European Wafaa

As many people will know I've spent around 18 months of my spare time packaging and building the Netbook UX for Moblin/MeeGo on openSUSE.  Not on my own, but with a community around me. I would just like to say a huge thank you to that community, you've been great and spurred me on when I felt like the whole world was conspiring against me.

Sound a bit morose? Well in a way it is. Basically by all accounts MeeGo is stopping all work on the Netbook UX. Yup, all our hard work is now almost for nothing :-(

The first piece of evidence is the Release Engineering Plans for 1.2.  If you look at the bottom, you'll notice that the Netbook doesn't get any mention in Features, just bugs. Actually the same is for the 1.1 release.  In all honesty, the biggest change between 1.1 and its predecessor is that all refernces to Moblin was replaced with MeeGo. The next piece of info came at the fabulous FOSDEM XI (I'll do a seperate post on the event later). I spoke to several people directly and indirectly involved with MeeGo, especially the Netbook UX, about the lack of info on the Netbook UX. Each one of them said the same thing - MeeGo is putting the Netbook UX into Maintanence Mode, stopping any further development on it, and only providing bug fixes for major issues.  I asked if there was going to be any announcement, basically the answer was nothing official. They're just going to let it drift away - just like netbooks themselves have.

There are most likely a huge number of reasons, which is fair enough. I was given a couple of reasons - 1: Netbooks arent selling anymore, the Netbook ship didn't really sail away, but was sunk. 2: MeeGo doesn't want to invest anymore time or effort in gtk development, and wants to concentrate on Qt. Now I take this last one with a tiny bit of salt, only because both Intel and Nokia employ (or at least did so) a sizable team of GNOME developers. Saying that though, if they want to keep a roof over their heads they have to do what their employer says, and both originally started working with touch devices. So it does make sense as much as it doesn't.

So, I herby give immediate notice that I am now no longer going to be doing any further work on the MeeGo UX for openSUSE or anyone else.  I wont delete the repo for 1.0 but will clear out the 1.1 and 1.2 repos that I had - might as well give those resources back :-) . Now if anyone would like to continue what I and others had started, then let me know and I would be more than happy.

I cant say what the other distros are going to do, I've spoken to my counter part in Fedora, and they're having a think about it as they were busting their chops to get things in for the F15 release.  Either way I wish all involved luck.

Now before any of you conspiracy theory junkies get worked up - this has nothing to do with the whole MeeGo Trademark issue that Smeegol had with the Linux Foundation.  As it happens I was due to have a conversation with the Linux Foundation about the issues between us and them, but have had to re-schedule due to travel constraints from one party or the other.  I still intend to speak with the LF about the issues, as they are still present in the other UX's that they are developing.

So it's time for me to close off and say, so long and thanks for all the fish! I'll still be around, I'll probably start getting back into the GNOME swing of things, and help fcrozat with GNOME3 etc.  Oh and I've got a lunatic idea for a project which I intend to kick off (stay tuned ;-) ).

MeeGo is a trademark of the Linux Foundation.

I've been stewing over a response on the MeeGo developers mailing list for some time now.  Basically the MeeGo Project and their steward, the Linux Foundation don't seem to be wanting to play this whole open source, open community game.  I wouldn't have any issue with it if it was just Nokia and Intel fumbling with MeeGo, it would be just another lost opportunity that big corporations screwed up on.  Problem is the Linux Foundation is involved and are supposedly the ones guiding the project.

In case you don't know, before I released Smeegol I asked some questions on the MeeGo Dev list with regards to what openSUSE can/can't do/use.  That kind of went nowhere.  Fedora have also tried asking and again got nowhere.  Debian have also asked, and after seven weeks the Linux Foundation answered.

In all honesty, I was insensed by the response. I spoke to my counterparts at Fedora and they too echoed my feelings. To allow those in the openSUSE and wider community who aren't subscribed to the MeeGo lists I'll provide my response.  For those in a rush:

tl;dr - Don't think MeeGo, don't say MeeGo, don't contribute to MeeGo unless it is on our terms, don't use MeeGo unless it is on our crippled distro, MeeGo is going it alone.

