Re: Minutes for the Board meeting of February 25th, 2014
Also to note that moving valuables would demand paying and handling customs paperwork. A box with 1000 of valuables can be $200 only for import tax, no matter the purpose. This can be avoided with temporal internment methods but that requires *lots* of time, legal entities established and still some money. And it is different from country to country. Regarding banners and stickers and such, South América is dirt cheap for producing those. So there would be little benefit with printed material. Money is still the better option. On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 1:51 PM, Germán Póo-Caamaño g...@gnome.org wrote: On Tue, 2014-03-04 at 10:15 +, Emmanuele Bassi wrote: wiki: https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20140225 = Minutes for Tuesday, February 25th, 2014, 17:00 UTC = == Next Meeting == * Monday, March 3rd, 2014, 16:00 UTC [...] * Should we set aside funding for a South American event box? * '''ACTION''': Kat to ask South American events organisers for the Foundation to sponsor an event box * Expected cost: USD 1000 to USD 2500 * https://wiki.gnome.org/Foundation/Grants/EventsBox This can turn out very expensive and inconvenient for people there. Have in mind that South America is bigger than appears in the map. Just for a reference, Ecuador -that tiny country in the map- looks smaller than France, but it is ~70,000 square kms bigger, it doubles size UK. So, sending the event box from Lima to Santiago is equivalent in distance to Oslo-Lisbon, and Lima-Sao Paulo is equivalent in distance than Moscow-Lisbon. That is without considering the distances to other places within each country. The countries are not as well connected as in Europe. Sending an event box two or three times between countries could become as expensive as having two event boxes (courier, insurance, customs, etc.), something that might not be affordable by local people. -- Germán Poo-Caamaño http://calcifer.org/ ___ 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: A question to the candidates
Hi Gil, Perhaps this link is relevant: http://makeplaylive.com/ I would add this questions to your thread: Do you think a similar venture for GNOME would make sense? How do you think this, or a similar project, can happen without leaving us bankrupt? Thanks! :-) Diego On Sun, May 27, 2012 at 4:21 AM, Gil Forcada gforc...@gnome.org wrote: Hi all, First of all thanks for running for this critical role on GNOME! My question is about hardware and contacts: The average user is not going to ever install its own operating system by itself, for them hardware and software come together and they die together, so a new version of Windows means a new laptop and so on, a new iPhone OS means a new iPhone hardware... So the crucial part here are ISV, contacting them, engaging with them and finally making them ship our great software to the end user. Is that something that you both find important and also will try to pursue if you are elected? Cheers, -- Gil Forcada [ca] guifi.net - una xarxa lliure que no para de créixer [en] guifi.net - a non-stopping free network bloc: http://gil.badall.net planet: http://planet.guifi.net ___ 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: Boston Summit: We're going to Montréal!
Just wanted to highlight: On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 12:26 PM, Ryan Lortie de...@desrt.ca wrote: As of 2009, a passport is required for those entering Canada by car. Don't forget your passport. :) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reminder: AGM at the Desktop Summit, Berlin, 2011
2011/8/8 Emmanuele Bassi eba...@gmail.com: the AGM will be held on Tuesday, August 8, between 1600 and 1800 in the second building of the summit venue, Fritz-Reuter-Saal on Dorotheestrasse. Follow the sound of the ceremonial vuvuzela if you can't find the way. Diego ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 6:09 PM, Richard Stallman r...@gnu.org wrote: On the practical terms, as others stated, we should make sure that GNOME is great software and has cool features that make people /want/ to use it. It's fine to do that, as much as we can. But if we only do that, we are competing with Apple on its home territory. We have no inherent advantage in this; Apple is has contempt for its users, but we can hardly claim its developers lack ability. The one area where we have an inherent advantage is in treating the users ethically. Neither Apple nor Microsoft will ever match us in this. Shall we not make plans to utilize this advantage and increase it? Yes, agree, it's a factor we should highlight. Still, I keep my point of view that users are mainly attracted by a great experience. In that sense, what I'm proposing is to use this awesome experience we are building as the main marketing asset to sell to people our goals of software freedom and how it is positive to them and developers in so many ways. I'm sure we have the same goal (promote free software, its ideas and products), it's just that we are trying to engage users with a different hook. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for candidates - board processes significance
Hey Dave, On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 9:11 AM, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote: Hi all, I was away last week travelling, so I'm coming late to the election campaign. I have almost decided who I would like to vote for, but there are still a few things which are important to me when considering a prospective board member. 1. If elected, will you seek a named position (chairman/treasurer/secretary) on the board? If so, why? Not specially interested, but I could help with any of the three. 2. Board meetings are minuted, and these minutes are published regularly. However, the board also increasingly makes decisions on board-list with the Apache +1/0/-1 convention. Would you support the minuting of these votes, including recording any -1 votes? It was suggested on another thread, sure, not a bad idea. 3. I think financial transparency is important. If you plan on applying for the treasurer position, what changes (if any) would you propose for the budgeting process? How often would you publish financial reports for the foundation? Are you happy with the level of transparency in the board's finances now? I'm not thinking on applying for treasurer. I think Germán has done a really good job, and I'd like to give him no chance but to stay as the treasurer. Transparency has been good, I believe there's not much point in producing too many frequent reports, it's time consuming and doesn't really give people a lot of information they don't already have from the annual budget. 4. Our relationship with a number of groups has suffered this year - and one of the lesser known ones (but one I'm involvedd in) is the Libre Graphics Meeting organisers (a group of people representing a couple of dozen free art projects). Are you aware that the LGM organisers withdrew all the funds that the GNOME Foundation was managing for them this year, because they have been unhappy with the responsiveness and quality of communication with the foundation over the past 2 - 3 years? Do you have any thoughts on why this particular relationship degraded? And will you commit to handling or delegating answers to all time-critical queries which come to the board during your term? I can't comment on the specifics, but if LGM has grown to a point where we can't help them timely, or we just have been too busy with other things... well, shouldn't they create a Foundation? ;) We should help other groups achieve their goals whenever we can, but our prime interest is still GNOME. 5. In general, as a board member communication is vital to keep people outside the board informed whenever there is a delay or when extra input is needed on something they're working on. For incumbents, are you happy with the level of communication reactivity in the current board? For new candidates, what would you like to do to ensure that the communication reactivity of the board improves in the coming term? I haven't had much interaction with the Board during this period so I couldn't tell if they are more or less responsive, but I haven't seen or heard of any big omission from the Board this period. From previous experience, as I proposed in my candidacy, I'd like to make sure the Board has good internal feedback and things don't get stalled on slow responsiveness. This is something where I believe I can help. 6. Board members are ambassadors for the foundation. I think it's important that board members be social, and be nice. Are you nice? Yes, I think I'm social and nice. At the very least, I'm approachable and anything but intimidating :). Diego ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Two Questions for the Board Candidates
On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 12:38 PM, Lefty le...@shugendo.org wrote: Attempts to divide the community and delegitimize individuals and their viewpoints are common, and becoming increasingly so in the past few years. Bad feelings have driven many away from the level of involvement in the community they've previously had. Do candidates see this as a problem? Do they have any proposals for addressing it? Reminding people of the guidelines stated in the Code of Conduct and warning them when they might have -unwillingly- said something flamish; that's what we can do and what we should. Second: Do candidates have any view as to how the disastrous attempts at engagement by GNOME with the mobile space might be improved on? The GNOME Mobile and Embedded Initiative went nowhere, and arguably handed the mobile device space to Google and Android by forfeit. Since that time, there have been various attempts to get community-based, mainstream open source onto mobile devices, all of which have pretty much died. The sole remaining effort seems to be MeeGo, and GNOME has no apparent direct involvement there. Do candidates have any thoughts on the future of GNOME with respect to the mobile space? It's the fastest-growing portion of the general computing device market, and the main platform choices are proprietary or as good as. One of the issues raised by Canonical with respect to the GNOME 3 shell for Ubuntu was that it wasn't felt to be as appropriate for tablets and the like as Unity... Agree that it has not worked, not being an expert on mobile topics I can only think of some of the basic things like: having /something/ concrete to sell, a really really easy SDK, getting our stuff to devices... I guess these are really obvious things but we haven't really done them anyway. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
