Re: Private Foundation-List Petition for referendum
quote who=Behdad Esfahbod [/me removes board hat] Hi everyone, I like to ask for your support in my petition for referendum to make foundation-list archives private and membership limited to actual Foundation members. If we make that change we would be able to discuss matters freely without making lots of news that more often than not are harmful to our image to the world in general. Please sign here: http://live.gnome.org/PrivateFoundationListPetition We would need 35 to 40 signatures to put this to vote. Changing the existing foundation-list to private: I would hate to see the GNOME community move towards non-transparency largely due to the efforts of an ambulance-chasing trollumnist, and no other credible media (because they rightly don't regard any of this as news). Don't over-compensate because an idiot with a platform got his latest non-story about Open Source people and arguments onto Slashdot (of all places). New private mailing list for Foundation members: Much like gnome-private of yore, everyone will still chatter on the public list because it's easier and more useful to post there, and practically impossible to move threads away from the public list once they've started. By all means, rename the unused gnome-private to foundation-private, but I'm sure it'll stay as dead as it has for *years* now. So a sensible discussion was run off the rails by argumentative boofheads -- happens all the time, and most of the adults in the GNOME community know who the boofheads are (which is why practically the entire board didn't pay attention to the thread until it went off the rails; unfortunate, but there it is). Everyone should be embarrassed by momentary lapses of sanity like this. But it has happened before, it'll happen again, and it barely registers on the radar compared to the great work being done towards GNOME's mission. Remember your priorities and carry on. None of this is worth your time. - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2010: Wellington, NZhttp://www.lca2010.org.nz/ The existence of 'someone' is a common myth in volunteer projects. - Mary Gardiner ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: board meeting quasi-minutes, May 14th and 21st, 2008
quote who=Gregory Leblanc On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 2:37 AM, Luis Villa [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The board had meetings on the 14th and 21st to discuss a confidential matter which the board hopes to disclose in the near future. No minutes were taken because of the confidential nature of the meetings, No minutes were taken at all, or none will be posted for now? This seems like it could be a bad thing, but I'll reserve any further comment until I see what happens once this matter presents itself. Notes were taken for a particular purpose, but these were not conventional (or official) meetings of the board which required minuting. Luis brought them up here because we felt it was important to mention that we had the meetings, and at least one of these replaced a regular board meeting. When the item comes to fruition, it will be raised, decided and minuted in an official board meeting. This will be soon. :-) - Jeff -- OSCON 2008: Portland OR, USA http://conferences.oreilly.com/oscon/ Perl - The Movie Starring 'Weird' Al Yankovic ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Call for hosts for GUADEC 2009
quote who=Johannes Schmid Sorry, to step into this discussion, but I would really like to point out that every part of the world may have a gnome conference, even an important or *the* GNOME conference. But why can we keep GUADEC the european conference? If you want to do a GUAD*C at any other place of the world, I am fully ok with that but let's keep one GNOME conference in europe as there is a huge community there. 100% agree. This is the principle that underlines my (apparently now noted) conservatism on this issue... and why GNOME.conf.au exists. :-) Nevertheless, we would need some host applications anyway, before we can discuss the place further. Ahoy! Get those applications in, mateys! - Jeff -- OSCON 2008: Portland OR, USA http://conferences.oreilly.com/oscon/ You know, like nunchuck skills, bowhunting skills, computer hacking skills... Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills. - Napoleon Dynamite ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Call for hosts for GUADEC 2009
quote who=Claudio Saavedra I currently don't like the fact that no one can even consider working in such a proposal. I think it's possible, but there's little incentive to right now, because it seems so unlikely that it would succeed. If there was a bid that might succeed, it would be a cheap location (in terms of travel and event budget) pushing on the boundaries of Europe. Some might suggest that Turkey fits that description. :-) - Jeff -- OSCON 2008: Portland OR, USA http://conferences.oreilly.com/oscon/ It is not enough for me to wear dark sunglasses and a wig. The wheelchair gives me away. People want to be photographed with me, but it can be a nuisance when I am in a hurry. - Stephen Hawking on celebrity ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Call for hosts for GUADEC 2009
quote who=Thomas Thurman Is the rule about having GUADEC in Europe rather than, say, in Bangalore still in play, by the way? The 'E' still stands for Europe, yeah. ;-) - Jeff -- GUADEC 2008: Istanbul, Turkey http://www.guadec.org/ The two [separate] UIs are both incredibly simple and don't even look like computer programs; they barely need menus. [When combined, they] suddenly look like software. - Havoc Pennington on 'software' design ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Call for hosts for GUADEC 2009
quote who=Jeff Waugh quote who=Thomas Thurman Is the rule about having GUADEC in Europe rather than, say, in Bangalore still in play, by the way? The 'E' still stands for Europe, yeah. ;-) Aha, was this more in reference to the text of the CfH? In that case, it's a minor disconnect between norms of each organisation and conference, not well expressed in the CfH (I don't think anyone noticed it). Speaking only for myself, not for either organisation involved in the CfH... It would take a lot to convince me that we should hold GUADEC outside Europe even if we had a neat GUADEC+Akademy proposal for somewhere else. And I say that as someone who is not particularly close to Europe (let alone anywhere else on the planet I guess). ;-) - Jeff -- GUADEC 2008: Istanbul, Turkey http://www.guadec.org/ You know, it's not that unusual, even in Hollywood, for brothers to work together. Heard of the Warner brothers? - Ethan Coen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Call for hosts for GUADEC 2009
quote who=BJörn Lindqvist Americans might feel that it is a little unfair that guadec always is in Europe. Couldn't there be two conferences? GUADEC and the Boston Summit. :-) - Jeff -- OSCON 2008: Portland OR, USA http://conferences.oreilly.com/oscon/ Imagine a four million line code base that is based on C++, uses threads, a hundred shared libraries, and is over a gigabyte in size when built and then point a debugger at it that was designed to debug GNU sed. - Chris Blizzard on Mozilla ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Call for hosts for GUADEC 2009
quote who=Clare So Where in the world with the highest concentration of GNOME and KDE community? This thread has so far been considering the GNOME community only. Both communities have their strongest presence in Europe. - Jeff -- GUADEC 2008: Istanbul, Turkey http://www.guadec.org/ Everyone says they like Free Software - not everyone is ready to make the tough choices to make it happen. - Maciej Stachowiak ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Minutes for Directors Meeting of Feb. 27th, 2008
quote who=Dave Neary http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html No further proof needed... The Reply-To header was actually set to your own address, not to that of the list. :-) - Jeff -- OSCON 2008: Portland OR, USA http://conferences.oreilly.com/oscon/ The cool stuff coming out of freedesktop.org doesn't just happen as the result of an accident with a particle accelerator and a goat: it only happens when people hack on it. - Daniel Stone ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Minutes for Directors Meeting of Feb. 27th, 2008
quote who=Jeff Waugh No further proof needed... The Reply-To header was actually set to your own address, not to that of the list. :-) [ Dave points out that the offending Reply-To was of course on the announce list email. While entirely intentional, and more effective than setting the Mail-Followup-To header, it certainly engages the no-opt-out damage pointed out in 'Reply-To Considered Harmful'. Anyone moderating a GNOME announce list will know, however, that even that doesn't stop people from replying to the announcement mailing lists. ;-) ] - Jeff -- GUADEC 2008: Istanbul, Turkey http://www.guadec.org/ All I got is a red guitar, three chords and the truth. - U2 ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Ga-nome or NOME
quote who=Ani Peter I have heard a lot of people pronouncing GNOME as Ga-nome and I feel Nome is the correct pronunciation. Appreciate if someone please advise me which is the correct pronunciation. When folks ask me about this at conferences and such, I always say, doesn't matter how you pronounce it, as long as you love using it, quickly followed up with, but GNOME developers say 'guh-nome' because the 'G' comes from the 'GNU' project. :-) - Jeff -- GUADEC 2008: Istanbul, Turkey http://www.guadec.org/ Wars end, love lasts. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Can we improve things?
quote who=Federico Mena Quintero What I want to resolve is this: So do I, as already noted. Sucking guidelines out of my head --- that's exactly the kind of problem we need to solve. That's why I mentioned it. - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ The two [separate] UIs are both incredibly simple and don't even look like computer programs; they barely need menus. [When combined, they] suddenly look like software. - Havoc Pennington on 'software' design ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Can we improve things?
quote who=Og Maciel Federico, Thank you for spearheading this. Please don't turn this into something it is not. I had already been working on this before threads on this list, and before Federico's recent mails. It is not particularly motivating to see the issue approached in this way. - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ Man, is there some worldwide consipiracy to supply me with doctored dictionaries or something? - Adrian van den Dries ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Can we improve things?
quote who=Federico Mena Quintero But please don't ignore the question I asked: Who's on the potential maintainership team for PGO, so that we may inquire them about the progress? Sorry, but I'm not going to get caught up in pointless crap like this. Some folks may think it's okay to treat me differently as a result of attempted character assassination, but you should know better Federico. I've already said -- before your emails and after them -- that I'm writing down the guidelines and will have a maintainership team in order to resolve the minor maintenance issues with Planet GNOME. The potential co-maintainers have already had experience doing so, and were asked months ago. - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 And, most importantly, we now have modules named 'fontilus' and 'themus' -- the two founders of GROME. - Jonathon Blandford ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Can we improve things?
