Re: Preliminary Results - GNOME Foundation Board of Directors Elections 2019

[James via foundation-list]

On Fri, Jun 21, 2019 at 7:41 AM Jens Georg  wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm sorry if this was explained before  - what does
>
> "Elimination due to affiliation" mean?

Max of 2 candidates per organization.
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Re: Board of Directors Elections 2019 - Candidacy - Jeremy Allison

[James via foundation-list]

On Fri, May 31, 2019 at 7:35 PM Jeremy Allison via foundation-list
 wrote:
>
> Name: Jeremy Allison
> Email: j...@google.com, j...@samba.org
> Affiliation: Google
> IRC: Don't use it - I'm too old so I use email instead :-).
>
> I'd like to run for the Gnome Foundation Board of Directors
> on behalf of Google.
>
> I've used Gnome for as long as it has been available
> as a GNU/Linux desktop.
>
> I don't currently contribute other than helping the
> gnome-vfs maintainers use one of the libraries (libsmbclient) of
> my primary project, Samba to access SMB1/2/3 servers.
>
> I have a long (25+ years) experience with Free and Open
> Source Software, mostly to do with my primary project
> Samba.
>
> I am on the Board of Directors of the Software Freedom
> Conservancy, and on the Advisory Board of the Document
> Foundation (LibreOffice).
>
> I perform my board duties diligently as required.
>
> I'd like to help support Gnome and promote it as a
> desktop environment within Google and outside of
> Google.
>
> I've had my differences with some of the design
> decisions in the past (as Karen Sandler can attest :-),
> but I would really like to help add my experience
> and enthusiasm for Free and Open Source Software
> to the project.
>
> Thank you for your consideration.
>
> Jeremy Allison,
> Google Open Source Programs Office,
> Co-Author of the Samba project.

Hi Jeremy!

Really glad to see that you're running for the board!

Assuming I'm correct in that we're allowed to ask questions to
prospective candidates here, I'll throw in a few...
(Other candidates are welcome to answer as well.)

1) What distribution(s) do you use on your personal and work laptops
and desktops?

2) What's the biggest technical difficulty you've had with modern GNOME?

3) How will you help GNOME succeed on modern mobile devices where the
hardware is often very locked down or difficult to get running on?

Thanks and good luck! You have my support =D
James
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Re: New GNOME Foundation employee - GTK+ Core Developer

[James via foundation-list]

On Sun, Dec 2, 2018 at 12:52 PM Neil McGovern  wrote:
> Dear Foundation members,
>
> After a long and robust recruitment process, I'm very pleased to
> announce our first new staff member in a while.
> Emmanuele Bassi will be joining us tomorrow (3rd December) to take on
> the role of GTK+ Core Developer!
>
> Emmanuele has a long history of contributions to GTK, and has been a
> Foundation member himself for over 12 years.
> Previously working at Endless, Mozilla and Intel, where he contributed
> to many components of the GNOME core development platform, I'm happy to
> bring him on board to continue his commitment to the project.
>
> I'm sure you'll all give him a warm welcome in this new role!
>
> Thanks,
> Neil

This is awesome news, and I'm extremely glad to hear that:

1) money is going to fund an excellent project / cause (GTK+)
2) we have such a well-known and talented (AFAIK, since I'm not a GTK+
expert) person working on this!

Yay Emmanuele!!

As long as nobody minds, I think I'll mention what I'm sure everyone
already knows: funding free software hackers, is probably one of the
best ways to improve free software, so I'm happy that the foundation
is leading by example!

One question: is Emmanuele given any particular tasks or direction for
GTK+, eg: does the GNOME foundation have any specific priorities
they'd like to address, or is it more self-directed?

Thanks again, and keep it up! Can't wait till there is a second
developer on board.

James
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Re: LAS GNOME Update | Postponed until Spring 2018

[James]

On Fri, Aug 25, 2017 at 2:22 AM, Nuritzi Sanchez <nuri...@gnome.org> wrote:
> Hello friends,
>
> I'm writing to announce that, after a lot of consideration, we have decided
> to postpone LAS GNOME from November 2017 to the Spring of 2018. We believe
> that this will allow us to have a great conference that helps us meet some
> updated goals around the libre application ecosystem, especially now that we
> have launched Flathub and are gaining momentum on newcomers initiatives.
>
> Below is more information on our wider proposal for what the 2018 Libre
> Application Summit should be and how it can fit in with regard to other more
> GNOME-centered events.
>
> If you have any questions, or are interested in becoming part of the
> organizing team, please let us know!
>
> Thanks, and we hope to send more updates about the upcoming Spring iteration
> of LAS soon.
>
> Best,
> Nuritzi on behalf of the LAS organizing team
>
>
> The Libre Applicaiton Summit / LAS Strategy
> Since the long-term vision for the Libre Application Summit is that it
> outgrows GNOME and becomes its own thing, with many ecosystem players
> besides GNOME participating, we want to try to get rid of the "GNOME" part
> of "LAS GNOME." This means we will start to refer to the conference simply
> as the "Libre Application Summit," or "LAS."
>
> We would like to incubate the Libre Application Summit within a North
> American event for about 2 - 5 years. We believe this will help us get more
> people to attend and provide enough volunteer manpower and GNOME-raised
> funding to get LAS off its feet.
>
> Co-Hosting with a North American GNOME event
> With no formal GNOME-related conference in North America (where a number of
> GNOME developers reside), it seems prudent to merge the concept of the
> Boston/Montreal Summit and West Coast Summit into a single unitary GNOME
> event in North America.
>
> Last week on foundation-list, Allan proposed having something like a "North
> American Summit" [1], and we think it's a great idea. However, we would like
> to propose that the official name of that event have "GNOME" in the title so
> that we can call it out as a GNOME-centered event.
>
> We have come up with some ideas for the name of the event, and would love
> help coming up with others. We are missing a clear vision for what the North
> American event will become, which makes it harder to name it. We'll
> circulate a separate email asking for help naming the event soon.
>
> Next Steps for LAS 2018
> We are planning an event for LAS 2018 organizers in a few weeks to keep the
> ball rolling since the event is still just a few months away. The event will
> most likely be the weekend of September 30 - October 1st in San Francisco
> since most of the people interested in organizing LAS 2018 are already in
> the SF Bay Area.
>
> If you are interested in organizing LAS 2018 elsewhere in North America, let
> us know ASAP so we can talk about next steps.
>
> [1]
> https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2017-August/msg00011.html
>

