Re: Minutes of the board meeting of April 29, 2019

[Carlos Soriano via foundation-list]

Hi Tobi,

Just as small addition to what Rob said. As an example, I have been working
on some critical work for the foundation, for over a year now. This work
required extensive reading of legal, tax forms, research, etc. and is yet
to be finished. It's quite complex, and at the same time it cannot wait if
we want the foundation and project to keep growing and being healthy. It's
unlikely this work can continue without someone with the expertise gained
over the last year, and it's unlikely any effective hand off can be done
with a clean cut.

As Rob mentioned, over the last year the board of directors has changed to
a more strategic oversight, and the things we do are quite more complex
compared to what we were doing a year ago. While this is exciting and it's
good for the foundation, it adds the necessity to start doing long term
planning in a quite more complex environment.

While my duty if I want to continue this work is to apply again and
convince the membership to vote for me, this have a non-negligible
overhead. In my case, the uncertainty is making me focusing more on
preparing for a possible full hand off in less than a month than on keep
working on it. This is not healthy, and this doesn't work well. At the end
of the day is a matter of balance, and between the minimum term of 1 year
and the other extreme of no elections, we can find a middle ground that
works better with the new responsibilities and kind of work the board needs
to do nowadays.

It worth to mention that it's easier for any any person to commit to just
one year, so this is definitely not a selfish decision that we are
discussing (and I'm aware you didn't imply that), we are volunteers after
all. But this is not what we have found good for the foundation and the
directors going forward, so we believe a longer commitment will most
probably be what's needed.

Hope that helps clarify the situation, it's definitely different than what
we were one year ago, and it's normal that these questions arise. So don't
hesitate to let us know if you or anyone else has any more questions, just
keep in mind we are figuring things out as we move forward.

Cheers

On Wed, 22 May 2019 at 12:43, Robert McQueen  wrote:

> On Wed, 2019-05-22 at 11:35 +0200, Tobias Mueller wrote:
> > Hi,
>
> Hi Tobi,
>
> > I guess these plans are news to most members.
>
> They were mentioned previously in the blog posts we wrote after the
> hackfest last year - see http://ramcq.net/2018/10/19/gnome-foundation-h
> ackfest-2018/
>  - although
> not moved much further since then as you see
> from these minutes,
>
> > I think that the proposed change is a strict subset of what is
> > possible
> > today and that the cost associated with that change do not outweigh
> > the
> > benefits.
>
> We've received several large grants over the past year or so, and a
> spokesperson for the anonymous donor spent a while with the board
> talking about a number of factors, including the requirements around
> setting the compensation of the Executive Director (hence our new
> compensation committee) and more generally, how to attract and retain
> good staff, and be able to demonstrate impact for donors.
>
> They support a number of philanthropic initiatives and they impressed
> on us the importance of a growing Foundation that the strategy is
> maintained over longer periods of time, so that the resources that are
> given (ie donations, large or small) can be put to work on longer-term
> / more impactful projects, and that the staff are able to make plans to
> deliver such projects and impact.
>
> They said a normal time period for a directors term in most non-profits
> would be 3 years, but after discussion amongst the board it was felt
> that anything longer than a 2 year term might be a disincentive for
> people to stand for election. (Although as part of growing the
> Foundation budget and staff, we are aiming that the directors can
> reduce their time commitment to the usual oversight role of a board,
> allowing them to separately decide the extent to which they are able
> and willing to volunteer for other initiatives.) Most governments or
> other public bodies tend to have 3-4 year terms as well; for the same
> reasons. It's really hard to get *anything* non-trivial done in a year.
>
> A significant change of the board all at once, particularly if the
> incoming directors have less experience and might be less confident or
> decisive, is a significant fear of the staff of any non-profit. It
> threatens the ability of the (now 6-7) staff of the foundation being
> able to make effective plans, start longer-running programs and see
> them through, etc. If our decision making cadence, visibility and
> horizon is a year (or less) it's very hard to see past that for longer
> periods of time.
>
> In a business context the typical HR advice is that it takes 12-18
> months for a change in team structure, strategy, etc to really bear

Re: Preliminary Results - GNOME Foundation Board of Directors Elections 2017

[Carlos Soriano via foundation-list]

I think we have to analyze why there are so few before trying to get more 
without knowing the problem. I have few ideas why this happens based on 
discussions with some other members that doesn't feel like proposing to be on 
the board, although they are more than capable time and skill wise.
It's a discussion perfect for GUADEC. Are you coming Richard?