quote who=Julien PUYDT You've been asked to be more open, don't get annoyed if people are pissed by closed non-answers! I'm mostly annoyed at the attitude rather than the questions (even the ones that have already been answered). I don't really feel an obligation to give answers to people who have negative intent, which I know many onlookers can appreciate. I'm writing an email now that will resolve some of these issues, with the knowledge that nothing will satisfy those who want negativity more than they want resolution. :-) - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 Orphaned farm-boy hero helps save world against bad-guys, begins a journey of self-discovery, and makes interesting friends. Passable. - Andrew Bennetts on Star Wars ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Can we improve things?
quote who=Federico Mena Quintero It's somewhat more intricate than that -- I'm writing it up atm, so people can understand the decision making process (guidelines). That's the first step. :-) Ping. Any progress on this, so the editorial policy can be linked from Planet? Also, Dave's idea about having a co-maintainer for Planet didn't get any replies: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2007-September/msg00103.html When a code module's maintainership is sucking, what we do is let someone else take over. The planet-web module shouldn't be an exception. [Yes, I'm volunteering for the co-maintainer position of Planet.] I missed this at the bottom of the thread. Thanks for pointing it out to me on IRC. The module's maintainership isn't sucking in general, but there have been a number of periods in which it hasn't been great. Please don't make this out to be worse than it is, that kind of approach doesn't help resolve anything. I've spoken to potential maintainership team members who already have direct experience with pgo maintenance, and have been working on sucking guidelines out of my head and into publishable form. What you're asking for is already on the way. Thanks, - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. - Mahatma Gandhi ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: what about next ODF?
quote who=Richard Stallman I don't recall that any candidate explicily rejected supporting the free software movement by means other than improving the attractiveness and success of GNOME. But several candidates answered in a way that seemed to pointedly imply a rejection of any such form of support for the community. I answered about the success of GNOME, mostly because I didn't read what you now raise as the point of your original question. - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 Learning and doing is the true spirit of free software -- learning without doing gets you academic sterility, and doing without learning is all too often the way things are done in proprietary software. - Raph Levien ___ 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]
quote who=Elijah Newren What will you as a candidate do to make sure we avoid this mess in the future? Work with the Membership Committee to document their practices and make sure they perform them more consistently in future years. During the current term, I have already made that you won't have to deal with this again for 18 months. :-) - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 Itanium: A synthetic market-group tested plasticised square. - Jamie Wilkinson ___ 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]
quote who=Jeff Waugh Work with the Membership Committee to document their practices and make sure they perform them more consistently in future years. Miss one word and it changes the entire tone... and help make sure. They have done a great job this year, though as a result of numerous changes to the volunteer team a couple of things have been dropped on the floor (such as question gathering from the community and linking to the election rules in the announcement). Easy to fix for the future. It's generally a pretty thankless task, so... thanks to the membership committee! :-) - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, and know when to run. - Kenny Rogers, The Gambler ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME dependent on Mono
quote who=Shaun McCance And all of this could have been explained just as simply if the folks at boycottnovell.com had simply emailed us and asked for details, instead of posting unsubstantiated drivel. Pretty much the crux of the issue with that website. Despite transparency into the community that they would never get with companies, they do not actually do any primary research, and have come up with some doozies about things they simply don't understand. - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it. - Alan J. Perlis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME dependent on Mono
quote who=Rui Miguel Silva Seabra I think you're way too harsh on people who actually concluded things like: Sorry, but the negativity of that site greatly outweighs the positive. It takes more than a little sucking up to earn back my respect after the crap they've been spewing. - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ Money can't buy me grok. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME dependent on Mono
quote who=Rui Miguel Silva Seabra Yelp has had an optional Beagle dependency for at least 2 years. It's optional, and it's not news. We need a new RPM in some distributions, as optional dependencies are not part of current RPM in Fedora, for instance :) libbeagle does not depend on Mono. Perhaps, if the Fedora RPM of libbeagle actually depends on Mono, it needs to be fixed. - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ Again you are making up inventing as you go. Be specific aba gaba datata. - Oscar Plameras ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME dependent on Mono
quote who=Bastien Nocera libbeagle does not depend on Mono. Perhaps, if the Fedora RPM of libbeagle actually depends on Mono, it needs to be fixed. It doesn't. I am Jack's abject lack of surprise. :-) - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ Love never misses the chance to put the boot in. - Kelly, SLOU ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: what about next ODF?
quote who=Richard Stallman The reason this is not so is that Microsoft is trying to spin the apparent support of GNOME into proof that OOXML is not bad for free software. Microsoft haven't done so publicly thus far, but the risk is there, and we will endeavour to make it absolutely clear that our participation does not imply endorsement, contribution or support. We've taken one step already with our statement on our participation, and you are sure to see more in the future. - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ No clue is good clue. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME dependent on Mono
quote who=Joe Shaw It's been frustrating over the past few years that GNOME hasn't taken a firm position on the issue. Agree. I suspect there hasn't been anything firm because (a) there is quite a bit of division within the community on the issue and (b) there is some element of walking on eggshells around Novell and its endorsement of the environment. Agree. Also, I think much of the issue has moved on from legal paranoia to concerns about adopting a strategy perceived as Microsoft-friendly (at least among those who don't adopt a knee-jerk, black-and-white approach to such issues). I agree this isn't really something that the foundation can force, but even asking politely in an official capacity would be a step in the right direction. The Foundation asking politely of developers with regards to their choices, or Novell (or any developer advocating Mono) asking politely of the GNOME Foundation with regards to a policy? My feeling on past discussions about this at the Foundation (or Advisory Board) level is that it has been other participants, not generally Novell, that have pursued the discussion. Maybe Novell raising the issue would be a good thing. - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ The beanbag is a triumph of modern day eclectic colourism... - Catie Flick ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME dependent on Mono
quote who=Og Maciel On Nov 29, 2007 5:40 PM, Jeff Waugh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If these programs are important enough to deserve the term miss out on, then I think they should be written in another language. Note that the above quote is misattributed, and was stated by Richard, not me. - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ Creative thinkers make many false starts, and continually waver between unmanageable fantasies and systematic attack. - Harry Hepner ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: On Boston Summit organization and delegation [was Re: A question to candidates]
quote who=Behdad Esfahbod But if you look, I asked for help about Boston Summit on the boston-social list as early as June: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/boston-social/2007-June/msg0.html and got no reply. I mailed at least three Boston residents directly and got no reply either. And I gave up and Jeff ended up doing it all the way from Australia. It was going well until the *reserved venue* got canceled... Thanks for pointing that out - but I do want to stress again that Zana and Owen saved the day when all else failed, and we should be very grateful to them (not that you're forgetting them, I just wanted to say thanks again). We have to wait until January to book the usual venue at MIT, so I hope J5 (elected or not - formalities, formalities) can adopt that task and pursue it vigorously! :-) - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 On Tuesday I saw Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with Zack and two ladies whom I presume are gracious. - Seth Schoen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: On Boston Summit organization and delegation [was Re: A question to candidates]
quote who=Ghee Teo Have the board paused and thought why the Summit has to be Boston? Is it because most hackers work around Boston? May be it was the case. Because there's a critical mass of developers there -- most of both the Red Hat and Novell desktop teams. - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 The FFF policy: File a bug, Fix it, or F*ck off. - pwhysall on gnomedesktop.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: On Boston Summit organization and delegation [was Re: A question to candidates]
quote who=Jeff Waugh quote who=Ghee Teo Have the board paused and thought why the Summit has to be Boston? Is it because most hackers work around Boston? May be it was the case. Because there's a critical mass of developers there -- most of both the Red Hat and Novell desktop teams. Dan Winship points out on IRC that while this was true when the Boston Summit was created, there aren't a lot of Novell desktop hackers left in Boston these days. Perhaps a roaming Columbus Day weekend conference (still in the USA) would be a good thing? - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ The only people still using Microsoft IIS are those who don't even know it's there. - Larry Ellison ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: what about next ODF?
quote who=Gregory Leblanc While this is all technically true, I think it's somewhat misleading, based on my recollections, and what I could find in a brief browse of the mailing list archives. There was much clearer leadership in the community then, but I do not believe that the community came to a conclusion that we would cede development of a GNOME office to OpenOffice.org. My impression of what happened was more that the community never got a cohesive and self-sustaining effort going to make a GNOME Office suite happen. It certainly wasn't a consensus, or a clear decision, but the energy of popular thought in the community along with decreased investment led to us ceding our office/productivity leadership at the time to OpenOffice.org. We were actually well ahead, but OpenOffice.org had the weight of existing features, code and commercial interest. Thinking about it in those terms, I regret it even more. - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ Spam is about consent, not content. - Craig Sanders ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: two questions for candidates
quote who=Jeff Waugh quote who=Richard Stallman 1. Would you change anything in the GNOME Foundation statement about OOXML? I'd probably include a message about not fighting OOXML on political grounds because they have no impact on the ISO standardisation process. To succeed, we need to fight OOXML under the terms defined by ISO, which means nuking it as hard was we possibly can on technical grounds. Actually, a very important point, which I'm not just saying because this is a reply to a question from Richard... :-) What I *wouldn't* change in our statement is that the number 1 point in our position statement was Software Freedom, and that our final comment was to encourage people to contribute to Software Freedom. That's important because ultimately, whatever goes on with standards and their impact on our industry, *our* number 1 priority is Software Freedom, and making sure our users can access it, use it and enjoy it. - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 Blessed are the cracked, for they let in the light. - Spike Milligan ___ 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!
