Re: GNOME DVCS Survey Results
Hi, On Sun, Jan 4, 2009 at 7:51 AM, Olav Vitters o...@bkor.dhs.org wrote: Anyway, I'd rather add John Carr to the sysadmin team. I plan to make a proposal to switch GNOME to a DVCS where Git works using Johns suggestion. Then other sysadmins[1] can suggest whatever proposal they want. These proposals can be investigated on merit and then a one can be chosen (chosen as in: go ahead and try if this would work, not go ahead blindly; everything must be tested before a cutover). [1] or whomever. Although I don't see how that would work. While I'm sure John will at least be able to get basic functionality working, and the project has a certain amount of cool geek factor, taking John's proposal as a path forward concerns many in the community for a variety of reasons[*1]. (In fact, I bet such an option would rank lower than any native vcs option had it been included in the survey.) I'd like to help with another path forward, namely native git repositories since I believe that is what most of the community wants. As you said, it isn't clear how it could work for non-sysadmins to come up with clear proposal strategies and implementations. Are there others on the sysadmin team who are willing to work on such a transition? If so, how can I help? Elijah [*1] Reasons I've seen or can think of off the top of my head: * As James H. mentioned on John's blog, you'd likely end up with the intersection of the features of the two version control systems rather than improving things. * John's project does not have a large community behind it and supporting it. In fact, it may end up with a bus factor of 1[*2]. Even if it increases, it doesn't have the kind of large community that, say, git-svn has. In general, it's unsettling to many to adopt a project without a large community behind it. * John's bridge would have to be updated whenever either the bzr or git formats changed (in particular, bzr has changed repository formats several times and even promotes it's ability to seamlessly change repository formats as an advantage), or whenever the network protocols changed (including protocol extensions, such as the git push tell-me-more extension). * It would introduce extra lag between when new features become available, since the bridge would need to be updated for each such change. * There's no guarantee bzr and git will change in ways that will make them remain compatible, so we run the risk of accepting (additional) feature losses as time goes on. It may be a small risk, but we simply don't know and have no way of knowing. * All software has bugs. John's bridge can't be exempt, and particularly as new and not-yet-tested software, it's more of a risk. Will that mean data loss? Loss of features? Inability to perform certain operations? While the bugs are being investigated and fixed, what do maintainers do? Use bzr since it's the official format? I think John's pretty clever and that we would likely avoid most such issues -- but there's no guarantee and this is something that affects developers daily work. * I believe bzr proponents even admit that bzr is still slow for network operations. John's bridge would essentially add another layer on top of that. [*2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: time to (re)consider preferential voting?
At the risk of sounding like a bad person... On Sat, Feb 23, 2008 at 6:33 PM, James Henstridge [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think the same arguments about not locking out candidates stand when you generalise single seat instant run-off to multiple seat single transferable vote: if the candidate you prefer is unpopular and gets eliminated at the start, this does not penalise you for choosing them. snip This gives you another benefit over our current system: you aren't penalised for picking a popular candidate. I was thinking of speaking up earlier, but was a bit worried about it. Since James seemed to nail it on the head so well, though, I thought my experience might be enlightening. (By the way, both of these features James points out would be really nice...) You may never have made a strategic vote with our current system, but it is definitely possible. I doubt many who have done so will speak up. I mean...it just doesn't look right. At the risk of hitting that problem though, let me state that I have been one person to do so and I suspect there are many more. In particular, I've seen time after time where someone decides to run but doesn't do very well their first year, despite the fact that I think they'd be great. (And in several cases, does do increasingly better in later years if they try again.) For some, it discourages them from trying again. The problem seems to mostly be with the fact that while these people are very positive contributors and are well regarded among those that know them, they're only known within a small subset of the wider GNOME community. It seems that those who work on the bugsquad, the release team, or other visibile-in-the-community positions have better odds of making it. I'll take clarkbw's and J5's first run as an example; I thought both would be great candidates, but neither got elected. clarkbw didn't try again; J5 did (after being on the release team for a bit over a year...did that help?) and got on