Council Meeting

There will be a Council meeting (IRC - #maemo-meeting) at 15:00 UTC on
Tuesday April 17. Preliminary agenda is as follows:

Preliminary Agenda:
1. Welcome (back) to QGil/Update from Nokia(?)
2. Community OBS
3. Council Election voting
4. Left-over topics from last council meeting (if timely)
A. Qt style license agreement for maemo
B. Co-maintainership for CSSU repo

On 11 April 2012 15:01, robert bauer <nybauer@gmail.com> wrote:
> There will be a Council meeting (IRC - #maemo-meeting) at 15:00 UTC on
> Tuesday April 17.  Preliminary agenda is as follows:

>  Preliminary Agenda:
>  1.  Welcome (back) to QGil/Update from Nokia(?)
>  2.  Community OBS

Could you share a link to the appropriate background discussion; there
are a few? I'd also like to make sure I record the follow on
discussion I had with X-Fade after #mer-meeting in the right place.

>  3.  Council Election voting
>  4.  Left-over topics from last council meeting (if timely)
>       A.  Qt style license agreement for maemo

...and the same for this. Is there an actual proposal of what "Qt
style license" actually would mean for a closed/open mixed project?[1]

>       B.  Co-maintainership for CSSU repo

Background: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=82372
Short version: MohammadAG was absent and there were changes the CSSU
developers would have liked to push, but the Garage account was linked
to Mohammad's RSA keys. A shared account is now being used as the
obvious workaround, but there's a decision for the community
prioritisation[2] as to how far up X-Fade's task list supporting
multiple different keys for the CSSU project is appropriate (unless it
is an easy win)

Thanks in advance,

Andrew

[1] http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=1190357&postcount=810
[2] http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=1187621&postcount=41

--
Andrew Flegg -- mailto:andrew@bleb.org  |  http://www.bleb.org/

On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 03:19:24PM +0100, Andrew Flegg wrote:
> On 11 April 2012 15:01, robert bauer <nybauer@gmail.com> wrote:
> > There will be a Council meeting (IRC - #maemo-meeting) at 15:00 UTC on
> > Tuesday April 17.  Preliminary agenda is as follows:
>
> >  Preliminary Agenda:
> >  1.  Welcome (back) to QGil/Update from Nokia(?)
> >  2.  Community OBS
>
> Could you share a link to the appropriate background discussion; there
> are a few? I'd also like to make sure I record the follow on
> discussion I had with X-Fade after #mer-meeting in the right place.
>
> >  3.  Council Election voting
> >  4.  Left-over topics from last council meeting (if timely)
> >       A.  Qt style license agreement for maemo
>
> ...and the same for this. Is there an actual proposal of what "Qt
> style license" actually would mean for a closed/open mixed project?[1]

I agree with Andrew here, there needs to be much more information. It
is unclear how a dual license scheme (i.e. Qt style license) would fit
here. How do you propose to close software that is explicitly licensed
as open?

[snip]

Regards,

Jeremiah

On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 10:19 AM, Andrew Flegg <andrew@bleb.org> wrote:

> On 11 April 2012 15:01, robert bauer <nybauer@gmail.com> wrote:
> > There will be a Council meeting (IRC - #maemo-meeting) at 15:00 UTC on
> > Tuesday April 17. Preliminary agenda is as follows:
>
> > Preliminary Agenda:
> > 1. Welcome (back) to QGil/Update from Nokia(?)
> > 2. Community OBS
>
> Could you share a link to the appropriate background discussion; there
> are a few? I'd also like to make sure I record the follow on
> discussion I had with X-Fade after #mer-meeting in the right place.
>
There's a thread on developer's ML with the meeting logs. I don't think
there has been much discussion elsewhere.


>
> > 3. Council Election voting
> > 4. Left-over topics from last council meeting (if timely)
> > A. Qt style license agreement for maemo
>
> ...and the same for this. Is there an actual proposal of what "Qt
> style license" actually would mean for a closed/open mixed project?[1]
>
> This does indeed refer to a perpetual license to redistribute maemo closed
packages. No inventory exists yet of the desired packages. Not picked up
from Graham Cobb - this is a carryover from its earlier introduction in
January.


> > B. Co-maintainership for CSSU repo
>
> Background: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=82372
> Short version: MohammadAG was absent and there were changes the CSSU
> developers would have liked to push, but the Garage account was linked
> to Mohammad's RSA keys. A shared account is now being used as the
> obvious workaround, but there's a decision for the community
> prioritisation[2] as to how far up X-Fade's task list supporting
> multiple different keys for the CSSU project is appropriate (unless it
> is an easy win)
>
Not a prioritization, but a request to learn what needs to be done to make
this happen (and whether it is a relatively small amount of time)

Rob



>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Andrew
>
> [1] http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=1190357&postcount=810
> [2] http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=1187621&postcount=41
>
> --
> <http://www.bleb.org/>
>

> Qt style license agreement for maemo

I also don't understand what does this mean. While Qt is a clearly
defined set of modules, all developed under the same upstream project,
contribution agreement, etc... Maemo (the OS) is a much wider collection
of software with several types of licenses (open, closed) and upstreams
(Nokia, OSS communities, private companies).

There is not much to discuss about the licenses that make Maemo since
Nokia has no intention to touch that now.

If we are talking about defining a Maemo community in similar terms than
the Qt Project, that is a totally different discussion. But still the
point above would stand: while the mission and scope of the Qt community
at http://qt-project.org is quite clear (using, developing and promoting
Qt libraries & Qt developer tools), http://maemo.org is a lot more fuzzy
and diverse.

Whatever it is, I believe we can progress better moving this to a TMO
discussion instead of IRC.

