Re: Reminder: SFO call for action - aka questionnaire

[Stefan Kost <ensonic hora-obscura de>]

Nils Faerber schrieb:
> As a reminder: The questionnaire's due date is in less than a week from
> now. So far not all subscribers have replied.
> 
> So please all subscribed members, take a few minutes and reply to the
> questionnaire.
> 
> Many thanks!
> 
> ----
> 
> Dear Gnome/mobile members!
> 
> Following is finally the questionnaire we have been working on as
> follow-up to the San Francisco Gnome/mobile meeting at the Linux
> Foundation Collaboration Summit meeting.
> 
> We want to kindly ask *all* subscribed mailinglist members to reply to
> this questionnaire! Since we do not have a formal membership all
> subscribed members can consider themselves group members. If you should
> be in a positions to be member with "two hats on" we would of course be
> interested in both views, e.g. personal and company, project and
> individual, etc. Either mark the two (or more) variants or send in
> multiple replies.
> 
> For all of the following questions we kindly ask you to be as frank and
> open as possible! Do not hesitate to state missing knowledge,
> uncertainties or doubts - we all have those. We know that in the past
> members did not speak because they thought they would miss certain
> knowledge that would qualify them to comment. You would be amazed how
> little knowledge there is that could be known. Your answers will help us
> all to create this knowledge!
> So again we kindly ask you for your most open and frank thoughts.
> 
> You can either reply to this questionnaire directly to this list or
> reply as personal email to me (nils faerber kernelconcepts de). Replying
> to the list is the most open way and in general would be favourable but
> could also lead to too much discussions right away if any individual
> post gets commented.
> Stormy, Dave and me will do our best to aggregate all incoming answers
> and present a conclusive summary to the group not too much later.
> 
> Please reply until the 13th of July latest!
> 
> This is roughly two weeks from now. We will also do our best to give the
> summary in almost the same time-frame, i.e. two to three weeks after the
> 13th.

13th was one week from the 7th. So I still reply.

> 
> Many many thanks in advance for taking the time to reply to this
> questionnaire! Your answers will be beneficial for all of us and help
> us to better shape the group and goals.
> 
> 
> And here we go... (in your reply please cut off the above ;)
> 
> About you:
> 1. Please describe your background a little bit, i.e. what are you
> working on that made you interested in Gnome/mobile? If it helps us
> understand your background, who are you working for?

I work as a multimedia architect fro Nokia in Maemo Software. Besides I work in
GStreamer and Gnome.
> 
> 
> When you first heard of Gnome/mobile:
> 2. What did you think it to be? Please be as frank as possible - what
> were your really *first* thoughts?

2006 Boston Gnome Summit (was it 2006 or 2007?) I thought its a good idea to
join the efforts. Seeing how much we spend on optimizing stuff from the grnome
stack for use on embedded at Nokia, I was thinking that this can only get better
when collaborating.

> 
> 3. What did you expect from it? What did you hope to see as a result
> from it?

Performance improvements. Marketing to get more companies onboard.

> 
> 4. Why did you join the group? Do you feel like a "member" at all? If
> not, why not?

I joined the list quite late - I had no idea that it exists. I don't feel so
much as a member. That would require some joint activity. Having a goal,
releasing a product, having a hack fest, having an irc channel, knowing each
other in person.

> 
> 5. Did it match your expectations? If not, why? If yes, how?

What does "it" refers to?

> 
> 6. Is there something like a top-three of most important goals that you
> (personally, not thinking of the group as a whole) would like to see
> addressed by Gnome/mobile? (Three would be great, one is enough too)

We should set ourself some target and work towards it (that could be e.g.
working on development tools, having some build.gnome.org improvements that help
us monitor performance targets ...)

> 
> And today:
> 7. How do you perceive Gnome/mobile today? What is missing? What is too
> much? What is / could be Gnome/mobile's first priority goal? And second?

The mobile BOF at Guadec got me thinking. We really need to redefine what we
are. I see the need for differentiation in the UI level. Some companies with use
themed gtk, some clutter, some even qt :/. But underneath we have dbus,
gstreamer, glib, ... If we can focus on the technology and not so much on the UI
style, we might be able to cooperate more easily.

> 
> 
> Technically:
> 8. What do you think should qualify a platform for being a Gnome/mobile
> platform? A specific set of components used? If yes, which components?

I mentioned some above already. Its a bit difficult to qualify. glib + other
things :) It would be cool if we could define being a gnome mobile member by
contributions, rather than by modules used.

> 
> 9. Or should there be a formal qualification process? If yes, what would
> be your idea about it? If not, why not?

Nope. A logo would be nice still.

> 
> 10. What should be the technology goals of Gnome/mobile? Like creating a
> toolbox rather than a product? Or collaboration and information
> infrastructure rather than a development project?

We have multiple companies and their products. Of course there is competition.
But then there are things that we just want to have working. If we could
identify those ... I see it as a middleware. The linux kernel is the hardware
adaptation layer. Gnome Mobile would provide a middleware - a set of libraries
following a common style and having API docs.

> 
> Organisation:
> 11. At the moment the Gnome/mobile group is a pretty loose group,
> everyone interested is welcome and can at once participate. Would you
> like to see this a little more formally structured? Like a formal
> membership, application process, levels of membership, voting processes,
> etc.? Or would like to see it grow as is, a group connected by ideas and
> consensus rather than rules? Other ideas?

not really.
> 
> 
> Comments:
> 11. Anything else? Did we forget something? Any additional comments?
> Thoughts?
> 
> 
> 
> Again, many many thanks in replying and for your time and work to craft
> your answers!
> 
> Cheers
>   nils faerber
> 

Late or not. I hope my answers an be used still.

Stefan