BBB ships more than 100K units -- and soon with Debian!

Excellent news, and yes as shabaz wrote, every part of it is good!

And very well done Jason Kridner for making the necessary adjustments in software support.  I'm sure the message was arriving loud and clear from multiple quarters.

Morgaine.

Interesting thread here https://groups.google.com/d/msg/beagleboard/WYrk-JUAkbM/EdXVSEiU6oYJ where Geralg Coley confirms it.

For me, it says a lot when Jason doesn't participate - seemingly at all - in the community surrounding his creation, announces Debian on a third party website and leaves it to Gerald to confirm it after someone posted the same link as John did. I'm beginning to wonder what part Jason actually plays in Beagle* these days as it seems to be left to Gerald, the hardware guy, to take all of the flak. It also seems that Robert Nelson has become the defacto software leader and the move to debian is likely largely down to his influence.

The rest of that thread is worth a quick read, we're clearly not the only ones seeing problems with angstrom.  Anguel's reply made me laugh, and before someone suggests it, no it's not me posting in disguise

John Beetem wrote:

 

I used to spend a lot of time at Google Groups, especially in the BeagleBoard group.  That all ended it 2012 when Google updated Google Groups, and reading the BeagleBoard group became more bother than it was worth.

I'll just say that I hate the web interface to googlegroups too.  However, there is another way. They really make it hard to find the info, but all of the googlegroups are setup as mailing lists, so you can send an email to groupname+subscribe@googlegroups.com and have the discussions delivered to an email address of your choice. That's what I do and just read them in Thunderbird in threaded mode.

As you probably know, I'm not a big fan of web forums, be that e14/jive, the RPF forums, or google groups, it's my belief that mailing lists are better and also much easier to deal with. The beagle* stuff goes wrong even there by having a single google group that covers all of the boards and everything from user support to kernel development. It doesn't work and it shows in the chaos there currently where most of the noise is little to do with the BBB, mostly basic "I don't know how to use a computer at all" or "I don't know how to use application X". The RPF has been forced to outgrow that stage by 2million+ users and at least they have some sensibly segregated areas for different sorts of discussion.

selsinork wrote:

 

Interesting thread here https://groups.google.com/d/msg/beagleboard/WYrk-JUAkbM/EdXVSEiU6oYJ where Geralg Coley confirms it.

 

For me, it says a lot when Jason doesn't participate - seemingly at all - in the community surrounding his creation, announces Debian on a third party website and leaves it to Gerald to confirm it after someone posted the same link as John did. I'm beginning to wonder what part Jason actually plays in Beagle* these days as it seems to be left to Gerald, the hardware guy, to take all of the flak. It also seems that Robert Nelson has become the defacto software leader and the move to debian is likely largely down to his influence.

 

The rest of that thread is worth a quick read, we're clearly not the only ones seeing problems with angstrom.  Anguel's reply made me laugh, and before someone suggests it, no it's not me posting in disguise

Gerald is a monster at replying to the mailing list. If he answers the question, then why do I need to chime in? I'm frequently poking around for unanswered questions and trying to help out rock-star developers like Robert help the Beagle community move ahead. It has always been my objective for the community to survive on its own, but this is my life and my passion, so you I'm not running from the flak. If there is something you see I'm not answering, it is fine to call me out specifically. If anything isn't running right, I'm most certainly at least partially to blame.

selsinork wrote:

 

John Beetem wrote:

 

I used to spend a lot of time at Google Groups, especially in the BeagleBoard group.  That all ended it 2012 when Google updated Google Groups, and reading the BeagleBoard group became more bother than it was worth.

I'll just say that I hate the web interface to googlegroups too.  However, there is another way. They really make it hard to find the info, but all of the googlegroups are setup as mailing lists, so you can send an email to groupname+subscribe@googlegroups.com and have the discussions delivered to an email address of your choice. That's what I do and just read them in Thunderbird in threaded mode.

 

As you probably know, I'm not a big fan of web forums, be that e14/jive, the RPF forums, or google groups, it's my belief that mailing lists are better and also much easier to deal with. The beagle* stuff goes wrong even there by having a single google group that covers all of the boards and everything from user support to kernel development. It doesn't work and it shows in the chaos there currently where most of the noise is little to do with the BBB, mostly basic "I don't know how to use a computer at all" or "I don't know how to use application X". The RPF has been forced to outgrow that stage by 2million+ users and at least they have some sensibly segregated areas for different sorts of discussion.

I've personally always used as an email list with beagleboard at googlegroups.com being where I send the e-mail. You have to set your Google Groups account to send you the mail.

We miss you John. I wish Google didn't do what they did, but I haven't seen an honestly good replacement that keeps people who prefer to interact with everything as e-mail happy.

That said, my inbox has been flooded for months. If the message doesn't specifically CC me, I probably miss it. I look for beagleboard e-mails that don't have replies first or ones that clearly mention a topic in the subject where I feel I'm an expert (or at least relatively knowledgable).

Some of these things I feel must organize themselves. I find that very few of the problems people have with BeagleBoards are specific to Beagle at all---they are more to do with Linux, or real-time, or programming, or electronics in general. I feel that Beagle has a huge opportunity to make it easier for people to learn about all of those topics and more in a friendly manner, but I feel some other solutions than forums, such as books, interactive websites and in-the-box-software make better long-term impacts. I'm very interested in feedback on that and would encourage you to call me out in a discussion on that in the Beagle mailing list (or less preferably here).