quote who=Vincent Untz Jeff is right: it's not all rollercoasters and martinis. There's ice cream too. I heartily endorse this strategy. /quimby http://www.flickr.com/photos/garrett/858313114/ - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ Microsoft treats security vulnerabilities as public relations problems. - Bruce Schneier ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: two questions for candidates
quote who=Richard Stallman 1. Would you change anything in the GNOME Foundation statement about OOXML? I'd probably include a message about not fighting OOXML on political grounds because they have no impact on the ISO standardisation process. To succeed, we need to fight OOXML under the terms defined by ISO, which means nuking it as hard was we possibly can on technical grounds. 2. How do you think the GNOME Foundation should support the Free Software Movement in general? By creating rocking Free Software that is easy to use, accessible and usable for users around the world, whether they're ubergeeks or neophytes. :-) The phrase I use that I think best illustrates GNOME's values in this regard is: Software Freedom is not just for geeks! :-) - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ I still fervently believe that the only way to make software secure, reliable, and fast is to make it small. Fight Features. - Andy Tanenbaum ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Foundation Statement on ECMA TC45-M Participation
quote who=jamie I can see MS spinning this to their advantage and I believe playing safe here would be better for us in the short term Thing is, Microsoft haven't spun it to their advantage. They've mentioned that Gnumeric is implementing OOXML, but that actually works against them (due to the complexity of the spec and the completeness of the impl). They haven't spun our membership of TC45-M to their advantage, and they won't, because we're not their friends, and won't react kindly if they do. :-) - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 Whoever wrote [the Twisted documentation] uses a vivid and interesting style of prose which triggers pleasure. - Francois Pinard ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Foundation Statement on ECMA TC45-M Participation
quote who=jamie In any event I dont understand why the gnome foundation was pulled into this - cant you do your work with ECMA without foundation backing? As explained in the statement, the GNOME Foundation joined ECMA as a non-profit to allow Jody to continue his work sucking the documentation blood from Microsoft's stone. - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ It's much harder to just make shit up to get oneself out of a tight plot spot. - William Gibson on writing about the present day ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Foundation Statement on ECMA TC45-M Participation
quote who=jamie On Mon, 2007-11-26 at 04:45 +1100, Jeff Waugh wrote: quote who=jamie In any event I dont understand why the gnome foundation was pulled into this - cant you do your work with ECMA without foundation backing? As explained in the statement, the GNOME Foundation joined ECMA as a non-profit to allow Jody to continue his work sucking the documentation blood from Microsoft's stone. I know but that does not answer my question - could jody do this without foundation backing? No, of course not. - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ Maybe you should put some shorts on or something, if you want to keep fighting evil today. - The Bowler, Mystery Men ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Foundation Statement on ECMA TC45-M Participation
quote who=Rui Miguel Silva Seabra The more you guys keep playing the neutral game, the more you'll get abused like this. There is no neutral game being played here. Concerns were raised that the GNOME Foundation's participation in EMCA TC45-M suggested that we supported OOXML becoming an ISO standard. Thus, the answer was simple: We do not. - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 You know, the crunchy, folk-singer part of me wants to believe that a performance is a dialogue, but I can't hear a fucking thing you're saying. - Ani DiFranco ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Candidacy: Jeff Waugh
quote who=Andrew Cowie On Thu, 2007-11-15 at 06:34 +1100, Jeff Waugh wrote: * This year has been pretty tough for me as a Board member, as I've been starting a new business which has required a lot of time, I have been travelling a lot, and conference calls have been at a particularly bad time for me in Sydney. Do you have a plan to deal with the situation this coming year? Sorry, missed this mail until now... Yeah, I think the situation this year is different in a number of ways: * I'm not organising linux.conf.au this time around, and I failed to realise how much an impact that really had on almost the first half of last year. * There were some extremely demotivating personal issues in the GNOME community that I had to contend with last year, which led to a fairly long period of depression (mentioned in my blog a few months back). I can only hope this doesn't return. * Finally, the nature of the work Pia and I are doing in our business is changing a bit from frenetic startup stuff to more regular, ongoing projects... and *hopefully* less travel. I totally thought that would be one of the benefits of leaving Canonical... Unfortunately, I can't see the timezone thing changing too much. :-) - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 People keep asking me why we aren't married, and he says, 'Every time I am about to ask you, you do something annoying'. - Kate Beckinsale ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: A question to candidates
quote who=Murray Cumming This is generally caused by the habit of only making decisions in meetings, instead of making decisions on the mailing list. And a tendency to think that all decisions must be unanimous. A majority of the decisions this year were made on the mailing list, with a quorum consensus rather than majority. Plenty slipped through, and tougher decisions were deferred to meetings or ultimately not made, but largely due to team coherency issues more than anything else. There were *very* few times that the Board suffered from consensus gridlock this year, which is a good sign. - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ If your life was a movie, would you pay to see it? Would you pay to see an advertisement for it? - James Morris ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: A question to candidates
quote who=Vincent Untz (also I'm not sure why you mention GTK+ developers never requested a GTK+ summit: it seems to me they did) It's sort of in the middle -- they wanted to do one, but never really came to the Board for support. We've always been 100% behind helping though! I'm going to spend some time putting together a GNOME Mobile summit, which I hope will be an appropriate venue for a GTK+ development meeting too. - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 If I can't be near you I would rather be adrift in space. - Neil Finn, Try Whistling This ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to the candidates
quote who=Anne Østergaard Will you apply for the position as new Executive Director for GNOME? Will you apply for any paid position within GNOME while serving as board member? Unlikely, although I have considered it in the past. It would be foolish to rule anything out. Enough people have asked me about it that it seems to be in the realm of possibility. Will you attend at least 90% of the board calls? I'd try, but as anyone who has been on the Board will attest (and those who have been on the Board while living in GMT+10 and above would INSIST) it is difficult to attend *every* meeting in between the average business, travel and personal commitments of GNOME Board members. Hopefully the meeting time will be somewhat more compatible with my timezone... but looking at the list of candidates, I somewhat doubt it. ;-) Can you accept competing official ISO standards? Absolutely. It is ISO's role to facilitate the development of standards in a coherent, transparent manner, not to determine the market demand for a given standard. I think it's extremely short-sighted to protest OOXML on the basis of competing standards given that standards exist for technologies that we are very likely to want true Free standards for in the future - for example, video encoders and decoders. What is your position towards official standards that do not meet the gennerally accepted definition of a free and open standard. Such as Microsoft OOXML? That is an extremely loaded question, so I can only refer to my sigquote for the appropriate response. - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 If you have any poo, fling it now. - Mason the Chimpanzee, Madagascar ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Foundation Elections 2007. Let's start the debate!
