Re: [guadec-list] Re-considering expectnation web service
On Wed, 2008-01-02 at 16:43 +, Karl Lattimer wrote: On Wed, 2008-01-02 at 17:24 +0100, Murray Cumming wrote: On Sun, 2007-12-30 at 23:09 +0200, Baris Cicek wrote: And whatever we do we need to do it quickly You are not going to put together a completely new system in time, using Drupal or anything else. That's not your fault and you shouldn't be punished for it. You probably do have time to try Expectnation and to configure it as you need. If you choose to waste time twiddling with ideologically-sound systems then the masses will blame you (rather than the zealots who persuaded you) for it later. I agree 100% here, just because we're supposed to have an ideology of free software doesn't mean we should be against using non-free software. Hell, dreamweaver is an awesome product! This logic extends further that if we are able to help Expectnation become open source (as a previous post suggested), then the way to do that is to embrace it now... Especially as it has features which are invaluable to GUADEC being a success in 2008! K, Ok, we need to separate out a couple of arguments to be precise here. I'm not against using non-free software if it fills a need that can not be filled by free software. However to look at this and say just use Expectnation without having a debate on the board is wrong. Murry's been playing the emotion card a bit too much lately (I object to being called a zealot) and others are ready to ditch free software solutions without taking a bit to really look at the requirements and seeing what matches up (no system so far has been able to streamline the issues of moving money into and out of Turkey for instance). BTW completely new system stretches the truth a bit. As others have posted Drupal does have conference plugins. Whether they are adequate is something to be seen. That being said, there is a requirement for the Foundation as the face of one of the biggest free software organizations to encourage the use of free software and foster its growth. A hint of perhaps someday, something might open up the sources does not enter into the equation. That punishes the people who have worked on solutions which are already free software. So, let the board do its work and weigh the pros and cons of each option. We might in the end go with Expectnation or we might go with Drupal or some other system someone brings to our attention. If someone has something constructive to add to our evaluation then please do. Leave all the name calling and rush to judgment out of it though. -- John (J5) Palmieri [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Re-considering expectnation web service
On Sun, 2007-12-30 at 18:28 +0100, Xavier Bestel wrote: Hi, On sam, 2007-12-29 at 00:35 +, Baris Cicek wrote: Currently we're using Drupal as CMS on guadec.org. Although it is convenient if you want to use web page only for announcements but it lacks functional bits like Registration Management, CfP and Schedule preparing/announcement etc. Drupal has many, many modules implementing various features, and I would be very surprised if it couldn't do what you want. Just look at Event-related modules, they may match your case: http://drupal.org/project/Modules/category/61 And then, if assembling Drupal modules together is too much work (it may be), or if you miss a bit of custom PHP code, you could just ask on http://drupal.org/paid-services for some professional help. IMHO, this is much more in line with GNOME's ideals. Xav While I agree with Edd that the conference organizer's job is not to build web systems it is the Foundation Board's job to seek out solutions which both fit the need and are in-line with the community's expectations and values. It is clear that there are other solutions available and we need to consider them. Can we get a detailed list from the conference committee on what their requirements are for such a system so that the board members may discuss this at the upcoming meeting? I will push for an action item to get someone to evaluate the different options, report back to the board and make a decision in a timely manner. -- John (J5) Palmieri [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Can we improve things?
