Question for candidates: transparency and accountability
Hi everyone, I'd like to hear your thoughts on implementing transparency and accountability on the Board. How transparent the work of the Board should be to Foundation members? What should be communicated and when? Do you think we have been transparent enough in the last term? If not, how can we improve things and how high in your priorities would be to do so? In terms of accountability, it's been unclear to me since joining the Foundation how much different Board members contribute to the Board's goals and tasks. Do you think the meeting notes provide enough visibility and context to the work being done? By the end of a term, how can the Foundation have a fair understanding of one's contributions to the Board? Thanks, Fabiana ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: Best use of Trademark Fundraiser money?
Hi, On Sun, May 24, 2015 at 7:23 PM, Andreas Nilsson li...@andreasn.se wrote: As part of the GNOME Trademark Fundraiser [1], the Foundation raised $102 608 USD. Since the trademark claims from the other part in the issue was withdrawn, it was never taken to court and the money was never spent on that. What, in your mind, is the best use of these funds now? Kept as a War Chest [2] or spent on something specific? Keeping it all as a war chest doesn't make much sense to me. As others have already said, we should spend it to bolster and improve GNOME but what this will mean remains to be defined. I think this will mostly mean that when a proposal to spend some money on something will arrive, we'll be a bit more confortable as this reserve gives us some leeway. However I don't think we can decide to spend a huge chunk of it on a specific item as this was not raised with a specific goal apart from the trademark issue which is no more. -- Alexandre Franke ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates: transparency and accountability
On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 12:39 PM, Fabiana Simões fabianapsim...@gmail.com wrote: Hi everyone, Hi, I'd like to hear your thoughts on implementing transparency and accountability on the Board. How transparent the work of the Board should be to Foundation members? What should be communicated and when? Do you think we have been transparent enough in the last term? If not, how can we improve things and how high in your priorities would be to do so? The board should communicate almost everything they do to the members. I say almost because I see a few exceptions. There are cases such as the groupon campaign where they can't unfortunately say anything about what's going on because that could play against the foundation. There are also cases that don't need to be advertised. For instance say the board is mediating in an issue involving two members. The decision to make this public does not belong to the board, but to the member that complained to the board. So far, I guess the board was good on transparency. There are always times where the community is impatient and wants to know more about something that's going on, but I trust that when the board says there's nothing we can say right now it is actually true. In terms of accountability, it's been unclear to me since joining the Foundation how much different Board members contribute to the Board's goals and tasks. Do you think the meeting notes provide enough visibility and context to the work being done? By the end of a term, how can the Foundation have a fair understanding of one's contributions to the Board? Meeting notes are difficult to read, and more precisely it is hard to follow an ongoing agenda item over several meetings. Each member has to do some digging on their own to find out what happened (and who was involved). It would be nice to have a place to sum up the activities of the board. I'm not sure yet which form it would take, but it could be a wiki page per term, or a quarterly report… I also hear the board has been experimenting with a kanban app, I wonder if this could come in handy to craft the reports. In the past we had some reports by our employees (sysadmin and ED) and I found them very valuable, so I reckon the board should provide something similar in some way. -- Alexandre Franke ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates: transparency and accountability
On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 1:23 PM, Alexandre Franke alexandre.fra...@gmail.com wrote: It would be nice to have a place to sum up the activities of the board. I'm not sure yet which form it would take, but it could be a wiki page per term, or a quarterly report… I also hear the board has been experimenting with a kanban app, I wonder if this could come in handy to craft the reports. In the past we had some reports by our employees (sysadmin and ED) and I found them very valuable, so I reckon the board should provide something similar in some way. Sorry, I forgot to mention the awesome President's report Jeff did. This is really welcome and is an example of the things the board should do, but doesn't solve the difficult-to-follow issue described earlier. -- Alexandre Franke ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: code of conduct question for Board candidates
On Sat, May 23, 2015 at 5:41 PM, Marina Zhurakhinskaya mari...@redhat.com wrote: Hi, Hi, Many free software organizations have adopted codes of conduct for their events [1] and some for their communities [2]. Detailed codes of conduct with specific enforcement guidelines signal to newcomers that the community has high standards of behavior. They give participants who observe or are subject to inappropriate behavior something to point to that shows that such behavior is outside of what is expected and guidelines on how to proceed in getting it addressed. What do you think about adopting a detailed code of conduct, similar to the one used for GUADEC 2014 [3], for all GNOME events and creating a similarly detailed code of conduct for the GNOME community? First of all, it is important for people participating in the community activities, be them online (mailing list discussions, IRC, bugzilla…) or offline (GUADEC, hackfests…), to be aware that they have someone they can talk to if they need to. They should also know that suffering from attacks, or feeling like it is the case, is nothing to be ashamed of, and that they can trust the listed contacts to have a listening hear