Hi Richard, On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 3:34 PM, Richard Stallman r...@gnu.org wrote: I'd like to ask the candidates this question: * What do you think GNOME should do to help promote the ideals of free software, beyond being composed of free programs. On the practical terms, as others stated, we should make sure that GNOME is great software and has cool features that make people /want/ to use it. Our communication usually follows this method I believe, first we always say that GNOME has done X or Y and that it has happened because of the efforts of all the people gathered around this Free Software project. I think that the plan of making it rock - telling about its Free Software nature works fine, with the sidenote that we shouldn't forget about the second step of telling people that GNOME has reached this level of awesome thanks to it being Free Software ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for all board candidates
Hey Jeff On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 7:43 AM, Jeff Schroeder jschroe...@gnome.org wrote: 1.) For incumbents, have you missed any meetings? What is your % of missed vs attended meetings and why? For new challengers, how much time can you dedicate to working on the board each week? How do you plan on spending that time? Following Germáns highly detailed report, I'll do the same: - I joined the Board December 2008, my first meeting was December 10th - For the half-period of December 2008 - July 2009 I missed 1 meeting because of midterm tests, and the GUADEC meeting because I'm an idiot and I lost my flight :) - For the period of July 2009 - July 2010 I missed 7 meetings: 3 because of tests, 1 because of urgent family matters and 3 I was missing I believe Germán explains the real importance of meetings in his email. They are important, of course, but the biggest time you should invest in Board work is responsiveness on topics discussed on the mailing list. Meetings are just once every two weeks, but there's traffic on the list almost all day. Decisions usually stall there and not in phone meetings. 2.) Other open source / free software projects run their meetings in the open via IRC (such as Fedora's FESCO I believe). Would you consider that, and if not, what about recording how board members vote on a given topic. This includes +1 / -1 / abstains and perhaps give a small comment on any -1 or abstain. In my opinion, as an open foundation, the transparency of the board is absolutely critical _where possible_. Leaders should always set the example for members. I agree with others that recording the votes is no issue at all. But I wouldn't make Board meetings in the open. Many issues are confidential when they are discussed and making every meeting in the open would make us have additional meetings anyway. Timely minutes are great to keep the Foundation members on the loop of what's going on, and also the eventual IRC meetings can help solve questions and chat on some ideas. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Candidates question: Contributor agreement
On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 5:01 AM, Olav Vitters o...@vitters.nl wrote: Given that we already have a policy on copyright assignments[1], I wondered what is your position regarding contributor agreements[2]? Should the board do something with contributor agreements and if so, what should be done? Personally I don't like them, they are a barrier. I support our current position on this. That said, as Brian points, we should try to dissolve any barrier we encounter along the way, as people like Emmanuele have been doing. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [question to candidates] GNOME OS
Hello Frederic :) On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 1:24 AM, Frederic Peters fpet...@gnome.org wrote: Hello all, GNOME OS has been mentioned and questioned repeatedly in recent discussions on desktop-devel-list, about its definition itself[1], and the changing (or not?) role of the GNOME project with regards to distributions (based or not on the Linux kernel). What are your thougths on this?[2] Do you think this is a foundation job to answer those questions? If not, is this a responsibility of the release team? Or something that is best left unanswered, as pieces are put into positions by different persons? My personal take on GNOME OS is that it certainly is ambitious, I like the idea of expanding our user experience to a the system and not just the desktop shell and some applications. There'll always be some rough edges since we primarily hack on top of Linux but I believe good will always take us to common interfaces and APIs. It would be foolish to think we can coordinate every known system/distributor out there on what /we/ want before we actually do it. Disclaimer: I've never worked on the low level parts of our stack, so maybe I'm being naive :-). As for the Foundation, I'll agree with what others already said: technical matters are to be evaluated by release-team/maintainers. However we can influence this with Hackfests or sponsoring work on a certain area. I'll echo Ryan that the current approach of let-happen-what-will-happen can have negative consequences, I believe the approach of Feature Proposals we are seeing can give us better planning and more fruitful discussions. This remined me that when we usually ask ourselves about technical lead or making things clear, I wonder if a team doing a lot of coordination work (not decisions, working closely with RT) to get everyone on the same channel would be a more efficient investment. In my personal experience, sometimes hackers were missing the proper introduction or a mediator to get things flowing. I'd like to explore this as a solution under a more formal process than just beer budget. Thanks for the question! ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Candidacy: Diego Escalante Urrelo
With a more experienced point of view, a record of stuff done, and a new background in communication, I'd like to join the Board again to help. About me: - I'm Diego Escalante Urrelo, contributor since 2007, living in Lima, Perú (UTC-5). - My main involvement has been hacking on Epiphany, but I've also sent patches to few other modules, helped in the accounts team, busquad. - I was a Board Director from December 2008 to July 2010 - Currently I work for Igalia as an intern, hacking on Epiphany - I've attended every GUADEC since 2007, DíaGNOME in Chile since 2008 and GUADEC Hispana since 2009 - I'm on the third year of Social Communication at university - I blog at http://blogs.gnome.org/diegoe/ (en) and http://diegoe.blogspot.com/ (es). Things I did while in the Board, in the past: - Bootstraped the Travel Committee in 2009. - Wrote the New Board Director HowTo in 2009, a guide to help new Board members to be productive and participative as soon as possible. - Defined and wrote the New Hackfest request process in 2010. - Worked with Marina to get the Women Outreach Program re-started in 2010. - Started an internal-review process to improve the performance of the Board in 2010. It was internal to allow directors to express themselves openly and provide accurate feedback, which not necessarily would be understood publicly because of the lack of context. Things I'd like to work on for this term: - Enhance our fund-raising: create campaigns for Friends of GNOME with concrete goals, that is, a reason to raise funds, for example new server(s) to improve our hosting infrastructure. - I have a good insight of how the Board and several teams work, so I'd like to help facilitate communication: raising issues, talking with the right people. I have seen several issues where the problem has been miscommunication rather than anything else, and sometimes a facilitator with good relationship with all parties can help to get a better understanding of the different parties involved. I think I can play that role very well because of my understanding of our community as well as my social skills. - I'd like to continue with the internal-review process from 2010, to make sure Directors always have feedback from the team about their performance. From my side, I'll do my best to give constant feedback about the progress of my own work. I'll try to be as responsive as possible, to answer the questions arised, discuss promptly the issues that need attention, and pushing other directors to do the same. - Move the Travel Committee to the next level: enhance the process with a proper system for requests and managing reimbursements. Make it faster and tidier. - Given my non-standard major I believe I can contribute a different point of view to discussions. - Last but not least, using my previous experience I believe I can be a productive Board member from day 1. Thanks for reading! Diego ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Foundation Hires a System Administrator
El vie, 17-09-2010 a las 22:01 -0500, Paul Cutler escribió: The GNOME Foundation is pleased to announce the hiring of Christer Edwards to fill the position of system administrator. Christer joins the GNOME Foundation in a part-time role and will be responsible for working with GNOME's volunteer sysadmin team in mantaining GNOME's infrastructure. Welcome Christer! ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for the candidates : money !
