Focus dev on Github? Open to international community, for our goal of helping Earth’s ecosystem?
- Yes to both.
- Yes, our focal point should be Github for maximum collaboration.
- Yes, we should become less national and try to open more towards the international community.
- Neutral.
- No, no Github or Git or such. Just keep it all in spread in the forum.
- No, no internationalization, all the (stalling) OSE suborganizations like OSE EU, IT, Germany, … should remain.
- No to both.
0 voters
It’s apparent the open source ecology movement has lost momentum since the late 2012 quarrels at factor e farm in the USA. It’s been 2 years. OSEG first seemed to grow, there even was talk about a central FeF/Green Hacker Space. Now it’s basically a 2-man show (Olliver HW+SW, Tony Ford SW) and we now are somewhat required to go the Virtual FeF way which is flexible as it allows multiple decentralized green hacker spaces (we already have Alex’ blog, Olli’s blog, …). It’s up to us to turn the tide and at least form a nice github organization which may attract contributors (and will make our undertakings more serious, currently Open source (ecology) is losing ground as can be seen by the lack of reverse engineered proprietary hardware and drivers). The situations has changed, there no longer is the need for an mp3player, tablet, mobile, desktop/pc, notebook/laptop. A 5" smartphone just fulfills all these purposes at once. At least it could - if our GNU/Linux worlds weren’t overwhelmed by the sheer amount and speed of proprietary hardware and drivers to be reverse engineered. Otherwise we since long had a full-featured GNU/Linux to put on any tablet/smartphone/… with ease (just like it is for the x86 architecture). The goal can’t be to reinvent the wheel now that there’s the crippled Linux (Android) (no Linux programs run there natively!), Windows X Phone vs. Windows X (no .exe et al run on ARM Windows natively) and why should it be different for Apple IOS vs. Mac OS which not only uses the Linux kernel but also builds upon a BSD Linux.
This all is even more ridiculous if we consider that there are already download choices for 32bit (x86) and 64bit (x86_64) on the web for almost every program! Think of it! Why not just add a third option (ARM)? That’d be the solution but that only works/is in our power if you have the sources! You can’t compile proprietary drivers to ARM because we don’t have the sources. That in conjunction with the spread- and thinned-out open source devs will finally lead to the downfall of the open source world we appreciate (and even take for granted) nowadays (because the shift towards the clean ARM architecture standard will continue due to its advantages and widespread use in microcontrollers and living costs have increased such that more and more people will have less time to do things for free for a better world).
2 reasons why I’d like to discuss/ask for your opinion on restructuring:
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Activity/participation in OSEG is seeing a long-time deep.
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Productivity is difficult in the current setup. (We have many sites, stretched and unmaintainable. Finding technical assistance here is almost impossible, finding funders or collaborators is no easier.)
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It seems OSEG is (ab)used just to promote own business (e.g. when it comes to fundraisers, suddenly people seem willing to use our channels and suddenly appear in our channels, just to abandon us once they have reached their goal).
To mitigate these issues, to open our goals to other countries, and to ease collaboration and participation the following proposed structure: -
Server (2 git repositories: 1x Webpage, under Git version control; 1x development modules).
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These 2 repos (or public branches thereof) should/could be shared on Github. (=> Allow people forking our work, issuing pull requests, using Github’s project management capabilities and more).
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Get rid of the „G“ of „OSEG“, as it might seem a bit national-inclined, thus call the Github organization like development_set or technology or base_technology_set or base_construction_set or base_development_set, just like you want or more general and then create a wrapper git repo that has several other more special repos as submodules.
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Language: English, optional translation to German (better use translate.google to automate?). To use German was a nice experiment but it didn’t bring the involvement of the non-english-speaking Germans to the extent that had been desired. The only mechanics and other skilled people that help in my projects are local friends. Most of the OSEG Forum + Wiki people (especially those that contribute) are entirely English-capable.
I know it looks like we are going to approach OSE US, but what this is really about is to get rid of nationalities entirely, and just be constructive and objective. I.e. have the main activity on Github / our git repositories and just mirror some content on our server.
As there is forum-/blog-/wiki-like capability (commit comments/ issues +comments / wiki) on Github, we could be able to get rid of the main server load / forum if desired (but perhaps there is still a part that this forum can play).
Generally I feel the Green colour scheme of OSEG fits a bit better than the blue one, and thus would love to keep all this and everything you want. Shouldn’t we unite our stalling splinter groups and focus on the goal/objective itself: the set of open source tools/tech/community in an ecological context?
Disclaimer: In no sense this shall be an offense. I clearly understand why OSEG came together as a split from the general OSE. I don’t like to talk about OSE US, UK, Germany or whatever, instead shouldn’t we focus solely on the ecosystem itself? It’s open source ecology, no national interests, no local goal. Let’s focus on objectives and avoid subjectives. It’s just a proposal! Please don’t hate me being unhappy with how we drift into insignificance.