Re: Questions to the candidates
On Thu, 2007-11-22 at 23:52 +0100, Anne Østergaard wrote: > Questions to the candidates: > > Will you apply for the position as new Executive Director for GNOME? I don't expect to change job during next term of the board. > Will you apply for any paid position within GNOME while serving as board > member? I don't expect to change job during next term of the board. > Will you attend at least 90% of the board calls? I don't expect to miss more than three or four of the board calls a year (do the math). That said, I think a member that attends 100% of the board calls but is totally silent in between conf calls on the board list is most probably less effective than an otherwise active umember that attens only 50% of the calls. > Can you accept competing official ISO standards? So many levels I can answer (or not) this. I'll give a few a try: - Yes, I accepted all of Fortran (ISO 1539), Ada (ISO 8652), C (ISO 9899), BASIC (ISO 10279), C++ (ISO 14882), C# (ISO 23270) as standard and competing programming languages in my Programming Languages course back in college. I welcome accepting more in the future, Python, Java, and JavaScript particularly. - ISO is irrelevant. Governments or companies are not mandated to use its standards. National standardization bodies on the other hand matter for governmental requirements. It's true that most national bodies copy ISO standards, but its by no means the only way to give a spec the Standard stamp. - How are we as an industry are going to move on if we are bound by obsolete "official ISO standards" without adding competing (and superior) ones? > What is your position towards official standards that do not meet the > gennerally accepted definition of a free and open standard. Such as > Microsoft OOXML? Mild. > Kind regards > > Anne -- behdad http://behdad.org/ "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759 ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: A question to candidates
On Fri, 2007-11-23 at 02:10 -0300, Germán Poó-Caamaño wrote: > > This is new to me. I thought this was the way the board was trying to > delegate. Well, more recently it has been. But for most things that are brought up to board, it's either not possible or not feasible to ask for help publicly. The issues eventually become public and go in the meetings. So what we've been doing has been to think of one or two community members that we think can handle it and email them. Most of the times this works, so that's a great thing. -- behdad http://behdad.org/ "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759 ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Foundation Elections 2007. Let's start the debate!
Hi, > [1] How much impact would being a member of the GNOME Foundation Board > have on your current contributions to GNOME ? It impacted when I joined the board last year. I was spending a good part of my work and non-work time on GNOME hacking. Now I spend part of that time on board work. I don't expect that to change this coming term. > [2] Online Desktop and Services are being talked about as the next > large step in GNOME - what is your vision for Online Desktop and > Services and how would you measure them ? I don't have visions ;), if I had, I would have left board and jumped up to them. Seriously, I don't think that's relevant to the board. I just leave that to the GOD and Gimmie developers and others who have visions and are doing the work already. As for my personal opinion about GOD, I think the vision that GOD team has is the future, but I'm not a huge fan of current prototypes. > [3] What are the SMART goals that you desire to set for yourself > should you be elected to the Board ? I want to focus on events. For the first six months I want to help with GUADEC organization as the board representative. At the same time I also want to pursue the idea of having GUADEC and aKademy at the same time and location for 2009, so if that goes well, there's a lot more to do for that GUADEC and I sure want to be helping there too. Then there's Boston Summit, brand new Asia Summit, and Latin American conferences that I want to help coordinate on the board side. At the same time I like to help organize small targeted miniconfs and summits, like a Gtk+ Summit, another a11y summit, possibly a documentation summit, text layout summit, etc. The other item I want to work on is the Business Developer director hiring. See Q 8. > [4] If you were part of the GNOME Board last year and a candidate > again, what would you like to put as your achievements as a Board > member ? This was my first time on the board, or any other board of this kind for that matter. My biggest achievement was learning how this whole thing works. Other than that, I facilitated the java-gnome hackfest and a11y summit at Boston Summit, and oh, I got free Beer for Boston Summit from Google! > [5] Do you think it is important to mentor and coach potential leaders > in the GNOME community ? Yes, it is important. > If yes, what do you think the role of the > Board be in this task ? If no, what are your thoughts on this ? The board can speed that up by being more open and pro-active to delegating project-wide responsibilities to lesser-known contributors. But honestly I think GNOME as a project is already very welcoming to new leadership. I'm not exactly the GNOME historian but as far as I know, many, if not most, of us started as a student interested in the project and willing to dedicate time to it. The rest was always just history. > [6] Some of the tasks of a Board Member are mundane administrative > tasks, are you comfortable taking on such tasks as opposed to being > always involved in strategic and visionary thinking ? I'm getting comfortable to it. There's not much strategic and visionary thinking to board work by the way. > [7] What or which according to you, is the one "tipping point" move > for GNOME in the