and provide an appropriate response. It is however also very important for them to feel welcome and I know that a code such as the one used for GUADEC 2014 fails to achieve that. As the organizer, I was approached by people, seasoned contributors as well as newcomers, who told me they felt uneasy because the code conveyed the message that there was a constant threat and that they should be on their guard. I share their concerns and I would feel the same way if I had to attend another event with the same code. I want to emphasize that I'm not saying there is no threat at all, and I'm taking this very seriously. What I'm saying here is that we want a positive environment. Long texts also suffer from the TL;DR (Too Long; Didn't Read) effect, and I'm convinced many people who sign up for events with a checkbox saying I have read the code of conduct and I agree to this terms actually think yada yada yada whatever, I just want to participate and I don't care/have time to read this. Some people have argued to me that it's ok since all we should care about is people signing off the code so that it can be enforced on them. This is a pretty shortsighted way of thinking and I'd say I'd rather have people read and take into account a short message without having to sign anything than them signing something they don't acknowledge and us having to take action afterwards. Another issue I have with strong codes of conduct is that often they try to substitute themselves to the appropriate authorities. There are laws and bodies whose job is to enforce them. The people in charge of a gathering should not have to list illegal activities as unacceptable. Most of us are not lawyers and have limited knowledge of the legality of such texts, even more so in an international context such as ours. We should strive to act as interfaces with the local authorities, not try to supersede them. That is of course not to say that we should call the police when the appropriate response is to call someone out on their bad behaviour, but threatening with sanctions is most of the time inappropriate too. The last point I want to cover is codes of conduct vs. their actual implementation. In many cases, organizers decide on a code of conduct but then they don't properly train the staff or take actions. If you have a look at the timeline of incidents on the geek feminist wiki, you'll find examples of such cases. I consider more important to have people willing to help and prepared than having the code itself. In fact, while I disagree with the GUADEC 2014 code of conduct and they way it was handled, I was happy to give a hand to solve issues at previous events which I helped organize. -- Alexandre Franke ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: code of conduct question for Board candidates
Hi Marina, I think we all agree we want a welcome community, and that means searching for the commune divisor and not allowing anything outside that. As far as I saw, all the previous answer from the candidates share the same opinion. I would actually like to have a code of conduct for every part of GNOME, like IRC, Bugzilla, events, etc. And I always though this one https://wiki.gnome.org/Foundation/CodeOfConduct is not enough. But it's true that even if I take seriously any inappropriate language or discrimination, I felt uncomfortable reading the code of conduct of GUADEC 2014, and I think we don't have to substitute law forces, because we are not. I'm thinking something more concise and shorter than the one at GUADEC 2014, with a more friendly language, but expressing a strong position and applicable to all parts of GNOME. I have in mind something like: --- In GNOME we want a friendly community and we require these points from every person involved: - Friendly and polite language. - No discrimination, and respect towards believes, race or gender. - Not inappropriate jokes, images or comments. - In doubt, be always cautious, don't assume the other person thinks like you. Always ask firsts. If you think someone misbehave on the points above described or you feel uncomfortable for any reason, even in something different than those points, don't hesitate to contact the GNOME code of conduct support team or people in charge, we will glad to talk and help you =) Any misbehavior could cause to take any actions from the GNOME code of conduct support team or the people in charge. --- Which also includes taking actions on IRC and Bugzilla towards the people that insult or shows an unfriendly behavior. I think anything else relies in the law authorities (we can't do more than just expel and ban the person, but some actions could require more), and we have to delegate to them everything that surpasses those points... A detailed code of conduct could for one part, suffer the TLDR as Alexander said, and on the other part, limit the actions GNOME can take towards misbehavior that was not thought when the code of conduct was written. i.e. The misbehaving person can say: It's written like this, so you can't take a different action than what is written. Cheers, Carlos Soriano - Original Message - | Hi, | | Thanks to all the candidates for stepping up to run for the board and for all | the work you already do for the Foundation! | | Many free software organizations have adopted codes of conduct for their | events [1] and some for their communities [2]. Detailed codes of conduct | with specific enforcement guidelines signal to newcomers that the community | has high standards of behavior. They give participants who observe or are | subject to inappropriate behavior something to point to that shows that such | behavior is outside of what is expected and guidelines on how to proceed in | getting it addressed. | | What do you think about adopting a detailed code of conduct, similar to the | one used for GUADEC 2014 [3], for all GNOME events and creating a similarly | detailed code of conduct for the GNOME community? | | Thanks, | Marina | | [1] http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Conference_anti-harassment/Adoption | [2] http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Community_anti-harassment/Adoption | [3] https://2014.guadec.org/conduct/ | ___ | foundation-list mailing list | foundation-list@gnome.org | https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list | ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: Best use of Trademark Fundraiser money?
