make for some publicity, also it would allow for a
re-organisation of GPE, a CVS to SVN migration with a repository clean-up. A
newer and leaner project structure to increase productivity, quicker response
on contributions, etc... On the other hand moving location from a by-now well
known location and the eventual event of a half-assed fork, where one of the
branches is bound to die and maybe both, is not a nice perspective. As for
kernelconcepts hijackig GPE. Since the source is LGPL/GPL that would mean they
would have to open up the work they are doing on it anyway, so their
contributions would go to a freely available community project. It is kind of
hard to hijack a project in this manner...

> It is not a question of how much or how little contribution was made.  It is 
> an issue of conduct.  Grievers are not welcome.   

I believe contribution is what matters the most as I pointed out who actually
promotes that move. However I do not want to rule out the smaller
contributors. I just wonder what you mean by grievers as it seems overly
dramatic to me.

> Lets look at Koen's: last 
> e-mail to the GPE mailing list:
> 
> Three paragraphs designed to make people upset and angry. None of them are 
> true.  

Let sleeping dogs lie. This is very personal past and mails like this are not
relevant to the current discussion. We should behave like adults no? (and this
is relevant to both sides)

> It may appear dead from the outside.  Many people have just gotten quiet, 
> are doing things. It is not much fun getting attacked every time they post 
> something.

Good! I wish them luck. However I fail to see how a move from GPE will
influence their work...

Personally I am these days more inclined to follow the linuxtogo proposal for
the clear benefits I see. Also taking into account who started this move I
believe that if GPE branches it will have more chances of surviving on linucto
than on handhelds. I am just sad the general tone has been so hostile and
emotional lately, it is not constructive and will only end up in hurting people.

Regards,

Philippe

 
| Philippe De Swert       
|      
| GPE developer: http://gpe.handhelds.org 
| Emdebian developer: http://www.emdebian.org  
|   
| Please do not send me documents in a closed 
| format.(*.doc,*.xls,*.ppt)    
| Use the open alternatives. (*.pdf,*.ps,*.html,*.txt)    
| http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html  

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