On Sun, 2007-12-16 at 14:34 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote: I have not used Planet GNOME, and I have no opinions about how it is run. However, a site without editorial control, on which people can post whatever they like, should not be the public face of GNOME. If it is perceived that way, that is a problem. To solve this problem does not necessarily mean changing the way Planet GNOME is run. Maybe it can be addressed by changes elsewhere. But it should be addressed. Actually Planet GNOME has always prided itself as a Window into the work and lives of GNOME hackers and contributors. Disagreements erupt and not everyone portrays a unified face there. It is an unfiltered (except for self filtering) view of those who have contributed significant bits to GNOME. I think any sort of editorial control other than good old individuals common sense would break this spirit. It is not however the official voice of the Foundation and individuals posts are not necessarily the views of the Foundation (perhaps we do need to state that more prominently on the site). I believe what is at issue here is that there are those who felt they deserved to be on Planet GNOME but never got any answers yay or nay to their queries. -- John (J5) Palmieri [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Money spending, questions for the candidates
On Sat, 2007-12-01 at 12:15 +0100, Philip Van Hoof wrote: On Sat, 2007-12-01 at 10:18 +, Diego Escalante Urrelo wrote: On 12/1/07, Dave Neary [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Doing that quality control could eat some (human) resources. Also as John says this could easily lead to an unintentioned favouritism. Unintentioned favouritism is a cheap reason to avoid all innovation from now on: o. Let's start with our license: I think that picking the GPL license implies an unintentioned favouritism for GNU. o. We should also not support ODF, because that implies an unintentioned favouritism for a company called Sun, and also for Novell! Please feel the sarcasm. If we are going to try to stop expressing any form of unintentioned favouritism, we might as well just stop at all. This is a completely straw man argument Philip. By restricting competition through favoritism we actually kill innovation. There are times when we will endorse already dominant ideologies that are in-line with our own and reject those that are dangerous, but I have never seen the board stray from our partner neutrality by pushing for something that hasn't already proved itself. i.e The board isn't going to come up with its own license and office format and push those as the one true way of doing things. To that effect if a company is interested or individuals wanted to put together a training program they could come to us and request we overview the course for endorsement and rights to use our trademarks. There are always these details to consider and there are consequences to even the smallest detail. I'm going to call you out here. You come to us with a set of questions which I can sum up to - If elected will you get the board to fund my pet projects? I'll give you this Philip, you have some nice high level ideas. What you lack is the details to get there - the step by step map that considers all the consequences and routes around them. I learned a great deal about this when I went to speak to Representative Barney Frank. I was helping push the Education For All Act which would provide US aid funding for a basic level of education to children around the world. Representative Frank turned around and said that all sounds really good but how do we get there? Where do the funds come from? What is your plan? Lesson learned - it is all about how you get there and not just the end results. If a project is worthwhile it will prove itself by getting itself off the ground and be able to sustain itself. The foundation comes in when such projects need a little push to get to the next level. A project should not rely solely on the Foundation because, lets face it, our resources are limited and there are a number of good project out there that could use our help. We are going to go for the ones that have a high probability of success and give us the biggest bang for our buck. -- John (J5) Palmieri [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ 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]
On Mon, 2007-12-03 at 12:46 -0500, Adam Schreiber wrote: On Dec 3, 2007 12:41 PM, Og Maciel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: How about North Carolina? We have a great place with big name companies, schools and exciting people. Seconded. Adam Schreiber *cough*Clemson University, Clemson, SC*cough* Would one of you guys like to put together a proposal including venue, costs and dates? It might be too late for this year since I am pretty sure we can book the Stata Center in January but it would be nice to have people talking to other venues and getting estimates so we have backup plans and the ability to move fast when choosing a venue for the year after. Alternatively if you wanted to get your feet wet and start small you could organize a smaller event and apply for funding from the board. -- John (J5) Palmieri [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Money spending, questions for the candidates