coming year ? One tipping point for GNOME would be when the membership/community stops thinking of board as visionaries who set the direction and happenings of project and starts seeing that it's just set of trusted people who volunteered to do the boring and frustrating tasks (take my word for that) that are so essential to the project but no-one else is doing. At that point I hope questions like this will not arise ;-). Oh, your question, OLPC should be very exciting this year. > [8] What do you think is the most important item on the Board's agenda > right now ? What will you do more or better than the previous boards > in that aspect ? Hiring a Business Development director. Many of the tasks on the board's plate are simply blocked by that (and get delayed and frustrating for board members and membership alike) and there's a lot more we can get if we had a pro-active business developer. It's a very hard job though. The current board has been very fortunate to have a very qualified hiring committee but was missing candidates for the position. Both Dave and Jeff have talked about how to go forward next year. While I don't have the communication skills or links like they do, but this is another area I want to work on, based on my experience on the board this year. > [9] What is your positioning with respect to the issue of OOXML? Let me tell you where I'm coming from. Most of my hacking these days is on HarfBuzz, an implementation of parts of the OpenType standard. I can't imagine what would have happened in our text rendering stack if the OpenType standard was not open. And I wish one day I get the chance to request for as much clarification as I want about OpenType and have Micros
Re: Questions to the candidates
Hello :) On 11/22/07, Anne Østergaard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Questions to the candidates: > > Will you apply for the position as new Executive Director for GNOME? > No, I don't think so. > Will you apply for any paid position within GNOME while serving as board > member? > No, if I'm elected that's because other members are willing to trust me to be on the Board for a given period of time and I think I should respect that and complete this time as long as it's possible (life always have surprises). > Will you attend at least 90% of the board calls? > I will try to, the goal is to be there at 100% of the calls. I think my timezone helps (GMT-5) and also that I have flexibility with my free time. > Can you accept competing official ISO standards? > It's better to have just one, but if by some reason there's more than one, well we either reject one and leave part of our users out or we use both and give users freedom to choose. Similar to what others said in the first question-pack thread. > What is your position towards official standards that do not meet the > gennerally accepted definition of a free and open standard. Such as > Microsoft OOXML? > I don't like them :). I'm really mad when I receive documents in "freedom unfriendly" formats and when I open them they are all mutant and horrible, it's a shame to have this impossed over people that is not aware of the problem. So the answer would be no, I don't like this kind of stuff at all. Feel free to ask for clarification if I didn't understood any of your questions correctly. Diego ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: A question to candidates
On Fri, 2007-11-23 at 01:18 +0100, Vincent Untz wrote: > Le jeudi 22 novembre 2007, à 18:11 +0100, Dave Neary a écrit : > [...] > > A second question to all candidates: what do you see as the weak points > > of the current board, and how do you propose addressing those weak points? > > [it's probably a hard question for candidates that weren't on the board > this year] > > Keeping track of everything: I've already written about this in my > reply to the 10 questions. It's just need to be a task taken seriously, > with a good tool. And someone to do it. > > Difficulties to delegate: known issue again. I think sending private > mails to one or two people instead of waiting for people to propose to > help is the way to go. This is new to me. I thought this was the way the board was trying to delegate. I don't remember many times that help has been requested. Regards, -- Germán Poó Caamaño Concepción - Chile ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to the candidates
Hi, Le jeudi 22 novembre 2007, à 23:52 +0100, Anne Østergaard a écrit : > Questions to the candidates: > > Will you apply for the position as new Executive Director for GNOME? No. > Will you apply for any paid position within GNOME while serving as board > member? I'd say it's highly unlikely, although it's hard to be sure. I won't apply for a job if I helped creating the job description, that's sure. (And of course, I wouldn't participate in the decision process). But again, it's really unlikely that this will happen. > Will you attend at least 90% of the board calls? I'll try, but it's impossible to say yes. The goal is to attend 100% of the calls, but sometimes, life outside GNOME makes it impossible to attend a call. > Can you accept competing official ISO standards? I'm not quite sure why ISO matters here. It certainly happens to have two "competing" standards, even if the two weren't standardized by the same body. Take RSS and Atom, eg.: the first format has become a de facto widely adopted standard, and the second, standardized by the IETF, is also widely used. Sure, it's a pain to have to support both, but it happens. (I know, RSS is not a single format, and there are at least 3 variants of it, but you get my point ;-)) So, yes, I can accept. But it's more convenient to have only one. > What is your position towards official standards that do not meet the > gennerally accepted definition of a free and open standard. Such as > Microsoft OOXML? I'm not sure what "free standard" means (is this related to patents? Is this free as in libre or free as in gratuit?). Also, I'm assuming you want to talk more specifically about file formats and not all types of standards. I'm all for open formats, and, to be honest, the fact that a format is standardized is not that important to me. That being said, and obviously, I'd very much prefer to have something not being standardized if it's not open. (don't know if this answers your questions, if not feel free to ask for clarifications) Vincent -- Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: A question to candidates