quote who=Bruno Boaventura [1] How much impact would being a member of the GNOME Foundation Board have on your current contributions to GNOME ? Not a huge amount -- most of what I do these days is either related in some way to the Board, or keeping things ticking as maintenance. While I've been on the Board, I've still had the time to do large projects such as creating blogs.gnome.org and massive repair work on our mail server. [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 ? GOD is only one of the many interesting opportunities we have right now, so I think there's a broader conversation to have here -- but it's also mostly outside the scope of what the Foundation does. GOD raises some interesting questions for the Foundation though, which I've commented on at GUADEC and on this list in the past: Should the Foundation start hosting services? What can we provide that supports our community and commercial ecosystem, without creating unnecessary competition? I want the Foundation to play a role here, but we have to figure out just what that is going to be -- where the GOD developers have an idea that is unrealistic without some kind of central support, I want them to know they can lean on the Foundation. I don't want our software to suffer because we don't have the organisational cajones to support great ideas. :-) [3] What are the SMART goals that you desire to set for yourself should you be elected to the Board ? Is 'SMART' a management acronym of some kind, or capitalised for emphasis? I wasn't expecting candidates to suggest DUMB goals... ;-) I think I'll answer this in question [8]. [4] If you were part of the GNOME Board last year and a candidate again, what would you like to put as your achievements as a Board member ? They may seem small, but I'm very glad to have fixed two outstanding issues with the operation of the GNOME Foundation: The position of 'President' has been held by someone who has not had an active role in the Foundation for a long time -- we've now established the convention that the President of the GNOME Foundation will be an elected director playing substantially the same role we've referred to as 'Chairman' for years. I also pursued a change to our bylaws that results in the next Board term starting with a face-to-face meeting at GUADEC. Towards the end of the year I've done quite a bit of outreach to companies considering participation in GNOME and the Foundation (which hopefully makes up for the start of the year when I was pretty burnt out after linux.conf.au 2007 -- I keep forgetting about that black hole). [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 ? Yes, in both technology and community roles. I have some thoughts about how we can do better with technology mentorship, but they are not relevant to my candidacy (because the Foundation does not play a role in the technical side of the project other than handling emergencies and resolving disputes). Next year, I want to involve more contributors in Foundation activities as delegates of the Board, responsible for particular tasks or projects for the community. We've dabbled in this a bit in the past, but always in a very casual kind of way. I want to pursue it in a more robust fashion, ensuring that contributors are involved in things like the Board conference calls, to report on their activities and be a part of the team. If we make a real effort to do this well, we can grow the number of people who are contributing in community roles, and who might want to run for the Board in the future. I do see it as essentially a mentoring opportunity. [6] Some of the tasks of a Board Member are mundane administrative tasks, are you comfortable taking on such tasks as opposed to being always involved in strategic and visionary thinking ? Yeah. Half my GNOME time is spent doing the relatively mundane anyway. :-) [7] What or which according to you, is the one tipping point move for GNOME in the coming year ? For GNOME in general I think the dovetailing of so much work in disparate little related projects is going to make one of 2.22-2.26 *really* shine. More needs to be done to encourage this dovetailing -- we need to be more proactive about it. For the GNOME Foundation (which is what is important here), I think that making a artful hire within the next 12-18 months may have a huge impact on the resources we have to hand, and our commercial ecosystem (whether that means the traditional big players or the recent influx of smaller companies involved in GNOME). I say artful because I strongly believe we can't rush in and hire just anyone so we can claim to have a warm body -- we need someone who can bring a very different skill set
Re: Candidacy Announcement for the 2007 GNOME Board Election: George Kraft
quote who=George Kraft On Fri, 2007-11-16 at 02:49 +1100, Jeff Waugh wrote: No director represents their affiliation -- they're elected to represent the GNOME Foundation membership after all -- but it must be documented (least of all because of the maximum representation rule). Should I repost to foundation-list and election with the correction, or is this discussion thread good enough? Probably best to request that the membership committee fix it where it is published as information to eligible voters in the future. You could reply to the foundation-announce mail with a correction, but it's probably a bit of overkill. - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 One in 10 Europeans is allegedly conceived in an Ikea bed. - BBC News, 2005 ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Candidacy Announcement for the 2007 GNOME Board Election: George Kraft
quote who=George Kraft Great to see you running. So, you are not with IBM anymore? In that case your Bio page is outdated. I still work for IBM, but I would not officially represent them with respect to GNOME. No director represents their affiliation -- they're elected to represent the GNOME Foundation membership after all -- but it must be documented (least of all because of the maximum representation rule). - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 Laughter is a force for democracy. - John Cleese ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Help us prepare a budget for 2008!
quote who=Vincent Untz + small meetings/hackfests: As mentioned to the Board previously, I'd like to put a GNOME Mobile (maybe also GTK+ if they're keen [1]) summit on the budget agenda for March/April 2008, in Europe. It's far enough away from both the Boston Summit and GUADEC that I think this will be a good bookend event for the community. Europe because the vast majority of our Mobile folk are there, and it's expensive to focus on the Boston Summit for them. Thanks, - Jeff [1] I hope this event can be the GTK+ summit too, but from previous talks, I get the impression they'd like to have something pretty exclusively GTK+. I think the natural platform focus of GNOME Mobile and our interest in pushing GTK+ forward would make this combined event even more worthwhile -- and much easier to fund, to boot! -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 There, I did it... I defiled a timeless piece of ART! - Jim Carrey, covering I Am The Walrus ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Who would be a good member? [Was: About the coming election]
quote who=Vincent Untz Also, people tend to forget what they wrote in their introduction after a few months :-) Again, as Quim said, it's not because they're bad people. It's just really easy to forget the original plan when many new things have appeared in the meantime! (I'm sure I'd be ashamed to see I didn't do what I wrote in mine last year) A couple of times we've tried to build a plan based on those statements, but the difficulties of doing so in a thorough way over the phone or email have made it less successful than it could be. I'm hoping the next Board can make a better go of it, because it would be a great thing to get right at the start of the year. (This is why having an in-person Board meeting at the beginning of the term is such an exciting opportunity, and why I pushed hard to make it possible this term. No point waiting when we can fix something easily.) - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 I haven't been this excited since the introduction of devfs. - Mark Rosenstand on upstart-devel list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: bounties?
quote who=Dr. Michael J. Chudobiak Did the foundation come out against bounties on principal, or has the idea just not gone anywhere? Given that you've read previous threads here, I'll just briefly summarise where I think we stand with regards to bounties: We've had some success and some failures, but ultimately it required quite a lot of infrastructure and time to get it right, but hadn't really delivered on expectations. There are also ongoing concerns about how the introduction of financial incentives will affect volunteer motivation. Hopefully that's a useful summary, and I'm sure others will chime in with other views or additional info if necessary. - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ I don't know whose brain child it was, but it was quite an ugly child. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Executive director [was: Re: OOXML]
quote who=David Bolter It is perhaps of interest to some that the Mozilla Foundation has not found it easy to find a new Executive Director (see http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/executive-director-search.html). Note the Mozilla position comes with salary and benefits. Are we thinking the same for GNOME? Yes (this was the case with our previous ED too, btw), although we probably have less room to move on that front that Mozilla. ;-) Even if you know you want the traditional ED role filled, it's tough to find the right candidate. - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ But then one can only ask questions. One can't dictate answers. - Sam Varghese, 'Journalist' ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Who would be a good member? [Was: About the coming election]
quote who=Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay That in effect perhaps raises the important question So who would be a good member of the Board?. Above all else, I hope you vote for people you know and trust to represent what you value about GNOME. To put it in a clunky but simple way, if GNOME is People, vote for the people who are GNOME. - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ I love 2001. Especially the beginning with the proto-humans screaming at each other and beating each other to death with rocks and bones. That very neatly encapsulates my whole concept of interpersonal relationships. - Branden Robinson ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: board [was Re: OOXML [was Re: GNOME Foundation Board Meeting Minutes :: 7/6/07]]
quote who=Quim Gil Also, looking backwards we also see that our time and issues could have been invested much better. I think that's probably true, but I strongly disagree with your examples. I also think that with such high expectations, we can beat ourselves up pretty badly even when we do great things. What follows on from that is bitterness, defensiveness, and a dysfunctional group of people. We could have done a lot better with debriefs and general meeting conversation to avoid some of this. What is left from the 10th anniversary? Imagine if some of that time would have been put in a Boston Summit planning. I've explained this a few times now, but I'll do it again here: The Board could not have done significantly more about the Boston Summit to avoid or avert the crisis we had. It's that simple. Due to unrepresentative and ill informed noise on board-list, it has been turned into a much bigger issue that it ever was. At precisely the time when the Boston Summit was ready to announce and work could begin on the (much more interesting) detail of catering, what we were going to do, how we were going to run it, and calling for local volunteers to run the show, our apparently booked venue pulled the plug. This started a lengthy period of going through other channels to get the venue back, trying for a different venue with the same organisation, looking at different dates and hosts, and finally, a last-minute splurge on a venue as we were down to the wire and couldn't feasibly change the dates. It was not a lack of time, planning or local volunteers that set off this chain of events... It was a *horribly* timed disappearance of the most important piece of the Summit's organisational puzzle: The venue. If there's no venue, there's no Summit. Of course, massive thanks go to Zana and Owen for pulling it all together for a very successful Summit despite the roadblocks and challenges. In the end, the Board only received one complaint about the Summit, and that was before it was held, and by someone who did not go to it. (If anyone *does* have complaints about the Summit, please mail the Board!) I am more (personally) disappointed with the 10th anniversary execution and results than those of the Boston Summit. How much time did we put in aligning the election period with GUADEC? Imagine if instead we had been dealing with this poisoned OOXML discussion. It took *one* Board member's time and leadership to pursue the term length bylaws change (in addition to discussion among members and the time of the membership committee to run the vote). This is a very important and worthy change, which will have a positive impact from 2009 onward - that's a long time away, but we had to change it now or it would languish until the 2010 term! Given that this has come up nearly every term I've been on the Board, I regard actual execution on this issue as a great success of this term. It would have taken *one* Board member's time (and a bit of review) to ship a timely announcement and clarification when we joined ECMA and TC45-M. It would have created an outburst itself, with mildly different properties to what we're experiencing now -- unless we had done a *spectacular* job with the messaging, it would've been GNOME announces support for OOXML. I have been dealing with the shrill voices for days now, so I might sound a bit rankled on this front. ;-) Different people were responsible for these tasks, there was no substantial cross-over in time or topic, so they're basically incomparable. - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ And the only time I met George W Bush, he said to me, 'Hey Mike! Go find real work.' Of all people! - Michael Moore ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: OOXML [was Re: GNOME Foundation Board Meeting Minutes :: 7/6/07]
