Nokia's funding for maemo.org is ending: call for donations

Via: @Jaffa2

Editor: Andrew Flegg

Council member, Joerg Reisenweber has announced a need for donations to keep all of maemo.org running as Nokia step back from support: I have to inform all of you that we're approaching a critical date for all of us: Nokia is about to stop funding our infrastructure and board and council are busy to establish a new set of servers to run all the bits we need to continue with our daily maemo-life. First impact is on this very forum, which we need to either move to a new server until end of the year, or as a last resort find some 500 bucks to buy one more month of operation on the old one, until we established the move end of January then. There are other expenses the board is facing right now to ensure a smooth continuation of services like repositories, wiki, whatnot else.

There are many facets to maemo.org's infrastructure, from the website itself (running on Midgard); Talk (running on vBulletin); the wiki (running on Mediawiki); Garage (home to many projects, including MWKN, running on GForge); the autobuilder and Extras (and the testing infrastructure for them) any many other aspects.

Despite facing a critical time at the moment, your editor expects the financial situation for maemo.org to be one of the ongoing stories of 2013.

maemo.org Talk donated to Hildon Foundation

Via: @Jaffa2

Editor: Andrew Flegg

With the other changes to the infrastructure, Reggie Suplido is stepping down as TMO administrator, and handing it over to the Hildon Foundation. In the announcement, Council, and Board, member Ivan Galvez Junquera said:

The Internet Tablet Talk first and TMO later, have been the glue for this amazing community that we have, providing an efficient way of communication between developers and end users, not just a place for discussion and comments.

Reggie has been the administrator and owner of forums since the very beginning, and thanks to him a lot has been accomplished. However, now that Nokia is stopping activities around Maemo and Meego, continuation of forums was at risk.

Reggie is stepping down as TMO administrator at the start of 2013, and is handing over the database to the Foundation. This means a new administrator is needed, and running costs managed by the more constrained finances.

The discussion also veered into open source replacements for the vBulletin system on which it currently runs. Although ultimately a sensible move, in your editor's opinion, now is not the time for that. At the moment, continuity of service is required whilst alternatives - and trusted people willing to put in the effort to perform the migration - are properly investigated and weighed up.

Nokia Store losing billing support on N9 in China

Via: @GeneralAntilles

Talk user "rzr" reported on an email he received last week from Nokia: Recently we are going to deploy an upgrade of store billing to improve the billing in China, but unfortunately as a side effect of this, we will lose billing support on N9, which means content on N9 can’t be billed in China anymore. If developers wish to continue shipping their Harmattan applications in China they'll need to publish them in free versions.

We'll likely be hearing more and similar stories like this over the coming months and years as Nokia's support for Harmattan really screetches to a halt.