Hi Andreas, One of the things is an ED, I think everyone agrees here... On the other hand, I have specific items in mind, but I really don't know the drawbacks of them, since I don't know why we didn't do it before. So it needs discussion. I think we have to fix the where is the money I gave to the foundation went? Did it achieve the goals? How does it affect me directly? One thing that I had in mind is, show the community that their money is spend in something that directly affects them (and not only long-time developers, like spending the money on GUADEC or so). I really think we have to show that to those people. For example allocating some money for bountysource or so, in this way we can choose some bugs that we think are priority to fix, and we can say part of your money was spend in this specific thing that will affect directly to you. Another thing I had in mind is a GNOME excellency program. Read as, a GSOC for one person and directly paid by GNOME. The problem with GSOC is that is only for students. And the issue with Outreachy is that is only for women. So the way I imagine it is, one important specific project that people has to compete to be elected to do it, and we offer a little bigger amount than GSOC to promote it. In this way we can achieve a specific goal, independent of the person, so here the goal is not to gain new people, but to achieve the goal of the project. In this way we can also say to the community part of your money was spend in a very great developer, to fix this long-standing issue that directly affects you. I think spending 10% of the money in those initiatives are not that much, and send a message to the community and improves the image of GNOME towards them. But I also believe we need to have a little war chest and I understand big part of the money goes to hackfests, etc. Cheers, Carlos Soriano - Original Message - | Dear candidates. Thank you all for running! | | As part of the GNOME Trademark Fundraiser [1], the Foundation raised | $102 608 USD. | Since the trademark claims from the other part in the issue was | withdrawn, it was never taken to court and the money was never spent on | that. | What, in your mind, is the best use of these funds now? Kept as a War | Chest [2] or spent on something specific? | | 1. https://www.gnome.org/groupon/ | 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_chest | - Andreas | ___ | foundation-list mailing list | foundation-list@gnome.org | https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list | ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates: transparency and accountability
Hi Fabiana, - Original Message - | | | Hi everyone, | | I'd like to hear your thoughts on implementing transparency and | accountability on the Board. | | How transparent the work of the Board should be to Foundation members? What I think the transparency should be complete. Since GNOME relies on money from the community. | should be communicated and when? Do you think we have been transparent | enough in the last term? If not, how can we improve things and how high in I think it should be communicated when something big happens (ED contracted, Hackfests, programs like outreachy, etc.) and then after a fiscal year or so. | your priorities would be to do so? I think the last year in GUADEC GNOME showed a very detailed graphic on expenses, actually it was too complex to understanding it at first in my humble opinion =) I think a good way is a simple graphic with the income/outcome/balance and the important items where the outcome went and if it accomplished the expected result. I could understand that the income can need some privacy (companies that doesn't want to show its name or so?) | | In terms of accountability, it's been unclear to me since joining the | Foundation how much different Board members contribute to the Board's goals | and tasks. Do you think the meeting notes provide enough visibility and | context to the work being done? By the end of a term, how can the Foundation | have a fair understanding of one's contributions to the Board? I think this needs improvement, and I don't have a clear solution without putting more work on the board right now. | | Thanks, | Fabiana | | ___ | foundation-list mailing list | foundation-list@gnome.org | https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list | Cheers, Carlos Soriano ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates: transparency and accountability
2015-05-25 12:39 GMT+02:00 Fabiana Simões fabianapsim...@gmail.com: Hi everyone, Hey Fabiana! How transparent the work of the Board should be to Foundation members? What should be communicated and when? Do you think we have been transparent enough in the last term? If not, how can we improve things and how high in your priorities would be to do so? During this last term we had to discuss several items that couldn't be disclosed with the community for the particular subject they were covering or for the parties involved that wanted to remain private. I'm mainly referring to the Groupon legal matter and the huge amount of behind-the-scenes action items each of us took part in during this last year. It's clear these kind of subjects are (and were in the Groupon's case) going to be made public when the Board will actually decide (upon consulting with our legal counsel) that it's time to disclose the information and the results we gathered. That's intended to prevent the external entity, party or person involved to know the plans and next moves of the GNOME Foundation and benefit from it. We had other similar cases as well and I personally made sure and asked the whole Board to evaluate how much had to be disclosed about these specific matters. For example the WHS agreement that was finally signed during this term was made public at [1], the GNOME Foundation -- SFC move of Outreachy was included on the minutes of many Board meetings in a detailed manner. What we probably omitted at first was the name of the new program as there was an explicit request from the organizers. That didn't mean we weren't going to let the Foundation membership know at all about the new name but just that it was going to take a few weeks for us to make that information available. We valued transparency a lot during this term and you can notice how detailed the minutes are going from the items discussed on the meeting itself to the ones discussed on the mailing list. A few examples [2], [3], [4]. (and more :-) ) As the Secretary of the Board transparency has been one of my main goals and will remain as such in case of a re-election. In terms of accountability, it's been unclear to me since joining the Foundation how much different Board members contribute to the Board's goals and tasks. Do you think the meeting notes provide enough visibility and context to the work being done? By the end of a term, how can the Foundation have a fair understanding of one's contributions to the Board? This is a very interesting point. While right now meeting minutes do provide a good overview of what's going on within the Board itself and the items that are being discussed they don't provide a summary of who worked on what and how long it took for an action item to be completed. During this term we introduced a tasks system based on [5] which helped us identifying who was in charge of a certain item. We might want to bring the meeting minutes to the next level making them more detailed by including the name, surname of the person who achieved a certain action item to facilitate the membership to verify one's involvement. Having some sort of stats every year (also in terms of meeting's participations for each member) would also help. Although the new tasks system served the Board great not every member got used to it and hopefully having a new Board that will start using it from the beginning will definitely allow everyone to be as much as productive as we originally thought when we introduced the software. [1] https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Resources/WHSAgreement [2] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2015-May/msg2.html [3] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2015-April/msg4.html [4] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2015-April/msg2.html [5] http://kanboard.net -- Cheers, Andrea Debian Developer, Fedora / EPEL packager, GNOME Infrastructure Team Coordinator, GNOME Foundation Board of Directors Secretary, GNOME Foundation Membership Elections Committee Chairman Homepage: http://www.gnome.org/~av ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: code of conduct question for Board candidates
On Sun, May 24, 2015 at 05:15:29PM -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. ]]] I suggest that we postpone discussion on codes of conduct until after the election. It is likely be a very big debate and likely to drown out discussion with the candidates. I would partially agree. The purpose of the candidate QA is for prospective voters to seek out information they desire about candidates, in order to inform their vote. So, to the extent people are seeking further information specifically about the candidates and their positions, that's fine; to the extent people are looking to discuss codes of conduct in general, or start a large discussion about what GNOME should actually do, that should wait until we have the new board. - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: Best use of Trademark Fundraiser money?