quote who=Dave Neary Jeff Waugh wrote: Things change -- what was taken for granted while you were on the Board may not be the case now. Way to make a guy feel like his opinion is worth something Jeff. Huh? Of course your opinion is worth something, but the issue is not static. Would you mind educating me on what's changed, please? Perhaps as a foundation member who put a lot of time over two terms into the hiring process I might have something to offer the decision making process? I explained it in that email. If something wasn't clear or you need further explanation, let me know what it is. - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ I've been thinking: I get way too many pieces of e-mail, about 60 a day. - Microserfs ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: board [was Re: OOXML [was Re: GNOME Foundation Board Meeting Minutes :: 7/6/07]]
quote who=Alan Cox As for trashing you, it seems any comment about the boards actions or activities that is the slighest bit negative or in disagreement with yourself you take as a personal insult and follow up in flowery language attempting to supress the dissent by acting hurt. I pointed out behaviour that I thought was inappropriate and unproductive. Given that it wasn't particularly relevant to myself (but highly relevant to my corporate responsibility with the Board), your attempts to discredit me and my comments are similarly inappropriate and unproductive. I suggest you take a gander at the Code of Conduct, and figure a more constructive way to contribute to the community. - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ Instead you're doing circle jerks with the Care Bears of Censorship. - Siduri on Slashdot ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: board [was Re: OOXML [was Re: GNOME Foundation Board Meeting Minutes :: 7/6/07]]
quote who=Luis Villa I volunteered to take leadership on this position months ago. We chose to have a Board member as liaison to the Legal team, which was very clearly delegated the responsibility to provide legal support and advice to the Foundation. This is the same model as other teams, but as the legal team is new and doesn't have a well-defined leadership/sustainability model (as, say, the release team does), it could do with a lot more shepherding. It was only clear to us very recently that the current liaison was not doing this effectively. The only reason it became clear to us is that our own goals were not being met, not as a result of feedback from the legal team itself. So, yes, I totally understand your position, but I think that falling back on unsympathetic, dramatic criticism of the Board and ultimatums is not a productive way of fixing the problem. - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 Creative thinkers make many false starts, and continually waver between unmanageable fantasies and systematic attack. - Harry Hepner ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: OOXML [was Re: GNOME Foundation Board Meeting Minutes :: 7/6/07]
quote who=Luis Villa I am frustrated, and so I will be running for the board again. If elected, my almost-exclusive focus will be handling legal and secretarial issues for the board. So I can't guarantee that my being on the board would necessarily have prevented this particular problem, but I'd like to think I would have at least screamed very loud. That's rocking good news. More warm bodies on the Board with time to spare (or a very particular focus, plus the usual oversight and representation) is a very welcome thing, and it would be great to have you on the Board again. A related issue: I think we've pretty much shown that the seven person Board thing is a bit of a failure. Even if you're not elected or didn't run, we could appoint you to the Board for this function. :-) We ought to consider adding a couple of people to the Board. So much for being away for five years. :-) - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 When you're running, you want to run as far as you can, and you can't run further than Australia. - Jacek Koman ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: OOXML [was Re: GNOME Foundation Board Meeting Minutes :: 7/6/07]
quote who=Andy Tai Maybe Jody's involvement can be just his personal activity and totally separated from, and have nothing to do with, GNOME. His involvement is facilitated by our membership of ECMA. We were entirely willing to do so. - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 The Motif interface, with chunkier controls, felt more like a ghetto blaster. - Liam Quin ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: board [was Re: OOXML [was Re: GNOME Foundation Board Meeting Minutes :: 7/6/07]]
quote who=Luis Villa I'm hesitant to declare it a failure until I see more evidence that delegation has been tried and failed. For example, I could do this sort of thing without being on the board at all- no need to appoint me to the board. But frankly I have not felt like my attempts to help out have been invited, much less encouraged. I have personally tried, and certainly taken legal issues to legal-private as a matter of delegation (and only received one response, btw), but I think there is an issue of... domain-specific responsibility... involved that has not created or encouraged an active team around legal work. That's a bummer, and I think the extreme business of other Board members has contributed to no one else picking up that ball. (Sorry I'm not being more specific, but I have to figure out if/how I can be during this election cycle.) - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ Linux continues to have almost as much soul as James Brown. - Forrest Cook, LWN ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: OOXML [was Re: GNOME Foundation Board Meeting Minutes :: 7/6/07]
quote who=Dave Neary What we've shown is not having a full-time director has been a mistake It has actually been a very helpful learning experience -- understanding what the purpose of that role should be, by grokking the gaps. It's less obvious what that role ought to be now that we're so far away from the Executive Director assumption. I agree that expecting a 7 person volunteer board to take care of the administration and day to day running of the foundation is asking too much. It would be, but luckily, that's not the situation we're in. We have a very good part time administrator in Zana, who has done a fantastic job picking up the pieces of our previous administrative mess. It's very easy to simplify this issue, and I think it's a mistake to do so. Defining the role and hiring someone for it has been and will continue to be a very tricky task. We have to be very comfortable choosing between large target and small target goals. Just hiring for an Executive Director role would put us firmly in the small target zone, which is probably not the right thing to do. I don't even think it's necessary. Things change -- what was taken for granted while you were on the Board may not be the case now. - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 The Unix Way: Everything is a file. The Linux Way: Everything is a filesystem. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: OOXML [was Re: GNOME Foundation Board Meeting Minutes :: 7/6/07]
quote who=Andy Tai For the future the board should really consider not sponsoring anyone to work on the OOXML format No one was sponsored to work on the OOXML format. (and withdraw existing involvement on the behalf of the GNOME Foundation), as many people in the free software/FOSS community are working hard to try to prevent the OOXML from becoming a standard. We're not working towards ISO standardisation of OOXML. - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ Microsoft treats security vulnerabilities as public relations problems. - Bruce Schneier ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: OOXML [was Re: GNOME Foundation Board Meeting Minutes :: 7/6/07]
quote who=Luis Villa So, uh... this apparently didn't happen, and now we're getting flamed (rightfully) for appearing to give a stamp of approval to a deeply flawed standard. So... when is the board making this happen? Although I disagree with the tone and content of your email, an announcement is pending about a related issue, which may address concerns (legitimate or not) raised about GNOME's involvement in TC45-M. Participation in the TC45-M process does not imply approval or support for ISO standardisation of OOXML. - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 When you're running, you want to run as far as you can, and you can't run further than Australia. - Jacek Koman ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: OOXML [was Re: GNOME Foundation Board Meeting Minutes :: 7/6/07]
quote who=Luis Villa This flaming was completely and utterly predictable. I'm disappointed that the board took the time to approve an action that obviously exposed GNOME to PR problems without taking the (very obvious) PR steps to reduce that impact. Based on the genesis of the open letter, it is hard to believe it would have helped. That said, since the letter, there have been numerous contacts to the Board and members of it, and there is likely to be a more official response to come (due to the interest in clarifying what on earth the letter was about). I look forward to further aggravated public shaming of past incompetencies, especially ones so obvious in hindsight, as it always improves motivation and encourages members to run for election. I'm sorry I couldn't find a way to write this sentence without sarcasm. - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ Boys will be boys, hackers will be hackers, geeks will be geeks, and cyberpunks will always just be ravers with Macintoshes. - Monkey Master, Crackmonkey ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Preliminary results for Membership Vote Regarding Change to Bylaws
quote who=Dave Neary Voting in referenda is generally not very high, and there was 0 debate on this issue on the list (I did see some grumbling on IRC, but nothing concrete), so it's hardly an initiative that's going to mobilise the troops. There was buttloads of discussion around the initial plan, which partly led to the revised implementation (mostly about extending the current board's term, and we had legal advice suggesting the bylaws change). Based on the length and breadth of the earlier threads, I don't think there was any lack of discussion. :-) - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 I hear Tom Wolfe's speaking at Lincoln Center. [...] Well, of course we're going to fling poo at him! - Mason the Chimpanzee, Madagascar ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Suggestion for coming elections
quote who=Dave Neary Quim Gil wrote: What happens when you get less than 7 people with votes? I don't understand - you mean if there are fewer than 7 candidates? Quim meant fewer than seven who receive votes at all (implying that there would be other candidates running who received none). I don't think it's a huge issue, as those who were elected can choose to appoint more directors should they wish to. I think it would be better to go with a widely used and familiar system, such as those proposed by James Henstridge and Ryan Lortie in previous years. In fact, I would be happy to appoint a group (including James and Ryan) to come up with a proposal for the Board. - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 I rather think of Pat as our linguistic ornithologist here - 'Oh look, the brown noddy also nests in the mangrove!' - John Fleck ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Can we improve things?
quote who=Vincent Untz But I'm 100% fine with this since we still didn't change most of the world to understand French; hopefully we will get there soon! ;-) This would be an entirely reasonable catalyst for applying censorship to Planet GNOME. - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 It's like having someone say to you, 'You should get back together with your first wife. You guys were good together'. It's not that simple. - David Byrne on Talking Heads ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Can we improve things?
