Re: GNOME Foundation Board candidacy: Seif Lotfy
Hi Seif, On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 2:51 AM, seiflo...@googlemail.com seiflo...@gmail.com wrote: Name: Seif Lotfy Email: seiflotfy (at) gmail.com Affiliation: None I have been a GNOME contributor since 2007. And served on the board of directors the past year. Could you kindly provide a brief summary of your work/contributions as board member in the past year? It would greatly help the members in deciding to vote for you. -- Regards, Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) FSF member#5124 ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Fwd: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy
Lefty fwd'd his reply to the list, but not mine to him. -- Forwarded message -- From: Iain i...@gnome.org Date: Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 5:34 PM Subject: Re: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy To: Lefty (石鏡 ) le...@shugendo.org On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 4:39 PM, Lefty (石鏡 ) le...@shugendo.org wrote: On 6/1/10 7:38 AM, Iain i...@gnome.org wrote: It seems to me that your underlying belief is that there is too much (large) corporate influence in GNOME. Would you say that you might have some conflict of interest here given that your project (Zeitgeist) was ignored/shunned by the GNOME Shell developers? Iain, this seems unreasonable to me. Is anyone who decides to run for the board who's ever had a disagreement with some group of GNOME developers or other going to be subject to the suggestion that they have a conflict of interest? If that's the case, I doubt we can really find a single qualified candidate. Everyone's got their interests and views, and (hopefully) the candidates are candid about what their views are. I think these suggestions of conflicts of interest are, honestly, a little out of line. I disagree, I don't remember any candidate who has quite glaringly obvious conflicts of interest running though their candidacy statement as Seif's. Its a struggle to find anything in his statement that doesn't come from his annoyance that Zeitgeist is not being picked up for GNOME 3. I have to say that I don't think we need to have spotlessly clean, conflict of interest free candidates. Its perfectly fine to run for the board even if these conflicts exist. They are his opinions, interests and beliefs after all, but it seems rather disingenious to pretend that the conflicts do not exist and I think it is completely proper to mention them, discuss them in public and to allow people to make up their own minds as to whether the conflict is going to cause a problem if they are elected. This is the reason elected representatives are supposed to inform the public as to their conflicts of interest, so that we can see whether or not the decisions they make are for the good of the project/country or for the own person. Seeing as Seif has mentioned in the past his plans for starting a company based around Zeitgeist, I think this is a very important issue. The board is not a method to push your personal projects in the limelight. In future, I would prefer it if you would reply in public, thanks, iain ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Fwd: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy
On Wed, 2010-06-02 at 11:52 +0100, Iain wrote: On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 4:39 PM, Lefty (石鏡 ) le...@shugendo.org wrote: On 6/1/10 7:38 AM, Iain i...@gnome.org wrote: It seems to me that your underlying belief is that there is too much (large) corporate influence in GNOME. Would you say that you might have some conflict of interest here given that your project (Zeitgeist) was ignored/shunned by the GNOME Shell developers? Iain, this seems unreasonable to me. Is anyone who decides to run for the board who's ever had a disagreement with some group of GNOME developers or other going to be subject to the suggestion that they have a conflict of interest? If that's the case, I doubt we can really find a single qualified candidate. Everyone's got their interests and views, and (hopefully) the candidates are candid about what their views are. I think these suggestions of conflicts of interest are, honestly, a little out of line. I disagree, I don't remember any candidate who has quite glaringly obvious conflicts of interest running though their candidacy statement as Seif's. Its a struggle to find anything in his statement that doesn't come from his annoyance that Zeitgeist is not being picked up for GNOME 3. The way I read Seif's candidacy is that he wants more coordination to take place between different GNOME stakeholders (community, Canonical, RH, Novell, etc) when it comes to the development and design of a technology like GNOME's Shell. This is _perfectly_ reasonable and several people have responded already that they understand and agree with this. Include me in that group. In future, I would prefer it if you would reply in public, In my opinion is your Seif - Zeitgeist conspiracy theory, crazy. It's also my opinion that it doesn't belong on the foundation-list. Can you stick to asking the candidates relevant questions? [Context] Lefty fwd'd his reply to the list, but not mine to him. In future, I would prefer it if you would reply in public, Lefty did reply in public. Getting your reply on the foundation-list is your responsibility, not Lefty's. It would even be impolite if he'd have forwarded a private reply from you to him unto a public mailing list. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof freelance software developer Codeminded BVBA - http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy
Hi Olav, Hello Seif, Reading your motivation I think I understand what you mean, but would like to know for sure. As such, I'd appreciate if you could expand some more on your motivation. Further, though I think I understand, I'm purposely asking very open ended questions (to avoid suggestive ones). My goal is not to have a discussion on this with you or others, purely to better understand your motivation. On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 10:59:35AM +0200, Seif Lotfy wrote: Motivation: My reasons for running for GNOME board are as follows: • Encourage more cooperation on design between RH and Canonical. What do you mean concretely (design of what)? Why RH and Canonical specifically? I left out Intel, Nokia, Novell and others because their main focus now is on Meego which on a design level I do not consider a GNOME project. Currently RH and Canonical both have started their own design user experience to improve the usability of GNOME. Both however seem to be heading to the same goal but with different designs that could on a shallow level end up leaving GNOME in an diverging state (Shell vs Unity). Both should start cooperating on the design level. One could start off with a design board combining selected and competent representatives from community and companies, whose first objective is to rewrite the HIG. • Avoid fragmentation by helping to build consensus around a unified vision for GNOME's future to prevent a GNOME divergence into 2.30 -and GNOME 3 base. What do you think is lacking now? What is lacking is a vision of what GNOME 3 should be. Where is it heading? Who is the target of the GNOME 3 desktop? How is the current GNOME accepted by the community. There seems to be some disagreements on several issues concerning design and technical aspects, which are leading to frictions between upstream and downstream development. • Bring up and fix issues with GNOME that are being ignored or shunned. Can you list these? I will just be frank here... • Translation shifting from upstream to downstream ? • Development infrastructure limiting upstream contribution. • Canonical's Unity development, what does it mean for GNOME ? • Red Hat's control over GNOME Shell ? • Meego being a competition or a GNOME sister project ? • Smaller companies involvement into GNOME decisions • How much of GNOME is community driven and how much is company driven • Is the GNOME community forced to assimilate with decisions made by those companies? • More... • Work on letting GNOME shell be lead by the community. Can you expand on what you want changed? Currently all GNOME Shell decisions are taken by Red Hat, thus limiting the community's technical as well as design contribution. I suggest starting a technical board with equal amounts of representatives of companies as and community whose members are significantly competent for the roles. Those should drive the technical development of GNOME Shell forward. • I stand for innovation in GNOME. What is lacking now, and what do want to do when being part of the board? Recently GNOME has not been attracting many new developers. It is because its current development state doesn't allow any new innovation to settle in. GNOME being run mostly by people representing bigger companies no risks are being taken and thinking out of the box is usually categorized as such. While understandable it leaves GNOME in a state where a lot of functionalities are desired but not deployable. Innovations are usually brought up by smaller companies such as Collabora, Codethink, Landeo, Igalia and others. We should allow them more responsibilities in decision taking when it comes to GNOME's emerging technologies. Don't hesitate to ask me questions when the lines are open. done Hope I answered your questions. -- Regards, Olav ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy
Bring up and fix issues with GNOME that are being ignored or shunned. Can you list these? I will just be frank here... Translation shifting from upstream to downstream ? Development infrastructure limiting upstream contribution. Canonical's Unity development, what does it mean for GNOME ? Red Hat's control over GNOME Shell ? Meego being a competition or a GNOME sister project ? Smaller companies involvement into GNOME decisions How much of GNOME is community driven and how much is company driven Is the GNOME community forced to assimilate with decisions made by those companies? Work on letting GNOME shell be lead by the community. Can you expand on what you want changed? Currently all GNOME Shell decisions are taken by Red Hat, thus limiting the community's technical as well as design