Hi, El mar, 01-06-2010 a las 15:11 -0500, Brian Cameron escribió: Do you plan to work on this business model ? Do you have any proposals ? - The board is currently working to develop a program to allow companies and organizations to donate money. This program would be directed at organizations that are not currently advisory board members. This could be something like a Friends of GNOME program for organizations instead of individuals. This could, for example, provide a link exchange, advertising, mention as a sponsor of an event, or other forms of recognition as an incentive to donate money. Brian refers to this email in marketing list: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/marketing-list/2010-June/msg1.html Basically we want to define new roles that can be taken by smaller companies or organizations so they can donate and get visibility for it. Likely there are a lot of companies that would like to associate to GNOME if they had a clear chance. Comments welcome in marketing-list! ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Candidacy: Diego Escalante Urrelo
Name:Diego Escalante Urrelo Email: die...@gnome.org Nick:diegoe Blog:http://blogs.gnome.org/diegoe/ Affiliation: Igalia S.L. Summary I'm Diego, 22, from good old Lima - Perú. I've been involved since 2006, I've contributed with code, bug triaging, accounts administration, promotion with/at events, organization, Board, etc. I love GNOME and our community, it's awesome :). Motivation for this period I think I've gathered important experience from my time on the Board; I contribute more, and better, as time passes. For this period I'm interested in new opportunities for GNOME to get more funding, supporting new hackfests, keeping a close relationship with our worldwide community and improving our marketing. I look forward to also keep doing a good job following up with topics, assuming more roles and transfering experience to new Board members. What I did this period in the Board * Worked on the GNOME Women Outreach Program[0] with Marina and Stormy, should launch soon (you are welcome to help!) * Launched Foundation IRC meetings. * Defined the work flow for hackfests and put together the New Hackfest howto[1] * Started an internal+periodical 360° review process for the Board with Stormy. * In general I have tried to follow discussed issues closely, giving timely feedback and also trying to get opinions from people outside the Board (when possible). * Outside the Board I try to be involved in discussions on mailing lists, lately in the marketing list. I've even tried to control some flames. I've also helped Stormy and Ruben maintaining the twitter/identi.ca/fb accounts. Thanks for reading and considering me! 0 - http://live.gnome.org/GnomeWomen/OutreachProgram 1 - http://live.gnome.org/Hackfests/New ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Changes in Membership Committee
Hey! El lun, 22-03-2010 a las 23:18 -0300, Bruno Boaventura escribió: Hello! It was a pleasure for me hold the chairman position of Membership Committee in the last two years. Recently we had a meeting to resolve some issues. One of these things were to elect another chairman to the committee. I'm in the committee yet, but the chairman now is Andrea Veri. Thanks again for leading Bruno. I hope this doesn't mean you are going away! We have a pending icecream deathmatch. Go go go membership committee! ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: New foundation member introduction - This time: Nils-Christoph Fiedler, Low German translator
Hey Nils, El vie, 12-03-2010 a las 15:02 +0100, Nils-Christoph Fiedler escribió: Hi there! Low German is spoken by about 10.000.000 people worldwide and for a few years now accepted as an official minority's language by the European Charta and the Federal Republic of Germany. My ambition in starting to translate GNOME into Low German was and is, to spread the language and also make GNOME competitive with KDE within the struggle for suitable desktops to teach young pupils from northern Germany the Low German language. What a task! Thanks for joining GNOME, surely you'll meet the goal :). Welcome! ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Non-Free JavaScript
Hi all, this sounds like an interesting topic to discuss over some drinks ;) but right now we are trying to aim the discussion at a GNOME overall roadmap/strategy. So please stay in topic, if you want to discuss something not directly related to the current topic with the whole community you can try at a later time so that the discussions don't get mixed up and ideas are lost. It will be better for the current discussion and for the discussion you are planning! Diego El dom, 07-03-2010 a las 15:11 -0500, Liam R E Quin escribió: On Sat, 2010-03-06 at 05:29 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote: [...] Javascript programs are not necessarily bad, but if browsers temporarily install them silently without checking whether they are free, that systematically leads users to run nonfree software without knowing it. That raises an interesting point - there's no standard way to mark a licence on a fragment of JavaScript, neither included in an HTML or XML document nor if downloaded separately, at least as far as I can tell. Is that something we (W3C) should take up? Liam ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Non-Free JavaScript
El dom, 07-03-2010 a las 21:43 -0500, Diego Escalante Urrelo escribió: Hi all, this sounds like an interesting topic to discuss over some drinks ;) but right now we are trying to aim the discussion at a GNOME overall roadmap/strategy. Just to clarify: this doesn't mean we can't discuss about a broad spectrum of topics, I just meant that in the interest of both threads/topics it would be better to delay the discussion of the last one a couple of days so attention is not diluted and hence ideas lost. Sorry if it sounded hard. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Stormy's Update: Weeks of February 15th and 22nd
El lun, 01-03-2010 a las 21:54 +0100, Vincent Untz escribió: Le lundi 01 mars 2010, à 11:02 -0800, Luis Villa a écrit : 2010/3/1 Stormy Peters sto...@gnome.org: GNOME Foundation IRC meeting. How did this go? I guess I spoke way too much ;-) The discussion was mostly about how to prepare a roadmap for GNOME, and how to communicate it. There's an IRC log and maybe even minutes, but, hrm, it's not readable for me: http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/IRC20100227 Yeah I kind of broke the ACL :-). Only Javier Jardón can *read* and write it. Any admin around? #lalala ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
El dom, 28-02-2010 a las 00:30 +, Alberto Ruiz escribió: I'm going to call for an end of thread, If people want to sort out what their personal points of view on what GNOME should be, I would suggest them to follow up that discussion in private and not in this list anymore. +1. Disagreeing and discussing is fun and educational, but let's please keep *on topic* about how to make GNOME the best desktop thanks to a fantastic strategy and roadmap. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
El jue, 25-02-2010 a las 22:29 +0200, Ivan Frade escribió: Hi, The big idea behind GNOME3 can be to offer a completely new User Experience. GNOME2 did well with the usual Menus/panel/folders approach, it brought stability, performance and we built the basic blocks of a Desktop. Now comes the time to use those blocks to revamp how the user interact with its computer. In some way, it should do on the Desktop what maemo5 did on a mobile device: use the things we already know in a new way and it doesn't look like the usual boring computer. I agree with Frade, for example among my university friends facebook is quite important, it's how you interact with a lot of people you don't see daily and some times the way to find out about meetings, parties, etc. Why can't we provide an easy way for people to integrate all this info to the local apps? A small example that I believe is doable right now: - you login to GNOME for the first time - you are asked for personal info - you are asked also for your facebook id (example) - the fb id gets processed into an empathy account and a f-spot export configuration (or whatever wants to consume it) - the panel/clock show fb events you are attending, evolution reminds you of them also I'm sure my univ mates would appreciate a desktop that eases their FB experience. Notice how we would improve that without buzz-y words and without smoking crack. My Peruvian Nuevo Sol (PEN) for the discussion. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: New member introduction