the board. Trying to counteract this factor, I've often voted for such people that I thought would be great and would be unknown in the wider community, and omitted voting for people I liked that I knew would make it on the board anyway (often making sure to select fewer people than the maximum I was allowed). I was hoping it would even out the number of votes a little bit, and make those who didn't get elected feel more encouraged to try again. My hat is off to those who have run for the foundation board and to those who have served and are serving on it. I considered running a couple times, but I really think it'd be too rough for me. I'm glad others have stepped up where I stepped away. Anyway, a long winded way of saying I'd like to try out preferential voting. Elijah ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Question for the candidates [Was: Re: Money spending, questions for the candidates]
Hi, As warned about earlier in this election (by someone with better foresight than I have), when there isn't an organized call for questions people will fire off zillions of them at random. This puts an unreasonable burden on not only the candidates who feel obligated to spend time responding to an unbounded and haphazard collection of interrogations, but also similarly burdens the general community with too much email. You also find people asking additional questions based on misunderstandings due to the fact that they simply weren't able to keep up with all the other email (I have seen this in multiple threads, not just this one.) What will you as a candidate do to make sure we avoid this mess in the future? Elijah [With apologies to Philip--it wasn't really his fault since no one asked the general membership for questions in an organized fashion...but while his email probably makes some interesting points it very much qualifies as excessively long and spurred my comments.] ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Proposal: Shift election cycle back six months
On 8/7/07, Dave Neary [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jeff Waugh wrote: So here's the proposal: I'd like to suggest we shift the election cycle back six months, landing the process in May and June [1]. More controversially, I reckon the best way to achieve this without a lot of pain would be to extend the current Board's term by six months. Fully support this - I have no problem with the current board holding on for another 6 months. Sounds like a useful change to me; I'm behind it as well. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Foundation Board Meeting Minutes :: 7/6/07
On 6/18/07, Behdad Esfahbod [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: KDE. When both sides mentioned that the logistics of such an event seemed quite difficult, someone pointed out that helping with this kind of collaboration is one of the reasons for the existence of the Linux Foundation. So, there may well be additional organizational resources available. So, what was KDE's reaction? And any resolution? Are we going to discuss it? Where? Lars said about the same as I did before the comment from the audience--namely, that their community seemed split with some in favor of a combined conference and some against, with logistics of pulling off such an event looking pretty daunting. After the comment from the audience about the Linux Foundation existing to help with things like this, we were all kind of surprised (we just hadn't thought of that, or at least I hadn't) and we just sat there thinking about it. None of us really commented further. I think someone just asked a question on a different topic after this. We also didn't discuss it separately afterward (I'm almost certainly the wrong person to discuss it having never helped organize a conference and having no desire to do so), so we don't really have any resolutions or even official places to discuss further. *shrug* ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of conduct (bis)
On 12/4/06, Andrew Sobala [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It has 82 signatures. Last year 169 members could be bothered to vote for the board. It sounds like we've pretty much got community adoption now, or will in a couple of days ;-) Additionally, the mailing list consensus is that no top-down adoption is necessary, and the board consensus is that there is not going to be any top-down forced adoption anyway. So let's link to it from www.gnome.org, and we're finished with this. Am I right? IMO, yes. :-) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Foundation Board Activity Watch