quote who=Alvaro Lopez Ortega The planet is not a newspaper or a magazine, it is just a planet. That censorship / editorial line idea doesn't make any sense to me. I hope that this is a similar effect to that of great design -- you don't notice the editorship because Planet is highly readable and reflective of the people who are active bloggers in our community. :-) - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ I run Linux on pretty much everything except the microwave and washing machine. Those are tempting targets but would probably make Telsa extremely cross. - Alan Cox ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Can we improve things?
quote who=Alvaro Lopez Ortega Jeff Waugh wrote, On 13/09/07 11:43: The planet is not a newspaper or a magazine, it is just a planet. That censorship / editorial line idea doesn't make any sense to me. I hope that this is a similar effect to that of great design -- you don't notice the editorship because Planet is highly readable and reflective of the people who are active bloggers in our community. :-) Does that mean that if someone isn't an active blogger he has nothing interesting to write about every now and then? That's a pretty bizaare interpretation of what I wrote. :-) Besides, that would need someone to be over the good and the bad to make the decision of whether a post is worth to be in the planet or not... and I'd like to think that nobody would step forward to take over that position. Editorship doesn't mean intrusive oversight of every post. It means there's a benchmark for inclusion. I'm summarising how I go through that decision at the moment [1]. - Jeff [1] I did tell myself not to get involved in the discussion and just post this once I'd finished it, but I didn't want to let the conversation go off the rails with all the conspiracy theory crap. -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ I think hot Chinese girls who kick ass are the wave of the future, as far as films go. - Cody Russell ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Can we improve things?
quote who=Tristan Van Berkom *sigh*, I wonder what you are basing this claim on, maybe there's an archived thread that you could reffer us to which details that ? Unfortunately my blog didn't have comments at the time, so most of the responses to this were on IRC or by mail. It's mentioned fairly regularly even now. Planet GNOME is vastly more readable and relevant (in terms of people, not topic) than many other Planets. I think its important to note here that giving someone access to blog on planet gnome is like publicly aknowlaging that they are indeed a part of the gnome community - people who contribute to the project need to feel like they are part of the project. For sure. Currently it seems like there is even more sensorship in planet membership than svn access I'm just not going to get caught up in all this alarmism about censorship. I can't imagine why anyone would think I could get away with actual censorship of Planet... it would be laughable if it wasn't so mean spirited. Suggesting this about SVN is equally ridiculous. - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ Professor Tanenbaum did not convince AdTI that Linus Torvalds wrote the Linux kernel from scratch. - Ken Brown, Sponsored Moron ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Can we improve things?
quote who=Steve Frécinaux I'd even go one step further saying than most people care about gnome and gnome apps, and not about one's cats and the other's culinar niceties. Because despite Gnome is people, I think that for most people, Planet Gnome is primarily about Gnome. Well, that's counter to the original purpose and design of Planet GNOME. It would be like asking Bastien to include support for comic book compression formats in Totem. :-) - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 Linux continues to have almost as much soul as James Brown. - Forrest Cook, LWN ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Can we improve things?
quote who=Federico Mena Quintero The current editorial control is simply more or less if you ever did something peripherally related to GNOME, you can be on Planet, regardless of what you post. It's somewhat more intricate than that -- I'm writing it up atm, so people can understand the decision making process (guidelines). That's the first step. :-) - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 I would hack on the file selector. But I think I would write like, 3 LOC for every 100 lines of mail I had to read/write. - James Willcox ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Can we improve things?
quote who=Pascal Terjan I think that asking people to have tags/categories on their blogs and not aggregate everything would be better than having all the content of the ones who arrived first. Planet GNOME is about the people moreso than the project. We talk about the project *all the time*. The reason why I started Planet GNOME (and Planet!) was to read about and better understand the *people*. That's why full feeds are preferred over GNOME-specific tags, why we have hackergotchis (to put a face to a name), and why this idea has been so influential around the FLOSS community. Some people currently post everyday about their life and it's never related to GNOME at all. It's related to GNOME because they're part of our *family*, and we are all better off for knowing each other. - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 This is the new dividing line in public life. It is not a question of Left versus Right, but a struggle between insiders and outsiders. - Mark Latham ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Can we improve things?
quote who=Jeff Waugh That's why full feeds are preferred over GNOME-specific tags Minor point: I do mean 'preferred'. If someone has a good reason for wanting only their GNOME-related posts on Planet I'm cool with that, but I always go back to ask before putting them up. So no knicker-twisting, censorship nuts! - Jeff -- GNOME Boston Summit 2007http://live.gnome.org/Boston2007 I have a burning curiosity about everything, everything-- except country and western, of course. - David Bowie ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Foundation Board Meeting Minutes :: 23rd Auguest 2007
quote who=Dave Neary I think it's a mistake not to have someone in Boston involved early in the planning process. This problem would not have been solved by having someone in Boston involved early in the planning process. It's just rotten luck. - Jeff -- Open Source in Mobile 2007: Madrid, Spain http://www.osimconference.com/ Free software never simply picks up its marbles and goes home. - Jonathan Corbet, LWN ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Foundation Board Meeting Minutes :: 23rd Auguest 2007
quote who=Dave Neary I think it's a mistake not to have someone in Boston involved early in the planning process. This problem would not have been solved by having someone in Boston involved early in the planning process. It's just rotten luck. I didn't say it would have been. That's not the point. It appeared to be the catalyst for your complaint, but not relevant to the issue at hand. If you point is to repeat your complaint without taking into account the answer you've received previously, then great, but it's not very helpful. - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 What do you get when you cross a web server and a hen? Apoache. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Foundation Board Meeting Minutes :: 23rd Auguest 2007
quote who=Dave Neary You don't have to take this as some kind of challenge to your authority, and get defensive about it. I'm objecting to your repeated griping-without-helping (and now in public), Dave. It's not motivating *or* helpful, particularly following up to this. - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ The beanbag is a triumph of modern day eclectic colourism... - Catie Flick ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Creating new modules (was Re: Git vs SVN (was: Can we improve things?))
quote who=Havoc Pennington Bringing it back to the present, there's stuff on svn.mugshot.org that really belongs on gnome.org, but it seems it didn't end up there. I don't think this was a conscious thing, but I think it probably was due to just enough of a barrier to create a new gnome module. This happens with more than just revision control infrastructure. More and more projects are hosting everything (web, svn, lists) elsewhere, because of the social and technical issues related to staying upstream -- it's not just infrastructure (though your example is probably the strongest atm). Anyway, this warrants a lot of thought. - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ Again you are making up inventing as you go. Be specific aba gaba datata. - Oscar Plameras ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Community Celebrates 10 Years of Software Freedom, Innovation and Industry Adoption
quote who=Richard Stallman To promote software freedom, it is vital to talk about free software, because the term Open source is most often used to lead attention away from issues of freedom. There'll be all kinds of explanation about Software Freedom and Open Source in the opening of the cookbook -- the goal is to explain both freedom *and* the process to computing 'laity' via delicious food from around the world. - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 Laughter is a force for democracy. - John Cleese ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Proposal: Shift election cycle back six months
quote who=Andy Tai It still looks strange to have the voting body to vote to extend the term of the current board, not the same as a general election. Extending the terms of some leadership tend to happen under situations where something prevents the holding of regular elections... nothing comparable exists here for the GNOME Foundation. The proposal is about doing something out of the ordinary processes defined by the bylaws -- that is why we are consulting the membership. Rather than point out that the situation is extraordinary, please tell us your feelings or concerns about the proposal as a member. - Jeff -- Open Source in Mobile 2007: Madrid, Spain http://www.osimconference.com/ Building a Kernel is a requirement for Securing Servers. - Oscar Plameras ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Proposal: Shift election cycle back six months
quote who=Andy Tai OK, simply, the stated reason for the extraordinary measure (face to face meeting timing) is not a strong one to justify touching the term limit of the board. In that case -- let's try for productive input here, if possible -- how do you suggest we solve the problem? (Or describe why it's not a problem that needs to be solved.) - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Proposal: Shift election cycle back six months
quote who=Quim Gil 1. Make sure that from a legal point of view we can have board mandate not coinciding with budget terms. If legally we can't do it the rest is pointless. I've put it to our legal folks and am waiting for a response. 2. Check if the current board members would be willing to continue for an extended period. If the current board members are not willing to go further the rest is pointless. Sure. The Board will decide whether or not to call a vote. 3. If 1 and 2 are met then we can talking about something as exceptional as a referendum. Really, the GNOME Foundation doesn't *need* urgently that change. We are used to plan and execute changes that have a mid term impact. The newly elected board would have to wait until Istanbul to meet. What is the so big issue with that? Until now this has been the rule and we seem to have survived. I don't understand really why all this hurry now. Please don't mistake doing for haste. :-) There is no hurry, but I have a desire to see this problem solved, and I feel we have a responsibility to solve it such that the next Board may benefit from it. We've talked about it for long enough that I'm happy to take the bullet to actually do something about it. :-) It's August, so we have about three months to put this to our members before the elections must be held. No hurry, but it's a good time to get moving. - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ We're kind of like Canada, only we hate ourselves more, and it's wetter around the edges. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Proposal: Shift election cycle back six months