2015-05-24 19:23 GMT+02:00 Andreas Nilsson li...@andreasn.se: Since the trademark claims from the other part in the issue was withdrawn, it was never taken to court and the money was never spent on that. What, in your mind, is the best use of these funds now? Kept as a War Chest [2] or spent on something specific? The Board this year didn't have much time to discuss further how to spend this amount or even a chunk of it. While I would be for keeping part of this amount as part of the Foundation's cash reserves (for when we'll be hiring an ED, possible other legal issues) I'm open to ideas from the community and will be more than happy to discuss with other Board members which of these proposals is more inherent to the bolster and improve GNOME goal we promised to our donors at first. -- Cheers, Andrea Debian Developer, Fedora / EPEL packager, GNOME Infrastructure Team Coordinator, GNOME Foundation Board of Directors Secretary, GNOME Foundation Membership Elections Committee Chairman Homepage: http://www.gnome.org/~av ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: code of conduct question for Board candidates
2015-05-23 17:41 GMT+02:00 Marina Zhurakhinskaya mari...@redhat.com: What do you think about adopting a detailed code of conduct, similar to the one used for GUADEC 2014 [3], for all GNOME events and creating a similarly detailed code of conduct for the GNOME community? Having a final version of the Code of Conduct (from now, CoC) for the yearly GNOME events is definitely something the new Board should look at during the next term. While we can't legally enforce anything - as we don't have the jurisdiction to do so - it's important for new and existing contributors to know what they should expect from an event the GNOME Foundation organizes. The events we promote see the participation of contributors and users from all over the world coming from different countries, religions and habits having in common their love for the GNOME platform and community. One of our duties, as Board members, is to ensure these people feel comfortable participating at the events we promote and that no harassment or other inappropriate behaviour takes place on any of these events. In addition the CoC should be the document where offended people can find a local contact to report the inappropriate behaviour they were target of. There seems to be a misunderstanding [1] on what the purpose of a CoC is and how enforceable one might be and at what level. The GNOME Foundation (or any other private organization) does not have the jurisdiction to enforce a document such as the one proposed for the GUADEC 2014 edition [2]. A breakage of the CoC does not directly result in a civil or penal sanction of any form unless the relevant legal entity (police, local law enforcement) verifies the occurrence and issues it. The same applies with a different communication channel such as the Internet where abusers might get a ban for their account or IP without receiving any other possible legal consequence. That said breaking any of the rules (I would define them as General guidelines when participating to a GNOME event) won't result in a lawsuit or other local law enforcement *unless* the behaviour is explicitly listed as in illicit (violation of a duty, obligation or generally considered as harmful for other people) from a law of the State where the event is taking place. In the case of GNOME's CoC (I'm looking at the GUADEC 2014 edition) pretty much all the offending behaviours listed there would be considered as illicit from the vast majority of countries in the world as they truly represent a menace to people's dignity, integrity and freedom and thus enforceable even by the local law enforcement. [1] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2015-May/msg00052.html [2] https://2014.guadec.org/conduct/ -- Cheers, Andrea Debian Developer, Fedora / EPEL packager, GNOME Infrastructure Team Coordinator, GNOME Foundation Board of Directors Secretary, GNOME Foundation Membership Elections Committee Chairman Homepage: http://www.gnome.org/~av ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: More questions for Board candidates
2015-05-21 23:25 GMT+02:00 Karen Sandler ka...@gnome.org: Have you ever done any fundraising? I took an active part on the GNOME vs Groupon's fundraising campaign the GNOME Foundation launched the past year. Are you comfortable asking sponsors for money? Yes as in making sure the sponsors do actually know why they should trust us and our mission and donate. We can do this is many ways and Jeff's initiative on the Sysadmin's brochure is one of these cases. In the eventuality the funds for the Sysadmin position will end the virtual sponsors should know what has been achieved, how and what have been the benefits of both the community and the representatives of the company / organization itself with their daily use of the GNOME Infrastructure. What I'm comfortable in - summarizing - is asking for money while providing a good rationale (and documentation, past achievements and results of the Board / other GNOME team) about why external entities should donate to our cause. Have you ever been in a manager role? No, but I've been coordinating the GNOME Infrastructure and the GNOME Foundation Membership Elections Committee since several years now hopefully providing a good service for the GNOME community and membership. Do you have any experience talking to reporters? Some, my personal background includes a degree in law which helped me a lot handling several legal matters we had to face during this term. On this side I was interviewed by the World Trademark Review online magazine [1]. Additionally - if that matters - I've been part of the press myself for several months as a technical freelance writer [2] writing about anything GNU / Linux and FOSS related. Additionally I took part writing / reviewing / co-writing some PRs for the GNOME Foundation back in the days. Have you ever talked to a group of people about why software freedom is important? I did in many occasions during conferences I participated in as a speaker. Talks there were technical but I always made sure to introduce my speech mentioning the fact the software / tool in question was completely Open Source and licensed under a free software-compliant license. [1] http://www.worldtrademarkreview.com/Blog/detail.aspx?g=9df9d63a-417f-4a95-88b2-d781008a47f3 [2] http://www.oneopensource.it (italian website) -- Cheers, Andrea Debian Developer, Fedora / EPEL packager, GNOME Infrastructure Team Coordinator, GNOME Foundation Board of Directors Secretary, GNOME Foundation Membership Elections Committee Chairman Homepage: http://www.gnome.org/~av ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates: transparency and accountability
