Brave Heart 'welcome letter' draft - feedback welcome
12-19-2019, 01:22 PM
I think the wording is very good, but considering some other responses here, perhaps you should make a more detailed statement about the relationship between pine64 and the different OS projects and how that will complicate reporting of problems and other user responses.
I believe the pinephone is the first consumer-oriented phone that has ever been released without the "full stack" being controlled and distributed by the device manufacturer. It is going to be a challenge to keep track of what issues involve the hardware itself and what issues are related to the OS project. Add to this the fact that each OS project has its own policies, communication methods, and culture and you have a recipe for confusion for the end user. For example, as a user if I try to run postmarket and can't connect to my wifi is the problem that I haven't configured the connection right (my problem), a network stack issue (a project-level problem), or bad hardware (a pine64-level problem)?
This isn't a bad thing, as long as everyone has a firm grasp of the distributed nature of the effort. You have done a wonderful job of communication; the "Brave Heart" approach is probably the best way to ease this transition, but I still worry about how "we" (non-developer brave heart early adopters) will end up fitting into the different project communities that have been built by the developers (a very different culture).
I'm hoping that each project has thought through this (I'm guessing some of them are secretly dreading the assault of non-technical users on their solution-focused communities). Perhaps Pine64 can help coordinate a more user-friendly set of "launching points" for each project. You have the framework in place both on the pinephone wiki page and the software forum. Maybe you could ask each project for more detailed "getting started" info for early adopters, especially an description of how each community prefers to handle communication. Those writeups would be added to the wiki and forums entries as "getting started with" guides that introduce the community as well as just the steps to install and boot the device for the first time. Sort of a "welcome letter" for each project?
I believe the pinephone is the first consumer-oriented phone that has ever been released without the "full stack" being controlled and distributed by the device manufacturer. It is going to be a challenge to keep track of what issues involve the hardware itself and what issues are related to the OS project. Add to this the fact that each OS project has its own policies, communication methods, and culture and you have a recipe for confusion for the end user. For example, as a user if I try to run postmarket and can't connect to my wifi is the problem that I haven't configured the connection right (my problem), a network stack issue (a project-level problem), or bad hardware (a pine64-level problem)?
This isn't a bad thing, as long as everyone has a firm grasp of the distributed nature of the effort. You have done a wonderful job of communication; the "Brave Heart" approach is probably the best way to ease this transition, but I still worry about how "we" (non-developer brave heart early adopters) will end up fitting into the different project communities that have been built by the developers (a very different culture).
I'm hoping that each project has thought through this (I'm guessing some of them are secretly dreading the assault of non-technical users on their solution-focused communities). Perhaps Pine64 can help coordinate a more user-friendly set of "launching points" for each project. You have the framework in place both on the pinephone wiki page and the software forum. Maybe you could ask each project for more detailed "getting started" info for early adopters, especially an description of how each community prefers to handle communication. Those writeups would be added to the wiki and forums entries as "getting started with" guides that introduce the community as well as just the steps to install and boot the device for the first time. Sort of a "welcome letter" for each project?