Best,
Carlos Soriano

 Original Message 
Subject: Re: Preliminary Results - GNOME Foundation Board of Directors 
Elections 2017
Local Time: June 15, 2017 3:51 AM
UTC Time: June 15, 2017 1:51 AM
From: r...@gnu.org
To: foundation-list@gnome.org

[[[ 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. ]]]

> This year we had 225 registered voters, 110 of which sent in valid
> ballots.

I am not surprised that so few voted. Can anyone think of a way
to encourage more candidates?

--
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.

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Re: Question to GNOME Foundation Board candidates

[Carlos Soriano via foundation-list]

Hello Max,

1) How many hours per week do you expect you will be able to dedicate
to working on the board on a regular basis?

I expect the board to take between 3-5h per week in a normal situation. Of 
course if some task requires it, dedicating more time is expected. I don't have 
an specific upper limit for that, as long as it's not something necessary to be 
done every week.
Fortunately I have support from my employer for the board work.

2) What's your plan and view with GNOME in Asia? How do you think
about grow GNOME in Asia?

I didn't think about some specific plan for Asia, I think the same initiatives 
that could serve for any other continent would help. For example support local 
people for doing hackfest, conferences, etc. as it has been done on the past. 
Or do you have a specific idea?

3) How do you make GNOME great again? ( Sorry for my poor English again )
 Any idea about let everyone say " Wow!! it's GNOME " " I know GNOME :) "

Is not GNOME great already? :)
I'm not sure what you mean by "wow it's GNOME", you mean how to make people 
excited about the technologies GNOME delivers; or more about brand identity?
In the former, I think it's more like a technical discussion, and in my opinion 
our initiatives with gtk4, Flatpak, etc. are going in a more than good 
direction.
Of course we need more work on some places, but that would be more in the 
technical and community level. What the board can do is to support initiatives 
that comes from the community to improve those modules.

Best,
Carlos Soriano

 Original Message 
Subject: Question to GNOME Foundation Board candidates
Local Time: May 26, 2017 6:13 PM
UTC Time: May 26, 2017 4:13 PM
From: sakana...@gmail.com
To: foundation-list 

Hello all,

First, thanks to all candidates for volunteering to the Foundation Board.
Max come from GNOME.Asia team and thanks GNOME and board support Asia.

I know there will be more people ask questions about all domain with
GNOME, so I ask 1 question with Asia first.
I have 3 questions to all candidates ( sorry for my poor English )

1) How many hours per week do you expect you will be able to dedicate
to working on the board on a regular basis?

 for 2nd or 3rd ( or more ) term candidacy:
 last year, every one plan 5-10 or 5-15 hours per week,
what's average hours per week when you become board? do you think it's
good hours for life and work balance with you?( I think it might be
good reference for fist term candidacy and let us know your loading )(
Thanks again work and make GNOME forward )

 for 1st term candidacy:
 Please let us know your plan :)

2) What's your plan and view with GNOME in Asia? How do you think
about grow GNOME in Asia?

3) How do you make GNOME great again? ( Sorry for my poor English again )
 Any idea about let everyone say " Wow!! it's GNOME " " I know GNOME :) "

* We start to have sponsors from Asia with GUADEC.
* There are some open source events related and co-work with GNOME
Users Group or Members in Asia.
** Hong Kong Open Source Conference ( https://opensource.hk/events/ )
** openSUSE.Asia Summit ( https://events.opensuse.org/conference/summitasia16 )
** FUDCon ( https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon?rd=Fudcon )  We
held GNOME.AsiaSummit 2014 together with FUDCon.
** FOSSASIA ( http://fossasia.org/ )

Thanks again for all candidates volunteering to the Foundation Board.