On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 12:39:50PM +0200, Fabiana Simões wrote: I'd like to hear your thoughts on implementing transparency and accountability on the Board. How transparent the work of the Board should be to Foundation members? What should be communicated and when? Do you think we have been transparent enough in the last term? If not, how can we improve things and how high in your priorities would be to do so? In terms of accountability, it's been unclear to me since joining the Foundation how much different Board members contribute to the Board's goals and tasks. Do you think the meeting notes provide enough visibility and context to the work being done? By the end of a term, how can the Foundation have a fair understanding of one's contributions to the Board? I believe the board should be entirely transparent about all of its activities and discussions, with two exceptions: First, if the board is discussing some legal or contractual issue that cannot be disclosed until after a certain point, then detailed records should still be kept, but those records can be kept private until the point where they can be released/discussed. And second, if the board is handling some privacy-sensitive issue for community members, such as harassment or dispute mediation, then the decision of how much to disclose there should be up to the parties involved rather than to the board. Other than exceptions like those, the board should be entirely transparent and public about its activities and records. From what I've seen in the board minutes and similar, I think the board has been quite transparent about what happens in board meetings, but I agree that the board could potentially improve transparency about followups and resolutions that happen via activity outside of board meetings. I also think that activity summaries such as those other board members have recently posted help to avoid the hidden in plain sight problem that the minutes can have. Do you have any specific examples of board-related activities you could point to where you think additional transparency would have been helpful, as an example of what to improve? I certainly plan to be entirely transparent about my *own* activities if elected to the board. - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: code of conduct question for Board candidates
On Sun, May 24, 2015 at 07:11:42PM +0200, Olav Vitters wrote: On Sat, May 23, 2015 at 10:06:49AM -0700, Josh Triplett wrote: I'm entirely in favor of an improved code of conduct, both for events and in general. And thank you for raising this issue. Some searching turned up https://wiki.gnome.org/Foundation/CodeOfConduct , but that's definitely insufficient. (It's a nice set of sentiments, but not a functional code of conduct.) By contrast, the GUADEC 2014 code of conduct you linked to sets the higher standard I would expect, and that I've come to expect from other conferences as well. I'm in favor of improving the general code of conduct to the same standard. Why and how is it definitely insufficient? Marina linked to several resources about codes of conduct and their effectiveness; specifically, see http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Code_of_conduct_evaluations . For instance, a more effective Code of Conduct should include information like For issues arising on mailing lists, IRC, or Bugzilla, contact exam...@gnome.org, who can help address issues, and if necessary, can limit or ban access to those resources. Which I would hope is simply a statement of what we'd *already* do; I'd be shocked, for instance, if the IRC channel operators or server admins have never had to ban anyone. For the record: I'm not personally looking to put forth a proposal to update the current community code of conduct; I'm simply stating that I would be quite receptive to a well-considered proposal to do so. I quite like the Code of Conduct and I've signed it. By contrast, the 2014 GUADEC one is a very long statement specifically about a conference, not about a community. I don't see how the board has _any_ influence on the GNOME community. This while the conference one assumes you're attending a conference and that someone can expel you, can possibility contact law enforcement, etc. And that's the upper limit of what a Code of Conduct for a mailing list, IRC channel, Bugzilla, or other community resource should do as well: expel someone from a list, channel, Bugzilla server, etc. Nobody's talking about a document that has legal effect. While I disagree with the portion of the current CoC that says There is no official enforcement of these principles (not least of which for almost certainly being inaccurate), I agree with the this should not be interpreted like a legal document. For instance, nobody should be saying well, they're acting terribly and being disruptive, we all know it, but they're not violating the exact letter of the CoC, so my hands are tied. I don't follow why I'd sign something can cause legal issues for me if I could do without that. Nobody is asking anyone to sign anything. A CoC would simply be a stated policy for expected behavior on community resources, such as mailing lists, IRC, Bugzilla, wikis, email, etc. - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: Best use of Trademark Fundraiser money?
