Community IRC meeting, next steps?

General
#1

The Sailfish OS community co-operation is critical for Jolla to innovate, develop and maintain the open and independent mobile operating system. At the moment we are finding ways how to be more efficient with this interface, to create better communication channels and offer better solutions to serve this mutual objective. The new forum is a good example of this roadmap.

We are also eager to hear ideas how the bi-weekly IRC meetings could be enhanced, all ideas are welcome - as the meeting setup is bit fragile for possible absences, miscommunications or sudden schedule changes. What would be the best technology and service to use for the gathering and Q&A, Pros and Cons of the current setup - discussion is open!

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SailfishOS, open source, collaboration meeting planning
#2

For example SailfishOS, open source, collaboration meeting planning this theread is not editable like it was on tjc but meeting itself is fine as long as chairman shows up

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#3

I actually really enjoy how free form the IRC meetings are. They are a great way to get to know other users/developers working on similar things or having similar issues.

I’m not sure, if there is a better technology for those meeting. While I personally don’t use IRC and connect via the Matrix bridge, I think IRC is fairly easy to access. Something like Matrix may be a bit approachable to people more used to Discord, Whatsapp or Slack. Especially if you need a registered Nick to talk in #sailfishos-meeting anyway. I’m don’t think it is necessarily worth it to switch though.

Apart from that I generally think the meetings are doing fine, when everyone actually shows up. Maybe the topic proposal process could a bit streamlined, I don’t have any ideas how to though.

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#4

To be honest, better communication channels sound nice but it’s not necessary.
What is necessary is better communication from Jolla side.
From about year communication on TJC is poor. People report issues but usually there is no response from Jolla guys. Why should people report bugs if they feel ignored?
Before it was different, communication was better.
For now only good method to communicate with Jolla and get repospond is IRC meeting witch is really good channel.

You are loosing users and app devs because of lack of communication not because of poor communication channels.

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#5

I bump that up. Whatever is decided in meeting or “we’ll look into it” there is never response to that on next meeting. If we decide something with jolla, on the next meeting there should be update about that or noted somewhere not just “yeah yeah whatever”

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#6

This is very important and honest feedback as well, I appreciate. I don’t think there is a single person in Jolla who would think that any shared information, bugs or questions would not be important. Lack of communication may be a result of being uncertain what to say, or lack of possibility to commit to a fix at a certain moment… whatever the reason is, I can be sure that we are doing the best to make the Sailfish OS better every day. Now as said, I understand that there is the mutual agreement that we can enhance the interface and communication. I appreciate all ideas that help us build the system and the process so that it would solve any pain points we may have.

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#7

IRC is ok, just work on better communication. Better than at today meeting https://irclogs.sailfishos.org/logs/%23sailfishos-meeting/%23sailfishos-meeting.2020-08-06.log.html

Most of people have to organize their work time to attend your meetings.
I know you are trying to do your best but…

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#8

The biggest issue is not the lack of communication (depending on how you define it anyway). Anyone can ask something in the IRC meetings and it usually there is an answer. The main issue however is that certain issues seem to drag around forever and never get resolves without any updates.

Yes jolla is a small company with limited resources and everyone with a brain understands that there are priorities (those that pay) but the issue -for me- is that we haven’t found a formula on how this whole thing can work and help both parties (jolla + paying customers and the community). In other words help us help you and also get the benefits “ourselves”. There are a few examples of apps or kind of more general issues -and maybe conflicts of interest in a way- that keep SFOS back. Or at least cant make it be as great as it can be.

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#9

For the longest time, there were complains that Jolla would bail out of their promises. And while I still feel that it’s true, now it has moved from “Don’t make promises that you cannot keep” to “Just don’t promise anything”.

Community Forum was actually within schedule, but many things are still lingering in endless loop of not knowing what the hell is going on.

Recent example is SailfishOS 3 VoLTE support. It was advertised as one of the main features of SFOS3, but for now it seems to be dropped for who knows how long. And that’s the point. We are fine with delays and sometimes things do not go as planned. However, there has been almost no explanation or even announcement that it happened. Somebody just noticed that it was no-longer part of the SFOS 3 announcement page.

Qt upgrade is the next. I cannot keep even track what is the current reason for delaying since it seems to be doing ping pong movement in between almost a year. These things are constantly being asked in community meetings, so maybe there should be a FAQ about it that is kept up to date.