On Fri, 2007-11-30 at 20:28 +, Diego Escalante Urrelo wrote: Hey On 11/30/07, Bastian, Waldo [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: o. What is your opinion on an examination that could carry the title: GNOME Mobile certified software developer exam If the examination is offered by a third party, then I would say they are violating the trademark guidelines :). But if you suggest that GNOME via the Foundation could offer a certification, I wouldn't like to see that, sadly certifications tend to mean nothing with time due to people taking them just to pass the test. I think it would be more healthy to have easier ways for contributors to show their work and prove how much they have given to the project, hence showing their possible employer that they surely rock. Although the company that I work for surely employs a few rock stars, more often a project team or company is just looking for someone who knows how to use GTK+ widgets (think bellcurve). I believe the objective here would be to make it easier for commercial companies to develop solutions based on GNOME and part of the problem that such companies face is finding developers that are familiar with the technology. Reducing that hurdle will help to make the technology more popular. I don't think the Foundation should offer certification itself but maybe it could work together with an existing institute on expanding its training offerings around Gnome technology. Just my 2 ct. Interesting, I feel that anyway certifications tend to get worth nothing when people start taking them just to pass them, but still I see your point of letting people not in GNOME but users of GNOME's technology to prove they know that stuff. Certification implemented as training could be a different matter, as long as the real juice of the thing is the training. I still don't think Foundation should get involved into saying place X is an approbed training center, I fear that would go beyond its scope. I also fear it would lead to favoritism though I am all for helping out a company develop course-ware I am very much opposed to partnering with one entity over another. -- John (J5) Palmieri [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME dependent on Mono
On Fri, 2007-11-30 at 11:48 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote: That is a decision left entirely up to those who create such Free Software. I don't believe that we can tell them what to do or how to do it. We can ask politely. We are talking at cross purposes. The issue I raised is not whether a person _can_ write a program in C#; Microsoft might try to stop him, but we will not. The question is whether these programs are treated as part of GNOME, and to what extent other parts of GNOME use them, and what other GNOME developers are asked to do in regard to them. The GNOME Foundation ought to have something to say about that. And it does through the Release Team. I have personally witnessed and participated in numerous consensus meetings on the Release Team where pros and cons are heavily weighed. Mono has been a hot button for awhile there. It was only two releases or so ago that Tomboy was allowed in and that was after hard thought about the mono dependency. Vincent Untz already posted the policy that came out of that discussion (http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2007-November/msg00332.html) -- John (J5) Palmieri [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Money spending, questions for the candidates
leadership, the one that we lack, should have made our position clear to the audience (our users) before getting Slashdotted by the religious ones in the land of freesoftware. I think we covered this in another thread. We do need more transparency, timeliness and foresight but it is unclear if the reaction would have been different even if we did everything correctly. I think that we are having quite a handicap by this, and that we should do something about it. This year. Again, we've identified the issue ad nauseum , I would like to hear from the community on specifics they would like to see implemented. I have already detailed mine in this thread and others. How will you do that? What is your strategy? Since you directly ask - Jeff is already at work putting together a foundation blog which will be a huge help at getting information out there faster. I would also take time to identify decisions that could prove controversial and make sure we have a statement ready by the end of the meeting where the decision is made. Making sure board members are available to the press so that misinformation is minimized is also something that should be looked at. Notes on my mind: o. Technical leadership != one person dictatorship, we can work with committees too. Let's be open minded in stead of the I'm against everything point of view. Not sure where this comes from. Different bodies require different structure. The Board is a committee but a there are projects that are successfully run by a benevolent dictator. It is not up for the board to decide outside of it's own structure. If the right people are in that committee, nobody will be against anything. A good committee has debates and the best arguments win in a timely manner. Well that is a Utopian committee but the point is the Foundation is going to say no to things and yes to other things. o. I'm still hoping for GMAE/GNOME Mobile to be(come) that committee for mobile related components. Why not do ... o. one for the Desktop o. one for the translators and documentation writers o. one for that futuristic Online Desktop o. one for the language bindings and development tools Bureaucracy causes bottlenecks where they are not needed. Some of these may need committees but I would rather see them evolve naturally. Birds of a feather meetings are most likely more appropriate, at least in the beginning. o. On importance level: I think that without such technical leadership, GNOME will fragment into a huge amount of unconnected projects. I think this will eventually render most our components irrelevant. I don't see Armageddon on the horizon. We certainly need to keep an eye on things but the Release Team is well equipped to make sure we have a coherent platform. As we see clear winners from the current batch of technology they will naturally become part of the ecosystem. GUADEC, the Summit and other meeting makes sure relevant people keep up on what is going on and work together on shared solutions. I don't want to end with panic-speech but I just did. I'll continue my philosophic text with ... passion We like passion. We are a bunch of passionate people. I've met a lot of the other developers at conferences and my conclusion is that our average level of passion is high. With our combined passion, I think we can compete with any big player on this planet. I believe it has always been passion that made the final difference in technology Passion tempered in reality - yes. It would be a waste to steer ourselves to irrelevance. I think we can be both passionate and successful. And if not, let's die trying. I think we are a far cry from having to fall on our swords but yes we are both passionate and successful. (now that's a good conclusion, no?) ps. I hereby promise I will try not to make such long philosophic E-mails anymore. You must be insane for reading all of it! -- John (J5) Palmieri [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