On Sun, May 24, 2015 at 07:23:01PM +0200, Andreas Nilsson wrote: As part of the GNOME Trademark Fundraiser [1], the Foundation raised $102 608 USD. Since the trademark claims from the other part in the issue was withdrawn, it was never taken to court and the money was never spent on that. What, in your mind, is the best use of these funds now? Kept as a War Chest [2] or spent on something specific? As stated in the fundraiser, If we are able to defend the mark without spending this amount, we will use the remaining funds to bolster and improve GNOME.. That applies to *all* money directly donated to GNOME, as well. If, in working with the people we worked with on the Groupon issue, we get legal advice that suggests we'd be in a stronger position to defend GNOME by registering trademarks in additional countries, or otherwise getting specific legal structures into place, I think it makes sense to use some of the funds for that purpose; however, that would be a *very* small fraction of the funds raised. I also don't think it's worth keeping all of that money aside in a war chest in anticipation of a future legal issue that may never arise. So, I would suggest that after we consider any potential follow-up legal protections we're advised to take, we place the funds into the general GNOME Foundation account as we would any donations directly to the Foundation. I don't think it makes sense to earmark these funds for any particular purpose other than legal issues, and legal issues should not take up any significant fraction of these funds. I also don't think it makes sense to plan a project that involves spending that entire sum at once, rather than putting it in the GNOME Foundation account where it can be used as needed towards purposes that improve GNOME. - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: code of conduct question for Board candidates
On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 6:42 PM, Josh Triplett j...@joshtriplett.org wrote: On Sun, May 24, 2015 at 07:11:42PM +0200, Olav Vitters wrote: On Sat, May 23, 2015 at 10:06:49AM -0700, Josh Triplett wrote: I'm entirely in favor of an improved code of conduct, both for events and in general. And thank you for raising this issue. Some searching turned up https://wiki.gnome.org/Foundation/CodeOfConduct , but that's definitely insufficient. (It's a nice set of sentiments, but not a functional code of conduct.) By contrast, the GUADEC 2014 code of conduct you linked to sets the higher standard I would expect, and that I've come to expect from other conferences as well. I'm in favor of improving the general code of conduct to the same standard. Why and how is it definitely insufficient? Marina linked to several resources about codes of conduct and their effectiveness; specifically, see http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Code_of_conduct_evaluations . For instance, a more effective Code of Conduct should include information like For issues arising on mailing lists, IRC, or Bugzilla, contact exam...@gnome.org, who can help address issues, and if necessary, can limit or ban access to those resources. Which I would hope is simply a statement of what we'd *already* do; I'd be shocked, for instance, if the IRC channel operators or server admins have never had to ban anyone. For the record: I'm not personally looking to put forth a proposal to update the current community code of conduct; I'm simply stating that I would be quite receptive to a well-considered proposal to do so. I quite like the Code of Conduct and I've signed it. By contrast, the 2014 GUADEC one is a very long statement specifically about a conference, not about a community. I don't see how the board has _any_ influence on the GNOME community. This while the conference one assumes you're attending a conference and that someone can expel you, can possibility contact law enforcement, etc. And that's the upper limit of what a Code of Conduct for a mailing list, IRC channel, Bugzilla, or other community resource should do as well: expel someone from a list, channel, Bugzilla server, etc. Nobody's talking about a document that has legal effect. While I disagree with the portion of the current CoC that says There is no official enforcement of these principles (not least of which for almost certainly being inaccurate), I agree with the this should not be interpreted like a legal document. For instance, nobody should be saying well, they're acting terribly and being disruptive, we all know it, but they're not violating the exact letter of the CoC, so my hands are tied. OK in light of these responses, I feel I should maybe better clarify that whilst I agree this sort of stance may be a fair way to moderated communications with non-members, I do not agree with expelling card carrying members from lists, channels or servers under any circumstances. If someone has committed a *serious* breach of conduct, then the board do technically already have the power to revoke foundation membership which is the upper limit of what the board can enforce - (what’s currently lacking is a clear, transparent and fair process for that). In such *exceptional* circumstances, such privileges as access to the mailing list, IRC or git subscriptions could (in theory) justifiably be revoked under GNOME’s bylaws and California State law. However, partial exclusion of any card carrying member via an informal process could too easily become an affront to our democracy, lead to censorship, discriminatory treatment or victimisation, so therefore this is not a policy I could ever advocate, in principle. Ultimately, people have a right to be objectionable a-holes. as long as they are not infringing on anyone else’s rights in the process, in my view. I hope that better clarifies my stance on this issue. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Question to the candidates.