El vie, 12-02-2010 a las 07:55 -0500, Joanmarie Diggs escribió: I'm thrilled to be a Foundation member, and really appreciate the welcome messages I've received from those of you I already know. I look forward to getting to know the rest of you. And we appreciate your contributions to GNOME :-). Thanks Joanmarie, and welcome! ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Q4 2009 Quarterly report
Hi! Just wanted to say three things: 1. Thank you to everyone that has contributed to GNOME in Q4, as hackers, testers, evangelists, friends of gnome! You make it possible, thanks! 2. Thanks to the teams for providing this really good feedback 3. I seem unable to open links in the PDF file. Is it me, my evince, or the file itself? Anyone has a clue? Great work, thanks again! :-) El mié, 03-02-2010 a las 10:49 -0700, Stormy Peters escribió: The GNOME Foundation would like to present the Q4 2009 Quarterly report[1] (HTML version[2]). Q4 is normally a quiet quarter — but not for GNOME! During Q4 we had our annual GNOME Asia, GNOME Forum Brazil and Boston Summit events as well as a record four hackfests! The Marketing, Zeitgeist, Video and WebKitGTK+ teams all made good progress on their goals during their hackfests. Next quarter we'll continue the good work with hackfests planned in areas like usability and accessibility. GNOME will also be represented at a number of events like FOSDEM, SCALE, FOSS 2010 Workshop, Open Mobility, Libre Planet and more! In addition to events, teams like the System Administration team have made a lot of progress — they've installed Piwik, Plone, Splinter, and CiviCRM to improve GNOME's infrastructure. This quarter's update also includes an update from the GNOME Board of Directors. Read on[1] to hear all of the fabulous work that was done on GNOME in Q4 2009! If you'd like to receive the report via email in the future, please email me with the subject Subscribe to GNOME Quarterly Report via email. Best, Stormy [1] http://foundation.gnome.org/reports/gnome-report-2009-Q3.pdf [2] http://foundation.gnome.org/reports/gnome-report-2009-Q3.html ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Foundation IRC meeting, January 30th
El sáb, 30-01-2010 a las 12:53 -0500, Og Maciel escribió: Co-located Hackfests It was brought up by zana and seconded by others that a co-located hackfest prior to a possible co-located bigger event such as GUADEC would make more sense, as we could get people from different communities discussing and collaborating on similar issues, sharing their pains/knowledge and trying to pool together processes and ideas for dealing with them. Then, a co-located GUADEC could schedule co-located sessions where these teams would present their findings, etc, etc. Big +1, it would make a lot of sense. With the current proposal for co-location we have overlapping activities: catching up with GNOME pals and sharing time with new people from KDE. I feel catching up with old pals steals most of the time. I think this idea is great :-) Any idea for one? I am planning to write up a proposal for a co-located localization hackfest where we could gather a few representatives from different communities (think KDE, Xfce, GNOME, LXDE, etc) to discuss about the types of issues their respective projects are facing, how they've solved it, what is there to be improved, etc. The objective is to shed a light on what some of the common issues are and share general knowledge that will hopefully improve their own processes. Great! check http://live.gnome.org/Hackfests/New and feel free to give feedback on the suggested recipe :-) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Foundation IRC meeting, January 30th
Hey everyone, looking forward for feedback and discussion of general issues, the Board would like to invite all GNOME Foundation members to a general purpose IRC meeting: When: Saturday, January 30th, 16:00 UTC Where: irc.gnome.org, #foundation We understand that this time might not suit everybody, but we tried to select something that would work for most people. Feel free to suggest other times for future meetings. There's no specific goal or agenda for this meeting. Feedback, questions, comments, suggestions and general discussion of Foundation topics is welcomed. You can propose agenda items here: http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoardPublic/MeetingAgenda See you there! ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
New hackfest proposal step-by-step guide
Hello everyone! in the last year we have seen a really positive trend towards organizing Hackfests to speed up the coordination, development and improvement of various projects. You can see a list of all this Hackfests in: http://live.gnome.org/Hackfests If you have been wondering what do you have to do to prepare a proposal for a Hackfest, the Board is glad to announce the New Hackfest proposal step-by-step guide: http://live.gnome.org/Hackfests/New We hope this will help everyone interested in hosting a Hackfest to get organized and have a clear view of what they need to do. Happy hacking! ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: New GNOME Foundation Members
El vie, 15-01-2010 a las 06:50 -0300, Bruno Boaventura escribió: Hello everybody! I was quite busy due to my daughter. And now, she is almost three months older, so... I'm back. Really. :-) Congrats Bruno, thanks for keep working on this despite your (highly likely) 3 hours of sleep per day :-) The GNOME Foundation Membership Committee is proud to present the new members: - Adam Janos Reviczky - Benjamin Konrath - David Schlesinger - Frank Solensky - James Vasile - Jeff Schroeder - Ke Wang - Marc-Andre Lureau - Thibault Saunier Welcome and thanks for your work helping GNOME! :-) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Change of affiliation
Hi, starting on Monday my affiliation will change from none to Igalia. I'll be doing an internship for the following 2 or 3 months working on WebKitGTK+ and Epiphany :-). Have a nice day! Diego ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Expenses Report of Beijing GNOME Users Group from 2008 - 2009
El mar, 05-01-2010 a las 16:51 +0800, Emily Chen escribió: Hi all, This is the yearly expense report of Beijing GNOME Users Group in 2008 and 2009. Looks like you are doing great, congratulations to the Beijing GNOME User Group! 2010 will surely be equal or even better ;-) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
IRC Foundation meeting?
Hey everyone, lately there has been an idea floating around about having an IRC meeting with the membership of the Foundation, something like the AGM but obviously smaller and text-only :-). Other groups have similar activities once in a while, the goal being sharing a more open space to discuss ideas and get feedback from the whole community. The Board would like to know if there's interest for such a meeting. The agenda would be composed of proposed items. A proposed time for this would be September 24th at 17 UTC. If you are interested in this, please let us know replying to this email. We can set the agenda in a wiki page later. Diego ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: New GNOME Foundation Members
On Sun, 2009-08-23 at 19:22 -0300, Bruno Boaventura wrote: Hello everybody! The GNOME Foundation Membership Committee is proud to present the new members: - Carl James Collier - Halton Huo - Javier Jardón Cabezas - Milo Casagrande - Tim Horton - Will Thompson Welcome guys! Thanks for contributing to GNOME :-). Keep rocking! ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: I don't have my token
On Sat, 2009-06-20 at 20:12 +0100, Alberto Ruiz wrote: Hello there, I don't have my token to vote for the foundation elections :( Ping the membership committee! http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/membership-committee ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for the candidates