Max Huang
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GNOME accepted for GSoC

[Carlos Soriano via foundation-list]

Hello all,

GNOME was again accepted for GSoC! \\o//

Thanks to the mentors who've already listed GSoC project ideas! We currently 
have only around 16 GSoC ideas, it would be excellent to have at least four 
more mentors with new ideas for this round, as we are used to be one of the 
biggest organisations and would be awesome to keep it this way :)
If you are interested please add your idea in the wiki [0]. If you are 
interested but don't have any ideas, please contact us at soc-adm...@gnome.org 
or one of the admins [1] on IRC and we will help you find some.

For mentors whose ideas are triaged, it's time to register with us!
Please fill the form [2] and we will invite you to the GSoC program in Google's 
website.
Also, please subscribe to the mentors list [3] if you haven't done so yet. We 
will send required information for mentors in that list.

If you have any question, please don't hesitate to contact us at 
soc-adm...@gnome.org or any of us on IRC [1].

[0] https://wiki.gnome.org/Outreach/SummerOfCode/2017/Ideas
[1] https://wiki.gnome.org/Outreach/SummerOfCode/admins
[2] 
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeCuIH2mY7D6aMvQs0jFymTc_7AwEC5lX54NYa24a6bI1pvOw/viewform?usp=sf_link
[3] https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/soc-mentors-list

Have a nice day,
GSOC admins___
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Re: Proposal: creation of IRC Operators Team

[Carlos Soriano via foundation-list]

Hello again,

Thanks for the responses and volunteers!
Sadly, I don't know many people in Asia timezones, so I asked Sri to help me 
figure out some, again thanks for the volunteering!
For America timezones we though about Patrick Griffis (TingPing), and later we 
can figure out someone more too.
For European timezones it seems you are fine with Alexander, Andre and me, so 
I'm going with those.
I will try to make the new ops effective today.



Best regards,
Carlos Soriano


 Original Message 
Subject: Re: Proposal: creation of IRC Operators Team
Local Time: December 13, 2016 9:59 AM
UTC Time: December 13, 2016 8:59 AM
From: a...@accosted.net
To: Alexandre Franke 
foundation-list@gnome.org 

On 13 December 2016 at 14:07, Alexandre Franke  wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 13, 2016 at 4:54 AM, Sriram Ramkrishna  wrote:
>> Also I apologize for not being around on at least #gnome-hackers as I know I
>> am ops there.
>
> There is currently 0 op in that channel.

I can also volunteer for Asia timezone.

-- Arun
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Re: Proposal: creation of IRC Operators Team

[Carlos Soriano via foundation-list]

Hello,

Sri, that's actually my main worry about this initiative. Can you, and people 
on non European zone, give some names of people usually active on irc on those 
timezones in the main channels?

That would be awesome to have the initiative complete.



Best regards,
Carlos Soriano

 Original Message 
Subject: Re: Proposal: creation of IRC Operators Team
Local Time: December 13, 2016 4:54 AM
UTC Time: December 13, 2016 3:54 AM
From: s...@ramkrishna.me
To: Carlos Soriano <csori...@protonmail.com>, foundation-list@gnome.org 
<foundation-list@gnome.org>





On Mon, Dec 12, 2016 at 12:33 AM Carlos Soriano via foundation-list 
<foundation-list@gnome.org> wrote:


And the people I though to be part of this team of OP's in those channels are 
Andre Klapper (andre), Alexandre Franke (afranke) and me, Carlos Soriano 
(csoriano).

I plan to put this information in the wiki, so users of IRC can know who to 
contact in case of any issue (for example in case some of us prefer to be on 
non-OP status for regular talking in the channel).

If you are current op or creator of those channels, what do you think of this 
idea? What do you think of the people and channel selection?

Sounds good to me. My only reservation is that your list of opers are all on 
european time frame and you don't have a proper spread across all time zones. 
You should add two more in the U.S. and Asian time zone so there is so overlap.