On 10/25/06, Quim Gil [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you ever thought the board needs more transparency you should have a look at http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/2006ActivityWatch Hopefully this page will help communicating better the board activities. All the information is taken from the publicly available meeting minutes. There is no additional data, just the same data packaged in a different way. This rocks. Thanks Quim! Elijah ___ 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 6/5/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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 look at all arbitrary to me. Behdad and German ran for the board last year and are the highest two vote receivers who aren't on the board. On Mon, 5 Jun 2006, Alan Horkan wrote: The way I always thought of the purpose of the referendum was that it should be possible - in fact it is a necessity - that others beyond the official board be involved in organising. The number of people on the board seems to be a symptom of the fact that it is difficult to get people involved and helping out with the foundation any other way. I agree with Alan on this (and if you read the Inkscape list, you know that Alan and I don't agree that much :) If these people want to help out, and there are tasks that the board wishes to assign to them, that'd be great. And, I would consider did X for the board a great plus on any candidacy statement for the next election. But, they can't be members of the board without an election. There may be reasons to object to this, but I disagree with this reasoning. There was an election. Besides -- what about the case where Luis resigned just recently? Your reasoning would say that he can't be replaced. Is that really what you're suggesting? ___ 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 6/5/06, David Neary [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, Andreas J. Guelzow wrote: 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? The board must have at least 7 people. Aside from that, your summary is correct. But then, we're supposed to trust our board members at election time - that's why we vote for them, isn't it? :) Seriously - the board will not abuse this, but co-opting members onto the board to handle workload is a common occurrence - as is setting up empowered sub-committees. Would the board lose anything by creating an empowered sub-committee here specifically consisting of Behdad and German? That would seem to quell most of the problems people have voiced against the proposal, and perhaps still allow all the same stuff to get done. I'm thinking here of the analogy to the release team -- the board formed the release-team (and still has oversight of it, if necessary), yet release-team members (assuming they are not also board members) have no board powers other than the release-team tasks they have been delegated to handle. I could be wrong, but judging from the comments so far, I believe that handles the delegation many people want to see. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Foundation Elections - Preliminary results
On 12/11/05, Baris Cicek [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The GNOME Foundation Membership Elections Committee is pleased to announce the preliminary results for the Board of Directors. Candidates in order of votes received, with affiliations: Luis Villa (119 votes) - Harvard Law School Jeff Waugh (115 votes) - Canonical Ltd Federico Mena-Quintero (106 votes) - Novell, Inc. Jonathan Blandford (105 votes) - Red Hat David Neary (102 votes) - Cegelec SA Anne Østergaard (97 votes) - Easterbridge.dk Vincent Untz (93 votes) - Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble Quim Gil (77 votes) - Interactors s.coop. Behdad Esfahbod (66 votes) - Sharif FarsiWeb Germán Poó Caamaño (59 votes) - Universidad del Bío-Bío Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller (55 votes) - Fluendo S.L. Bastien Nocera (46 votes) - Red Hat Dominic Lachowicz (43 votes) - Teragram Corporation I'd like to personally thank all those who ran this year. When I went to vote, I found it really difficult because there were so many great candidates this year; quite honestly, I would have been happy this year regardless of which 7 got picked since everyone who ran was great. Anyway, I heard many others express the same hard-to-pick-among-so-many-good-candidates problem in IRC. That's exactly the kind of problem I like us to have. :-) Thanks again! Elijah ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to answer
On 11/26/05, Jeff Waugh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: quote who=Richard M. Stallman Does ISV stand for Independent Software Vendor? If so, the term is often misleading, because the most important developers of GNOME applications--those developing free software--are mostly not vendors. We use the term interchangably with 'third party developers', and have made that explicit in many cases when we talk about it. OOo and Firefox also fit into this world view as 'third party developers' or ISVs. Maybe we should just claim that we can't spell very well; ISV = Third Party Developer. A whole new kind of a10n[1]. ;-) Cheers, Elijah [1] Hint at what a10n means here: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-love/2004-November/msg6.html ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to answer
