In the interests of a broader collection of data, I've shelled out of my own pocket to set up a professional-level SurveyMonkey account (the use of which I will happily share with the Foundation, at least until the annual subscription runs out, if it wishes to conduct surveys of its own).
I've set up a survey to collect some data on how people view the suggestions that have been made regarding the governance of Planet GNOME, and I encourage anyone who's interested to participate. The survey can be found at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Z7WHPDF So far, we've gotten over 170 responses, and public opinion doesn't seem to be generally running in favor of Mr. Stallman's proposal, at a rate of roughly four against to one in favor, in the best of circumstances. The survey attempts to probe a little more deeply, but if the results are indicative of anything, Mr. Stallman's views here represent a minority opinion. As a specific example, to the question, "Do you agree that viewing proprietary software as 'illegitimate', 'immoral', 'antisocial' and/or 'unethical' should be a pre-condition for syndication on Planet GNOME?", so far 151 respondents have answered "No", only 19 have answered "Yes". That's about an 8-to-1 ratio. I'll publish more detailed results before the week is out. On consideration, I now believe there's no need to call for a vote of the Foundation membership. Since the problem doesn't seem to exist, there's no need to do anything with Planet. Similarly, I see no need to expend any further energy on the GNOME's community's part on dealing with this. If the GNU Project finds the current level of expression on Planet GNOME intolerably unsupportive of the free software movement, for whatever reasons, they can certainly take whatever steps they feel are necessary. _______________________________________________ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
