Meeting held on FreeNode, channel #maemo-meeting (logs http://mg.pov.lt/maemo-meeting-irclog/%23maemo-meeting.2012-06-29.log.html#t2012-06-29T21:09:23 )

Attending: Woody14619, SD69, NielDK, Jaffa

Summary of topics (ordered by discussion):
Problems in representation
CA firestorm and proposals
OBS progress and status
Movement on self-sustaining
AI review, other topics.

Topic 1 (Problems in representation)
There has been dispute over personal actions for a few weeks now.
Given Estel's offer in June 15th meeting, proposal is made to remove Chair from Estel.
Three of three present represent a majority, and pass the proposal.
A motion to select and elect a new chair are tabled to next week, in part due to attendance and to reflect on need and responsibilities of the position.

Topic 2 (CA Firestorm and proposals)
A set of proposals is presented for comment and request for actions by Council.
One proposal is requesting devices for Council, freeing CA devices.
Another proposal is requesting if reduced price options are open to Council to buy devices (for use with TMO-raised funds for devices to developers).
There are objections from two Council (one not present), the motion is tabled to next week to allow review and contemplation.

Topic 3 (OBS progress and status)
OBS is moving slower, but still moving.
Documenters are needed, status updated.
SD69 will attend OBS this week, as Woody14619 may not be available (vacation)

Topic 4 (Movement on self-sustaining)
TMO is a-buzz with talk of self-sustaining again, time to move is now.
Discussions about legal entity and US/EU implementation.
Discussions around funding are touched, including startup costs.
By-laws will be drafted and proposed by SD69.
NielDK will look into EU issues on VAT, NFP status and the like.
We should request a rough budget & cost structure from Nokia/Nemein to have a base on where things are now.  Breakdown would be best if we can get it.

Topic 5 (AI & Misc)
All AI from last meeting were completed, status given.
Woody14619 will be on vacation and may be off-line through July 9th.
Tabled topics should be brought up next week (Chair & CA proposals)

Action Items:
SD69: Draw up by-laws for new entity for presentation
SD69: Attend OBS to capture needs and Council requests
NielDK: Look into EU laws on NFP, VAT, etc.
NielDK: Post minutes on Monday if Woody is unable.
All: Consider motions on electing new Chair.
All: Consider motions on post-CA proposals.

A year ago Nokia announced the death of the meego platform. A few days ago, Nokia released the last PR SW 1.3 for the N9...and  for quite a while now, the N950 - a keyboard version of the N9 that was initially for developers only - has been selling on ebay.
Some are on ebay spain (http://www.ebay.es/itm/Nokia-N950-dev-phone-/280896512893?pt=UK_Mobile_Phones&hash=item4166bca37d.).
Now it seems that one of those device went for 1136 euros... so about 1400 dollars!!!
The legend continues....

Tired of the fact that my N9 had few battery time I decided to “as a developer” investigate my device a little bit. Last time I did that I was still contracted by Nokia and a few days later I had to fly to Helsinki to help fix a Tracker in combination with contactsd bug. I’m btw. no longer working for Nokia since a few months. So this time I can’t fix it for everyone. Lemme write it here instead.

It’s pretty funny what is going on: I installed Battery-Icon at some point. The software is writing periodically to /usr/share/applications/battery-icon.desktop. Having been a developer at Nokia for the metadata subsystem I know that tracker-miner-fs will reindex .desktop files that change. You don’t really need to be a developer to know that: Tracker’s FS miner is, among other things, responsible for keeping up to date a list of known applications.

Because of Battery-Icon, which people are probably installing to monitor their battery, tracker-miner-fs wakes up to update the metadata. That in turn wakes up tracker-store to store the metadata. That in turn wakes up smartsearch which will fetch from Tracker some textual data. All three will consume power periodically because of this .desktop file write trigger. I’m guessing the power consumption is triggering Battery-Icon to update the .desktop file. And circular power consumption was born.

I guess I should file a bug on Battery-Icon and tell its author to update the .desktop file less often. I think he could  for example wait ten minutes before doing that write. Or is the user really interested in accurate battery information each and every second? Looks like Battery-Icon is even writing to the file more frequent every hour. Interesting behavior for a tool monitoring battery to do things in a way that influences power consumption significantly.