Hi: First, thanks to all of you for running as directors. Currently, GNOME is a strong platform for development, but it's lacking integration and features to be a complete, fully integrated desktop environment like Mac OS X, for instance. My question is: What plans do you have to make GNOME a more complete, fully working solution as desktop environment. Cheers, and good luck! ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: code of conduct question for Board candidates
On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 12:34:14AM +0100, Magdalen Berns wrote: OK in light of these responses, I feel I should maybe better clarify that whilst I agree this sort of stance may be a fair way to moderated communications with non-members, I do not agree with expelling card carrying members from lists, channels or servers under any circumstances. I agree that people should not lose access to resources while remaining a Foundation member. An offense serious enough to permanently lose access to those resources is an offense serious enough to revoke someone's membership in the Foundation. Let us hope that we don't ever have to put that into practice. Ultimately, people have a right to be objectionable a-holes. as long as they are not infringing on anyone else’s rights in the process, in my view. I regret that this mail is too short to fully contain the depths of my disagreement. Rather than continue an extensive debate on what is likely a fundamental point of disagreement, I'll summarize my own position on the same point, and leave the rest for some time other than the candidate QA period: People can do as they like on their own systems and resources, but when participating in the GNOME community, they should do so with respect. Refusing to exclude anyone is itself an exclusionary policy; it selects for the kind of people who will put up with absolutely anything, and excludes people who do not feel comfortable in such an environment. That creates a kind of community that I would not want to see GNOME become; there are too many of those already, because there are too many projects unwilling to kick out awful people. See also http://www.slideshare.net/dberkholz/assholes-are-killing-your-project - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates: transparency and accountability
Hi Fabiana, Great question, thanks! Response inline: I'd like to hear your thoughts on implementing transparency and accountability on the Board. How transparent the work of the Board should be to Foundation members? What should be communicated and when? I think it is appropriate the board seek a consensus from the community before adopting any new policy. I also believe it it is fair practice for the board to take steps to advertise posts, such as: secretary, treasurer and president before appointing new officers. I would seek to encourage healthy discussion between the board and the rest of the community about matters of importance arising, which would include, taking conscious steps to publish the agenda and minutes as early as possible. I would also advocate we publish advisory board minutes. More generally, I think it would be useful if we kept an up to date list of all committee names, committee members, committee meeting logs/minutes and policies, just as we already to keep our current members list up to date on the Foundation pages. Always useful to be able to see a more detailed breakdown of income and outgoings so we are clear on how much each “sponsor is actually contributing to the project in real, practical terms. The community could also benefit from being kept abreast of the specific yearly contributions of advisory board affiliates. Do you think we have been transparent enough in the last term? If not, how can we improve things and how high in your priorities would be to do so? Who knows that GNOME has been a “delinquent” charity in the eyes of so the California State Department of Justice since 2013? The board have done their best under exceptionally challenging circumstances, but of course must always strive to do better, year on year. If elected, I would be seeking feedback from members on an ongoing basis. Transparency and accessibility go hand in hand: This is a top priority for me. In terms of accountability, it's been unclear to me since joining the Foundation how much different Board members contribute to the Board's goals and tasks. Do you think the meeting notes provide enough visibility and context to the work being done? It would be useful to be able to provide access to meeting logs, but as I understand things, there are some confidentiality issues which may prevent that from being workable. I suppose I could advocate each director write a monthly or (dare I say it) maybe even a fortnightly report, that sort of thing could make it clear to members that everyone is pulling their weight” and ensure members are always clear on what tasks are actively being carried out by each member of the board. By the end of a term, how can the Foundation have a fair understanding of one's contributions to the Board? Jeff’s end of term update was a good call and I get the sense that the rest of the community really appreciated his efforts too. It would be great to see the same sort of thing from all board members and then compiled either into a pdf document or as a condensed so it can be added to the annual report and I would certainly be willing to support an initiative like this. Thanks again, for your questions! Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to the candidates (what is a complete desktop?)
Hi Erick, This is such a large question, and possibly a fairly technical one, I'm not sure it is within the scope of board candidates to debate this. Unless you clearly define what you mean by complete, fully integrated desktop environment… as everyone is going to have a different opinion on what that means. Besides, plenty of people are going to disagree and say that Free desktops like GNOME are already technically better (or equal to) OS X (or Windows) and inherently better by definition of being different and Free. On a UX level, some people can't stand using Windows or OS X after seeing what GNOME has to offer (ie: using other platforms then feels like stepping back ten years and swimming through molasse). Not to say that our app ecosystem is perfect. We have yet to have something to counter the infamous Creative Suite on a professional level when it comes to video/multimedia (non-linear and/or node-based video and audio editors and compositors come to mind). But hey, part of that puzzle is just something I've been working on for a decade! Besides the multimedia-specific area above, make GNOME a creativity workhorse platform is the global goal we should be aiming for. And by that, I include stuff like mindmapping, annotating documents (with easily typed or handwritten notes in PDF or ODF documents for example) or filling dynamic PDF forms. By the way, LibreOffice is making fantastic progress lately. I can really feel the improvements with each release (couldn't say that from its predecessor), and it seems that we will soon have something very solid on the office productivity front. Additionally, LibLibreOffice (semi-official nickname?) could be an interesting opportunity for developing a LibreOffice-based GNOME Office Suite as a simplified set of frontends (think: alternative to Apple iWork), providing a more GNOMEish UX for simpler everyday office work needs (closer to the simplicity of Google Documents, for example). There has to be a significant amount of interest in the community for people to step up and do that work though. Personally, I want our desktop to have incredible performance and be *solid as a mountain's bedrock*. The core/shell experience must not ever slow down or freeze. It must gracefully handle driver bugs, apps deployments and upgrades, and system resources (we need watchdogs, everywhere). I've lost count of the times I had to hard-reset my system (or quickly kill things through SSH, with some luck) because of some random pointer grab deadlock, because of a network IO deadlock preventing my mail client from exiting, because the system can't cope with a browser having too many tabs open, opening too big of an image in EOG (which kills the X server!), opening too many images in GIMP without shutting down my web browser first, etc. We can do better. There's lots of work to do in this area, but it's a vast metaproject to undertake and it will take a concerted effort (ie: making one or two GNOME release cycles all about performance, or some desktop-wide performance reliability hackfests, maybe). In theory, the browser story is probably best solved by the combination of sandboxing with improvements to Epiphany (aka Web). Epiphany is our window into the biggest information application market out there, the World Wide Web; it needs to have a much better UX and performance for handling tons of active and inactive tabs, and transient information in general, such as a way to painlessly manage reading lists and bookmarks. You'd be shocked if you saw how many (groups of) tabs I have stashed in Firefox's Panorama feature. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to the candidates (what is a complete desktop?)