Red Hat (my employer) has a very large, and mostly unused office in
Montreal which we could probably use if folks want to have an event in
Montreal. There is really fast wifi, a full kitchen (no stove) and
lots of tables/chairs, etc...

Montreal is a good North American location, because it is a great
city, it is close to Europe, and it's not in the United States which
is more dangerous and politically unstable at the moment.

Feel free to ping offline if you'd like to coordinate on this.

Cheers,
James
@purpleidea
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Re: Send us your pants nominations

[James]

On Wed, Jul 5, 2017 at 8:14 AM, Neil McGovern <n...@gnome.org> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> GUADEC is coming up soon, and with GUADEC comes the annual Pants Award.
> Every year, GNOME awards a pair of pants to somebody in recognition of
> their outstanding contributions. The board will make the final decision
> on who receives the pants, but we'd love to hear your nominations.
>
> The award can be for any kind of contribution to our software or our
> community. It does not have to be software development work. The only
> requirements are that the person is attending GUADEC to receive the
> pants, and that it's not a current or outgoing board member. Not sure
> if the person fits the requirements? Just nominate! We'll sort it out.
>
> Please feel free to send your nominations as a reply to this email. Or,
> if you'd prefer to nominate someone anonymously, email board-list.
>
> Thanks,
> Neil
> --

Here's a nomination for Milan Crha who does lots of hacking on Evolution.

https://git.gnome.org/browse/evolution/log/

It's not the most public, "sexy" project in our arsenal, and while
many people find it more glorious to work on newer things like Maps,
Builder, Flatpak and more (I'm a fan of these projects, the
contributors and their work) it's still excellent to have people
contributing to one of the workhorses that helps many of us get a lot
of our work done.

Here's to Milan, and the other Evolution contributors. May they
continue their great work, and may other join them in the quest to a
better alternative to gmail.

Thanks,
James
@purpleidea
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Re: Code of Conduct Adoption Process

[James]

On Sat, Sep 17, 2016 at 3:11 PM, Richard Stallman  wrote:
> My practical question is, which of those lists _do his messages
> actually get through to_?
>
> I should send my reactions to the lists that his messages
> actually reach, and not to those his messages do not reach.

I would respectfully recommend to treat his email address as SPAM when
his messages reach you, since based on previous comments and postings
I've seen from him, he's obviously just a troll and doesn't need to be
fed.

Good luck!
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Re: Code of Conduct Adoption Process

[James]

On Fri, Sep 16, 2016 at 3:34 AM, Jens Georg  wrote:
>>
>> I do agree that seeing only part of the conversation isn't
>> particularly helpful,
>
>
> Sorry for not making this clear, that was the point I was trying to make
> here. Nothing else.

Indeed, now an apology from me, if it wasn't clear that I wasn't
trying to interject against you, but rather both:
1) agree with your comment
2) ask if someone is looking into helping deal with the alleged harassment.

I still haven't heard anything about (2) but hope that it is resolved soon.
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Re: Code of Conduct Adoption Process

[James]

On Fri, Sep 16, 2016 at 1:04 AM, Jens Georg  wrote:
> Can you please stop leaking half a conversation from a private mailing list
> to a public one? Thank you.

I have to interject here. What it sounds like is that one foundation
list member (doesn't matter who it is) is getting harassed (possibly
off-list to some degree) by another person. I would hope that the
foundation can take steps to decide if this alleged intimidation is
happening or not, and if so, to help remedy the situation.

I do agree that seeing only part of the conversation isn't
particularly helpful, but hopefully someone on the foundation board
can ensure that this can be made at least somewhat of a safe and
welcome space.

Thanks
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Re: Minutes of the Board meeting of August, 2nd, 2016

[James]

On Mon, Aug 29, 2016 at 5:08 PM, Michael Catanzaro <mcatanz...@gnome.org> wrote:
> It's upcoming in October. I don't think any details have been published
> yet for this year, but historically it begins the Saturday before
> Columbus Day and ends on that day, each year, in either Boston or
> Montreal.

Oh cool. Well if it ends up being in Montreal, and I'm around, then
I'm happy to try and help out and I might possibly even have a good
venue available.

Cheers,
James
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Re: Minutes of the Board meeting of August, 2nd, 2016

[James]

On Mon, Aug 29, 2016 at 1:54 AM, Cosimo Cecchi <cosi...@gnome.org> wrote:
> = Foundation Board Minutes for Monday, August 2nd 2016, 17:00 UTC =

> == Agenda for 2016-08-02 ==
>
>  * GNOME Summit 2016 in Montreal

Is this something that is upcoming or already happened?