quote who=Quim Gil The current board was elected for one year and there is no exceptional reason to change this. The next board can be elected for an extended period and then voters and electors know what is going on beforehand. We could do that, and it has been discussed in the past, but it defers the problem (so the next board will suffer the same issue). I think this illustrates a misunderstanding of the word 'exceptional'. We don't need an 'exceptional' reason to put a change like this to the members, but the process of doing so would be to hold a 'special' or 'exceptional' meeting (or in our case, an online vote). The proposal email was pretty clear: It's highly unlikely that we'd do this without going to the membership for a vote. So the knowing beforehand idea that has been raised a number of times is not really relevant. If members are uncomfortable with it, they'll vote it down, and we'll have to come up with another solution (which itself will have to involve a vote anyway, as the bylaws do not provide a mechanism for doing this). I'm pretty satisfied that the responses we've had so far indicate that this is worth pursuing by putting a vote to the membership. We can call a vote with minimum ten days notice (but we'll have to work with the membership committee to ensure the infrastructure exists to run it). - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ http://www.illusionary.com/GNOMEvKDE.html ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Proposal: Shift election cycle back six months
quote who=Vincent Untz Sorry, I'm going to dive into boring details... Is this something from the by-laws (I couldn't find a reference to the 10 days notice there, but I only gave a quick look), or something you are suggesting? Yes. See under VII: 3-8. And by vote, do you mean referendum or something else (the only other type of vote I know is elections :-))? Just a vote of the membership. - Jeff -- Open Source in Mobile 2007: Madrid, Spain http://www.osimconference.com/ The Unix Way: Everything is a file. The Linux Way: Everything is a filesystem. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Proposal: Shift election cycle back six months
quote who=Vincent Untz Forgot to reply to this: one worry (which is valid, IMHO) is that we don't know if all current board members will have time for the first six months of 2008. I know I have absolutely no idea right now if I'll be able to continue. Agree, though directors can resign, and the Board can appoint new directors to fill vacancies. It need not have an impact on the proper function of the Board. So really, if we do a referendum, we have two questions: + Do you want to shift the election cycle? + Do you want to extend the current mandate of the board? I don't think we should mix them. Two questions can be the kiss of death for a 'referendum'. :-) I've put a question to the Board now, so let's see if/what the group accepts. - Jeff -- Open Source in Mobile 2007: Madrid, Spain http://www.osimconference.com/ We must be proactive, eternally vigilant, forever fighting, overwhelmingly clever and handsome. - Robert Love ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Proposal: Shift election cycle back six months
quote who=Jeff Waugh So really, if we do a referendum, we have two questions: + Do you want to shift the election cycle? + Do you want to extend the current mandate of the board? I don't think we should mix them. Two questions can be the kiss of death for a 'referendum'. :-) I've put a question to the Board now, so let's see if/what the group accepts. I've modified my proposal to the Board to put forward two questions. - Jeff -- GNOME Boston Summit 2007http://live.gnome.org/Boston2007 The Unix Way: Everything is a file. The Linux Way: Everything is a filesystem. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Proposal: Shift election cycle back six months
quote who=Shaun McCance While this year's and last year's GUADECs were in July, previous GUADECs have been in April (2001), May (2005), and June (2004). If we have elections in May and June, then we wouldn't want to have future GUADECs any earlier than July. I don't know if that's a problem, but it is worth mentioning. June is realistic, considering the timeline. Typically, preliminary results are announced in early December, finalising a couple of weeks later. So that works okay with GUADEC in June, but there's certainly the option of shifting it only by five months. Related to this, I worry about having the elections too close to GUADEC. Many of us just can't make it to GUADEC every single year, for various reasons. Board members, of course, should make GUADEC a very high priority. But if you're only elected two weeks before GUADEC, it may be too late to make travel arrangements, particularly if you need a visa. The travel issue is a *very* good reason to look at changing it only by five months. Thanks very much for pointing that out. (Note that the Foundation has provided travel assistance to Board members in the past, so this not generally a problem. The timing and costs of late travel arrangements is.) On another note, if anybody actually has a problem with extending this board's term (I don't, and nobody else who's replied so far seems to), another option would be to phase the shift in over the next two or three years by extending those terms by three or two months. That was one of the soft options raised a couple of years back. I'd prefer to simply fix the problem once and for all. - Jeff -- Open Source in Mobile 2007: Madrid, Spain http://www.osimconference.com/ Python amazes me for its concision. The current prototype is all of 900 lines of code, yet it contains a lexer, parser (recursive descent), core language interpreter, and parallelizing process spawner. - Raph Levien on Rebar ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Proposal: Shift election cycle back six months
quote who=Julien PUYDT I don't have anything against the current board, BUT extending a term after the voters cast their vote is very wrong. As mentioned in the original mail: (Note that the Board is unlikely to make a change like this without formally consulting our membership via a referendum.) - that means casting a vote. - Jeff -- Open Source in Mobile 2007: Madrid, Spain http://www.osimconference.com/ If you want to start a debate on a subject, however, all that seems to be necessary is to involve perennial target Richard Gooch. - LWN ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Minor change to Board practice
quote who=The Face of Sun Microsystems Jeff Waugh wrote: 3. Recommend that future Boards appoint the President and Vice-President from elected directors annually (instead of Chairman and Vice-Chairman) As a slightly confusing nit, are we now saying there will only be President, Vice-President, Secretary and Treasurer? or are we saying there will be a Chairman, Vice-Chairman, President, Vice-President, Secretary and Treasurer? The former. The bylaws provide the option to have a Chairman, but I don't really think we need one if the President is an active Director. - Jeff -- Open Source in Mobile 2007: Madrid, Spain http://www.osimconference.com/ The worst vice is ad-vice. - Al Pacino, The Devil's Advocate ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Proposal: Shift election cycle back six months
quote who=Claudio Saavedra If I remember correctly, that's the situation since last year, when we decided to switch boards with the year change. What I don't remember (and can't find in the rules you linked), is what was the situation before. When used the boards to switch before that? Pretty sure it's worked the same way since 2001 (in 2000, it was a bit more than a month earlier) though I have half a memory of what you've mentioned, and don't know why it's not ringing any bells. Clearly getting old. :-) http://foundation.gnome.org/elections/2001/rules.html http://foundation.gnome.org/elections/2000/rules.html - Jeff -- Open Source in Mobile 2007: Madrid, Spain http://www.osimconference.com/ NASCAR is not race per se. It's just a contest about who can turn left the best. - Unknown ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Minor change to Board practice
Hi all, Another administrative issue the Board needs to deal with, but vastly less interesting or controversial than the one raised in my last email. :-) The Board is planning to fix a minor but institutionalised problem with the practice of selecting and current state of Foundation Board officers. It is not a major issue, because we're operating in accordance with the bylaws and functioning properly and efficiently as an organisation, but we want to fix the problem regardless. This does not require a vote or confirmation from the membership, but we wanted to announce our plans and deal with concerns should there be any. For quite some time we have chosen a Chairman, Vice-Chairman, Secretary and Treasurer from the elected directors. The Chairman and Vice-Chairman have in every practical sense functioned as the President and Vice-President, though for touchy-feely reasons we've never used those titles. The actual President has served for many years, very rarely in a practical sense; but I'd like to stress again that this has been in accordance with the bylaws. The President for all these years has been... Miguel de Icaza. :-) We'd like the officers of the GNOME Foundation to reflect the current state and practice of the Board, and recommend this as best practice for future Boards, so here is what we're going to do: 1. Request a letter of resignation from Miguel (as that is the only way for the office of President to become vacant) 2. Appoint the Chairman (Quim) and Vice-Chairman (Anne) as President and Vice-President 3. Recommend that future Boards appoint the President and Vice-President from elected directors annually (instead of Chairman and Vice-Chairman) Please reply if you have questions or concerns. Thanks, - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ It will test your head. And your mind. And your brain, too. - Jack Black, School of Rock ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Minor change to Board practice
quote who=Dave Neary I think there's value in having a figurehead president divorced from the day-to-day running of things Unfortunately, that is not how the position is defined in the bylaws. Over the past few years, what we have called the Chairman (for touchy-feely reaosns) has for all intents and purposes served as the President, just not in name. a symbolic figure who is a patron of the foundation (like, say, the Irish president who doesn't run the country, or the Queen in Australia). Well, despite her most excellent maintainership of GDM, we'd love to get rid of her. :-) There is an advantage too - you get to choose your president from outside of the community, and have it be someone with major weight in higher orbits - a Jonathan Schwarz or Michael Tiemann (or, indeed, Miguel de Icaza, in spite of him still being firmly in the community). We could do this by having honorary members of the Advisory Board or something. Miguel *hasn't* been firmly in the community or participating as that symbolic figure -- no slight on him, this expectation was never set. If you're doing away with the symbolic president, then it probably makes sense to throw in a second procedural change, and have that person elected to the position, rather than nominated from within the board. I didn't want to cloud the issue by introducing that (which is something I have raised numerous times in the past, but not formally proposed). What we are doing here is fixing the inadequate semantics and practice surrounding the positions of President and Chairman. - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ Again you are making up inventing as you go. Be specific aba gaba datata. - Oscar Plameras ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Foundation and Source Code Copyright