Hey, On Fri, 2009-05-29 at 18:17 +0100, Susana Pereira wrote: Questions - 1. For outgoing board members: what have been the upsides/good things from your previous stint at the Board which you would like to see carried forward into this term ? I would like to keep seeing more participation, enabling current contributors to get more involved, such is the case of the refresh in the membership committee and the new travel committee. Also, keeping good communication with a broader public (yes, I'm thinking Latin America here). 2. If you are a new candidate: what specific SMART (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_(project_management)) goals would you like to put for yourself? Or, in other words, how would you like to measure yourself and, let others know how you are doing ? 3. What part of being a board member do you think will be most difficult for you? How do you plan to compensate for that? Trying to get more involved with the Board without losing focus in stuff, I constantly try to sit down and think about what I'm currently doing in my life in general to be aware of how much free time and focus I have to offer for new tasks or current ones. 4. Do you have any experience on management teams or boards at non-profits? If so, can you give an example of a change you affected in that role? If not, what makes you think that you will be a good board member? What single change do you want to affect during your term? I've been working with local groups, had a chance to resurrect a local lug in 2006 and until 2008 were I stopped actively coordinating activies there, and of course my Board work for the last 6 months. I think I'll be a good member because I have the time needed (based on my experience so far), I trust my communication skills and feel that now that I had the last 6 months as 'training' I can do a great job from day 1. A concrete thing to affect could be enabling more people to get more involved with the Foundation or with the Project itself. 5. What are the specific areas of the Foundation's focus and strategy where you think you can contribute as a change agent ? I don't feel like I'm a specialized agent and hence could revolutionize a concrete area, but I have interest for this period (like I said in my Candidacy mail) in marketing, fundraising, working with committees (and enabling new contribution oportunities) and trying to get out a second GNOME LA Tour. 6. Do you think we need to make the being a member of the Foundation feel more valuable, and how do you think we should do that? What would you change about the Foundation to make it more useful to members. I think we can try to make our communication channels more evident, so people can feel more confident to approach the Foundation to try to get sponsorship (in money or just institutional backup) for activities. Like Germán said, local groups around here usually feel a lot distant from the most visible people in our community, language barrier and other stuff usually discourages them to try to get closer. Although we all know most of us are quite friendly, this is something we just find out after having been together for a certain time. 7. Do you have any plans on how can the board help bring the GNOME platform and desktop in the top of opensource desktop and mobile application development? Helping define our set of offers for such markets would be a key factor for that. Also, trying to get our software to run and being more hackable in more platforms (yes, I mean Windows) will inevitably get us more developers and spotlight than just being limited to unix systems. This has been key to Python, Django, etc and I think we should start thinking on that also. 8. Do you think the GNOME Foundation and the GNOME projects get enough representation at events? If not, how would you fix that? I don't know too many big conferences, but where I have been to (EncuentroLinux in Chile, Latinoware in Brasil) there has been a good number of people working as a local GNOME group. I think this is linked somewhat with the previous question, I can imagine local GNOME groups being more agressive in their promotion of the project if they could offer something to Windows developers or users. For example promoting Evince as a good PDF reader for Windows or gEdit. 9. What, in your view, are the top 5 requirements (from a strategic perspective) for the GNOME communities world-wide ? I'm reading this as communities (hence user groups or promotion groups not development of/or business), I think most of us could agree that we could use more of: 1. defining our offer of products more precisely (software, solutions); 2. having more 'instant deliverables' for users and developers, for example downloading a .exe of Evince or a .exe of the complete PyGTK bundle to show your Windows friend how cool and good our software is; 3. promoting get-together local events, where people can start to know
Re: New GNOME Foundation Members
On Thu, 2009-04-09 at 11:39 +0200, Stéphane Raimbault wrote: 2009/4/9 Bruno Boaventura bruno...@gnome.org: Hello everybody! The GNOME Foundation Membership Committee is pleased to present the new members: - Andrew Stormont - Jonny Lamb - Li Yuan - Martin Picek Welcome, guys! Has previously said, is it possible to have a short introduction on each new member? Yes, let us know about you guys, so we can make you do our work, I mean, to know you better! :-) Welcome and thanks for contributing! ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
The Travel Committee is ready!
Dear happy Foundation members: We are happy to announce that the Travel Committee is ready! This new team will be in charge of processing requests for travel and/or accommodation sponsorship for conferences and other activities related to our beloved project. The Travel Committee is composed by: Rosanna Yuen, Emily Chen, Chema Casanova, Sir Ross Burton and Germán Póo-Caamaño. Some things you should know: * Any information you send the TC will be private * Asking for sponsorship *does not* guarantee you will get sponsored * Always choose the most economical option when possible * A good application with good information will be processed faster In order to know how the Travel Committee will work and how you can ask for sponsorship, please read the wiki page: http://live.gnome.org/Travel (carefully!) Yes, the Travel Committee is ready to receive applications for GUADEC travel. :o) Applications will be received until April 27, 2009, 19:00 UTC; answers will be given before May 11 19:00 UTC. You can start sending your applications now! Remember that travel requests from GNOME Foundation members have preference. If you are not yet a member this is a great time to join! ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Support GTK+
Hi! On 3/16/09, 呉永 w...@shcore.com.cn wrote: Hi, First,Thank you for replying me , I want to zoom in a window just like when we use IE browser,sometime we can't see the web page clearly, so we will use [Ctrl]+[mouse wheel] keys to zoom the page in, in that case we can see the web page clearly! please tell me how to do that in gtk Your question belongs to gtk-apps-devel list, subscribe to it and please resend it there, where people doing work in GTK+ apps (commercial and free apps) can give you a hint: http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-app-devel-list Good luck ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Travel Committee Travel Policy: A proposal for consideration and feedback
On 2/18/09, Bruno Boaventura brunoboavent...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 6:38 AM, Alberto Ruiz ar...@gnome.org wrote: Note that I'm not against a generalized co-pay policy, I'm just concerned about making it a rule set to stone that would have an impact on our ability to foster future contributors. That's my position too. Co-pay policy is great, however, what we have to think about students is: they have other costs with food and transport (depending the place, can be 200 EUR for a week). Summarising all the discussion a bit: - a travel committee is suggested to take out the huge work of processing sponsorship applications from the GUADEC committee - a more formal process would be installed: a form to be filled, deadlines to get a reply, etc; - conditions and obligations by both parties will be clearer (we won't cover your new shin pads for the FreeFA cup, you must present clear tickets) Regarding the % or 200€ thing: - we can agree that the people that *should* get a 100% coverage is people that deserve it or really need it - we can't leave out people asking for 100% just because they are not crucial people in GNOME; it would kill the involvement of new people We could remove the fixed/default %-200€ policy and of course leave the travel committee with the faculty to ask people if they could be able to afford an ammount of the trip if they see it as a reasonable thing to ask. Just like it is done now. I -personally- expect the real improvements and savings to be in the enhanced speed of the process (hence earlier bookings of tickets), having all the tickets bought with enough anticipation should save us a considerable ammount already. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: New Friends of GNOME program launched!
On 1/16/09, Máirín Duffy du...@redhat.com wrote: Germán Póo-Caamaño wrote: I wonder if the t-shirts are only for men or women. The webpage doesn't say anything, but I tend to think they are for men. However, are we expecting the supporters comes from one gender only? fwiw I prefer men's S shirts rather than shirts that are sized for women, because the sizing on the women's shirts is so unpredictable, In some I'm size M, L, and I actually have one from a LinuxWorld that I needed an XL for it to fit. Perhaps we could add the sizing info on the page (in inches and centimeters). ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: New Friends of GNOME program launched!