There's some comments inline. On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 12:36 AM, Jeff Fortin Tam nekoh...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Erick, This is such a large question, and possibly a fairly technical one, I'm not sure it is within the scope of board candidates to debate this. I'm not asking you to be technical, but to be managers. (Not saying here that manager can/should/must be non-technical) Unless you clearly define what you mean by complete, fully integrated desktop environment… as everyone is going to have a different opinion on what that means. Besides, plenty of people are going to disagree and say that Free desktops like GNOME are already technically better (or equal to) OS X (or Windows) and inherently better by definition of being different and Free. On a UX level, some people can't stand using Windows or OS X after seeing what GNOME has to offer (ie: using other platforms then feels like stepping back ten years and swimming through molasse). I'm talking from the point of view of the user. A simple user needs a desktop environment in which fulfills his daily tasks. And clearly, GNOME is lacking here in some areas like: integration between modules, some basic applications a modern desktop provide, performance, etc. For instance, Allan recently made a call on GNOME to complete a small number of core applications, which are a bit far away of what we as a community has. That's what I'm asking. Being a director of the board for me, means having the power to allocate resources to make GNOME better, gather the community consensus and improve HDPi support the way we did once, for instance. Not to say that our app ecosystem is perfect. We have yet to have something to counter the infamous Creative Suite on a professional level when it comes to video/multimedia (non-linear and/or node-based video and audio editors and compositors come to mind). But hey, part of that puzzle is just something I've been working on for a decade! Besides the multimedia-specific area above, make GNOME a creativity workhorse platform is the global goal we should be aiming for. And by that, I include stuff like mindmapping, annotating documents (with easily typed or handwritten notes in PDF or ODF documents for example) or filling dynamic PDF forms. By the way, LibreOffice is making fantastic progress lately. I can really feel the improvements with each release (couldn't say that from its predecessor), and it seems that we will soon have something very solid on the office productivity front. Additionally, LibLibreOffice (semi-official nickname?) could be an interesting opportunity for developing a LibreOffice-based GNOME Office Suite as a simplified set of frontends (think: alternative to Apple iWork), providing a more GNOMEish UX for simpler everyday office work needs (closer to the simplicity of Google Documents, for example). There has to be a significant amount of interest in the community for people to step up and do that work though. Personally, I want our desktop to have incredible performance and be *solid as a mountain's bedrock*. The core/shell experience must not ever slow down or freeze. It must gracefully handle driver bugs, apps deployments and upgrades, and system resources (we need watchdogs, everywhere). I've lost count of the times I had to hard-reset my system (or quickly kill things through SSH, with some luck) because of some random pointer grab deadlock, because of a network IO deadlock preventing my mail client from exiting, because the system can't cope with a browser having too many tabs open, opening too big of an image in EOG (which kills the X server!), opening too many images in GIMP without shutting down my web browser first, etc. We can do better. There's lots of work to do in this area, but it's a vast metaproject to undertake and it will take a concerted effort (ie: making one or two GNOME release cycles all about performance, or some desktop-wide performance reliability hackfests, maybe). So far, you've tell me what you want, not how to accomplish it. And I know, we as community provide a huge pools of ideas and discussion, but I would love to know how each candidate thinks about it. I would like a board of directors to be strong leaders of the project, with clears views on what to improve and how. In theory, the browser story is probably best solved by the combination of sandboxing with improvements to Epiphany (aka Web). Epiphany is our window into the biggest information application market out there, the World Wide Web; it needs to have a much better UX and performance for handling tons of active and inactive tabs, and transient information in general, such as a way to painlessly manage reading lists and bookmarks. You'd be shocked if you saw how many (groups of) tabs I have stashed in Firefox's Panorama feature. This is one the things I've noticed, we've been trying to solve the tabs problems of Web for some cycles now. That's basic
Question on community to the candidates.
It is my impression (and I state impression because I am providing no data) that GNOME has more reliance on people paid to work on GNOME than community. I do not question the passion and dedication to those who are paid on GNOME, I know that they would do it as a community even if they were not paid. If you agree with my impression, what actions do you think would help increase participation in GNOME? Participation in the core parts of GNOME is not trivial, and requires an enormous amount of time and dedication to get to become familiar with the huge codebase that we have, as well as gain the trust of the maintainer of the module you are interested in. If you disagree with my impression, what makes you believe that it is not the case? How would you change my mind? I did not bring any data points, so you don't have to either. I'm more interested in giving you a biased opinion and I want to know how you would react to it. sri ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