On 11/25/05, Jonathan Blandford [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Additionally, we need to push our ISV platform. This is one of the biggest issues facing us, and as big an effort as getting GNOME 2.0 out was. We should start another group to work on this (similar to the release team) and for this to be a big project-wide initiative. I think that would rock. It may be worth noting that Brian has been pushing in this area[1], Murray tried to help push it along[2], and Federico is making noise in the area as well[3], all of which is great. Brian and Murray have been putting together some draft/preliminary Interface Specification notes on the wiki (which I've looked over, but I'm not really that qualified to help out in this area). So I think along with your work there'd be at least a few easy candidates who could be suckered^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hnominated/appointed to be part of such a team. ;-) Cheers, Elijah [1] http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/yippi?entry=gnome_summit, http://mail.gnome.org/archives/release-team/2005-July/msg00162.html [2] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2005-August/msg3.html [3] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/release-team/2005-November/msg00075.html ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Beginning of the 2005 GNOME Foundation elections
On 11/11/05, Quim Gil [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Being a candidate - If you are a member of the GNOME Foundation and are interested in running for election, you may (...) before November 14th 2005 (23:59 UTC). This is my first election period in the GNOME Foundation, so I'm surprised by the lack of candidates few days before the deadline. :) Is it always like this? Yes, it's precisely why I voted yes on reducing the number of directors. I felt the other side had a lot of strong arguments for voting no, but I don't think it makes any sense given that only a few people care much about being on the board anyway as this obviously demonstrates. I thought things might change this time because of the huge discussion (in particular, Jeff's emails) and so I was a little hesitant to vote the way I did, but now I'm feeling very satisfied that I voted correctly. BTW, speaking as just an individual, I STRONGLY encourage everyone to give special consideration to voting FOR those who nominated themselves early. I personally feel that these people are those who really want to be on the board and make it better. According to my quick rescanning of the archives (someone please correct me if I'm wrong), this list includes: Quim Gil Dave Neary I'll be voting for both and will likely include any that send in their candidacy *soon*. I may still vote for those that nominate at the last minute, but I will count it as a mark against them. I personally encourage others to do likewise. Just my $0.02, Elijah ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Petition for referendum
On 10/9/05, Ross Golder [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The wording of David's original call seemed clear enough to me: If you would like this issue to be debated, and decided, by the foundation membership, please add your name to the page. That may have been the wording in his email, but not on the wiki; my reading was similar to Bill's and had been a good part of why I hadn't signed (yet?) either. While I'm finally chiming in... It turns out that Luis' arguments were almost enough to get me to sign. Actually, I still might; I'm kind of wavering on the edge. The thing that's still tripping me up is that my vote would be based mostly on the info from Luis, which is stuff that most people in the foundation probably would have no clue about if they hadn't read his recent emails (I sure didn't know about it before, though it makes sense from what I do know[1]); it just seems weird to have a large group vote on an issue when this group is quite possibly not fully aware of the reasons behind it. And I'm not sure whether those reasons will all come out even if we have the debate (it sure seems this thread went on for quite a while before Luis even chimed in with those details). Just my $0.02, Elijah [1] I was even considering running for foundation board at one point last year almost exclusively for the reason that I thought it was embarrassing that very few people were running. I was kind of relieved when all the slots finally did fill in not long before the deadline. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME trademark guidelines and user group agreement
On 9/9/05, Behdad Esfahbod [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, 9 Sep 2005, David Neary wrote: Let's say that it was a mistake, or that distributing the foot under the GPL is incompatible with defending it as a trademark - what remedy do you think we should consider? Seems like that's what redhat does these days: releasing their product which is Free Software, but you cannot redistribute due to trademarks. Don't flame me for what I just said, it's here: http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/06/30/esr_interview.html You can redistribute the source code for Red Hat's RHEL offerings and/or binaries you compile from it, IF you remove Red Hat's trademarks first (which yes, means it isn't RHEL any more, but it's close enough for many); see http://www.centos.org/ and others. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Changing the name of GUADEC
On 9/6/05, Rob Adams [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: General Upgraded Android Designed for Efficient Calculation. Grandiose Ubiquitous Acronyms Designed to Eradicate Conflict ...or maybe at least the flamewars, though there might be a bug in their current implementation. ;-) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