On 1/16/09, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote: Hi, Diego Escalante Urrelo wrote: fwiw I prefer men's S shirts rather than shirts that are sized for women, because the sizing on the women's shirts is so unpredictable, In some I'm size M, L, and I actually have one from a LinuxWorld that I needed an XL for it to fit. Perhaps we could add the sizing info on the page (in inches and centimeters). I don't think there's a need. I don't believe that the t-shirt is a determinant in donating or not. At the numbers we're talking about, I imagine that repeat donors will receive an e-mail asking them what size t-shirt they'd like when the time comes - handle t-shirt size issues then. Automating this too early would be counter-productive premature optimisation. In such case can we confirm that when the t-shirt is sent this will be asked again? Because it would be bad to have to resend t-shirts or people with t-shirts that fit badly, hence unhappy donors. While it's not a determinant fact, we should try to keep the donors as happy as we can, and if putting sizes in the page saves a sad face in someone, then it's worth it. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME DVCS Survey Results
On 1/5/09, Johannes Schmid j...@jsschmid.de wrote: 6. Check all the documentation stuff on live.gnome.org that needs to be updated. That is really important because not everybody is familiar with git. There should also be a short introduction to git somewhere on the wiki. And some announcements should probably be made... And perhaps explain the benefits and cool stuff, if we are moving to !svn, we should take advantage of the new cool stuff introduced... that's where something like Federico's proposal to use gitorious fit. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Changes to the GNOME board
Thank you all! I'll do my best :-) On 12/15/08, Bruno Boaventura brunoboavent...@gmail.com wrote: Great news!!! Congratulations Diego! Now we can go with our plans from Latin America Complot! Of course Bruno, but don't let the others know ;) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Akademy+GUADEC *2009* Hosting Proposals
On 7/3/08, Lennart Poettering [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, 03.07.08 20:54, Quim Gil ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Thu, Jul 3, 2008 at 6:30 PM, Lennart Poettering [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Are there even any direct flights to Tampere, except from HEL? Ryanair in Tampere operates to Frankfurt, London, Bremen, Dublin, Milan and to Riga. Blue 1 operates to Stockholm and Copenhagen. Still no comparison to charter trips. Food, at http://www.gnome.org/~behdad/akademy+guadec-2009-bids/finland/ there is a list of restaurants with many options starting from meals at 5€. Remember that Tampere is a city full of (public) university students, including Erasmus from all Europe. 5€ is a competitive price in the Spanish Summer, specially in the coast. Coping with parties every night is a problem for the economy of many. This was raised in previous editions and should be taken into account next year, no matter where. 3 sponsored social events with drinks reasonably covered + a couple of nights covered by a visit to the supermarket + a couple of nights actually sleeping well and drinking very healty water... Sounds like a plan? I somehow doubt that this works out. It didn't in Birmingham: some people went out all the time because they had no problems affording it in Birmingham -- Some people had to focus more on living from Tesco. Claiming that this was a good solution is, uh, not really understandable to me. I don't think it's trivial either. The point of GUADEC is to socialize and get to known each other. We can't pretend to have everyone always together, but we should try to give everyone the chance to attend more places than Tesco. Not to make it a reason to always choose the cheapest place nor to rule out more expensive places, but let's try to keep it accesible to more people. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Call for hosts for GUADEC 2009
Hey On 4/22/08, Behdad Esfahbod [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, 2008-04-22 at 14:38 -0400, Adam Schreiber wrote: I too would appreciate another North/Central/South America based conference if GUADEC can't be moved across the pond occasionally. However, I suspect that because the GNOME summit is held in Boston every year we will have to make due. Boston Summit can move around. Just come up with proposals for Boston Summit 2009 before this year's Summit. Send to [EMAIL PROTECTED] It just hit me, if Boston Summit is usually around October and there's the LA tour planned for October, why not merge both ideas? We can have BS (ok, never use that acronym) in -say- Lima, and then some of the hackers can take a plane to -say- Santiago, some guys from Europe could also come and be in the Summit instead of just watching via IRC. Of course this involves having the usual attendees pay an extra fee for the trip, it's still something reasonable to pay under 1000 usd to get a weekend in South America. Also there's a language barrier, but I wouldn't consider it an actual problem, given that people in the Summit is gonna interact mainly between them. What do you think? ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Money spending, questions for the candidates
On 12/1/07, Dave Neary [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, Diego Escalante Urrelo wrote: I still don't think Foundation should get involved into saying place X is an approbed training center, I fear that would go beyond its scope. But the foundation could publish a syllabus and some sample exams, and then licence training institutes and companies to offer the training (with quality control of the training course) - in the way LPI does. Doing that quality control could eat some (human) resources. Also as John says this could easily lead to an unintentioned favouritism. I totally agree with him about being against partnering with an entity over another. The cons would outweight the benefits, I think we would get a lot of free problems from stuff like this. I imagine fountains of FUD on every corner. I really don't like the idea. In fact, this would be a decent follow-on from the idea that Andy Oram proposed (don't have the link right now) about having quizzes at the bottom of documentation pages to ensure that the material is understandable and that the lessons to be learned are absorbed by the reader - both to help the reader validate their learning, and to get live feedback on documentation quality to identify areas in need of improvement. This sounds like a nice idea, like a GNOMEpardy :). I think it could take a good ammount of work to ellaborate those questions however. Consider that we would also have to create and maintain some infrastructure for this. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Money spending, questions for the candidates
On 12/1/07, Philip Van Hoof [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sat, 2007-12-01 at 10:18 +, Diego Escalante Urrelo wrote: On 12/1/07, Dave Neary [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Doing that quality control could eat some (human) resources. Also as John says this could easily lead to an unintentioned favouritism. Unintentioned favouritism is a cheap reason to avoid all innovation from now on: No, you are misinterpretaing my words, it's quite different to talk about choosing GPL over $something-else and choosing place-X over place-Y. On the current context, choosing to endorse place-X's training courses would imply that we are helping them make profit. Choosing GPL or supporting ODF is a totally different matter. o. Let's start with our license: I think that picking the GPL license implies an unintentioned favouritism for GNU. o. We should also not support ODF, because that implies an unintentioned favouritism for a company called Sun, and also for Novell! Please feel the sarcasm. If we are going to try to stop expressing any form of unintentioned favouritism, we might as well just stop at all. The cons would outweight the benefits, I think we would get a lot of free problems from stuff like this. Name one that any one of our technology decisions doesn't have, My project creates opinions from people who prefer MAPI over IMAP, web clients over normal E-mail, XMPP over SMTP, ... Different matter, I don't think Tinymail could be a source of the same type of problems I'm thinking of. To clarify, I'm thinking more about the social implicances of such decision, lots of people would think we are discriminating some and favouring others, among other things. The quality of what we endorse also worries me a lot, we can try really hard to watch over the quality of the courses or training but it's impossible to guarantee 100% quality, hence we would end with people having papers that have our sign saying yes, this guy knows how to hack GNOME stuff and they don't necessarily would even know how to apt-get something. Lot's of free problems. Realism! I imagine fountains of FUD on every corner. That's unavoidable for anything we do. Nope, I don't think nobody has raised any kind of FUD about a lot of things we do. As an example, let's take Boston Summit: nobody accuses us of favouring Boston because it's just a hacker meeting, no one is making money with it directly. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Money spending, questions for the candidates
Hey On 11/30/07, Bastian, Waldo [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: o. What is your opinion on an examination that could carry the title: GNOME Mobile certified software developer exam If the examination is offered by a third party, then I would say they are violating the trademark guidelines :). But if you suggest that GNOME via the Foundation could offer a certification, I wouldn't like to see that, sadly certifications tend to mean nothing with time due to people taking them just to pass the test. I think it would be more healthy to have easier ways for contributors to show their work and prove how much they have given to the project, hence showing their possible employer that they surely rock. Although the company that I work for surely employs a few rock stars, more often a project team or company is just looking for someone who knows how to use GTK+ widgets (think bellcurve). I believe the objective here would be to make it easier for commercial companies to develop solutions based on GNOME and part of the problem that such companies face is finding developers that are familiar with the technology. Reducing that hurdle will help to make the technology more popular. I don't think the Foundation should offer certification itself but maybe it could work together with an existing institute on expanding its training offerings around Gnome technology. Just my 2 ct. Interesting, I feel that anyway certifications tend to get worth nothing when people start taking them just to pass them, but still I see your point of letting people not in GNOME but users of GNOME's technology to prove they know that stuff. Certification implemented as training could be a different matter, as long as the real juice of the thing is the training. I still don't think Foundation should get involved into saying place X is an approbed training center, I fear that would go beyond its scope. thanks for your comment, Diego ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for the candidates [Was: Re: Money spending, questions for the candidates]
Hey On 11/30/07, Elijah Newren [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, (...) What will you as a candidate do to make sure we avoid this mess in the future? I can only think of asking for question much sooner or proposing some topics under which to fill questions. But honestly, I don't know if anything could guarantee people participating more *before* this period. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: what about next ODF?
