Discussion 1/3: Openmoko community feelings

My previous post about the status of the Openmoko community generated some great discussion about the Openmoko community and software status. I haven’t been able to reply earlier so I’ll write here some of my thoughts to clarify the original post and present you some of the ‘best’ comments from others.

The discussion is in three parts to make it easier to read. This first post discusses the status of the community. The second post is the ‘wishlist’ from some community members to Openmoko and the third discusses one of the possible solutions to support the community.

What some others feel?

It looks like that most of others who replied share my thoughts. The comments without the e-mail addresses are from community mailing list, the rest from the comments of my previous post. Remember, these are only parts from the messages so please check the original posts for more details!

Tomas Riveros Schober <triveros@xxxxxx>     Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 5:40 PM
My brother feels exactly like you. Thing is, he packed his freerunner in the box and saved it for when its more developed (aka, ready). However, I do believe that there’s lack of community communication with openmoko…

October 4, 2008 at 5:57 pm / Uzytkownik
I have more or less the same feeling. The OM Community is not as friendly as it could. Don’t get me wrong. I’m really happy I’ve bought OM and it is the best phone I ever had. But it could be much better.

Michael Frandsen <mf1910@xxxxxx> Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 7:23 PM
I feel more or less the same way.

I have not give up but I really wish I could contribute more I keep on trying and wait and hope for things to get fixed. that’s most I can hope right now.

t m <ttb.1001@xxxxxx> Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 9:12 PM
I think the guys from OM are really working hard to get us a great phone. I’m not always sure if they got the same priorities as we have. For me the most important thing right now is a working pone. Until I’ve seen some reports of more than 1 person that an image has got phoning, smsing and battery under control I’m not going to use mine.I’d like to file in bug reports, but hey.. these are so obvious I don’t care about investing more time in the phone. It’s collecting dust right now, and I’m using a phone I know I can count on.

October 5, 2008 at 12:20 am / Ferenc Veres
I couldn’t agree more: all points of this blog post. The worst in this all, that normally I DO know how to get a backtrace or hack a source code. Not in Openmoko. I failed with everything I tried.

October 8, 2008 at 6:14 am / Kevin Dean
I agree with about 99% of your points here.

I’m not entirely sure I blame Openmoko. I mean, the Openmoko brand is certainly going to be what takes the hit, but I get the sense that there were internal factors (like investors threatening to pull money) that caused several decisions to be made.

Ole Kliemann <ole-om-community-2008@xxxxxx>     Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 3:33 PM
I experienced it the very same way. If you looked just at www.openmoko.com, you would think GTA02 was a ready phone for end-users. I can be blamed for not informing myself enough. But I think OM at least tolerated the possibility of users being misinformed. Otherwise they should have put a clear warning on openmoko.com. But honestly, I still love this project. OM after all is providing the first free phone. It is about time that man reclaimed machine. And this is a very important step towards it.

Still there is a lot of disappointment. And that certainly comes from a lack of communication and information. I experience an unopenness concerning things that don’t work yet.

Xavier Bestel <xavier.bestel@xxxxxx> Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 10:36 PM
That said, I admit people buying a Freerunner thinking it would work out of the box got it wrong. It’s still a hacker’s toy.

“Marco Trevisan (Treviño)” <mail@xxxxxx> Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 9:44 PM
Going back to the general thread, I was saying that OM was lacking of comuncation also 4 months ago, but I know that developers should develop first of all (and I’m with them, I’d prefer that too), so to me it seems that there’s a lack of people in Openmoko (they’re too few for that should be done).

It looks like that there are some people who are not very satisfied with the current situation. Some bought the phone thinking they’d get a phone suitable for everyday usage. Too bad – I agree that some more information about the status of the software would be good to have on the sites selling Freerunner.

My biggest concern is not that none of the distros we have works great, I still have my old phone around. What makes me feel uncomfortable is being uninformed about the status and development as well as having this feeling of uselessness but that might change when I upgrade to a supported distro and hopefully will be able to report some bugs.

October 5, 2008 at 8:50 am / Kombipom
Creating a truly open-source phone platform is a monumental task, Openmoko are battling closed-hardware and every user wants something different. It shouldn’t really be a surprise to anyone that there has been fragmentation, this project will take years but has the potential to make a real difference to mobile computing and communication.