Btw, while it’s not fixed: devel-su (enable developer mode, install terminal and password for devel-su is rootme) on your N9 and chmod -x /usr/bin/smartsearch, reboot, then uninstall Battery-Icon and your battery will last longer. I know the guys who were or are on the smartsearch team are going to hate me for that advice. Sorry guys.

Much has been written about the emerging Post-PC era, about the new possibilities it brings, and the limitations it imposes on developer creativity.

Just when you thought MeeGo was a closed chapter, comes news that ex-Nokians who worked on the N9 and the MeeGo community are coming together to ‘continue Nokia’s excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones’. The new project is called ‘Jolla’, which apparently when translated from Finnish means a better rescue boat, an obvious yet cheeky reference to the infamous burning platform memo.

This is great news for those of you who thought the MeeGo was the way to go for Nokia, but before you get too excited remember that doesn’t meant that your N9 will magically start getting updates from Jolla. That being said, you never know what the community might be able to achieve.

Jolla is here. #MeeGo based smartphones will have a bright, new future. Stay tuned!

— Jolla (@JollaMobile) July 7, 2012

Exciting times if you’re a MeeGo fan.

Front Page

Ex-Nokians found Jolla Mobile to "continue Nokia's excellent work on MeeGo-based smartphones"

The spirits of the downtrodden stalwarts of the Maemo and MeeGo communities were uplifted Saturday by the surprising announcement of Jolla Ltd., a new mobile smartphone company formed, in part, by former Nokia employees, with the stated goal of bringing new life to MeeGo and continuing the "excellent work that Nokia started." According to the press release they've been "developing a new smartphone product and the OS since the end of 2011" and a "new smartphone using this MeeGo based OS will be revealed later this year." No detailed specifics about the stack have been announced beyond it being based on the Mer Core and Qt, with Jolla providing their own UI on top.

I’ll focus on the technical stuff; I think I would only Peter Principle myself if I would try giving management advice.

What I’ve seen too much are community projects, companies or groups who think that the synchronization of Harmattan with Moblin or MeeGo was done well to make what is now the OS on the N9. Luckily is Jolla hiring Harmattan staff, so they understand the situation.

For me it was always clear that “MeeGo” was a more or less failed PR thing between Intel and Nokia. By the time the N9 was first released wasn’t Harmattan synchronized with Moblin or MeeGo technically very much. And after several updates of Harmattan it still isn’t.

The situation on the N9 now is an OS that has relatively few technical resemblance with “MeeGo”. For me is N9′s software Harmattan or Maemo 6. It’s the continuation of the software on the N900: Maemo 5 or Fremantle (after ~ two or three rather big rewrites, that much is true). That the rewrites happened doesn’t mean that during those rewrites Harmattan suddenly became MeeGo. MeeGo is, in other words, a different platform.

A successful project will have to work with what Harmattan is, and not try to replace it with what MeeGo is today. If they do want to end up with “MeeGo” on an N9 they will have to progressively improve Harmattan towards that goal by for example asking Nokia to open closed components, by developing fixes for softwares that are already open source (a lot are), by repackaging them and by explaining N9 owners how to add a repository and how to upgrade their phone safely.

I understand the idea isn’t to deploy on an N9, but if you want a new phone or device that resembles what the N9 is; the N9′s software is in my opinion not MeeGo but Harmattan. Rewrites have happened too often already. It’s my opinion that yet another rewrite of Harmattan isn’t a good idea at all.

For example replacing the Debian package management system with RPM doesn’t sound like a viable option to me at all. Nor is replacing any of the major middleware really doable within the timeframe you’d have to deliver to be relevant.

Instead software project per software project improve the phone’s OS. Kinda like how Ximian did Red Carpet many years ago (which also supported multiple package management systems).

No more big rewrites, no more starting from scratch. No more politics about how it should have been done. Start with the platform as it is. There are reasons why the OS is good, and among the reasons is that good middleware choices and compromises were made.

Kind regards, good luck.