Thanks,
James
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Re: Yorba Foundation looking to pass on copyrights

[James]

On Thu, Mar 24, 2016 at 4:55 PM, Adam Dingle <a...@medovina.org> wrote:
> My understanding is that GNOME itself does not hold copyrights.  Is anyone
> aware of any other free software organization that might be willing and able
> to receive our copyrights?  Thanks -

Obviously the FSF and maybe the https://sfconservancy.org/ might be up
to the task.

HTH and thanks for your efforts in funding Free Software while they lasted.

Cheers,
James
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Really professional GNOME videos

[James]

I'm a long time GNOME user, but I just wanted to say, that I've been
watching these GNOME release videos [1], and I think they're really
well done and very professional. In particular, they embody a
principle which I'd like to remind folks of: software freedom is
important, but it's also important that our software is _better_! This
is one of the things that I strive for when contributing to Free
Software, and I think this video does a great job of showing that
entirely Free Software can produce professional videos (and it also
highlights our great software too!).

Thanks to whoever was involved.

Cheers,
James
@purpleidea

[1] Eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JU2f_jkPRq4 and the other ones
before it.
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Re: [Builder] Developer experience (DX) hackfest 2016

[James]

On Wed, Dec 30, 2015 at 2:36 AM, Christian Hergert  wrote:
> I did contact her yesterday and the answer was jitsi. It seems
> reasonable, but I haven't had a chance to test it out yet.
>
> https://jitsi.org/

FWIW, I just tried this, and it seems to work similarly to ghangouts,
except that you don't need a google account, which seems to make this
even easier.

Eg: https://meet.jit.si/gnomehackers would just work for everyone. You
might have to change some settings if you want to make it private. I
didn't test screen sharing features or any appreciable size of users
connected simultaneously.

Of note, it seems the meet feature was recently relicensed to ALv2 to
make it easier to enable proprietary addons for other developers, but
it's not something I have much information on.

HTH
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Re: Agenda for board meeting on November 3rd

[James]

On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 4:11 PM, Hubert Figuière  wrote:
> On 06/11/15 04:40 PM, Richard Stallman wrote:
>>
>> That's true.  The program's developers, or others, can put it in the
>> Google store if they wish.
>>
>> My point is that the GNOME Foundation should not do so.
>
> So your point is that it would be better that the app appear on the
> store to come from Random J Hacker that most of the users might not have
> heard of, rather than a trusted organisation like the GNOME Foundation.
> Opening the door to Joe Criminal to publish a similar app that would
> have a malicious impact (stealing personal information, spying, etc.).

I think it makes most sense for the program's developers to put it in
the store, as Stallman suggested. What's wrong with that?
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Re: Agenda for board meeting on November 3rd

[James]

On Fri, 2015-11-06 at 16:40 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote:
> 
>   > While I do think we should recommend fdroid.org as preferable and
> only
>   > link to it (such as in links from the GNOME application and its
>   > documentation), and avoid linking to a version in the Play store
> (e.g.
>   > "To use the Foo feature, install the Foo application for Android,
>   > available via https://f-droid.org/...;), that doesn't preclude
> making
>   > the application available via the Google Play store for users who
>   > already have that installed.
> 
> That's true.  The program's developers, or others, can put it in the
> Google store if they wish.
> 
> My point is that the GNOME Foundation should not do so.

I initially thought we should put the app in the store. Reading this
last line, made me realize the distinction. I agree with Dr. Stallman.
I really enjoy reading this list sometimes!

Thanks!
James
@purpleidea


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Re: Minutes of the Board Meeting of January, 09th, 2015

[James]

On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 6:11 PM, Andrea Veri a...@gnome.org wrote:
  * Idea to have highly technical and popular GNOME ambassadors? Already 
 have a couple of qualified volunteers

I like this idea, however in my day to day hacking and speaking, I
already unofficially advocate for GNOME.
Examples: when speaking at conferences, visiting hackerspaces, talking
to random people, friends, and so on, I'm showing off a GNOME
environment.

One issue which could be (inexpensively) addressed by the foundation:
I received ~four GNOME stickers from Karen Sandler when she was in
Montreal. I've given them all out. If I had a bunch more it would
surely (I think) help the marketing efforts. is there anyone out there
who wants to send me a bunch?
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$B donations not working

[James]

From: https://www.gnome.org/friends/other-ways-to-donate/

 Bitcoin
 We have currently reached our daily limit for receiving Bitcoin.
 Please try again tomorrow :-(

This isn't very cool... Please just post a wallet address, and get the
currency converted at a later date! If that's not possible for some
reason, then I suspect someone should look into fixing the Bitcoin
processor we're using.

Cheers,
James



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Re: Agenda for board meeting on September 26th

[James]

On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 7:37 PM, Bastien Nocera had...@hadess.net wrote:
 On Tue, 2014-09-30 at 15:24 -0400, Richard Stallman wrote:
 [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]]
 [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]]
 [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

 So, this is a bit annoying already.

 snip
  * Free software.  Many web sites require visitors to run nonfree
  software to use some or even all of the functionality.  See
  http://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html.  Does Bountysource
  work without nonfree JS?  I don't know, but one can't presume that.

 Their JS is opensource

 Whether a program is open source is not the pertinent question.
 What matters is whether it is free software.
 snip heard many times before tirade about Open Source vs. Free
 Software

 The proletysing has to stop. He's a GNU orthodox thinking we're complete
 idiots of Roman GNUs.

 I've asked the mailing-list moderator to handle that already, but they
 won't lift a finger. Either he leaves, or I'm out of this mailing-list.

