Re: Regarding OOXML and Microsoft patents
@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list -- Andreas J. Guelzow Pyrenean Shepherds ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: membership
On Tue, 2006-05-12 at 12:44 +0100, Dave Neary wrote: Hi Andreas, Andreas J. Guelzow wrote: the membership page at http://foundation.gnome.org/membership/ unfortunately does not indicate the procedure to follow to cease being a foundation member. Could anybody indicate to me please how to do that? There are two options - wait, and 2 years after becoming a member, don't renew, or send a mail to the membership committee, and they will remove you from the list of members. Thanks Dave! I'll send a message to the membership committee. Mind me asking why you want to leave the foundation? I don't mind at all. The reason is really a combination of many. Primarily, over the last years the philosophy of the GNOME community has shown itself to be incompatible with my philosophy. As a side effect, the GNOME desktop has become, in many instances, inappropriate for our usage. When I look at the list of candidates for the current board elections and find that I can't justify to vote for any of the candidates, it is quite obvious that for me to remain in the foundation is inappropriate. Andreas -- Prof. Dr. Andreas J. Guelzow Dept. of Mathematical Computing Sciences Concordia University College of Alberta ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
membership
Hi, the membership page at http://foundation.gnome.org/membership/ unfortunately does not indicate the procedure to follow to cease being a foundation member. Could anybody indicate to me please how to do that? Thanks Andreas -- Andreas J. Guelzow ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct final draft?
On Wed, 2006-02-08 at 20:11 +0200, Anne Østergaard wrote: I think that we have most people with us now How do you know? _I_ may think that most people who are opposed to this additional legislation do not dare to speak up anymore. Andreas ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Temporaray enlargement of the GNOME Board with 3 persons
On Mon, 2006-05-06 at 13:21 -0400, Dominic Lachowicz wrote: Well, I think it should be three people. Those two guys, and me :) Seriously though, you can't arbitrarilly pick two people and not expect everyone else to be arbitrarilly picked. It doesn't seem to be entirely arbitrary. The 3 appointees were the next 3 highest vote-getters in the 2005 elections. In other words, they lost the election. http://foundation.gnome.org/vote/results.php?election_id=2 candidacy statement for the next election. But, they can't be members of the board without an election. The Foundation's charter apparently says (in at least two places) that they can appoint members without an election: http://foundation.gnome.org/about/charter/ New seats on the board may be made available as the project grows, subject to approval by the board or referendum of the membership. Between elections, board vacancies or new board slots shall be filled by appointment by the board of directors. This is different from temporarily appointing 2 additional members. Of course the board can add new seats, but they will then be permanent until (again?) removed via a referendum. Andreas ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Temporaray enlargement of the GNOME Board with 3 persons
On Mon, 2006-05-06 at 13:21 -0400, Dominic Lachowicz wrote: Well, I think it should be three people. Those two guys, and me :) Seriously though, you can't arbitrarilly pick two people and not expect everyone else to be arbitrarilly picked. It doesn't seem to be entirely arbitrary. The 3 appointees were the next 3 highest vote-getters in the 2005 elections. In other words, they lost the election. http://foundation.gnome.org/vote/results.php?election_id=2 candidacy statement for the next election. But, they can't be members of the board without an election. The Foundation's charter apparently says (in at least two places) that they can appoint members without an election: http://foundation.gnome.org/about/charter/ New seats on the board may be made available as the project grows, subject to approval by the board or referendum of the membership. Between elections, board vacancies or new board slots shall be filled by appointment by the board of directors. This is different from temporarily appointing 2 additional members. Of course the board can add new seats, but they will then be permanent until (again?) removed via a referendum. Andreas -- Andreas J. Guelzow Pyrenean Shepherds ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Temporaray enlargement of the GNOME Board with 3 persons
On Mon, 2006-05-06 at 21:54 +0200, David Neary wrote: Hi Andrew, Andreas J. Guelzow wrote: On Mon, 2006-05-06 at 13:21 -0400, Dominic Lachowicz wrote: New seats on the board may be made available as the project grows, subject to approval by the board or referendum of the membership. Between elections, board vacancies or new board slots shall be filled by appointment by the board of directors. This is different from temporarily appointing 2 additional members. Of course the board can add new seats, but they will then be permanent until (again?) removed via a referendum. No - the referendum last year was non-binding (as mentioned afterwards by Dom, I think). The board has the power to decide before the elections each year how many seats will be available. So, the board can decide how many people it wants to have elected and then it can add an arbitrary number of additional members after the election. Why do we have elections in the first place? Of course New seats on the board may be made available as the project grows. Has trhe project really grown that significantly since the last election? Andreas ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: 2005 Fall Board of Directors Election Voting Started
On Mon, 2005-28-11 at 10:32 +0200, Baris Cicek wrote: 2005 Fall Board of Directors Election voting period is started on November 27th. Ballots have been sent to foundation members. Voting instructions are written in the mails you will be get. For this elections you will have 13 candidates[1] and you should vote 7 of them which more than two of them could not have same affiliation. Why? I cannot find any rule against _voting_ for more than two candidates with the same affiliation. THis is independent fromt he fact that nor more than two candidates with the same affiliation may be _elected_. Moreover, shouldn't the above sentence say You should vote for up to 7 candidates? Andreas -- Prof. Dr. Andreas J. Guelzow Dept. of Mathematical Computing Sciences Concordia University College of Alberta signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [Fwd: Re: Beginning of the 2005 GNOME Foundation elections]