 

Council minutes for meeting on July 6th, 2012

Meeting held on FreeNode, channel #maemo-meeting (logs)

Attending: Estel, SD69, NielDK, ivgalvez

Summary of topics (ordered by discussion):

1 - New chairman election 2 - Establishing legal entity US/EU 3 - Community funding 4 - X-Fade leaving Maemo related activities 5 - Anything else Topic 1 (New chairman election) ivgalvez will act as today's chairman in substitution of Estel for this meeting.

As per ivgalvez's suggestion, Woody14619, is proposed as new chairman from now on. All votes unanimously agree.

Topic 2 (Establishing legal entity US/EU)
Draft document for establishing a legal entity (not affiliated with Nokia) is discussed. This document, prepared by SD69, will be shared with the community for feedback once it receives a few modifications. Points commented: - Legal entity name to avoid Maemo trademark (possible legal issues). Hildon Foundation will be used as legal entity name. - Discussion around mission statement, boar of legal entity, meetings rate. - It's proposed to use current voting system to elect first board of directors for legal entity.
Topic 3 (Community funding). Will be on held until legal entity launch, to avoid legal issues/taxes.
Topic 4 (X-Fade leaving Maemo related activities) Considering the lack of availability of X-Fade during upcoming months and the importance of his remaining time in activities such as COBS, Council will ask for as much administrator rights as possible, to start the creation of working groups that would help him (or even substitute him if possible) in current maintenance of Maemo related services. Having those working groups would also help to ease the migration to the new infrastructure. Topic 5 (Other issues) Current shipping of CA devices seems to be ongoing, despite some problems. According to qgil, this shouldn't be a problem.

Action Items:

all: comment by email on document to form legal entity. SD69: refine documment with councellors feedback ivgalvez: contact X-Fade to ask about possibility to obtain any administrative rights on Maemo.org services  until migration ivgalvez: prepare minutes from meeting

Front Page

Draft bylaws for non-profit entity to take over Maemo infrastructure

In a proposal on the Maemo Community mailing list, RM Bauer details a draft bylaw to change the maemo.org infrastructure that is currently provided by Nokia to a non-profit entity possibly to be named the Hildon Foundation. "In order to continue the community at www.maemo.org in the future, it will be necessary to migrate much of the infrastructure and associated elements to a new site and to establish a separate entity for that purpose. See generally http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=84933. The attached bylaws are proposed for discussion. Please note that this is primarily a legal document and this is not the appropriate place to discuss many of the issues associated with the actual migration of the community." Time will tell how the idea is received and how the obstacles will be navigated.

Read more (lists.maemo.org)

In this edition (Download)...

1. Front Page
   • Draft bylaws for non-profit entity to take over Maemo infrastructure
2. Applications
   • Open source video editor for Harmattan from Collabora
   • Unlocking landscape use of Harmattan built-in apps
   • Enable traffic updates in N9 Drive app
   • New version of Shutdown compatible with N9 PR1.3 now available
3. Development
   • Harmattan repository for open-mode/Inception-requiring packages
4. Community
   • How should the community around Jolla look?
5. Devices
   • Nokia officially announces PR1.3 for N9
6. In the Wild
   • Interview with Jussi Hurmola, CEO of Jolla

Back again with a new release, the 0.0.3, of Applications Fullscreener and Automatic Skype Launcher.

Just download and install them in your N8x0 for making it become a good 24/7 Skype phone. For more information about the goals and features of this project you can check the previous post Extending the life of your N8x0: Automatic Skype Launcher.

I took the chance to update also the artwork used in these two applications. First thing, I created a Tango-ized version of the Skype logo.

Then, I used the previous magnificent art works from Andreas Nilsson and Jakub Steiner to create the new icons, and these are the result:

Anyway, going to the actual changes.

The most important change for Applications Fullscreener is:

• There was a second bash helper to launch a certain application and send the fullscreen key event some time afterwards. It was not fully featured but now it is.

You can, also, check the complete ChangeLog for Applications Fullscreener.

The most important changes for Automatic Skype Launcher are:

• The Automatic Skype Launcher service was not stopping when uninstalled. Now this is corrected.
• The init service was not starting correctly in some scenarios due to some uninitialized variables. This has been corrected.
• In the previous version, I added an alarm triggered by the alarmd daemon to restart Skype (and the service). This was not working always. Now, killing Skype is forced.

You can, also, check the complete ChangeLog for Automatic Skype Launcher.