Hi, Le jeudi 22 novembre 2007, à 18:11 +0100, Dave Neary a écrit : > Hi, > > I did send these to the membership committee, but voting's nearly open, > and I think they're important, so I guess I'll just ask... > > The foundation's role is essentially to facilitate the enthusiasm of the > GNOME project, as Andrew Cowie blogged earlier [1]. This consists of two > major elements - managing/improving the finances that the foundation > has, and identifying areas where those finances can help remove > roadblocks or encourage productive contribution. > > After two years without a full-time employee, the foundation's finances > are in a decent state, with $150K cash and $50K receivables [2]. > > What do you see as the best way to spend this money? We've started sponsoring small face-to-face meetings, and this will continue. This is probably one of the best way to spend this money. Hiring is also important (see below). > In terms of hiring, do you prefer hiring a sysadmin, or an executive > director? Can I cheat and say "both"? :-) There has been issues with our infrastructre too frequently in the past few months (bugzilla being unresponsive for quite a long time, eg). We can't blame our current infrastructure team since they're already doing a great job. It's just that we have quite some infrastructure and making everything work (and adding new services or upgrading some others) is time-consuming. So it seems to me that we need a sysadmin. We also clearly need an "executive director" (using quotes here since we've tried to avoid this term when posting the job description) so the Foundation can grow a bit, get more funding, have someone working on getting new perspectives, etc. We've seen this year that hiring an "executive director" is hard, very hard. I'm hopeful that hiring a sysadmin would be (comparatively) easier. And I'm also hopeful that we can get some funding to hire the sysadmin. So my plan is to hire a sysadmin using part of what he have in our back account now and using some new funding, and keep enough cash so that we can hire an "executive director" too. It might sound too ambitious, but I think it's doable and that it's the best way to go. > What other priorities do you have for expenditure this year, outside > of our usual cost centers (GUADEC + salaries + travel sponsorship)? Face-to-face meetings on specific topics. Replying positively to requests from local groups (as long as they're reasonable ;-)). > A second question to all candidates: what do you see as the weak points > of the current board, and how do you propose addressing those weak points? [it's probably a hard question for candidates that weren't on the board this year] Keeping track of everything: I've already written about this in my reply to the 10 questions. It's just need to be a task taken seriously, with a good tool. And someone to do it. Difficulties to delegate: known issue again. I think sending private mails to one or two people instead of waiting for people to propose to help is the way to go. Taking too much time to decide: it sometimes happen that we wait for a meeting or for another event to take a decision, while the decision is pretty trivial. It might be related to my first item, since pinging people so they say +1/-1 could be enough. There are probably other weak points... Can't think of them right now, though. Vincent -- Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to the candidates
> Will you apply for the position as new Executive Director for GNOME? > Will you apply for any paid position within GNOME while serving as board > member? Unlikely, although I have considered it in the past. It would be foolish to rule anything out. Enough people have asked me about it that it seems to be in the realm of possibility. > Will you attend at least 90% of the board calls? I'd try, but as anyone who has been on the Board will attest (and those who have been on the Board while living in GMT+10 and above would INSIST) it is difficult to attend *every* meeting in between the average business, travel and personal commitments of GNOME Board members. Hopefully the meeting time will be somewhat more compatible with my timezone... but looking at the list of candidates, I somewhat doubt it. ;-) > Can you accept competing official ISO standards? Absolutely. It is ISO's role to facilitate the development of standards in a coherent, transparent manner, not to determine the market demand for a given standard. I think it's extremely short-sighted to protest OOXML on the basis of "competing standards" given that standards exist for technologies that we are very likely to want true Free standards for in the future - for example, video encoders and decoders. > What is your position towards official standards that do not meet the > gennerally accepted definition of a free and open standard. Such as > Microsoft OOXML? That is an extremely loaded question, so I can only refer to my sigquote for the appropriate response. - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 "If you have any poo, fling it now." - Mason the Chimpanzee, Madagascar ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: A question to candidates