RE: Money spending, questions for the candidates
On Fri, 2007-11-30 at 00:43 -0800, Bastian, Waldo wrote: o. What is your opinion on an examination that could carry the title: GNOME Mobile certified software developer exam If the examination is offered by a third party, then I would say they are violating the trademark guidelines :). But if you suggest that GNOME via the Foundation could offer a certification, I wouldn't like to see that, sadly certifications tend to mean nothing with time due to people taking them just to pass the test. I think it would be more healthy to have easier ways for contributors to show their work and prove how much they have given to the project, hence showing their possible employer that they surely rock. Although the company that I work for surely employs a few rock stars, more often a project team or company is just looking for someone who knows how to use GTK+ widgets (think bellcurve). I believe the objective here would be to make it easier for commercial companies to develop solutions based on GNOME and part of the problem that such companies face is finding developers that are familiar with the technology. Reducing that hurdle will help to make the technology more popular. I don't think the Foundation should offer certification itself but maybe it could work together with an existing institute on expanding its training offerings around Gnome technology. Just my 2 ct. Cheers, Waldo Waldo, this was a very astute observation. Thanks. -- John (J5) Palmieri [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME dependent on Mono
On Wed, 2007-11-28 at 20:03 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote: I read http://boycottnovell.com/2007/11/05/gnome-mono-yelp/ with great concern. Since I am not an expert, I cannot tell on my own if that description of the situation is accurate. If part of it is not accurate, I hope someone will explain. However, if it is accurate, GNOME has a serious problem. I have always supported the development of free platforms for C#, just as I've supported the development of free platforms for any language that users use. I also wouldn't argue that people should not use C# with a free platform for secondary applications. However, making GNOME depend on Mono is running a grave risk, and a grave mistake. If the article accurately describes the situation, I think we need to launch a high-priority project to reimplement Yelp in some other language. The use of code from Firefox in a way that might cause trademark problems is also a serious issue. The solution might not be difficult -- it may be enough to remove the trademark in the sources used by GNOME wherever that is necessary -- but the solution does need to be carried out. The nontechnical impact of these issues vastly exceeds the technical impact, so considering them only in technical terms is fundamentally misguided. In this sort of decision, the Foundation should intervene and decide based on the nontechnical issues at stake. If those who work for Novell tell us not to worry, we should not listen to them. I would also like to ease your mind and say the Release Team would take great exception to a core GNOME module all of a sudden sprouting hard dependencies. Some modules are more scrutinized than other, Yelp would be one of them. Novell has also been very sensitive to the Mono issue in the past. They still champion it but have done things like create C glue libraries and refrain from making their apps like Evolution depend on Mono. -- John (J5) Palmieri [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ 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]
On Wed, 2007-11-28 at 17:44 +, Ghee Teo wrote: Part of the issue is the Boston Summit is always in Boston where as GUADEC can always get fresh enthusiastic teams to help out. This is because in order to become a host city for GUADEC you already have to have a team assembled to make and sell a bid. This is helped by the fact that host cities and organizers often see prestige in hosting GUADEC. 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. Is it still true now? Are there other locations that substantial number of hackers are around? Just some thoughts :) It is called the Boston Summit. All joking asside cost is the main issue. The Boston Summit is supposed to be a more informal and efficient gathering where GUADEC is the big bang go all out conference so budgets are handled accordingly. Having it in one city allows us to theoretically keep costs down and make sure the quality is still there. There is also historically a large contingent of GNOME hackers in Boston. We did have it in New York one year. In fact that was the first year I went since being in NY meant I just had to hop a couple of trains to get there. The venue was, shall we say, less than desirable, though it worked out for me. So there are always pros and cons to the equation. Right now I think the pros still outweigh the cons in keeping it in Boston but who knows what the future brings. If someone wanted to organize in some other city and could put together a detailed proposal there is nothing stopping the board from considering it. -- John (J5) Palmieri [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: what about next ODF?