Also I apologize for not being around on at least #gnome-hackers as I know I am 
ops there.

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Re: Proposal: creation of IRC Operators Team

[Carlos Soriano via foundation-list]

Thanks Allan for answering.

An update of a discussion we had yesterday, one thing we would like to have is 
maintainers of the projects being the chanserv op of that corresponding 
channel. For that you need to register the channel to chanserv and you will 
have full access to the irc channel features, and become op too.
For that you will need chanop first, and we can provide that on a personal 
basis.
I found these channels that would be good to have registered to someone since 
they have a clear maintainer:
clutter documents evolution geary gegl gitg gnome-builder gnome-calendar 
gnome-games gnome-os gnome-shell gnome-software grilo gtk+ libpeas libsoup 
photos polari totem tracker

If you are maintainer of one of those and is not registered channel yet or you 
are not op, please ping me on IRC to give you op status to be able to register 
the channel.

Thanks!



Best regards,
Carlos Soriano

 Original Message 
Subject: Re: Proposal: creation of IRC Operators Team
Local Time: December 12, 2016 1:21 PM
UTC Time: December 12, 2016 12:21 PM
From: a...@gnome.org
To: Carlos Soriano <csori...@protonmail.com>
foundation-list@gnome.org <foundation-list@gnome.org>


Carlos Soriano via foundation-list <foundation-list@gnome.org> wrote:


...


For that reason I proposed to Andrea Veri to give OP status on several main 
channels to some of us that are more time present in most of main IRC channels. 
I gathered some information of what channels need some established OP's and 
what people could be those OP's, effectively creating a kinda "GNOME IRC 
Operators Team".
...


Sounds good to me. Thanks for this initiative, Carlos!
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Proposal: creation of IRC Operators Team

[Carlos Soriano via foundation-list]

Hello everyone,

Recently we had to deal with spam in several main IRC channels on 
irc.gnome.org, and we realized some of those channels didn't have any OP able 
to deal with it in a timely manner.
These channels included gnome-design, gnome-hackers and evolution among others.
In this case we needed a server wide ban, and Andrea Veri responded very quick 
and in less than 5 minutes the ban was applied. However, this situation kinda 
broke the current workflow of the people on those channels, and is kinda a bad 
image users on those channels are asking for help and nobody is able to chime 
in applying a quick /kick.
Having an OP in every main channel also ensures any social problem or issue 
could be handled in a quick way and users know who to contact in case of any 
need.

For that reason I proposed to Andrea Veri to give OP status on several main 
channels to some of us that are more time present in most of main IRC channels. 
I gathered some information of what channels need some established OP's and 
what people could be those OP's, effectively creating a kinda "GNOME IRC 
Operators Team".
Here is the info I gathered (main strategic channels or channels with most 
connected users at irc.gnome.org):

Channels that already have established OP's (more or equal than 2 op's during 
weekends) and therefore don't need us to add OP's:
a11y docs gimp gnomefr gnucash mono monodev monodevelop vala

Channels that are in need of established ops (no current OP's or just 1 during 
weekends):
banshee board bugs clutter documents empathy engagement evolution foundation 
geary gegl gitg gnome gnome-builder gnome-calendar gnome-design gnome-games 
gnome-os gnome-shell gnome-software grilo gtk+ guadec i18n introspection 
libpeas libsoup nautilus opw-admin outreachy outreachy-admin photos polari 
release-team rust soc-admin totem tracker gnome-hackers fedora-desktop

And the people I though to be part of this team of OP's in those channels are 
Andre Klapper (andre), Alexandre Franke (afranke) and me, Carlos Soriano 
(csoriano).

I plan to put this information in the wiki, so users of IRC can know who to 
contact in case of any issue (for example in case some of us prefer to be on 
non-OP status for regular talking in the channel).

If you are current op or creator of those channels, what do you think of this 
idea? What do you think of the people and channel selection?



Best regards,
Carlos Soriano___
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