contribution. It seems to me that your underlying belief is that there is too much (large) corporate influence in GNOME. Would you say that you might have some conflict of interest here given that your project (Zeitgeist) was ignored/shunned by the GNOME Shell developers? I stand for innovation in GNOME. What is lacking now, and what do want to do when being part of the board? Recently GNOME has not been attracting many new developers. It is because its current development state doesn't allow any new innovation to settle in. GNOME being run mostly by people representing bigger companies no risks are being taken and thinking out of the box is usually categorized as such. Surely one could argue that GNOME Shell is quite innovative thinking outside of the box, and that quite a large risk is being taken with it, and most of the suggestions for it that come from the community are of requests for uninnovative things; I want a task bar, I want applets Or is there a potential conflict of interest here as well that Zeitgeist has not gained much traction in the community? [Redhat or Ubuntu] could start off with a design board combining selected and competent representatives from community and companies, whose first objective is to rewrite the HIG. ... I suggest starting a technical board with equal amounts of representatives of companies as and community whose members are significantly competent for the roles. ... Recently GNOME has not been attracting many new developers. Yet you think the solution to attracting new developers is to wrap the processes up in red tape and technical boards or design boards? Surely Free Software is supposed to be about meritocracy, not about boards dictating how an individual project should be run. iain ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
FW: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy
Sorry, reply rather than reply all... -- Forwarded Message From: David Schlesinger le...@shugendo.org Date: Tue, 01 Jun 2010 08:39:59 -0700 To: Iain i...@gnome.org Conversation: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy Subject: Re: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy On 6/1/10 7:38 AM, Iain i...@gnome.org wrote: It seems to me that your underlying belief is that there is too much (large) corporate influence in GNOME. Would you say that you might have some conflict of interest here given that your project (Zeitgeist) was ignored/shunned by the GNOME Shell developers? Iain, this seems unreasonable to me. Is anyone who decides to run for the board who's ever had a disagreement with some group of GNOME developers or other going to be subject to the suggestion that they have a conflict of interest? If that's the case, I doubt we can really find a single qualified candidate. Everyone's got their interests and views, and (hopefully) the candidates are candid about what their views are. I think these suggestions of conflicts of interest are, honestly, a little out of line. -- End of Forwarded Message ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy
On Tue, 2010-06-01 at 09:38 -0700, Lefty (=?ISO-2022-JP?B?GyRCQFA2QBsoQg==?= ) wrote: Xav apparently needs to examine the headers first for evidence of lurking shill-hood or something of that sort. Sometimes the apparences are wrong. Evolution just shows me the mailer along with the From, To and Subject headers. I don't dig in headers of random people's mail. Your subject + mailer-agent just caught my eye. Well played, Xav. Well played. Apparently you were waiting for it. I'm happy if I've been useful to you. You're welcome. Xav ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: FW: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy
User-Agent: Microsoft-Entourage/12.24.0.100205 Date: Tue, 01 Jun 2010 08:41:19 -0700 Subject: FW: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy From: Lefty (=?ISO-2022-JP?B?GyRCQFA2QBsoQg==?= ) le...@shugendo.org I find it quite amusing that you're using a Microsoft client on an Apple pc to defend your GNOME candidacy. Kudos for your sense of humor (or is it just plain provocation ?). Xav ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy
On 06/01/2010 01:08 PM, Lefty (石鏡 ) wrote: On 6/1/10 10:01 AM, Xavier Bestel xavier.bes...@free.fr wrote: Err .. nothing, except my extraordinary ability to mix their names ? :) You're displaying quite a host of extraordinary abilities this morning. Can we please stop this subthread now? behdad ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy
On Tue, 2010-06-01 at 15:39 +0200, Seif Lotfy wrote: • Encourage more cooperation on design between RH and Canonical. What do you mean concretely (design of what)? Why RH and Canonical specifically? I left out Intel, Nokia, Novell and others because their main focus now is on Meego which on a design level I do not consider a GNOME project. I think that cooperation must be improved at all levels, not only at design. Currently RH and Canonical both have started their own design user experience to improve the usability of GNOME. Both however seem to be heading to the same goal but with different designs that could on a shallow level end up leaving GNOME in an diverging state (Shell vs Unity). Both should start cooperating on the design level. One could start off with a design board combining selected and competent representatives from community and companies, whose first objective is to rewrite the HIG. gnome-shell is working upstream, _is_ a GNOME project, and Unity isn't. Moreover, I wasn't realised of their existence since very lately, and GNOME shell is been working from about a year. Sincerely, I have no idea of their motivation for this fork. Reading a post from Tomeu Vizoso [1] I noticed that Ubuntu people doesn't have too much idea of GNOME GObject introspection. This sounds strange to me. Maybe they should have done better for been informed of this, but I'm sure we can do better too. What I want to mean is that we can problem like this at all levels, not only at design level. It seems that GNOME needs to improve the communication channels with downstreams (Red Hat, Canonical, Intel, Nokia, Novell, etc). We need active actions for this, it seems that transparency on GNOME project is not enough. And I know that we have the Advisory Board for that, but this model is not working neither. Maybe we need some periodical meetings with technical staff of downstream projects. Maybe we can organize this sort of meeting at GUADEC or we can organize hackfest for this. -- Juanjo marin [1] http://blog.tomeuvizoso.net/2010/05/ubuntu-and-gobject-introspection.html ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy
On Tue, 2010-06-01 at 10:07 -0700, Lefty (石鏡 ) wrote: On 6/1/10 9:49 AM, Claudio Saavedra csaave...@gnome.org wrote: I wouldn't be happy to see this kind of sarcasm being used by people running the Foundation, if they happen to disagree with other members. Happily for everyone, I'm not one of the people running the Foundation, I'm just another member. Fair enough. I had the wrong impression that you were running for the Foundation board. Sorry for the mistake. Claudio -- Claudio Saavedra csaave...@gnome.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy
On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 5:37 PM, Johannes Schmid j...@jsschmid.de wrote: Hi! I will just be frank here... • Translation shifting from upstream to downstream ? • Development infrastructure limiting upstream contribution. • Canonical's Unity development, what does it mean for GNOME ? • Red Hat's control over GNOME Shell ? • Meego being a competition or a GNOME sister project ? • Smaller companies involvement into GNOME decisions • How much of GNOME is community driven and how much is company driven • Is the GNOME community forced to assimilate with decisions made by those companies? • More... OK, you were asked to list them. Anyway, why do you think there are true? * From my point of view as part of the gtp coordination team I think translations are not shifting downstream, we rather solved most of these problems and have high-quality upstream translations. AFAIK there are quite a few standing issues with GNOME arabic support. http://wiki.arabeyes.org/Gnome http://wiki.arabeyes.org/%D8%AC%D9%86%D9%88%D9%85 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=420964 These are slightly out of date though. * Why do you think our infrastructure is limiting? The development happening on Launchpad (not bazaar) really beats what GNOME provides in several aspects, starting bug management, blueprinting and linking with branches. There are a lot of nice projects there that are not part of GNOME because of the GNOME Infrastructure: GNOME Do, Docky, Getting Things GNOME... These projects are in their own rights very successful and used by the community. And by allowing them to deploy per default with GNOME would just benefit the GNOME community... The Project leads don't care since they are being deployed downstream now which is more or less skipping the middle man which is GNOME, who seem to be conservative in some of these aspects. I am not saying we should switch to Lauchpad or so. But we need to study and make an effort into compromising. Having major projects work downstream will kill GNOME, and pointing fingers will not help. * For the company statements IMHO despite I don't know anything about the Unity plans I think those arent' true. Could you explain? I am not saying its true but sooner or later RH will want to deploy GNOME Shell on the netbooks just like Unity will at some point put an eye on the desktop... Its naive to asssume both will not try to assume positions in the netbook and desktop market... Thanks, Johannes -- This is me doing some advertisement for my blog http://seilo.geekyogre.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy
Hi! AFAIK there are quite a few standing issues with GNOME arabic support. http://wiki.arabeyes.org/Gnome http://wiki.arabeyes.org/%D8%AC%D9%86%D9%88%D9%85 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=420964 These are slightly out of date though. Hmm, the bugs seem mostly fixed and I don't see what this has to do with upstream vs. downstream. * Why do you think our infrastructure is limiting? The development happening on Launchpad (not bazaar) really beats what GNOME provides in several aspects, starting bug management, blueprinting and linking with branches. There are a lot of nice projects there that are not part of GNOME because of the GNOME Infrastructure: GNOME Do, Docky, Getting Things GNOME... These projects are in their own rights very successful and used by the community. And by allowing them to deploy per default with GNOME would just benefit the GNOME community... The Project leads don't care since they are being deployed downstream now which is more or less skipping the middle man which is GNOME, who seem to be conservative in some of these aspects. I am not saying we should switch to Lauchpad or so. But we need to study and make an effort into compromising. Having major projects work downstream will kill GNOME, and pointing fingers will not help. Well, I see your point while I disagree. * For the company statements IMHO despite I don't know anything about the Unity plans I think those arent' true. Could you explain? I am not saying its true but sooner or later RH will want to deploy GNOME Shell on the netbooks just like Unity will at some point put an eye on the desktop... Its naive to asssume both will not try to assume positions in the netbook and desktop market... It's getting off-topic but would it be wrong to say that one company is working upstream while the other company is working downstream? Wouldn't the point be to have everyone work upstream? Seems like the new board should participate in this discussion regardless who is in the new board. Regards, Johannes signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy
On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 10:40 PM, Johannes Schmid j...@jsschmid.de wrote: Hi! AFAIK there are quite a few standing issues with GNOME arabic support. http://wiki.arabeyes.org/Gnome http://wiki.arabeyes.org/%D8%AC%D9%86%D9%88%D9%85 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=420964 These are slightly out of date though. Hmm, the bugs seem mostly fixed and I don't see what this has to do with upstream vs. downstream. * Why do you think our infrastructure is limiting? The development happening on Launchpad (not bazaar) really beats what GNOME provides in several aspects, starting bug management, blueprinting and linking with branches. There are a lot of nice projects there that are not part of GNOME because of the GNOME Infrastructure: GNOME Do, Docky, Getting Things GNOME... These projects are in their own rights very successful and used by the community. And by allowing them to deploy per default with GNOME would just benefit the GNOME community... The Project leads don't care since they are being deployed downstream now which is more or less skipping the middle man which is GNOME, who seem to be conservative in some of these aspects. I am not saying we should switch to Lauchpad or so. But we need to study and make an effort into compromising. Having major projects work downstream will kill GNOME, and pointing fingers will not help. Well, I see your point while I disagree. * For the company statements IMHO despite I don't know anything about the Unity plans I think those arent' true. Could you explain? I am not saying its true but sooner or later RH will want to deploy GNOME Shell on the netbooks just like Unity will at some point put an eye on the desktop... Its naive to asssume both will not try to assume positions in the netbook and desktop market... It's getting off-topic but would it be wrong to say that one company is working upstream while the other company is working downstream? Wouldn't the point be to have everyone work upstream? Seems like the new board should participate in this discussion regardless who is in the new board. I would love to have the whole community discuss this issue... please wait for my next mail Regards, Johannes Cheers Seif ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy
On Tue, 2010-06-01 at 23:19 +0200, Seif Lotfy wrote: Yet you think the solution to attracting new developers is to wrap the processes up in red tape and technical boards or design boards? Surely Free Software is supposed to be about meritocracy, not about boards dictating how an individual project should be run. Well currently there is a GNOME Shell meritocracy among the RH employees. How is that meritocracy for the community. Yes I think the solution is setting up boards. It is not a Meritocracy as soon as sole responsibilities are given to a group of individuals affiliated with the same corporation. so, we complain that companies don't contribute enough upstream, and when a big team of developers from one company works on a new project, we don't like it? So what's the problem, that we want more non-RH people working on it? Since the development has been open for more than a year, I don't see anything preventing non-RH people to do so. As for giving responsibilities to a group of individuals, it is what happens in all GNOME modules. So, I don't see why we would need a board for gnome-shell and not for gnome-control-center, nautilus or others, or are you suggesting to add a huge bureaucracy for every non-trivial change/development that we do? ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