For those that want to see me rant some more:

Hi Ibrahim,

On Thu, 2010-12-09 at 13:12 -0600, Ibrahim Haddad wrote:
> Hello Didier,
>
>
> I am responding to you in relation to your inquiry below. First,
> thanks very much for sending the MeeGo Project these questions. We
> really do appreciate it. The MeeGo Project members devoted quite a bit
> of time discussing these questions to make sure the  responses are
> fair and most of all work to the benefit of the MeeGo project, its
> developers and the users of MeeGo.
>

Seven weeks to effectively turn around and say "No, no, no"?  I'm sorry
if I sound bitter or angry; but the truth of the matter is that I'm
actually fairly disgusted with how the Linux Foundation, Nokia and Intel
have all acted towards the wider Linux community.  For all the talk of
openness at the conference in Dublin all I see are closed doors and
barricades.

>
> To start with, the goal is to avoid any confusion around what is and
> what is not MeeGo.  Anything that is or will become associated with
> the MeeGo trademark has to be in conformance with the compliance
> program.  With that in mind, it becomes clear why none of the proposed
> uses of MeeGo  mentioned in your email are in line with the trademark
> policy and guidelines as they create confusion around MeeGo project
> packages, mailing list, project team name, etc.  For example, when you
> append MeeGo to a package name, it would be very reasonable to
> conclude that this is an official MeeGo package coming from MeeGo.com,
> which is not the case and could cause confusion both for your users as
> well MeeGo's.
>

I'm sorry but do you honestly think that users who install the MeeGo UX
on a distro be it openSUSE, Fedora, Debian or whichever are going to
think that it has come from the MeeGo project?  This doesn't happen for
any open source project that is available via a distribution. GNOME, KDE
etc welcome inclusion into distros and want downstream involvement.  Why
do you feel that MeeGo doesn't?

Trying to paint all users with a stupid brush is wrong and condescending
to both users and distros.  You appear to be missing a key factor that
myself and my counterparts are doing here - marketing MeeGo and enabling
the wider community to get involved and help make MeeGo better.  Why
should a developer have to install a new distro to be able to contribute
to the codebase?

Having meego in a package name shows where the upstream contribution
comes from.  Just like with packages from Google etc.  This is the most
basic form of attribution, and is only right.  Why are you trying to
force people to fork?  Yes, fork.  If you don't want people to recognise
your work and re-use it with almost no changes why have it in the open?

Linux users and especially developers can be fickle, they find a distro
they like and stick to it - quite often they are more faithful to their
distro than they are to their partner or loved one.  Forcing them to
choose between distro or contributing to MeeGo the chances are they'll
stick to their distro of choice.

When Moblin was around, it was one of three things - a User eXperience,
a distribution and a reference platform.  This worked well, so why have
you changed it?

>
> We would ask you to move away from using {M,m}-e-e-{G,g}-o or any
> subset of those letters or sounds in that order, alone or in
> combination with other letters, words or marks that would tend to
> cause someone to make a reasonable connection of the reference with
> the MeeGo mark. We specifically discussed one possibility for
> illustration purposes – which is to use MG in the place of MeeGo.  We
> do not think that a plain text MG, when used in reference to the code,
> as in a file or project or team name, would cause a reasonable person
> to be confused. 
>

This fanatical enforcement of the MeeGo trademark is going to do more
damage than good.  People have asked me what's different between MeeGo's
trademark guidelines and openSUSE's, and the simple answer is it is the
execution of the trademark that sets us apart.  Thinking that people are
going to get "confused" between Smeegol and MeeGo is ludicrous.  Sure
I'm not a lawyer/solicitor or any other form of legal professional, but
I don't need to be to apply common sense.

We are trying to promote MeeGo and further it in an already crowded
space.  Making us change package names, and removing any reference to
MeeGo gives you absolutely zero visibility.  At the end of the day,
openSUSE and the other distros have a much wider reach than MeeGo does,
and possibly ever will as a stand alone distro.


>
> We are available for additional discussions if needed and if you
> prefer to have a call to discuss we can certainly do that.
>

I have tried several times to discuss these issues, and have even tried
going off list to facilitate the dialogue in a more protected manner.
MeeGo is far from open to the community, if I was an ISV or ISV then
sure it maybe more open but from what I've heard even partners have a
tough time.

Being an exclusive project is a sure way to failure. Try being
inclusive, you'll have more chance of succeeding.  If you don't want
community participation that's fine, re-license to something proprietary
and you wont get bothered by those that want to help.  Yes you have
already re-licensed some code from open licenses to proprietary ones
without any announcement to the community, not a great open gesture.

>
> Best Regards,
> Ibrahim Haddad [on behalf of The Meego Project]
>
> PS:
> We started an FAQ at http://meego.com/trademark. We have added some
> text already and Q&A will be added there as they come.
>

I don't see a single question or answer in that FAQ, just a statement.
Not especially helpful to the community.