In all simplicity, I would like to know what Jolla is planning for this year and the next. What is the roadmap for new and current features? What do you see as the biggest problems with the OS right now and how you plan to fix them?

And not being certain how to answer or what to say is also an answer. Currently the complete dead silence is what people are angry about.

One cool way to communicate is to provide some insight on what’s going on. Something like GrimoireLab (or anything similar), would be really cool.

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#10

VoLTE and Qt upgrade are on the roadmap and to my understanding that have been also communicated earlier. The exact schedule for the release of these features is something we can not commit to at the moment. But I think that is a bit beside the point for this thread. At least what was my intention. I’d like to understand how information does not disappear, how do we make sure that questions are not left answered. Is there a better format to keep the meeting? Are there tools that would help?

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VoLTE support in SailfishOS?
#11

I think using already existing tools is something to start with. For example, if there is an answer to a topic X which points to thread X in the forum, Jolla should answer to that topic and put it “sticky/answer” to that question. People should not be required to go multiple places to look for the information (for example meeting logs +TJC + forum + wiki).

Also, migrating data from TJC is kinda the spirit of this idea. It should be put EoL as soon as possible. Now we are kinda in a limbo where some people are waiting for data to be migrated, so that there won’t be duplicate topics and so on.

Transparency is the key. People want to help and be informed. That should be made as easy as possible. People around this community and developers are passionate about Sailfish. Everybody is just frustrated since helping out and getting information is made as hard as possible.

For the 3.4 release it would again be nice to have blog about the development and what difficulties you faced during the implementation.

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#12

About the tools, maybe some public bug tracker with issues reported by community?

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#13

GitLab’s bug tracker works fine, also when not publishing source code.

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#14

About the bug tracker you’re refreshing an old discussion.

@maajussi: This is another example of an underlying problem that was amplified by TJC: Scattered information. Topics that are raised and raised again because the answers to them got lost somewhere in the post history jungle. And as has been noted already, too often there’s no answer at all.
Let’s start a FAQ! And please do take a look on the most frequently opened questions / highest voted ones on TJC as well as here. The community sure is willing to help collect questions and answers to it. Put it in a prominent and discoverable place

Personally I think that Jolla, despite the bad things that happened in the past would benefit from engaging with their users again. It’s possible to answer questions about planned features and current implementation progress without committing to everything as it was set in stone.
I’m repeating points made already above, I guess. but it’s not so much what tools and technology we’re using but which culture of communication there is. The Linux Kernel developers communicate via plain old mailing lists for decades .

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#15

personally,
I have stopped joining the meetings as they feel a bit like “throwing things at the wall” or a “bikeshed”; we all know jolla is busy and small.
like any startup, they are extremely constrained in resources.
but the point of the meeting is to keep the contact with the community; kind of “we are here” type of thing. but nothing else. I mean, some items proposed have been handled, yes; but where is the roadmap you mention? we as a community have no idea what thats about. or what comes next, for that matter.
even a community backlog / bugtracker would help already; if jolla cant fix their things because theres no ressources, they must learn to levereage the community id say. surprising they havent done so yet if you ask me. Also btw community members pay licenses, so they are paying customers just as much no?

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#16

TBH what does ‘newer’, better, ‘more open’ offer?
When the problem is caused by lazy, lame, elusive answering and action?
There are lots of examples, I will bring here only the creation of this forum and the handling of taking over the old content.

How do you think this forum will look like when all these
e.g. Remove icon texts from app launcher
links will lead to 404?

Any sufficient answer on this
https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/takeover-of-currently-existing-errors-or-questions-from-the-old-forum/1424/2topic from Jolla side? (else than it will take months?)

Will the take-over clutter this forum with all this links now leading back to TJC?

1 Like
#17

@maajussi Any info when Community Meetings will resume?

#18

Yes, we will continue them. Next week meeting is in plans. As we’ve left the TJC behind, we need to check how shall we inform people best of the next meeting and call for the topics. But for sure, the meetings are continued! This chain of discussion was originated to find out if the form of the meeting and connection between Jolla and the community could be upgraded someway.

#19

Maybe the first thing would be to update «#sailfishos-meeting topic was set jeu. juil. 9 00:31:31 2020 by Jaymzz» as it’s somewhat ridiculous now.

#20

Speaking of making IRC meetings better we need to find a way to propose topics in the new forum.

The main topic cant be edited. Its either made editable by all or we propose as replies and the topic is reset after the meeting. No comments there. Just issues.