Speaking personally, I have a lot of respect for *your* work, but also
his. I'd rather neither of you leave, but I also don't see one of the
parties trying to get rid of the other.

Having read, and re-read the previous email that you replied to, I
thought it was very fair and reasonable, although some aspects of his
replies were expected (eg: the header, and his reply to the use of the
term open source).

I'd personally recommend you avoid getting angry at your MUA, read
this (rudely titled, but well written) article:
https://weev.livejournal.com/409835.html?nojs=1 and get back to
hacking :)

Cheers,
James




 Cheers
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Re: Agenda for board meeting on September 26th

[James]

On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 7:53 PM, Lefty le...@shugendo.org wrote:
 Oh, you’d personally recommend the opinion of the guy who hounded Kathy
 Sierra off the web entirely.

I don't know the author of the post personally at all, nor anything
about his background.


 That’s an apropos choice.

 Richard could certainly stand to STFU more.

I think that's a rude way to say something, and not entirely
appropriate in my opinion. I respect that you don't agree with some of
the things he says, but I don't respect the way you or Mr. Nocera is
expressing them. Please be respectful to other foundation members.
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Re: Agenda for board meeting on September 26th

[James]

On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 7:53 PM, Lefty le...@shugendo.org wrote:
 https://weev.livejournal.com/409835.html?nojs=1 and get back to
 hacking :)


 Oh, you’d personally recommend the opinion of the guy who hounded Kathy
 Sierra off the web entirely.


Causing me to waste more internets time I've just looked up:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev

And so I apologize if I have chosen someone with a tainted past to
refer you all to. I don't think the link above had anything
questionable in it, and I do agree with the points mentioned within
it. I'll re-read it to double check.
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Re: Agenda for board meeting on September 26th

[James]

On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 8:01 PM, James purplei...@gmail.com wrote:


 Causing me to waste more internets time I've just looked up:

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev

 And so I apologize if I have chosen someone with a tainted past to
 refer you all to. I don't think the link above had anything
 questionable in it, and I do agree with the points mentioned within
 it. I'll re-read it to double check.


Luis Villa has emailed me to tell me about weev's tainted past.
Apparently he has a Swastika tattoo, and says mean things. That's
particularly not cool, and I really have no interest in learning more
about the fellow.

Additionally, Mr. Villa objected to my use of the if in the sentence
where I wrote:

 And so I apologize if I have chosen someone with a tainted past

So please rewrite my above sentence in your mind without the if
(s/if/that/), based on Mr. Villa's above information. I included the
if, because as I said, I didn't ever look into the background of the
author of that link.

Links on the internet are dangerous, and I did not fully vet
everything the author wrote before linking to the one article! I do
agree with what the author said in that particular post, but I
disagree with everything else that Mr. Villa has pointed me to.

As an aside (and not referring to Mr. Villa) there are a lot of people
on foundation-list who are quite rude and/or disrespectful. I'm from
the internet, so my feelings aren't hurt by this, but I'm not happy to
see it happening _here_ either.

/back to hacking

Cheers,
James
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Re: James Shubin joined the GNOME Foundation Membership Committee

[James]

On Tue, 2014-08-26 at 15:30 -0700, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote:
 Welcome aboard!  Glad to have you, James!  Thank you for all your
 valuable contributions thus far and looking forward to all your future
 ones as well!
Thank you! I'll try to do my best in being responsive to membership
tickets and other things :)

Cheers,
James

 
 sri
 
 On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 3:23 PM, Andrea Veri a...@gnome.org wrote:
  Hello Foundation Members!
 
  I'm really happy to announce James Shubin (purpleidea) kindly offered his
  help to keep the business of the GNOME Foundation Membership Committee up
  and running!
 
  After a trial period of a few weeks and the awesome work commenting and
  providing feedback about existing applications we are more than happy to
  welcome him aboard!
 
  Thanks James and welcome again!
 
  [1] https://wiki.gnome.org/purpleidea
 
 
 
  --
  Cheers,
 
  Andrea
 
  Debian Developer,
  Fedora / EPEL packager,
  GNOME Infrastructure Team Coordinator,
  GNOME Foundation Board of Directors member,
  GNOME Foundation Membership  Elections Committee Chairman
 
  Homepage: http://www.gnome.org/~av
 
 
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Re: GNOME Board of Directors Elections 2014 - Preliminary Results

[James]

On Mon, Jun 9, 2014 at 5:40 AM, Fabiana Simões fabianapsim...@gmail.com wrote:
 Oops - election_id should've been 22:

 http://vote.gnome.org/vote/results.php?election_id=22

 Thanks for the heads-up!
 Fabiana


Still 404.
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Re: Self introduction

[James]

On Sun, 2014-04-27 at 11:57 +0200, Oliver Propst wrote:
 Hi, my name is Oliver Propst [1], I'm a new foundation member. I have
 contributed to the marketing efforts of GNOME (as part of the
 Engagement Team) since around 2010.
 
 Beside my GNOME contributions I'm also involved with the Mozilla
 community [2] and organizing the free software/society conference
 FSCONS [3] (which Karen keynoted last year).
 
 Other interests includes exercise, take pictures [4] and read comics [5].
 
 Professionally I work as a public school teacher, although this
 semester I'm attending a course at the University here in Gothenburg,
 Sweden where I live.
 
 I look forward to continue contribute to the Engagement Team efforts
 and collaborate with the rest of the GNOME community.

Awesome Oliver, and thanks for saying hello!