> What do you see as the best way to spend this money? Getting GNOME contributors together, face-to-face, to nut out the difficult problems that are tough to solve in a distributed fashion. > In terms of hiring, do you prefer hiring a sysadmin, or an executive > director? We must have a full time staff member to manage any further hires, as there is no way our part time administrator should have to deal with any duties related to management. So, of the two, I'd prefer a full time, management capable hire before a sysadmin hire. Alternatively, we can contract for the sysadmin position. (I would not describe my priority for the first full time hire as an "executive director", either -- GNOME is not an art gallery.) > A second question to all candidates: what do you see as the weak points of > the current board, and how do you propose addressing those weak points? The biggest weak point is that we were unable to function as a coherent team for much of the past two, perhaps three, years. The major reason for this is not going to be a problem next year (and is thus not worth discussing), the secondary issue will be solved for the 2009-2010 Board (GUADEC at the start of the year), and I intend to focus on team-building and goal-setting for the first six months of the year, to get everyone focused and *ROCKING* for the rest of the 18 month term. - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 100% Pure Slashdot Wisdom: "Source code gives a whole new meaning to free software." ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Questions to the candidates
Questions to the candidates: Will you apply for the position as new Executive Director for GNOME? Will you apply for any paid position within GNOME while serving as board member? Will you attend at least 90% of the board calls? Can you accept competing official ISO standards? What is your position towards official standards that do not meet the gennerally accepted definition of a free and open standard. Such as Microsoft OOXML? Kind regards Anne ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: A question to candidates
Hi, On 11/22/07, Dave Neary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi, > > I did send these to the membership committee, but voting's nearly open, > and I think they're important, so I guess I'll just ask... > > The foundation's role is essentially to facilitate the enthusiasm of the > GNOME project, as Andrew Cowie blogged earlier [1]. This consists of two > major elements - managing/improving the finances that the foundation > has, and identifying areas where those finances can help remove > roadblocks or encourage productive contribution. > I agree with Andrew's post. The Linux Australia idea sounds quite cool to me: facilitate the enthusiasm. I see the Board exactly as that, the group of people in charge of deploying the Foundation resources to facilitate initiatives, events, meetings, etc. > After two years without a full-time employee, the foundation's finances > are in a decent state, with $150K cash and $50K receivables [2]. > > What do you see as the best way to spend this money? In terms of hiring, > do you prefer hiring a sysadmin, or an executive director? What other > priorities do you have for expenditure this year, outside of our usual > cost centers (GUADEC + salaries + travel sponsorship)? > If it's really critical to have more manpower for doing sysadmin tasks, that should be the priority I think, after all we are supposed to give good and enough infrastructure for the projects. Besides usual things like GUADEC, I would like to see some money passed to local groups for marketing things and events. In particular for my dear side of the world (Latin America) where stuff is mega cheap to do. I would support expending money on supporting initiatives that can produce new users and developers in places where we don't have much of them. > A second question to all candidates: what do you see as the weak points > of the current board, and how do you propose addressing those weak points? > Improvement, mmm, as I mentioned earlier I would like to continue making the Board work more transparent so people know not only the outcome but the process, this would be positive to prospective candidates I think. Another thing I feel I could help with is in communication with people, as I said on earlier emails I think my age and personality makes people see me as someone quite accesible and open, this -I think- would help me be a good entry point for people trying to communicate but still a bit shy to do it by other means like mailing the entire Board, of course the idea would be to destroy that shyness and make quite clear that the Board is happy to receive comments and ideas no matter how silly they can sound. greetings Diego ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
A question to candidates
Hi, I did send these to the membership committee, but voting's nearly open, and I think they're important, so I guess I'll just ask... The foundation's role is essentially to facilitate the enthusiasm of the GNOME project, as Andrew Cowie blogged earlier [1]. This consists of two major elements - managing/improving the finances that the foundation has, and identifying areas where those finances can help remove roadblocks or encourage productive contribution. After two years without a full-time employee, the foundation's finances are in a decent state, with $150K cash and $50K receivables [2]. What do you see as the best way to spend this money? In terms of hiring, do you prefer hiring a sysadmin, or an executive director? What other priorities do you have for expenditure this year, outside of our usual cost centers (GUADEC + salaries + travel sponsorship)? A second question to all candidates: what do you see as the weak points of the current board, and how do you propose addressing those weak points? Cheers, Dave. [1] http://research.operationaldynamics.com/blogs/andrew/boards/gnome-foundation/many-ways.html [2] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2007-November/msg00016.html -- Dave Neary [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