That’s it. Comments and patches are welcomed!

Wow, something I think I would not see, but GUADEC is happening less than 3km from home in less than a week!

I have collaborated in organizing the Lightning Talks and BoFs/Hackfests and of course, I’ll help wherever I can. Poor Zeenix will be at my place so he will need to wake up early to come with me and my wife Laura to the faculty.

I also want to thank Igalia for sponsoring me with time to help organizing and attending the event and I might be also helping the Advisory Board meeting that will happen at Igalia headquarters on the 25th.

Sorry for the delay on these. I thought I'd posted them but apparently never hit the send button. :P

Council logs for meeting on July 13th, 2012

Meeting held on FreeNode, channel #maemo-meeting (logs)

Attending: Woody14619, Estel_, SD69, Ivgalvez, ZogG, rzr, NielDK, StsKeeps

Summary of topics (ordered by discussion):

• Review and progress with bylaws
• Infrastructure discussion
• AI review, other topics.

Pre meeting (old business):

• Thanks to SD69 and Ivan for the followups to X-Fade and Qgil.
• We should request e-mails to Council go to the group ML (council@maemo.org)

Topic 1 (Review and progress with bylaws)

• The review on the mailing list is going well.
• Items from the mailing list should be folded and and presented as a blog post, to start the discussion on TMO.
• SD69 takes the item to retouch with suggestions and post as a blog item.
• ZogG notes a topic change and announcement on IRC may be in order.
• There is a concern for how final approval of new group should occur.
• General agreement is toward approval of bylaws in concurrent with electing first board, depending on the the variety or nature of branches (if any) after discussion.
• Thoughts on using the Wiki to house working copy of bylaws in discussed.
• Estel takes the item to put bylaws on wiki and monitor edits.
• Tabled until more input is forthcoming from further review (on TMO?)

Topic 2 (Infrastructure discussion)

• A request has been made to X-Fade about which services can be admined by Council or a subcommittee setup for maintenance.  The end goal being to lighten the load on X-Fade and allow faster access for the community when problems arise.

Topic 3 (Misc items)

• Zogg proposes using a more robust logging bot in #maemo-meeting, for topics, etc.

Post meeting discussions:

• A general discussion about OBS, QTCreator and Jolla. (separate topics)
• Estel announces (via link post) his resignation from Council

Action Items:
SD69 to retouch bylaws and post as a blog entry for review by full community
Estel (now Woody14619?) will post bylaws to wiki for markup and review edits
Woody14619 to follow up with IRC topic links and announcements once blog/wiki are up

Version 0.9.0.3 of the Advanced Geocaching Tool was just released. Changes are: - Fix some launching problems
- Fix fieldnote uploading
- Introduce new Icon
- Automatically disable remote logging
- Fix for downloading more than 20 geocaches
- Fix for Openstreetmaps bug

For Maemo users: Please download it from extras devel, where it will land shortly.

For Meego users: Download this file on your device and install it.

Version 0.9.0.3 of the Advanced Geocaching Tool was just released. Changes are: - Fix some launching problems - Fix fieldnote uploading - Introduce new Icon - Automatically disable remote logging - Fix for downloading more than 20 geocaches - Fix for Openstreetmaps bug For Maemo users: Please download it from extras devel, where it will land shortly. For Meego users: Download this file on your device and install it....

Front Page

Jolla clarifies position on "developer mode" after misinterpretation of interview comments

A mistranslation of a Finnish interview of Jolla's CEO Jussi Hurmola resulted in a great deal of FUD last week, when comments about Jolla's market positioning were taken to mean that Jolla devices would be locked down, with customers unable to flash the device or replace the kernel. Most of the furor stemmed from a SlashGear report on the IBTimes article that extrapolated from the translated comments a bit farther than was likely justified, claiming that Jolla planned "to lock down its MeeGo phone." The original IBTimes article has since been updated with clarifications from a Jolla spokesperson: "There were a couple of quotes from Jussi Hurmola about the product. I think they were translated from Finnish to English and misunderstood, or then the developer edition was left out. [...] We are however planning on creating a development version of the phone for open source community, those interested in Linux and open systems and for partners. [...] Jolla is going to release a developer edition of the device which gives full access to linux hackers and technology enthusiasts. Jolla will fully support the communities and be part of them, and wants them to be part of creating and developing our device. [...]"

gPodder 3.2.0 "The Great Radish Famine" has been released this week, and some users (not including me, otherwise I would have caught the bug earlier) had problems with the upgrade (see bug 1627 for details), so that's why gPodder 3.2.1 is already on its way to AFM and Nokia Store today. Expect the bug fix to appear as an update in the next few days.