Cheers,
James


 
 1 https://twitter.com/Opropst
 2 https://reps.mozilla.org/u/oliver_propst/
 3 https://fscons.org/2013/
 4 http://500px.com/oliverpropst
 5 https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/18407066-oliver-propst
 
 
 



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Re: Changes on the GNOME Foundation Membership Committee

[James]

On Sun, 2014-04-13 at 16:02 +0100, Allan Day wrote:
 James and Aruna - it's awesome that you want to help with this. :)
 
 Allan

Thanks Allan!

Haha-- The way you say it... Should we be afraid? ;)

James



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Re: Changes on the GNOME Foundation Membership Committee

[James]

On Thu, 2014-04-10 at 19:57 +0200, Andrea Veri wrote:
 Dear Foundation Members,
 
 the GNOME Foundation Membership Committee reviewed its members list 
 and two free spots were found. In particular I would like to thank 
 Pedro and Federico for serving the Committee during all these months. 
Thanks for serving!

 
 Lately the membership queue has been delayed in being processed for a 
 lack of man power and we're therefore looking for one or two more 
 members to join our ranks. Given mentoring new members requires time 
 and efforts to the current members I'd suggest you to apply 
 for the open positions only in the case you have at least 1-2 hours 
 per week to contribute to the team. (and you are an existing member of 
 the GNOME Foundation)
I'm feeling brave, so I'd like to apply to join the membership team.
How do I apply?

Cheers,
James


 
 Being part of the GNOME Foundation Membership Committee takes in the 
 following responsibilities:
 
 - Learning the team's policies and procedures listed at [1].
 - Processing the applications that are sent to our Request Tracker 
   istance [2], and eventually welcome new Foundation Members that 
   have enough contributions for their membership application to be
   accepted.
 - Participate at meetings. We don't plan many nowadays, but surely
   2 or 3 per year.
 - Help organizing the Board of Directors elections each June before
   GUADEC.
 - Make sure you are connected to our IRC channel (#membership on
   irc.gnome.org)
 
 
 Thanks for your attention!
 
 [1] https://wiki.gnome.org/MembershipCommittee/ProcessingAnApplication
 [2] https://wiki.gnome.org/MembershipCommittee/RT
 
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Re: *wave*

[James]

On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 9:42 PM, Sumana Harihareswara suma...@panix.com wrote:
 I'm much less involved in GNOME than I used to be, so I am leaving this
 list. You'll still see me helping with OPW from the Wikimedia angle. (You
 might enjoy a post I wrote last year, Snapshot: how another FLOSS project
 is addressing similar problems:
 https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2013-April/msg6.html .
 One update that those interested in communications and publicity channels
 should check out:
 https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/01/07/tech-news-fighting-technical-information-overload-for-wikimedians/
 )

 I suggest that you (the person reading this) also consider letting go of
 projects to make room for new growth. As Christie Koehler writes, it's
 useful to periodically inventory what we're working on and identify whether
 it's time to let go.
 http://subfictional.com/2014/01/16/making-time-for-new-projects/

 Best wishes and happy hacking.

 Sumana Harihareswara

Bye Sumana! Sorry to see you go, and thanks for being friendly!

James

 http://harihareswara.net
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Re: Announcing GNOME's official GitHub mirror

[James]

On Sun, 2013-08-18 at 13:14 -0400, Super Bisquit wrote:
 Since when did you become a Dr without having an actual doctorate-
 honorary ones don't mean shit?
Other Doctors that may or may not be real Doctor's include: Dr. Dre,
Doctor Who, and Dr. Seuss... Personally I think Dr. Stallman qualifies
at least as much or more than a real Doctor. Also, quit trolling and go
away. This is the foundation list.

Thanks :)
James

 
 
 
 
 On Sat, Aug 17, 2013 at 10:41 PM, Richard Stallman r...@gnu.org
 wrote:
 
  [ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please
 consider
  [ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,
  [ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's
 example.
 
  Its sad that there is a huge number out there who think Free
 Software
  means $0 software.
 
  I often say free/libre software to help clear this up.
 
  --
  Dr Richard Stallman
  President, Free Software Foundation
  51 Franklin St
  Boston MA 02110



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Re: Announcing GNOME's official GitHub mirror

[James]

On Thu, 2013-08-15 at 11:42 +0200, Alexandre Franke wrote:
 On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 11:34 AM, Alberto Ruiz ar...@gnome.org wrote:
  Why did I choose github? Because that's where everybody is these days.
  Because we have nothing to lose by mirroring our repos there and we
  have a lot to gain.
 
 You're entitled to your opinion but you must be aware that some people
 disagree. Actually, is there a way for maintainers that don't want to
 have their module on Github to opt out of this mirroring process?
 
While I too am surprised that GNOME didn't choose to mirror on gitorious
first, I don't think it's inherently bad that they're mirroring on
github as long as it's just used for mirroring. You can think of it as
another way/place to spread Free Software.

My question: can't we *also* mirror on gitorious? In addition, if
git.gnome.org really dies, can at least have a trusted second copy ?

Cheers!
James



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Re: Announcing GNOME's official GitHub mirror

[James]

On Thu, 2013-08-15 at 11:50 +0200, Alberto Ruiz wrote:
 A hook for github is more than welcome from my POV.
I'm guessing you mean gitorious...

Are you able to point us to the github scripts and hooks that were
already written so that someone might be able to port those or patch
those instead of writing something from scratch that isn't compatible?

The goal is the make adding an additional mirror such as gitorious
pleasant for you and Andrea of course.