Hey, On 11/28/07, Rui Miguel Silva Seabra [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello, One question to candidates: Wil you promote the Foundation's participation on the reviewing of ODF? Why won't we?. It's on the interest of or community to promote free standards, free software and if we can help by reviewing it and helping to make it better and more bullet proof, then let's just do it! :). I'm sure it won't be for lack of a sponsor, but I think it is much more important to the Free Software world to have a true Open Standard for office documents, regardless of MS OOXML's outcome, and I hope the Foundation will help make sure the users of GNOME can use the next version of ODF with GNOME based Free Software. The OOXML issue is already explained, someone volunteered for helping nuking MS's standard so we can get as much info as we can and make the problems of their stuff more evident. Jody's participation is -in my very humble opinion- anything but bad. He's probably made MS people throw one or two chairs through the window with his questions. I think Luis has replied you very clearly. No one's paying no one and Jody's participation is totally voluntary, if someone would stand up and want to help with ODF, I don't see a reason to oppose to the board helping them to participate. We all love free software as much as you, we wouldn't do anything to harm it. Greetings! Diego ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: two questions for candidates
Hey, On 11/26/07, Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 1. Would you change anything in the GNOME Foundation statement about OOXML? Mmmm, I would have included a line in all-caps saying GNOME Foundation doesn't like OOXML, we have someone in the committee because standard or not Ms is gonna push it everywhere, so we are taking the chance to ask questions and raise concern on all the problems we can find. :). I think the statement was fine, a bit longer than what the regular netizen would read however, so my new line would only be to avoid lazy netizens spreading FUD. As Jeff says on another thread, statement or not, the people hating us for being there is not going to ever be happy. So I'd print that line only to make it clearer for the ocassional bystander. 2. How do you think the GNOME Foundation should support the Free Software Movement in general? By keeping the high quality of GNOME and supporting the grow of our great community (note that it's on hackers hands to do it, but on Foundation's to encourage it). I always like to talk about GNOME when people asks or wonders about free software being too hippie or non serious. My personal view is that GNOME is a great argument for confirming that free software can be more serious and efficient than any other privative alternative (think about our release cycle). I think the Foundation is already helping free software by supporting GNOME and promoting it, it also does a great job being a proxy to all the companies interested in the project. Nuking the brick walls for GNOME also nuke them for other projects. see ya! ___ 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
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: GNOME Foundation Elections 2007. Let's start the debate!
On 11/19/07, Bruno Boaventura [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: With the final list of candidates announced, it's time to submit questions about the GNOME Foundation and GNOME Project to this years prospective Board of Directors. The list, a summary of each candidate's statement and a link to each candidate's candidacy can be found at: http://foundation.gnome.org/elections/2007/candidates.html Here we'll go: [1] How much impact would being a member of the GNOME Foundation Board have on your current contributions to GNOME ? It won't have a big impact, right now my main activity is minor bug fixing and a good bunch of bug triaging. As I said on my candidacy statement, I'm planning on devoting a bigger part of my GNOME time to Board activities, but given that my GNOME work is anyway not really time consuming or absorving I don't think my usual GNOME contributions will be hurt, I'm not a rockstar and I'm not planning on becoming one for the next 18 months. [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 think OD is really a cool project, I have heard lots of opinions saying it's great and others saying it's just an Active Desktop copy (hah!). There are other not directly related projects that make me dream of great innovation in the short term, for example Telepathy and tubes. Having that kind of integration between communication and collaboration is going to make us rock. OD is a great opportunity to innovate freely and go a step further, the vision behind it is quite realistic for our time: stuff is happening online, let's integrate with it. After all, one of our killer features is being an integrated desktop :). I'm sure OnlineDesktop will produce some interesting new ideas and applications. Talking about the role of the Foundation with this project, I'd say that it's important to support this and other initiatives with the resources they need -as long as it's realistic and reasonable-. [3] What are the SMART goals that you desire to set for yourself should you be elected to the Board ? - Support initiatives in Latin America for getting people involved as users and developers. Concretely, I would like to deploy 2 or 3 of our rockstars next year to a LA-tour, as seen on marketing-list[0] and later gugmasters[1] the idea has had a positive response. I would like to serve as a direct link to this initiative and hopefully other similar ones. - Help on showing the Board as a more transparent group, it's not that today it's not transparent, but I would like to make it as crystal clear as possible so people does know what happens in the Board and how the work is done (of course, as long as it doesn't disrupt the privacy of the matters discussed, common sense implied). I think this can have a positive impact on the number of people approaching with ideas and initiatives, also at the end of the term I would like to see a good number of candidates given that the doubt about what would it take to be on the board would be then a lot smaller, if not gone. - Putting attention to details, I confess I'm a perfectionist and I'm not planning on stop being one on the next 18 months :). - I would also be glad to be a channel for people to communicate with the Board, I feel that given my age and friendly attitude people won't feel inhibited from talking to me. [4] If you are a candidate for the first time, what are the areas that you think you can do better ? I think that my context is quite different to other people already working on the Board, not that it's better but it's just different. I'm quite young (20), I'm peruvian, and silly as this sounds I think that gives me a totally different set of ideas and ways of thinking that can complement perfectly with the other members of the Board. Some of the things I see room for improvement are the ones on question (3). As for skills to offer, I feel that my work over the last year and a half with my local LUG organizing conferences and workshops have given me a good knowledge of how to work with people and have made me immune to the boredom of administrative tasks. I also enjoy doing public relations and marketing. [5] Do you think it is important to mentor and coach potential leaders in the GNOME community ? If yes, what do you think the role of the Board be in this task ? If no, what are your thoughts on this ? This is really important, I think one of the key factors to the success of a group is producing new leaders and developing their leadership. Leadership is not limited only to being on top of a committee or being a Board member, leadership should be present on every single aspect of an organization through its people. We should think of everyone as possible leaders and encourage them to not be afraid of taking the first step into something. Leadership is one of the factors of innovation. I think we all agree
Candidacy: Diego Escalante Urrelo
Name: Diego Escalante Urrelo Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Affl: None Misc. Nick: dieguito Blog: http://diegoe.blogspot.com (in Spanish) GNOME-Blog: http://blogs.gnome.org/diegoe Summary --- I'm running for the Board because I want to help GNOME in areas where I haven't yet helped, but I feel capable of doing it. I'm totally devoted to GNOME as a project and as a group, I've met wonderful friends thanks to GNOME and learned lots of incredible things. I'm confident that my skills and experience working with people and doing administrative tasks will be useful to the Board. Who am I? - I'm Diego Escalante Urrelo, I'm peruvian[0] and I'm 20 years old. I've been using GNU/Linux since I was 14. I'm a GNOME user since 2.2 days (I confess I hated 1.4 :)) and a GNOME contributor since 2.14 days. Probably we exchanged one or two friendly words (or maybe kicks if you played the soccer match) in GUADEC last July. In GNOME I've worked on Epiphany, the Accounts team and Busquad. Locally I'm an active member of DebianPerú[1], a LUG right now devoted into getting people involved into Free Software projects. 0 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peru 1 - http://www.debianperu.org Why am I running? - I feel that right now I can help GNOME more being on the Board doing administrative tasks than hacking, I'm not a rockstar hacker and I'm not planning on becoming one the next year and a half. My experience working as a coordinator for DebianPerú has taught me a lot about working with people, public relations and administrative stuff. I see myself as a motivated, creative, energic and (sometimes) perfectionist person, I'm sure this skills can be useful to the Board. Why should you vote for me? -- Because give how much I love GNOME you can trust I won't do anything to harm the project that has given me so much. I also enjoy administrative tasks more than hacking tasks, so I plan on targetting my GNOME time to Board work if I'm elected. I feel I'm seen as friendly and open by people, so I hope to be a good way for people to contact the Board. Will I focus on something? - Of course, besides wanting to help make GNOME rock even harder I've some points I want to work on if I get elected: * promoting and supporting more people getting into GNOME in Latin America * transparency of the Board * putting attention into details Some more thoughts -- * I want to help in the Board because I feel that as a hacker I'm far less productive than as an administrative guy. * I confess that I'll help the Latin American Mafia to take over GNOME. * I'm full of energy and enthusiasm (and well, some cookies right now) * Thanks for reading this Diego ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: clarification and apology [was Re: board]