Highlights of 3.2.0 are an improved UI (e.g. cover art in the "All episodes" list) and Flattr integration, so you can now support podcast authors via micropayments (you'll find the Flattr button below the shownotes for podcasts that publish a Flattr URL).

The gory details about what went wrong with packaging this time can be found in the 3.2.1 blog post, and bug 1627 contains - special thanks to Reiner for providing the necessary debugging info needed to get this sorted out (again, I was not experiencing this bug myself).

If your 3.2.0 update worked out fine (the bug didn't affect all users), this is not for you - just enjoy 3.2.0, and install 3.2.1 when it comes out :)

Third day of GUADEC already. And in Coruña!

This is a very special city for me.

I came here in 1996 to study Computer Science. Here I discovered UNIX for the first time, and spent hours learning how to use it. It’s funny to see now those old UNIX servers being displayed in a small museum in the auditorium where the main track takes place.

It was also here where I learnt about free software, installed my first Debian system, helped creating the local LUG and met the awesome people that founded Igalia with me. Then we went international, but our headquarters and many of our people are still here so I guess we can still call this home.

So, needless to say, we are very happy to have GUADEC here this time.

I hope you all are enjoying the conference as much as we are. I’m quite satisfied with how it’s been going so far, the local team has done a good job organising everything and taking care of lots of details to make the life of all attendees easier. I especially want to stress all the effort put into the network infrastructure, one of the best that I remember in a GUADEC conference.

At Igalia we’ve been very busy lately. We’re putting lots of effort in making WebKit better, but our work is not limited to that. Our talks this year show some of the things we’ve been doing:

• A bright future for GNOME.
• WebKitGTK+: current status and roadmap.
• Web to the core.
• OCRFeeder – OCR made easy on GNOME.
• Grilo: present and future.
• GNOME 3 accessibility: State of the Union.
• Skeltrack: A Free Software library for skeleton tracking.
• Sketching interactions.
• Sandbox all the pipelines!.
• Web application stores in GNOME.

We are also coordinating 4 BOFs (a11y, GNOME OS, WebKit and Grilo) and hosted a UX hackfest in our offices before the conference.

And we have a booth next to the info desk where you can get some merchandising and see our interactivity demos.

In case you missed the conference this year, all talks are being recorded and the videos are expected to be published really soon (before the end of the conference).

So enjoy the remaining days of GUADEC, and enjoy Coruña!

And of course if you’re staying after the conference and want to know more about the city or about Galicia, don’t hesitate to ask me or anyone from the local team, we’ll be glad to help you.

GUADEC has been going on for a few days already, but it is far from over. This is a short post to make some noise about some upcoming BoFs & hackfests that might not receive as much publicity as the rest of the stuff, being outside of the “talks” track.

GNOME as an OS

As announced in our “A bright future for GNOME” talk Juanjo and myself will chair a BoF to talk about the future of GNOME. If you want to get things done and want our project to keep kicking ass for another 15 years (at least!) please come and talk with us next Monday 30th from 10AM, Room 2.1a. We intend to make this BoF productive, constructive and as little bikeshed-y as possible, your cooperation will be welcome!

Epiphany & WebKit hackfest

The might Epiphany and WebKit GNOME hackers will meet again in Room 2.1a on Tuesday 31st to hack, hack and hack. I have already committed to move the all-new Overview forward with Claudio, review the amazing new documentation submitted by Pierre-Yives Luiten, work with William on Data Sync or keep going on recently started secret projects. Some people have already approached me asking for various Ephy-related things (bug triaging, random bugs they want to see fixed), be there if you want to help!

OK, a rather long post about effective digital communication. Hopefully an interesting read to folks who would like to add some code to protect communications but haven't gotten around to that TODO item just yet.