--
Quim

On Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 2:43 PM, Quim Gil <quim.gil@nokia.com> wrote:

>
> There is not much to discuss about the licenses that make Maemo since
> Nokia has no intention to touch that now.
>
> Not surprising but disappointing nonetheless.


>
> Whatever it is, I believe we can progress better moving this to a TMO
> discussion instead of IRC.
>
>
Many people don't think the forum is a good place to get things done. I
tend to agree.

On 15 April 2012 15:03, robert bauer <nybauer@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 2:43 PM, Quim Gil <quim.gil@nokia.com> wrote:
>>
>> There is not much to discuss about the licenses that make Maemo since
>> Nokia has no intention to touch that now.
>
> Not surprising but disappointing nonetheless.

There seem to be three distinct things being discussed, and I'm not
sure everyone is on the same page (this is an observation, and it
could be that *I've* got entirely the wrong end of the stick):

1) Create a self-governing, non-profit legal entity for maemo.org. It is
unclear (to me), what this would accomplish.

2) Relicense Maemo under a "Qt style licence". This would _appear_ to be
asking Nokia to open up source code they've said they haven't got the
staff or motivation to do.

3) Get a permanent licence grant for maemo.org to ship Nokia binaries
(e.g. flasher, firmware) and use them in the build process (SDKs in
autobuilder and COBS). This would have practical advantage and
requires formalising something permanently which is already happening.

>> Whatever it is, I believe we can progress better moving this to a TMO
>> discussion instead of IRC.
>
> Many people don't think the forum is a good place to get things done.  I
> tend to agree.

I would suggest that an IRC meeting is useful after initial
brainstorming/scene setting so that any specifics can be discussed.
However, to get people roughly aligned would be better done via the
mailing lists (the quoting and threading opportunties are better than
TMO for this, I think, but as long as there's a core conversation in a
single place, that's fine).

HTH,

Andrew

--
Andrew Flegg -- mailto:andrew@bleb.org  |  http://www.bleb.org/

On Sun, Apr 15, 2012 at 10:21 AM, Andrew Flegg <andrew@bleb.org> wrote:

> On 15 April 2012 15:03, robert bauer <nybauer@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 2:43 PM, Quim Gil <quim.gil@nokia.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> There is not much to discuss about the licenses that make Maemo since
> >> Nokia has no intention to touch that now.
> >
> > Not surprising but disappointing nonetheless.
>
> There seem to be three distinct things being discussed, and I'm not
> sure everyone is on the same page (this is an observation, and it
> could be that *I've* got entirely the wrong end of the stick):
>
> 1) Create a self-governing, non-profit legal entity for maemo.org. It is
> unclear (to me), what this would accomplish.
>
> 2) Relicense Maemo under a "Qt style licence". This would _appear_ to be
> asking Nokia to open up source code they've said they haven't got the
> staff or motivation to do.
>
> 3) Get a permanent licence grant for maemo.org to ship Nokia binaries
> (e.g. flasher, firmware) and use them in the build process (SDKs in
> autobuilder and COBS). This would have practical advantage and
> requires formalising something permanently which is already happening.
>
> As for the agenda item in the next council meeting, it's 3).

> 3) Get a permanent licence grant for maemo.org to ship Nokia binaries
> (e.g. flasher, firmware) and use them in the build process (SDKs in
> autobuilder and COBS). This would have practical advantage and
> requires formalising something permanently which is already happening.

The current setup works in this sense, right? What are the actual concerns or risks?

A legal entity can only make a formal agreement with another legal entity. That was/is the case of the KDE Free Qt Foundation, which seems to be a source of inspiration of this proposal - http://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php

"maemo.org" is just an Internet domain (owned by Nokia). The Maemo community is not a legal entity.

> Many people don't think the forum is a good place to get things done. I
> tend to agree.

Fine, my point was to avoid starting discussion from zero on IRC. Glad to see the discussion getting fine tuned here.

--
Quim

On Sunday 15 April 2012 17:53:15 quim.gil@nokia.com wrote:
> > 3) Get a permanent licence grant for maemo.org to ship Nokia binaries
> > (e.g. flasher, firmware) and use them in the build process (SDKs in
> > autobuilder and COBS). This would have practical advantage and
> > requires formalising something permanently which is already happening.
>
> The current setup works in this sense, right? What are the actual concerns
> or risks?

My concern (at least, it is a risk) is that Nokia may choose to discontinue
the maemo.org domain and the systems which support it (and related sites).
Particularly the systems which distribute the software which (i) makes the
devices work, and (ii) the software (packages) which allow for development.

A week ago I would have thought the probability of this occuring before the
end of 2012 was very small, although it was a risk for next year. After the
profit warning last week (and the collapse of the share price) I think it has
become a serious risk even for this year (despite budgets being in place). I
can imagine Nokia doing something major like just closing the Linux-based
business altogether, or selling it to another company.

> A legal entity can only make a formal agreement with another legal entity.
> That was/is the case of the KDE Free Qt Foundation, which seems to be a
> source of inspiration of this proposal -
> http://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php

IANAL but I don't agree. An agreement with a legal entity *might* be the
right answer, but Nokia could also just publish a licence available to anyone
who follows certain rules (e.g. no derived works, proper acreditation, non-
commercial, or whatever rules Nokia wants -- not necessarily a CC licence but
along similar lines).

> "maemo.org" is just an Internet domain (owned by Nokia). The Maemo
> community is not a legal entity.

But a legal entity could be set up if necessary. Personally, I prefer the
"licence anyone, under certain conditions" approach (not least because it
could be perpetual, instead of requiring the entity to continue to exist).

Graham