quote who=Thomas Wood During discussions about copyright at GUADEC several people mentioned that developers were not encouraged to assign copyright to the GNOME Foundation. Not so much not encouraged as no one's ever done it before and we haven't created the necessary bureaucracy/infrastructure to handle it. We'd need to create a copyright assignment form and process - if, that is, we decide it's worth doing. :-) (I think it probably is - plus it has come up a number of times in the GPLv3 discussions.) - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ The Vines are the latest pretenders to the thrown. - Vines review by liv4now.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Foundation and Source Code Copyright
quote who=Thomas Wood We were aware of this, but since contributions mean that there are often a half a dozen different contributors to one file, we thought it may be easier to assign copyright and then list the contributors as authors. Copyright assignment generally doesn't make things for developers easier. It may make certain things more clear, but not necessarily easier. For a start, if your aim is sole aggregate copyright ownership, you have to ensure that contributors have signed the copyright assignment agreement before accepting their contributions... :-) - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ It will test your head. And your mind. And your brain, too. - Jack Black, School of Rock ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Foundation and Source Code Copyright
quote who=Rodrigo Moya hmm, sorry to say that, but I was under the impression this was suggested many years ago (2/3 or maybe 4), and indeed I've written some code myself assigning the copyright to the foundation. Usually small stuff that is not in GNOME, but I just had a look, and the whole of libgda is (C) The GNOME Foundation. So, should all those source files be changed, or can we do something about it? Well, the stated copyright ownership is a mistake, so whether you decide you want to assign copyright to the Foundation or just correct the problem, you have to know who *actually* owns the copyright. Going through the logs and listing committers and attributed contributors would be the first step along that painful path. :-) - Jeff -- Open Source in Mobile 2007: Madrid, Spain http://www.osimconference.com/ o/~ we all live in a yellow subroutine o/~ - auspex ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Idea: GNOME event in Beijing 2008
Adding Amy Jiang to the Cc. Hi Amy! :-) - Jeff quote who=Quim Gil This is a call for volunteers and interested GNOME lovers in Beijing / China / East Asia. Please forward to friends and contacts that might be interested. There is this initial idea of organizing a GNOME event in Beijing next year. Emily Chen and other developers of the Sun Desktop in Beijing have started pushing the idea and now they are in the task of having an initial organization team with volunteers from other organizations, companies and individuals. There is a lot of GNOME related development going on in Beijing, China and East Asia in general. This conference could be a great opportunity to provide more visibility to the ideas, people, teams etc. We are starting the discussion in the GNOME marketing-list. More: GNOME calling to Beijing / China / East Asia http://desdeamericaconamor.org/blog/node/384 -- linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australiahttp://lca2008.linux.org.au/ It's pretty hard to reinvent the wheel in Python, because so many awesome wheels already exist. - Colin Walters ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Resigning from the board
quote who=Ghee Teo Does this also implies there is a going to be by-election (first one ever) :) ? No, according to the GNOME Foundation by-laws, the Board may appoint a new director in the case of a vacancy (which we did last year under the same circumstances). - Jeff -- GUADEC 2007 in Beautiful Birmingham http://www.guadec.org/ I came for the quality, but I stayed for the freedom. - Sean Neakums ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Mailing lists fixage
quote who=Olav Vitters Mailing list setup is broken. Hiring someone to figure it all out might be a good idea; because currently I do not setup mailing lists just because I do not want to figure out how. I studied the broken setup a couple of weeks ago after doing blogo - I think I'll be able to fix it this morning with minimal downtime. So that's another thing off our backs. :-) (Also, I did some pending mailing list requests while I was figuring it out; are there others waiting in RT? My access is busted atm.) - Jeff -- Ubuntu Live 2007: Portland, OR, USA http://www.ubuntulive.com/ Love's such an old fashioned word. - Queen David Bowie, Under Presssure ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Hiring a part-time sysadmin?
quote who=Bruno Boaventura I think it's time to add more contributors on sysadmin. Me and Diego are very interested to contribute in many areas on GNOME. We have time, motivation and love, but we need help to start. I'm a person who can learn quickly. I appreciate your enthusiasm, and there's every chance that we will take up both your offers. However, our experience shows that 'more' does not always mean 'better'. Don't be disappointed though -- that's just the gut reaction you're going to get from the team straight away. That said, there is work going on at the moment to improve the mechanism of creating and approving accounts, which will allow us to parallelise the easy bit. The hard bit, as always, is social. Often, it takes way longer to get confirmations from peers than it does to create accounts and so on. - Jeff -- Ubuntu Live 2007: Portland, OR, USA http://www.ubuntulive.com/ Building a Kernel is a requirement for Securing Servers. - Oscar Plameras ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Hiring a part-time sysadmin?
quote who=Murray Cumming So, I think you should please ask the advisory board, and then I think you should try to find somebody. They might say No, but in the past they've wanted to be asked more often, because they want to help. There are plenty of part-time student sysadmins at universities and colleges, so you should be able to find someone similar for GNOME. You don't need a genius - you just need someone who is paid to have time to do stuff. It is quite clear that we do not have the funds to do this right now. It has been on the agenda for quite some time, but we must spend responsibly. We are in the process of hiring for a position that will open up opportunities such as this in due time. Your suggestion is noted; we've said that it has been a desire for the Foundation for some time -- please do not unreasonably agitate to get what you want immediately. - Jeff -- Ubuntu Live 2007: Portland, OR, USA http://www.ubuntulive.com/ Orphaned farm-boy hero helps save world against bad-guys, begins a journey of self-discovery, and makes interesting friends. Passable. - Andrew Bennetts on Star Wars ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Hiring a part-time sysadmin?
quote who=Corey Burger 1. Planet We absolutely need a team around this. The delays make no sense There haven't been significant delays recently. Vincent has been managing the GSoC folks to help out, which has been great. Strong editorship is one of the reasons why Planet GNOME is more readable than many other Planets, and when I've brought up potential policy changes in the past, plenty of people have suggested I keep it that way. It's in SVN, so if I'm hit by a bus or there's a crisis when I'm not around, others can take the wheel. 2. Foundation membership We need better communication around this. That's the membership committee, which is very much a separate issue to the one raised in this thread. Better communication would be facilitated by having more people involved Quoting this separately to point out how little sense it makes. More people does not result in better communication. :-) 3. SVN stuff Creation of these things are slow. It is more often the confirmation process that is slow (depending on people outside the sysadmin team for information and acceptance), not the account creation process. As noted in the previous mail, there is work being done to make the mechanism of account creation simpler and easier too. Lastly, we need to stop being hostile to people trying to help. I offered to help with the foundation membership and was rebuffed and now you just rebuffed Diego. I did not rebuff Diego. I was polite, open, and explained myself. It was not in the least bit hostile *and* did not close the possibility of involvement. What I described has been pointed out by others before. It pisses me the hell off to watch the old guard rebuff people like myself who are merely trying to help. Ever wonder why KDE is better at attracting new people? Because they seem to understand that people are not perfect when coming to them! This is an unreasonably argumentative and manipulative way to make a point. - Jeff -- OSCON 2007: Portland OR, USAhttp://conferences.oreillynet.com/oscon/ Every fight is a food fight. When you're a cannibal. - Demetri Martin ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Mailing lists fixage
quote who=Olav Vitters Nice! Please document the new stuff on the wiki. All fixed. Nothing new, just working without unexpected insanity. Sysadmin info updated on http://live.gnome.org/NewListRequest I'm going through the (one or two) remaining list requests in RT now. - Jeff -- Ubuntu Live 2007: Portland, OR, USA http://www.ubuntulive.com/ The cool stuff coming out of freedesktop.org doesn't just happen as the result of an accident with a particle accelerator and a goat: it only happens when people hack on it. - Daniel Stone ___ 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
quote who=Luis Villa Of course, I'd be more comfortable with it if we put out a press release saying something to the effect of 'we see no way to avoid implementing OOXML without screwing our users, so we're joining ECMA to make sure it sucks as little as possible. All other things being equal, we'd much prefer to implement a spec that has a much better patent grant, was developed through a more public process, uses open standards like mathml, etc., but since MS has a dominant market position, we don't have much of a choice in the matter.' About GNOME ... About the GNOME Foundation ... SHIP IT! - Jeff -- OSCON 2007: Portland OR, USAhttp://conferences.oreillynet.com/oscon/ Once the game is over, the King and the pawn go back in the same box. - Italian proverb ___ 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
quote who=Lucas Rocha I think it would make sense to have both conferences scheduled in way that it would be easier for us, GNOMErs, to attend both. But I don't think we should have only one merged KDE/GNOME conference. Even though we aim to increase the collaboration with KDE, we're still different projects, with different development and organization aproaches. Personally, that is my feeling too, for philosophical and practical reasons. For the moment though, it's just a proposal under discussion. :-) - Jeff -- OSCON 2007: Portland OR, USAhttp://conferences.oreillynet.com/oscon/ One in 10 Europeans is allegedly conceived in an Ikea bed. - BBC News, 2005 ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