On Wed, 2007-11-28 at 21:34 +, Rui Miguel Silva Seabra wrote: Hello, One question to candidates: Wil you promote the Foundation's participation on the reviewing of ODF? I think it is a no brainier that we should support review of any version of ODF. That being said it would be up to someone within the community to step forward and say they needed help from the foundation to participate in the review. The foundation may wish to actively seek out someone appropriate to do so also but I don't see it being a problem finding someone to volunteer. However, the question is overly broad. The foundation itself is not going to be helping define the next ODF but should support community members who wish to join any steering committee provided the member is appropriate and committed for such a task. -- John (J5) Palmieri [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to the candidates
On Mon, 2007-11-26 at 16:31 +0100, Anne Østergaard wrote: On Mon, 2007-11-26 at 09:48 -0500, John (J5) Palmieri wrote: On Thu, 2007-11-22 at 23:52 +0100, Anne Østergaard wrote: Questions to the candidates: Will you apply for the position as new Executive Director for GNOME? No Will you apply for any paid position within GNOME while serving as board member? No Will you attend at least 90% of the board calls? Yes Can you accept competing official ISO standards? Yes, as long as they are open and free of intellectual property concerns. It is then up to the developers what direction they wish to go in. The board should not set technical direction but rather reflect the will of the community while offering moral guidance as well as advice from expert advisers. If they are fully interoperable there might not be a legal problem, but rather a political problem for the society about the costs. Well in that case we will also have an other situation to deal with, in the case where the dominant standard has near monopoly status. Then it becomes a question about monopoly versus free and open competition. We have all seen that even with a clear cut monopoly case in The European Court of Justice recently, it is not easy to have the loosing part change its conduct. Even if it eventually does so, it will take an awful long time and it will probably not be to 100%. You are completely correct and I think the community can make the right choices here that 6 elected people can not. I do however think the foundation is well within it's power to make statements based on community experts recommendations but for the most part should let things be settled in the community. -- John (J5) Palmieri [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to the candidates
On Thu, 2007-11-22 at 23:52 +0100, Anne Østergaard wrote: Questions to the candidates: Will you apply for the position as new Executive Director for GNOME? No Will you apply for any paid position within GNOME while serving as board member? No Will you attend at least 90% of the board calls? Yes Can you accept competing official ISO standards? Yes, as long as they are open and free of intellectual property concerns. It is then up to the developers what direction they wish to go in. The board should not set technical direction but rather reflect the will of the community while offering moral guidance as well as advice from expert advisers. 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? If it is not free and open then the board should not endorse it. However that is not to say the board should not engage working groups which are working on such non-free standards. If it is in our interest we should provide the resources to shift such standards in the free and open direction. -- John (J5) Palmieri [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: A question to candidates
On Thu, 2007-11-22 at 18:11 +0100, Dave Neary wrote: Hi, I did send these to the membership committee, but voting's nearly open, and I think they're important, so I guess I'll just ask... The foundation's role is essentially to facilitate the enthusiasm of the GNOME project, as Andrew Cowie blogged earlier [1]. This consists of two major elements - managing/improving the finances that the foundation has, and identifying areas where those finances can help remove roadblocks or encourage productive contribution. After two years without a full-time employee, the foundation's finances are in a decent state, with $150K cash and $50K receivables [2]. What do you see as the best way to spend this money? In terms of hiring, do you prefer hiring a sysadmin, or an executive director? What other priorities do you have for expenditure this year, outside of our usual cost centers (GUADEC + salaries + travel sponsorship)? This money should be used for micro meeting of not just GNOME specific events but also industry wide events such as the upcoming Desktop Plumbers meeting or KDE/GNOME face to faces. Many of these events sets the tone for uptake of base infrastructure which are key to the building blocks of GNOME. In many cases we can get funding from the organizers themselves for a few key people but having a larger presence makes these meeting more productive. It also should be used to foster conferences in areas such Asia both by direct funding and by funding leaders within those communities to travel to conferences such as Linux World, GUADEC and the Boston Summit so that they can learn how to run their own events. As for hiring I think we need an executive director first to get our ship in order. Then we can think about using or securing funding for other full time jobs we may need doing. The last thing I would say the funding could be used for is spicing up the GNOME booths at trade shows. We did an excellent job of getting the event boxes together thanks to some leaders within our community. Still our booths are usually bare of the simple but detailed touches which would make our booth more approachable. Logo'ed table cloths go a long way. Bringing back the swag initiative would also be important here. It could be a loss leader at first but selling stylish t-shirts and plush mascots could also bring in more funding as well as provide decoration for the booth. A second question to all candidates: what do you see as the weak points of the current board, and how do you propose addressing those weak points? Well one week point is the board seems almost foreign to the every day GNOME contributor. People vote and pretty much forget about the inner workings until Slashdot gets a hold on some sensationalized story and a press release is put out and still to the outside world the role of the foundation is unclear. It is hard to figure out weak points because it is hard to see exactly what the foundation does. I would fix this by communicating any decision, from the mundane to the sensational, in an easy to digest format on my blog. Meeting minutes and press releases are just not enough. Active engagement of the community is a must. One other weak point was the organization of the Boston Summit this year. While it was salvaged at the last minute it was done in a less than ideal way. The next board will have to make sure this years Boston Summit is no less than amazing so that it doesn't die out as a result of dissatisfaction. If elected to the board I would like to take on that role. Even if not elected I am an available Boston resident and would be more than happy to help out. -- John (J5) Palmieri [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Foundation Elections 2007. Let's start the debate!