Regards,

Andy

Looks like it's been a while since I mentioned anything about our dear friend Smeegol – sorry.

As most will know MeeGo made a couple of releases: 

• 1.0.5 mostly an update to their original release
• 1.1.0 the new release with new API, and renaming most packages

So where is Smeegol?  Well we're pretty much there, although not 100%.  I have 1.0.5 all built and packaged including an image.  Problem is I seem to have hit a bug with network-manager-netbook – it doesn't seem to be displaying networks which is a fairly fundamental issue :-(

I have also got 1.1.0 built, but for factory only atm – I'm having some issues with tracker on 11.3.  Problem is when I try and run the image, I basically have an unusable system thanks to some Gconf fubar but I don't really know what.

You may have also noticed that I'm still calling it Smeegol ;-) Well the simple reason is I have requested clarification from MeeGo, Nokia, Intel and the Linux Foundation and so far I've received bubkiss!!  I heard loads of talk from the recent MeeGo Conference about how open MeeGo was, but it seems that they are only open to partners who can help them make money; not open to the wider community.  I am not alone in waiting for a response from them, Fedora and Debian are also in limbo waiting for information/clarification and general communication from them.  The difference between us is the fact that in openSUSE if you want something done the best way is to Just Do It :-)

So in a nutshell, before I make an official release of either I need people to test and report back to me what does and doesn't work.  I haven't tried doing an upgrade from 1.0.3 to 1.0.5 or 1.1.0 so maybe someone could try that.  Jump onto #opensuse-moblin on Freenode or the opensuse-goblin mailing list and let's continue to be trail blazers. Yes I know I need to align the mailing list and irc channel names, but I'm waiting for a conclusion to the name debacle first.

I would really love to get both releases out as a little christmas present to you the community, so who's up for some festive fun?

I unfortunately received an e-mail just now from the Linux Foundation with regards to our precious Smeegol, and it appears on the face of it that they're not that impressed with our efforts.  Somewhat bizarrely as they have had plenty of opportunity to respond.

Now I'm not going to start ranting and raving about injustice etc, what I will say is this and it is a bit of a rant ;-):

Since Moblin morphed into MeeGo, things appear from the outside to have taken a bit of a dip for the worse :-(  MeeGo is now pushing the fact that it is a distro in it's own right which is perfectly acceptable and fair (although I think the world has enough distros).  There are several people within the paid community who look on our efforts and those of Fedora's as wasteful, and not for the greater good.  Sorry but bollocks to you!!

I wholly understand now why Canonical & Ubuntu dropped it and went down their own road with UNR & Unity.  They don't mind if someone else packages it and uses it - they and everyone else knows where it came from - for that I doff my cap to the Ubuntu crowd.

If the Linux Foundation really want to make MeeGo work and be prevalent everywhere they need to look to the wider community to help it.  Having a niche distro is all good and well, but without the wider eco-system that goes along with a distro you're buggered.  One of the reasons I started working on Smeegol is openSUSE has a fantastic ecosystem, we've got pretty good tools and have a shit load of applications available.  The same goes for Fedora.  We both also have a pretty vibrant community with lots of friendly and knowledgable people willing to help.

I unfortunately can't say the same for MeeGo.  They have taken the Build Service but closed the door on it, so application contributions can't happen easily. They seem to want to build a community from OEMs and partners, effectively become an exclusive community and not inclusive.  Harsh?  Maybe but that's what it seems like, and I'm not the only one to see it this way.

The biggest disappointment for me is the fact that MeeGo is supposedly under the Linux Foundation's banner.  These peeps are supposed to be championing the greater Linux cause, but can't see the cluster that is happening under their noses.  They are complaining that legally I can't call the project Smeegol or use any variation of MeeGo, and not use any of their logos/charchters/artwork/etc as it will dilute and weaken their trademark - WTF?!?  Hellfire, after we announced the release of Smeegol the first thing that people thought of when they heard it was Lord Of The Rings, NOT MeeGo or the Linux Foundation.  If you ask me (which I know no one is, but I'll answer anyway), actively pushing distros to include MeeGo will only strengthen the brand and mark, not weaken it.  I asked the question on the MeeGo development mailing list, and had absolutely no response from the trademark holders (that would be the Linux Foundation), only after a kind teddy bear of a kernel hacker (that would be Greg Kroah-Hartman) jumped in and started knocking heads did someone pipe up - Thanks Greg :-)  Even then it was a wishy washy response with no substance and not an answer.