On Wed, 2005-16-11 at 13:14 +0100, Dave Neary wrote: Quim Gil wrote: Gosh, we are not the EU Parliament or the US Congress. Neither have we 28 candidates to choose from. If we keep kicking off candidates for procedural reasons we will end up not needing to vote at all. Hear, hear. A bit of perspective will go a long way. What ever happened to trust? It went out of the window with all the talk about untrustworthy candidates in the recent referendum debate? Anderas -- Prof. Dr. Andreas J. Guelzow Dept. of Mathematical Computing Sciences Concordia University College of Alberta signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Petition for referendum
On Wed, 2005-28-09 at 17:55 -0500, Shaun McCance wrote: On Wed, 2005-09-28 at 16:37 -0600, Andreas J. Guelzow wrote: On Wed, 2005-28-09 at 18:26 -0400, Jonathan Blandford wrote: However, the board didn't agree on even having a referendum this evening (this is the problem which reducing board size will fix). That's not a fair characterization, Dave. Perhaps Dave's statement is a very appropriate statement. Shrinking the board size to a single dictator would make sure that decisions will be made unanimously. I would also agree that shrinking the board size but retaining a few members will likely result in less dissent on the board. And I, in turn, don't think that's a fair characterization of David's statement. Here, I'll use your trick on your statement: Having a smaller board means less dissent and the ability to make faster decisions. Since dissent is simply a natural expression of the differing viewpoints in the community, we want to maximize it whenever possible. Thus, we should grow the board size to its current limit, currently all ~365 members. Ridiculous. Nearly every argument a human could make could be taken to some absurd extreme. I'd expect a mathematician not to make such a blatant fallacy. No. The only way Dave's statement this is the problem which reducing board size will fix is correct is when one reduces the board size to one member. Otherwise you may always still have disagreement. The suggestion is to reduce the relatively small board to an even smaller number. There may be reason for and against this proposal, but if it is the stated intend to fix the problem that the board cannot agree on something I think everybody ought to be worried. There are clearly pros and cons on all ends. Larger groups can produce and defend a wider variety of viewpoints. Smaller groups can avoid filibustering and METOOing. My personal experience is that larger groups tend to be less efficient. Cooks, broth, etc. It's not an issue of wresting control from the community. It's an issue of finding the right balance given the trade-offs and the dynamic of the group. In view of Dave's statement it appears to me that the point is to make the board small enough to avoid dissent. Andreas -- Prof. Dr. Andreas J. Guelzow Dept. of Mathematical Computing Sciences Concordia University College of Alberta ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Petition for referendum
On Wed, 2005-28-09 at 18:26 -0400, Jonathan Blandford wrote: However, the board didn't agree on even having a referendum this evening (this is the problem which reducing board size will fix). That's not a fair characterization, Dave. Perhaps Dave's statement is a very appropriate statement. Shrinking the board size to a single dictator would make sure that decisions will be made unanimously. I would also agree that shrinking the board size but retaining a few members will likely result in less dissent on the board. That of course is a reason why people should be opposed to the suggestion. Andreas -- Andreas J. Guelzow, Professor Dept. of Mathematical Computing Sciences Concordia University College of Alberta signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: RFC: anonymous voting system
On Sun, 2005-25-09 at 17:07 +0200, Vincent Untz wrote: + You'll need to trust people with access to the database/code since they can do a lot of bad things. = You already trust the membership elections committee and the gnome.org admins, don't you? :-) More seriously, this is again something that is not different from the current system. I would like to disagree. This is very different from the old system. In the old system everybody was able and encouraged to check their votes and see those of others so that little trust was needed. In that system also everybody was able to see who did not vote. Under the new system that privilege remains with only a few (whom we likely trust not to abuse it). Nevertheless, this is significantly different from the old system. A question: what happens if one tries to vote and the token has already been used (by somebody who intercepted the insecure mail). Andreas -- Andreas J. Guelzow Taliesin Software, Shelties, Pyr Sheps and Shetland Sheep signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Changing the name of GUADEC
On Mon, 2005-05-09 at 22:13 +0200, David Neary wrote: I would like to propose changing the name of GUADEC. There are many reasons to do this, here are 5: 1. There is no link to GNOME in the name, or to being a conference GUADEC = GNOME Users and Developers European Conference It seems to me that there is both GNOME and Conference mentioned. 2. No-one knows what it means, which means the first question people ask isn't when is it? or where is it? or who's going? it's what does it mean? That's pretty much true with respect to every acronym. 3. It sucks. THere a terms that suck even more, e.g. GConf 4. Do we really want to limit it to Europe? That's probably the only thing worth discussing. 5. We have a great new name. Not GConf for sure. Davyd Madeley came up with GConf. This can be subtitles The GNOME Users and Developers Conference for the nostalgic, or just the GNOME Conference. It's obvious that it's a conference, and GNOME's right there. The link is pretty obvious. Let's see: 1) Gnome and Conference is as well hidden as in GUADEC. 2) All developers will think they know what it means but nobody will thik of a conference but configurations come to mind. 3) It sucks to use an acronym that already has a different meaning. 4) We had a much better name GUADEC. Andreas Some people might say that there are more important issues to deal with for GUADEC, like the content, the target audience, the direction, the site, all that. They're right. But this is one small thing we can make better, and finally correct an increasingly inaccurate pointless acronym. Let's do it. Cheers, Dave. -- Andreas J. Guelzow Taliesin Software, Shelties, Pyr Sheps and Shetland Sheep signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