On 11/8/07, Quim Gil [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Nov 8, 2007 7:44 PM, Luis Villa [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: apologies for the impression I may have created about the current board. No problem, Luis. I don't think the board members got bad feelings for your constructive and rather justified criticism. Man, we love you! Yes! GNOME Friend with benefits! wait a second... ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: About the coming election
Hey Anne :) On 11/6/07, Anne Østergaard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: About the coming election of new board members. It is time for reflection on whether you would like to run for election, for the next GNOME Board of Directors, for the next period of eighteen months. In my view, it is important to have a variety of skills represented on the board. Totally agree, I remember we had the chance to chat in GUADEC about how a different point of view is very important for any group, sometimes the outsider look opens your eyes. The outsider being either a people from outside or a people from inside but with a different set of ideas or way of thinking. I do not personally believe in a strong man dominated board, but rather in a group of dedicated team players who always has the best interests of the GNOME Foundation, as well as the GNOME community at heart. I think that a well run organization, with a welcoming and helpful attitude towards new comers and beginners who would like to contribute to the project, would reflect in more cool, user friendly applications which will make us all happy. It would also be a good thing to have as global a representation on the board as possible. For the variety of cultures and the inspiration. We would welcome candidates from all over the globe. (It would be nice to see candidates from India and the US for example. As these countries are not represented at the moment. The GNOME Foundation is a US based legal entity, which means that we act under US legislation.) Aha, don't worry, the evil latino plan to take over the board is in process (what do you think Lucas is doing there? muahaha!! :D) (that's a joke, laugh now) In case you are not able to put in the time it takes being a board member yourself, you could try to mail a friend you would like to see as a board member and convince him/her to become a candidate. While reading this, I remembered this mail by Federico: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2006-November/msg00014.html It cleared a lot of my doubts with regards to being on the board. I recommend it to anyone wanting to know more about the board (no matter they run or not for it). We have had two votes on internal, organizational issues apart from the yearly elections. They have worked fine. So we might consider asking The GNOME Foundation Members to vote on important, fundamental issues where it is difficult to deduct what the opinion of the majority is from the debate. This idea might also make it even more important to you to be or become a GNOME Foundation Member. I am writing this on behalf of myself, and it reflects my personal experience, and views on being a board member for the past two years. And it's nice to hear about the people who has already being through the experience, I would encourage other board members to comment about their experience on the board, the good and bad of it. greetings! Diego ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Thank you everyone for a wonderful GUADEC 2007
On 7/25/07, Claudio Saavedra [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, 2007-07-24 at 16:36 +0200, Anne Østergaard wrote: It is also a pleasure for me to inform you all that next years GUADEC 2008 will take place in Istanbul, Turkey. Congratulations Barış and everyone behind this proposal! Yes!. Can't wait to see you all guys again!! :) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Sponsorship letter
Hello everyone, (sorry if someone gets duplicates of this) Fighting the consulates, I realized that it would be a good idea to have a letter from the foundation where it's acknowledged that I'm being sponsored to attende GUADEC and GUADEC-ES. You know, to make things look official. So I crafted a letter about this, with the hope that someone wants to give me a hand and fill in the blanks, insert a png with his/her signature and mail it back to me. Obviously to make it official it has to be a Board Member the one signing it. I hope someone can give me a hand! Diego To whom it may concern (is this english?) On behalf of The GNOME Foundation, I would like to confirm that Mr. Diego Escalante Urrelo is being sponsored to attend GUADEC 2007: The GNOME Conference 15th - 21st July, 2007, Birmingham, United Kingdom, the 8th annual GNOME Users and Developers European Conference and GUADEC-ES 2007: The GNOME Hispanic Users and Developers Conference 12th - 13th July, 2007. Mr. Diego Escalante Urrelo holds a passport numbered 3923409. His flight to Spain and United Kingdom, his accommodation and other expenses during 11th-24th July 2007 are covered by the GUADEC committee in 1 Great Colmore Street Birmingham, B15 2AP, UK. Which is a $relationship with the foundation. He is being sponsored because of his contributions to the GNOME project which include software development, software translation and authoring software documentation. He has also helped promote GNOME in events, media and local community groups. We would like him to attend GUADEC so that he can share his experiences and learn about the latest developments in the GNOME project. GNOME Foundation (gnome.org) is a non-profit, non-government organization based in Boston, USA, with a worldwide membership. The GNOME User and Developer European Conferences (GUADEC and GUADEC-ES) www.guadec.org - www.guadec.es are annual gatherings of GNOME developers, enthusiasts and individual, business, education and government users worldwide. Yours sincerely, SCANED SIGNATURE someone ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [guadec-list] Sponsorship letter
On 6/29/07, Behdad Esfahbod [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, 2007-06-29 at 13:56 -0500, Diego Escalante Urrelo wrote: Hello everyone, (sorry if someone gets duplicates of this) Fighting the consulates, I realized that it would be a good idea to have a letter from the foundation where it's acknowledged that I'm being sponsored to attende GUADEC and GUADEC-ES. You know, to make things look official. I prefer to have these things handled by GUADEC organizers, not the Board. The standard GUADEC invitation letter looks quite official to me, and has got me (and others) visas already. What kind of problems are you having with the consulate? Yep I know, it's quite good. What I mean with this one is to show that the top-level organization (the foundation) knows about all this and to explain that my trip is both to Spain and UK. Right now I have the standard UK invitation letter (guadec letter) and that's fine, but it only mentions my trip to UK, it doesn't detail that I'm dropping by Spain a few days. It's just to summarize things. Under the asumption that if it doesn't harm then it clarifies things for the embassy. behdad So I crafted a letter about this, with the hope that someone wants to give me a hand and fill in the blanks, insert a png with his/her signature and mail it back to me. Obviously to make it official it has to be a Board Member the one signing it. I hope someone can give me a hand! Diego To whom it may concern (is this english?) On behalf of The GNOME Foundation, I would like to confirm that Mr. Diego Escalante Urrelo is being sponsored to attend GUADEC 2007: The GNOME Conference 15th - 21st July, 2007, Birmingham, United Kingdom, the 8th annual GNOME Users and Developers European Conference and GUADEC-ES 2007: The GNOME Hispanic Users and Developers Conference 12th - 13th July, 2007. Mr. Diego Escalante Urrelo holds a passport numbered 3923409. His flight to Spain and United Kingdom, his accommodation and other expenses during 11th-24th July 2007 are covered by the GUADEC committee in 1 Great Colmore Street Birmingham, B15 2AP, UK. Which is a $relationship with the foundation. He is being sponsored because of his contributions to the GNOME project which include software development, software translation and authoring software documentation. He has also helped promote GNOME in events, media and local community groups. We would like him to attend GUADEC so that he can share his experiences and learn about the latest developments in the GNOME project. GNOME Foundation (gnome.org) is a non-profit, non-government organization based in Boston, USA, with a worldwide membership. The GNOME User and Developer European Conferences (GUADEC and GUADEC-ES) www.guadec.org - www.guadec.es are annual gatherings of GNOME developers, enthusiasts and individual, business, education and government users worldwide. Yours sincerely, SCANED SIGNATURE someone ___ guadec-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/guadec-list -- 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