Community-sourced efforts like element14 forums and http://beaglefu.com/ are very important in my mind to get answers to people in the ways they feel the most comfortable. We've tried to make the Google Group solve as many people's needs as is possible, but I see these other efforts as a very natural part of a large and growing ecosystem of developers and users.

Wow, 3 X Jason in a row, awesome!!!   A Very Happy 2014 to you and yours.

As you probably know, we're big fans of BBB here, and very much look forward to what's coming in the future.  And you've answered the questions about "presence" perfectly i think.

Jason Kridner wrote:

 

It has always been my objective for the community to survive on its own, but this is my life and my passion, so you I'm not running from the flak. If there is something you see I'm not answering, it is fine to call me out specifically. If anything isn't running right, I'm most certainly at least partially to blame.

Awesome to hear that, and I expect it'll have assuaged any questions people might have had.  About the mess that is Google Groups, I think you're right to point out community-organized efforts like beaglefu.com (and elinux.org) as the way forwards.  Companies have agendas of their own, and all too frequently those agendas don't mesh with the needs of the community.

Great to hear about the C facility for the PRUs --- looking forward to that!

Have a great 2014 Jason, we're all on your side here.

Morgaine.

Jason Kridner wrote:

Gerald is a monster at replying to the mailing list. If he answers the question, then why do I need to chime in?

He certainly is

The rumors and speculation around angstrom and it's replacement have been going on for quite a while. You could have defused a lot of it with a quick post saying where things were heading.

Jason Kridner wrote:

I find that very few of the problems people have with BeagleBoards are specific to Beagle at all---they are more to do with Linux,

totally agreed, and I think you'd benefit from some seperation, general questions on one list, with kernel/driver/cape development on another to try to avoid the generic linux stuff drowning out the real development work.

Like the RPi, the BBB is a victim of it's own success, bringing in more people with little experience of linux was always going to alter the signal to noise ratio and it's a good indicator of success that you have the problem!

Jason Kridner wrote:

 

Some of these things I feel must organize themselves.

I have a suggestion, a way forward that could address many of the issues that you and many others have mentioned.  It fits the general category of the community "organizing themselves" but with just a hint of assistance through providing resources to help them,  Specifically:  run an issue tracker on Beagleboard.org.

I'm not suggesting that either Beagleboard.org nor TI track issues and resolve them, but only that you provide the hardware/software resource for it.  The community can do the work itself, and of course that's the costly part, the human resources.  But the community will I'm sure be happy to dedicate its own manpower and time so that the burden of administration won't fall on you.

This could go a long way towards adding some organization to the incoherent mess that is Google Groups.  Users who aren't scared by the prospect of registering with the tracker could search for related problem reports or questions, and add their own.  Knowledgeable users could collapse repeated questions into single-issue threads, add "See issue XXX" links as quick answers, manage the resolution state of issues (resolved within the community in most cases), and so on.

Would it be a mess?  Yes, total chaos, at least initially.  But communities have a habit of working themselves out, and as long as there is a revert system for undoing incorrect changes or abuse, it'll clean itself up.  After all, wikis manage just fine.  And if it doesn't work out, not a lot will be lost.  Personally, I expect that anything would be an improvement on the unstructured cauldron of the mailing list --- an issue tracker would add some organization to the current chatter, and that's important.

Morgaine.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

  Specifically:  run an issue tracker on Beagleboard.org.

There's https://github.com/beagleboard/kernel/issues already, but nobody's going to find that unless they already know it's going to be there.

It's a bit like the beaglefu.com link Jason posted, even though it's there, not having obvious links from beagleboard.org means it won't be used to full advantage. I'd never heard of beaglefu before today...

Which is why I suggested the tracker be run on beagleboard.org --- how about tracker.beagleboard.org ?  As you can see, I'm highly creative.

selsinork wrote:

 

There's https://github.com/beagleboard/kernel/issues already, but nobody's going to find that unless they already know it's going to be there.

That actually looks perfectly adequate.  So, the only thing beagleboard.org needs is a CNAME to it!

Plus, a lot of name dropping.

Morgaine.

selsinork wrote:

 

Jason Kridner wrote:

Gerald is a monster at replying to the mailing list. If he answers the question, then why do I need to chime in?

He certainly is

 

The rumors and speculation around angstrom and it's replacement have been going on for quite a while. You could have defused a lot of it with a quick post saying where things were heading.

Indeed. It was a fairly moronic move on my part to sugar up the 100k news post being made by LinuxGizmos with news of the fairly-openly-discussed rumor that really isn't just a rumor and then taking off on vacation where I barely have any Internet access. I haven't spoken to Gerald, Dave, Robert or others, but I'm pretty sure there is some irritation at me doing this. I'll try to learn from it!

Thanks for all the support.

selsinork wrote:

 

Jason Kridner wrote:

Gerald is a monster at replying to the mailing list. If he answers the question, then why do I need to chime in?

He certainly is

 

The rumors and speculation around angstrom and it's replacement have been going on for quite a while. You could have defused a lot of it with a quick post saying where things were heading.

Indeed. It was a fairly moronic move on my part to sugar up the 100k news post being made by LinuxGizmos with news of the fairly-openly-discussed rumor that really isn't just a rumor and then taking off on vacation where I barely have any Internet access. I haven't spoken to Gerald, Dave, Robert or others, but I'm pretty sure there is some irritation at me doing this. I'll try to learn from it!

Thanks for all the support.