So now I have my answer, and now I'm not so sure what next.  Yes I'm pissed off, and I think I have a right to be.  The crucial thing is I want to resolve this so that we can all get on and enjoy the shiny that is being produced.  I've spent the better part of eight months working on getting Moblin and subsequently MeeGo built and running on openSUSE, the latter was very tough.  I am still working on it, trying to get 1.1 build and ready, updating the network front-end as well as lots of other bits.

So, any suggestions on what to do next? :-)

So after many months of hard work, Smeegol is out the door.  Now contrary to what some folk may think, this was *NOT* a one man show - far from it!  I may have spearheaded the whole affair, but I in no way can take credit for it all - that doesn't mean I wouldn't accept any of your fine donations ;-)

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank many of the people that helped get this labour of love out the door.  Without them I most likely would still be floundering around, working out my backside from my elbow. This truely shows how great not just the openSUSE community is but also the wider open source & Linux community is in general.  So with out further delay, I'd like to thank the following people (in alphabetical order):

Aaron Bockover

Alan McGovern

Andrea Florio

Andreas Jaeger

Bertrand Lorenz

Bin Li

Dominique Leuenberger

Federico Mena-Quintero

Gabriel Burt

Gary Lin

Garret LeSage

Glen Gary

Greg Kroah-Hartman

Guy Lunardi

Jackub Steiner

James Tan

Joey Li

Jos Poortvliet

JP Rosevear

Marcus Ruckert

Michael Meeks

Pavol Rusnak

Raymond Woonick

Ross Burton

Vincent Untz

This list is by no means exhaustive, I would also like to thank the following projects in general: 

Banshee

Fedora Mini

MeeGo

openSUSE

SUSE Studio

Without you lot, my precious would never have made it out the door - THANK YOU!!

I thought I should let anyone that cares know what the latest status of my work is.  What work?  Getting MeeGo on openSUSE, of course!  I'm calling it Smeegol – SUSE MeeGo Linux, and this just happens to be the Teal Goblin – Teal is the code name for 11.3 ;-)

Well I'm not quite there yet (unfortunately) :-(  I have one major issue which is the Network Panel not displaying properly, and as such is difficult to use.  I also have a smaller issue with the web panel, but that is more of an annoyance rather than a blocker.

So in a nutshell that's the state of play.  Now I'm concentrating on getting things working on 11.3 and getting a working image, but if people would like to see things get into openSUSE 11.4 then there are some low hanging fruit for people to pick up and run with.  In a nutshell before things can make it into Factory, the spec files need to be cleaned up and made to comply with the Geeko's high standards.

So please join in the fun and have a look at the Meego:Netbook repo, and help out where you can.  I wanted to get things working first before I started to look at housekeeping.  Some packages already comply, but others most certainly don't as they were straight imports from upstream.

Oh and if you want to try Smeegol as it stands now, warts and all, you can grab the live image from here. If you're brave (or stupid) you can get the goodness via 1Click for 11.3 or Factory. Yes it is 32bit only at the moment, as when packaging I had too many x86_64 errors.  Please note that the Goblin may chew fluffy bunnies, sodomise gorrilas and generally be an imp!  You can file bugs if you wish over on BNC just select the Moblin Component

So please join in the fun and help clean up the Goblin :-)

I thought it was about time that I enlightened people as to what the
state of play is with my efforts of getting MeeGo 1.0 for Netbooks on
openSUSE.

The good news is I think I'm pretty much there :-)  I believe all the
essential packages are built now, although there is a *lot* of work to
be done in getting the packages into Factory.  The outstanding work is
mostly spec file housekeeping but non the less it will be a relatively
laborious task.

I am currently looking at getting a hybrid iso image built so that
people can install the goodness straight of the bat and have the image
available pretty close to 11.3's release - this may or may not happen as
fast as I would like but we'll see.

For those that are interested all the packages etc live in
Meego:Netbook, and the image stuff lives in the meego-live package in
there.  Any and all help with cleaning spec files and creating an image
is most appreciated.

Talking of thanks, none of this would have happened without the huge
amounts of help from DimStar, darix, dl9pf, joeyli, glin, mchang, mlin, mmeeks
and vuntz. Thank you *SO* much chaps!

I will try and get a 1-Click done whilst I work on an image.  If people could have a look at the repo and let me know if anything is missing that would be great - don't forget you can submit anything that is missing ;-)

As soon as I have anything new I'll let you know.   So if you want to join in the fun, then head over to #opensuse-moblin on IRC and the opensuse-goblin mailing list.  There are lots for people to do, and if you want to start contributing this is a good way to do so :-)