James



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Re: ask.gnome.org for developers

[James]

On Thu, 2013-06-20 at 15:08 +0200, Alexandre Franke wrote:
 
 The Stack exchange software (used by Stack overflow) is proprietary. I
 think Ubuntu used to have their instance hosted there.
 
 There is AskBot (http://askbot.org/) which is a free software
 alternative. It seems to be used by Fedora
 (https://ask.fedoraproject.org/) and we could run that on our servers.
 
 Solace (http://opensource.plurk.com/solace/) is another possibility.
 
  We could possibly just point people to
  http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/gnome-3 or
  http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/gnome
 
 Relying on a third party hosted, non free software tool when there is
 a viable free software alternative doesn't seem very in line with the
 GNOME philosophy.

+1, askbot seems nice. Good idea!

James



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Re: GNOME Foundation Board Elections Spring 2013 - Preliminary Results

[James]

On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 11:39 AM, Andrea Veri a...@gnome.org wrote:
 the GNOME Foundation Membership  Elections Committee is pleased to announce
 the preliminary results for the Board of Directors.


Congratulations to all the preliminary candidates !

James
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Code for voting scripts

[James]

Hi voting specialists,

Being the good hacker that I try to be, I am interested in learning more
about the GNOME elections voting process and the voting scripts.

Could someone point me to the code?

Thanks,
James



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Re: Code for voting scripts

[James]

Thank you!

James

On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 1:05 PM, Andrea Veri a...@gnome.org wrote:
 You can find everything at [1].

 cheers,

 [1]
 https://git.gnome.org/browse/foundation-web/tree/foundation.gnome.org/vote


 2013/5/29 James purplei...@gmail.com

 Hi voting specialists,

 Being the good hacker that I try to be, I am interested in learning more
 about the GNOME elections voting process and the voting scripts.

 Could someone point me to the code?

 Thanks,
 James


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 --
 Cheers,

 Andrea

 Debian Developer,
 Fedora / EPEL packager,
 GNOME Sysadmin,
 GNOME Foundation Membership  Elections Committee Chairman

 Homepage: http://www.gnome.org/~av
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Re: GNOME Board of Directors Elections 2013 - Voting Instructions sent

[James]

FYI: This isn't official, but the email I received had a voting link of:
http://vote.gnome.org/vote.php?id=21

I noticed that using HTTPS also works, and I imagine would be
preferable to everyone:

https://vote.gnome.org/vote.php?id=21

Cheers,
James

On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 12:23 PM, Andrea Veri a...@gnome.org wrote:
 Dear Foundation Members,

 we have just sent the ballots to the registered email addresses of the
 electorate.

 If you have not received your voting instructions, have a look on the list
 of eligible voters on http://www.gnome.org/foundation/membership/ and
 check the email account that is associated with you. Also check the SPAM
 folder. In case you are not on the list of eligible voters but think you
 should be, write us an email (see below).

 If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask them at
 membership-commit...@gnome.org or electi...@gnome.org.

 Happy Voting,
   Andrea Veri

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Re: Boston Summit 2013?

[James]

On Sat, May 4, 2013 at 1:56 PM, Germán Póo-Caamaño g...@gnome.org wrote:
 On Fri, 2013-05-03 at 17:00 +0100, Jeff Fortin wrote:
 Hi all,

 I just wanted to let you know that I'm currently trying to organize this
 in Montréal, it would be lovely to have you folks here again.

 As far as I see, there are 3 different people working on this (or at
 least 2 plus another one interested in).  It might be a good idea if you
 could coordinate between yourselves if you have not done that yet.
We've been talking by email. If any other Montrealers are around, feel
free to ping one of us.

Cheers,
James


 Regards,

 --
 Germán Poo-Caamaño
 http://calcifer.org/

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Re: Boston Summit 2013?

[James]

On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 11:38 AM, Karen Sandler ka...@gnome.org wrote:
 On Fri, April 26, 2013 4:51 am, Alberto Ruiz wrote:
 I'd love to visit Portland!

 However we might want to take into account that doing it in the west
 coast will have an impact on the travel budget since a lot of people
 live in Europe and the east coast.

 I know Sri is working hard to look into organizing this in Portland, but I
 think there are a number of obstacles. If Portland isn't the right choice
 for this year, are there folks who want to organize in Montreal?

I previously mentioned that I'm based in Montreal, and happy to help
organize this if people are interested.
HTH,
James


 karen

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Re: Boston Summit 2013?

[James]

On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 1:47 PM, Sriram Ramkrishna s...@ramkrishna.me wrote:



 On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 10:21 AM, James purplei...@gmail.com wrote:


 I previously mentioned that I'm based in Montreal, and happy to help
 organize this if people are interested.
 HTH,
 James



 OK, looks like we have a winner.  Do you have a venue that you can research?
Sure! I'll look into this. Has GNOME decided on Montreal? If so, maybe
someone can get me up to speed on some details, such as capacity and
specific dates. I'm happy to help with this, but I'd rather not be the
sole organizer.

Let me know what is needed!
Cheers,
James

 BTW Columbus Day is Thanksgiving in Canada right?

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Re: jabber.gnome.org's future

[James]

On Mon, 2013-03-04 at 22:11 -0800, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote:
 
 I think the point is well taken that the service never really got a
 chance
 because it wasn't well advertised.  I can imagine from a sysadmin
 perspective that XMPP would serve some interesting use cases for
 alerting
 for system events or other things or maybe build failures.
Good to know that this exists, but I didn't know it was available. I
have a jabber.org account, which I use occasionally. I might use GNOME's
servers now that I know they exist. It would be great if they support
federation.