On Mon, 2007-11-19 at 07:39 -0300, Bruno Boaventura wrote: With the final list of candidates announced, it's time to submit questions about the GNOME Foundation and GNOME Project to this years prospective Board of Directors. The list, a summary of each candidate's statement and a link to each candidate's candidacy can be found at: http://foundation.gnome.org/elections/2007/candidates.html Here we'll go: [1] How much impact would being a member of the GNOME Foundation Board have on your current contributions to GNOME ? The past year I have been busy with work on the OLPC project and have not had much time to dedicate to GNOME besides serving on the embedded advisory board. Now that my job is shifting from a Development to Leadership roll I will have more time (less context switches) for positions such as the GNOME Foundation Board and continuing to represent GNOME at such meetings such as the Desktop Architects meeting and the upcoming Desktop Plumbers meetings. My work on the Release Team will sadly have to move to another community member. The good news is this is a great way to get into the day to day functions of the GNOME project. [2] Online Desktop and Services are being talked about as the next large step in GNOME - what is your vision for Online Desktop and Services and how would you measure them ? I'm currently listening to the LUGRadio interview of Havoc Pennington and Colin Walters (http://www.lugradio.org/episodes/#episode88). I've been lucky enough to see the evolution of the Online Desktop from Ya, to Mugshot to GNOME Online Desktop. Things happen in small steps which only seem large if you tend to only look at the major milestone within the project. From the beginning I have been excited about the prospects of moving GNOME beyond the desktop. I in fact think that using the limiting nomenclature of a Desktop Environment has hamstrung us and we should simply call ourselves GNOME. I see the GNOME Online push as pulling us into the Wild West of the Web platform where everyone is staking their claims and there is yet to be monopolies to stifle innovation. Sure Google is big but sites like Facebook and Wikipedia were able to emerge. The only way to defeat entrenched adversaries in business is to outflank them with disruptive technology. Microsoft did it to IBM with the Desktop, Google did it to Microsoft with web search and we have the chance to bring in integrated Open Source web applications to the mix and even define a new era of Open Services. My vision is bringing a whole connected platform which is open, one small step at a time. How do we measure that? By knowing that the quality of what we produce will be better than what proprietary technology can produce. That in turn is measured in how we grow GNOME and grow the platform. That being said I believe the Boards mission in this is to not set direction but grease the wheels so that those who want to move in this direction find it easy to do so. This could included procuring hardware for applications to run on or facilitating talks between the different interested groups. [3] What are the SMART goals that you desire to set for yourself should you be elected to the Board ? 1) Increase participation in GNOME from within and without - (S)pecificly - identify areas where we need help and would be fun for other to participate - even the smallest of tasks can get people more active in the community - (M)easurable - The question to ask is are we meeting our various project goals, if not go back to the first S - (A)ttainable - if I leave office with one more person working as part of GNOME it will be a success, more and I will be dancing with joy - (R)ealistic - GNOME grows with the strength of our leadership and we have had strong leaders throughout the years. That is as real as it is going to get. - (T)imely - this goal can be attained with fairly quick changes as outlined in my next few goals Ok I'm going to forgo the rather dull SMART format for now 2) Find out the bottle necks within the board and work to getting others in the community to take on responsibility. The board is a fairly small group of people who need to learn how to delegate and include the rest of the community. It is not an ivory tower of cabal leaders. Giving small consumable tasks to foundation members involves them and lessens the burden on our part time board members. 3) Make sure the next Boston Summit kicks ass. This years was a bit of a letdown though good work still got done. It is an important meeting to grow membership as well as set direction. Being a Boston resident I organized the Beer Summit, given about a week. I think I can organize the whole Boston Summit as a board member next year. [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 ? Or, [4] If you are a candidate for the first time,
[Candidacy] John (J5) Palmieri
Name: John (J5) Palmieri E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Affiliations: Red Hat, Inc. and OLPC I am running for the board because I believe GNOME needs to reach out and get more people involved, not just in development of code. We are already really good at that and though there is always room for improvement there are areas that need a bit more push to get going. Areas such as marketing, art and outreach, while having been growing recently, need to be brought up and given more visibility within the community. I believe it is the boards job to identify areas where we need resources and to identify leaders and catalysts who can utilize those resources to build subprojects like gnome-love or the release team. It is also the boards job to help remove obstacles which hinder these subprojects. I believe I qualify for the position because of my experience within the GNOME community and in building bridges to other communities. I have been part of the release team for a year, been a GNOME representative to the LSB and and a GNOME ambassador to KDE as well as an adviser to the board for the OLPC project. -- John (J5) Palmieri [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