October 8, 2008 at 11:56 pm / MikeD
I’ve been following the OpenMoko project for a long time now. I bought into the promise of an open and free linux-based smart phone. I was sold. Then I waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. Communication has been very infrequent. And worse, the project doesn’t look like it is making any progress. The hardware looks sound. But the software isn’t even close yet.

Stroller <stroller@xxxxxx> Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 8:27 AM
I think you depend upon Openmoko Inc. to “provide” the community. Or perhaps direction for the community. I don’t know if that’s possible.

Additionally, I think most of us, as Linux geeks, disagree with Openmoko Inc. on what software for our phones should look like. Openmoko want to sell their next generation of phones to little old ladies and teenagers, and are prepared to sacrifice complexity to do that. And they won’t be asking the community how we want our phones.

But what Openmoko HAS given us is wonderful, wonderful phone hardware which runs fully open-source software. I have realised that any criticism I might make of Openmoko must pale in comparison beside this – they’re the ONLY people who have yet done so.

It’s going to be impossible to look at just a wiki or two and try and get a handle of everything that’s going on.

Michele Renda <michele.renda@xxxxxx> Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 5:58 PM
I don’t know what Openmoko is working for, for me their work is a dbus interface. It seem to be a very good work!

So… In the end, I don’t considerate myself unrespected. There is only a lot of work to do, and who can must to try to help on the accessory part that trasform a normal phone, in a super phone.

vasco.nevoa@sapo.pt <vasco.nevoa@xxxxxx> Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 6:42 PM
But just like the others, I don’t know what OM (the company) is doing. I know it is keeping FSO on track, which was always the real objective of OM (the project) and this is a Good Thing. But I don’t understand why there are so many distros, and none of them works as a solid basic
system.

Minh Ha Duong <haduong@xxxxxx> Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 9:46 PM
My understanding is that Om would like nothing more than community developpers take charge of the applications and distributions, so that they can focus on hardware, kernel and framewiork. But it’s an egg and chicken think, it can’ happen overnight.

As a community member, I feel that Om showing us total respect. Developpers, managers, and other all read and write to the lists. Of course it there is room for improvement,

As for blog posts: There is Mickey’s blog on the Planet, but indeed it would be nice to read from Sean more often. The Weekly Engineering Report should be added to the planet too.

Clemens Kirchgatterer <clemens@xxxxxx> Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 8:31 PM
I just read on /. that motorola is expanding its Android Developer Team from 50 to 350 people!!! everybody working in a small software development company knows what OM has already achieved. my respect to the people from OM!

David Samblas <dsamblasomcommunity@xxxxxx> Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 11:31 PM
I’m a foreigner too, but when I feel lost  I don’t sit down and cry, I search for a more actualiced guide or ask , aboriginals here are very friendly, and even a lot of experienced foreigner are happy to help you too.

Stroller <stroller@xxxxxx> Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 11:06 AM
Running a business is all about customer satisfaction, but you can’t keep EVERYONE happy. There will always be 1 or 2 who “don’t get it”, and they just happen to be vocal about it. You’ve already satisfied 99% of us with your open-source mobile phone platform – already so many people are bringing their own ideas and (more importantly) work to that. Ignore the whiners! I don’t include Risto in that characterisation, but I don’t see how you can please him.

In 6 months time you will have some amazing community distros for your phones, and at least then the “incomplete” complaint will be satisfied. Those that “don’t get it”, meanwhile, will have found something else to complain about. This is the nature of open source.

I have to agree with the authors here: Openmoko has done a great job creating two models of a free, linux-capable GSM phone with great innovative hardware in less than two years, making it more or less profitable: At the current volumes and the current cost of operations we are where we need to be (source).

I must admit that the weekly engineering news was something I didn’t know about earlier (thanks sadsammy and Minh!) and I’m very pleased to see this released. Could someone post these to Planet and community mailing lists?

Some feel that there’s a lack of information, some are bored with many incomplete distros as others hail Openmoko for their achievements. Obviously Openmoko has done something great but there’s still something to do better with the community.

Next post will discuss the wishes from the community to Openmoko.

NOTE: The quoted texts are copyrighted by the original authors and therefore not covered by the licence this blog uses!

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