 
 I have a hard time though thinking it is a superior chat system
 compared to
 IRC.  Mostly because, we have bots, we have just added some new IRC
 services.  Plus some of us run irc under screen, giving us 24/7 access
FWIW Sri is right on: irssi+screen is pretty invaluable. I actually like
screen and terminal apps and we use them, because the people who we want
to talk to are also on there of course. If all the devs and project
groups hung out on XMPP, we'd be there.

James

  to
 chat so we don't miss conversations.
 
 I think XMPP has a place, but chatting isn't one of them.
 
 sri



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Re: Introducing myself

[James]

On Sun, 2012-12-23 at 15:43 -0800, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote:
 Hi James!
 
 Welcome!  Glad you applied! That's really great that you're deploy
 GNOME to users, 
Thank you!

 it would be great to hear feedback from your users on what they think
 of GNOME and what gaps there might be.
I have a good amount of mental notes, but you're right that it would be
a good idea to write this down somewhere. I'll try to do this in the
future.
 
 
 I actually thought about an a gnome-integration mailing list.  (I
 actually already created it) as a way for other sysadmins to discuss
 how best to integrate GNOME into a corporate or school environment.
 Knowing the issues and helping to resolve them would be a great
 community action I think.
This is a good idea! I hope to release a bunch of code in the coming
months. After this is out there, maybe I can take more time to look into
this.

I've encountered a lot of broken/old GNOME deployments. I have a number
of puppet scripts and infrastructure (that I'm working on) that aim to
provide an easy/sane deployment process to help avoid bad installs. Many
users are still using ~2.18 era GNOME because of overly busy sysadmins.
I can help make this easier.

 
 sri
Cheers,
James

 
 
 
 On Sat, Dec 22, 2012 at 11:14 PM, James purplei...@gmail.com wrote:
 Dear foundation-list,
 
 I would like to introduce myself, my name is James Shubin, and
 I'm a
 sysadmin/developer from Montreal, Canada, and a new GNOME
 foundation
 member. (Thanks membership committee!)
 
 I've been a GNOME/Linux user since the early days, although I
 wasn't
 very proficient back then! I currently use GNOME, and support
 and deploy
 it for users. I work on Free Software tools to help sysadmins
 do this,
 and I write about it and other things on my technical blog:
 https://ttboj.wordpress.com/
 
 I'm 'purpleidea' on irc, although often afk, so a ping there
 or an email
 here is best to be able to contact me. I'm happy to answer (in
 particular) technical questions (my blog should help you to
 know my
 skillset) and I hope to improve GNOME and contribute a lot of
 useful
 tools for GNOME sysadmins/users.
 
 On a personal note, I'm proud to now be a more official
 contributor, and
 I hope my work is useful to you. Let me know,
 
 James
 
 
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Re: Copyright assignment policy

[James Henstridge]

On 14/03/2008, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
  Hash: SHA1


  [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

  | What is the policy of contributing to the GNOME project and expected
  copyright
  | assignment?
  |
  | I am Alexander Shopov and I act as a co-ordinator of the Bulgarian Gnome
  | translation team.
  |
  | Up till now, the copyrights have been assigned to the Free Software
  Foundation, Inc.


 Allow me to ask a different question : what is the problem or
  anticipated problem that compels you to ask this question, given that
  until now FSF was being assigned copyrights ? Perhaps a response to that
  can also provide a guidance on to the reply ...

From what has been said on the thread, no copyright assignment
contracts have been signed, so no copyright assignment has taken
place.

So the response to your question is that by placing inaccurate
copyright statements on the translations it makes it more difficult to
do things that require consent of the copyright holder: namely
pursuing infringements and relicensing the work (e.g. moving a GPLv2
only work to GPLv3).

We aren't requesting copyright assignment, so translators should be
credited as copyright holder for their work.

James.
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Re: time to (re)consider preferential voting?

[James Henstridge]

On 24/02/2008, Telsa Gwynne [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Ar Sat, Feb 23, 2008 at 09:10:23PM -0700, ysgrifennodd Elijah Newren:

  At the risk of sounding like a bad person...

 [...]

  Trying to counteract this factor, I've often voted for such people
   that I thought would be great and would be unknown in the wider
   community, and omitted voting for people I liked that I knew would
   make it on the board anyway (often making sure to select fewer people
   than the maximum I was allowed).  I was hoping it would even out the
   number of votes a little bit, and make those who didn't get elected
   feel more encouraged to try again.


 What can be bad about this? I do this too.

There is nothing bad about the people doing this: the voting system
effectively encourages it.

I would instead say that it is a problem with the voting system: that
people end up casting a ballot that doesn't accurately reflect who
they want on the board.

James.
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Re: time to (re)consider preferential voting?

[James Henstridge]

On 25/02/2008, Shaun McCance [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 [snip plenty of good discussion]


  On Sun, 2008-02-24 at 10:33 +0900, James Henstridge wrote:
   On 17/02/2008, Shaun McCance [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Any preferential voting systems is going to make the
 voting process more difficult.  If I had had to order
 my votes in previous elections, I'm sure it would have
 been mostly arbitrary.  If it's not solving any real
 problems, why bother?
  
   Is it really that much more difficult to order a list of ten
   candidates as opposed to selecting 7 out of the 10?


 I don't want to drag this argument out, and I'm not going to
  fight against preferential voting if that's what people want.

  But yes, I really do think it's hard to order a list of ten
  candidates.  I don't usually even select seven out of ten.
  In the last election, I selected maybe four or five.  Why?
  Because I just don't have a strong enough opinion on the
  others, and I think a random vote is worse than no vote.

This is certainly a problem with STV (the need to order candidates
that you consider irrelevant), but I don't think it is worse than the
problems with our current system.

Perhaps there are other systems that don't have the problem worth considering?


   Even if you aren't sure of a total ordering, you can probably pick a
   few candidates that you definitely want elected (put them at the top)
   and some candidates you definitely don't want elected (put them at the
   bottom).  You might decide to order the remainder randomly if you
   don't care about them.


 If, as your argument above indicates, this ordering can
  have drastic impacts on the outcome of the vote, I would
  not want to order them randomly.  Would the system still
  allow me to order my top five, and abstain of everybody
  else?  A voting system that doesn't allow abstaining has
  problems.

Most STV vote counting systems specify how to handle incomplete
ballots (often they are extinguished once the preferences run out, and
maybe the quota gets adjusted).

Of course, an incomplete ballot is probably not what you want if there
are candidates that you absolutely don't want elected (i.e. someone
you would consider being worse than an unknown).

That said, I don't really see assigning preferences much of a problem
given the number of candidates in the last few elections.  It isn't
like the senate ballots in Australia :)

James.
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Re: time to (re)consider preferential voting?

[James Henstridge]

On 17/02/2008, Shaun McCance [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

  On Sat, 2008-02-16 at 10:53 -0500, Luis Villa wrote:

  [Speaking purely as a Foundation member and not as a member of the
   Board; I've not discussed this with the Board at all.]
  
   Some years ago the Foundation considered the use of preferential
   voting to select the board. At the time I opposed it, for reasons I
   don't fully recall but which in retrospect probably boiled down to
   'I'm unfamiliar with it.' I believe that at the time we'd also have
   had to write the software, which would not have been fun. But I've
   come around to believing that this is a better way to run elections.
  
   It appears that by the time of our next election, we'll have a
   third-party, free software solution available for the problem, used
   recently and successfully by FreeCulture.org.
   http://blog.selectricity.org/?p=4
  
   I'm still trying to puzzle through the bylaws (which are a bit of a
   mess wrt voting) as to what it would take to actually enact this
   change (bottom line is probably that the board can just say 'it should
   be this way'), but in the meantime I thought it might be good to have
   a bit of discussion here around whether or not this is a good idea.


 Maybe I'm the only one, but I don't really see the point.
  For the record, I strongly advocate preferential voting
  in situations where you are electing exactly one person.
  In these cases, non-preferential voting systems tend to
  lock out candidates.

I think the same arguments about not locking out candidates stand when
you generalise single seat instant run-off to multiple seat single
transferable vote: if the candidate you prefer is unpopular and gets
eliminated at the start, this does not penalise you for choosing them.

In instant run-off, you are effectively eliminating candidates until
one has more than 50% of the first preference vote.  For seven seat
STV, you do the same but pick candidates with more than 12.5% of the
first preference vote (since 8 candidates could not satisfy this
criteria).

Where STV deviates from instant run-off is in what happens when a
candidate is elected.  With STV, when a candidate is selected, all the
votes for that candidate get redistributed at a reduced weighting
based on how far over the quota they were.  So if 25% of voters gave
their first preference to Luis, then he'd be elected, and all the
votes would be redistributed a weighting of 50%.

This gives you another benefit over our current system: you aren't
penalised for picking a popular candidate.


  For the board elections, we are electing seven people,
  and we each get to cast up to seven votes.  I don't
  think we've ever seen the list of candidates unfairly
  cut due to non-preferential voting.  And I'm sure I've
  never made a strategic vote for one person instead of
  another I like more, simply to block another person.

You may never have made a strategic vote with our current system, but
it is definitely possible.

As an example, in the last election there were only 15 votes
separating the board member who got the least votes, and the next
candidate.  In contrast Luis received 80 votes more than what he
needed to be elected.

If 16 people who wanted Luis on the board, instead voted for George
Kraft they'd have changed the outcome of the election while still
getting Luis elected.  In effect, votes for marginal candidates have a
higher value than those for safe candidates.  Of course, if everyone
adopted this practice then the safe candidates would not be very safe
-- one of the problems with systems that encourage strategic voting.


  Any preferential voting systems is going to make the
  voting process more difficult.  If I had had to order
  my votes in previous elections, I'm sure it would have
  been mostly arbitrary.  If it's not solving any real
  problems, why bother?

Is it really that much more difficult to order a list of ten
candidates as opposed to selecting 7 out of the 10?

Even if you aren't sure of a total ordering, you can probably pick a
few candidates that you definitely want elected (put them at the top)
and some candidates you definitely don't want elected (put them at the
bottom).  You might decide to order the remainder randomly if you
don't care about them.

James.
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Re: Temporaray enlargement of the GNOME Board with 3 persons

[James Henstridge]

On 06/06/06, Dominic Lachowicz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Well, I think it should be three people.  Those two guys, and me :)

 Seriously though, you can't arbitrarilly pick two people and not expect
 everyone else to be arbitrarilly picked.

It doesn't seem to be entirely arbitrary. The 3 appointees were the
next 3 highest vote-getters in the 2005 elections.

http://foundation.gnome.org/vote/results.php?election_id=2


Of course, the results of the elections may have been quite different
if Luis didn't stand, and each member had two more votes to cover the
additional seats.

If this sort of thing is likely to happen again, it might be worth
switching to a preferential voting system where we'd have all the
information to see what the result would be if a candidate was removed
or the number of seats increased.

Dispite this, I am sure that Behdad and German would make good
additions to the board.

James.
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