Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On 12/15/09 4:09 PM, Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) zee...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 11:49 PM, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote: Hi, Lefty wrote: Given the proposition that proprietary software is illegitimate, and the statement above, do you believe that the GNOME Foundation and community should distance itself from companies which produce proprietary software? Specifically, should the Advisory Board be dissolved, and should the Foundation refuse further financial support from the companies that are currently on the Ad Board? I for one am interested in Richard's position on this. Mine is clear: I have no problem at all working with companies who want to improve GNOME or the GNOME platform, even if they develop proprietary software. And the money they give to GNOME gets used to improve GNOME, so as long as there are no strings attached, I don't care particularly why they give it. On the other hand, I feel under no obligation to promote their non-free software offerings, or guilt in encouraging free equivalents of their proprietary components products. I fee like you took thoughts out of my mind but unlike me were able to express them very nicely. :) I'm actually still hoping to get a response on this... ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Hi to all. I'm not a GNOME Foundation member, then I apologize for this e-mail. But as enthusiastic GNOME user, I would like to send you my opinion. First at all: thank you Richard Stallman and Miguel De Icaza for GNOME idea. Thank you Miguel for GNOME hacking and for Mono too. Thank you RMS for GCC, Emacs and other packages of GNU system. Especially thanks to all GNOME hackers to improve GNOME every day. If some of you use/develop/love some proprietary software, this not matter. Thank you for your free code in GNOME. As user, my vision is that free software is a competitor of non-free software. It is simple for me: free software was born to replace proprietary software. Not only GNU/Linux is a competitor of Mac OS X and Windows, but all FLOSS are a competitor of its proprietary counterparts. I.e.: Firefox is a competitor of IE and Safari (and Chrome, that is partially non-free). GCC is a competitor of proprietary compilers (and GCC won :-) ). GNOME was born as a competitor of KDE because it was based on a proprietary framework. Today GNOME and KDE are friends and both free/open source. So the Free/Open Source Software is - taking it as a whole - a competitor of proprietary software. You may be not in agree with me, but many users see the issue in these terms. They would like to have free/open tools to replace proprietary tools. They feel free/open source software as a proprietary software alternative/competitor/replacement. I often read msdn blogs, google blogs, and other corporate and community blogs and planets. I never read on msdn something to legitimate Mac. Oh yes, you can read about MS Office for Mac, but it is different. You can read on GNU website about GNU software for Windows or Mac too. For GNU Project it is better to use Octave on Windows instead Matlab on Windows. If floss is a non-floss competitor then it is logic do not advertise or speaking favorably about non-free software in the GNOME Planet. Obviously, it is good to analyze proprietary software and learn from it. IMHO GNOME brings the better ideas from Windows an Mac, and it is better than Mac and Windows. But GNOME, on top of a free/open OS, is a replacement of Windows and Mac. And I think that GNOME should advertise its brothers in virtualization software, like QEMU and Virtualbox[1], not vmWare. Then I think RMS suggestion is essentially logic and coherent with GNOME mission and with what users expect from it. Thank you and best regards. Guido http://guiodic.wordpress.com [1] it is distributed as free software too. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership (Summary)
It seems that a better idea is to consider the Planet not part of GNOME. That way GNOME does not have to deal with whatever is in the planet, like slashdot does not control and is not responsible for the messages by its posters. GNOME controls the official web page content. This planet is not part of that. Easier for everyone. On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 4:41 PM, Lucas Rocha luc...@gnome.org wrote: Hi all, It's quite obvious that the original thread ended up branching into several separate topics. I thought it would be useful to summarize some of the key points on each topic in an attempt to bring a more practical perspective to the whole discussion. This is not an official message from the Board. It's just me trying to make some sense out of the tons of messages in the thread and, maybe, bring a more useful (or at least more clear) closure to the discussed topics. -- The original topic: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On 12/13/09 8:22 AM, Richard Stallman r...@gnu.org wrote: ...I would not encourage anyone to use non-free software even to get money to give to a worthy cause. I apologize to all, but given this, there's a question that _really_ has to be asked: Given the proposition that proprietary software is illegitimate, and the statement above, do you believe that the GNOME Foundation and community should distance itself from companies which produce proprietary software? Specifically, should the Advisory Board be dissolved, and should the Foundation refuse further financial support from the companies that are currently on the Ad Board? ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
El dom, 13-12-2009 a las 13:08 +0100, Peter Hjalmarsson escribió: For gentoo, they have two feeds: the planet, and the universe, where the planet only aggregates those blog posts that are tagged with gentoo, and the universe aggregates the rest. I cannot understand why GNOME cannot have this system also? I totally agree with Peter Hjalmarsson Then for the planet you can have a code of conduct of what they are allowed to tag as GNOME (i.e. upcoming events in OSS-land where GNOME will be represented, development in projects blessed/used by GNOME, comments about projects being blessed/used by GNOME, projects interesting for people interested in GNOME), Then Planet GNOME will be a window into the GNOME world, what GNOME community is doing now, what their plans are and how we are conquer and free the world ;) This planet will be very useful because it will give a community vision of our project. And this is useful not only for the community members, but also for the people outside the community that want to know about GNOME. and a universe with maybe an disclaimer that the posts there can have nothing what so ever to do with GNOME. and Universe GNOME will be a window into the world, work and lives of GNOME hackers and contributors. Basically Universe GNOME will be what Planet GNOME is now, maybe without the GNOME related posts. You find interesting people in the community and you want to know more about them because you share a common hobby, you learn new things, he/she is brilliant (there are many!) or whatever. I think foundation members, I'm not a member yet, should take into consideration this solution IMHO. best regards, -- Juanjo Marín -- Juan José Marín Martínez Tlf: 956009437 (Corp. 409437) Fax: 956009445 (Corp. 409445) Informática. Consejería de Cultura. DP Cádiz. Junta de Andalucía ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership (Summary)
Hi, Behdad Esfahbod wrote: I will, except that I don't know what the process to do that is. Just post to f-l? How would we make a decision? Or gather 10% to put it to vote? Edit the Code, if a few people complain they can remove their signatures (and remove their blogs from PGO, if the maintainers decide that agreeing with the Code is a precondition for blog syndication). If many people complain, you can revert the change. No need for a song dance. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
As a specific example, to the question, Do you agree that viewing proprietary software as 'illegitimate', 'immoral', 'antisocial' and/or 'unethical' should be a pre-condition for syndication on Planet GNOME?, so far 151 respondents have answered No, only 19 have answered Yes. That's about an 8-to-1 ratio. That goes far beyond what I said, and I would not propose it. It seems that a significant minority have views on this issue much stronger than mine. What worries me is that you presented this question inaccurately here as pertaining to my views. The readers here have seen what I said and can see the difference. But if you said the same thing elsewhere, that would constitute misrepresenting my views to the public. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Hi, On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 11:49 PM, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote: Hi, Lefty wrote: Given the proposition that proprietary software is illegitimate, and the statement above, do you believe that the GNOME Foundation and community should distance itself from companies which produce proprietary software? Specifically, should the Advisory Board be dissolved, and should the Foundation refuse further financial support from the companies that are currently on the Ad Board? I for one am interested in Richard's position on this. Mine is clear: I have no problem at all working with companies who want to improve GNOME or the GNOME platform, even if they develop proprietary software. And the money they give to GNOME gets used to improve GNOME, so as long as there are no strings attached, I don't care particularly why they give it. On the other hand, I feel under no obligation to promote their non-free software offerings, or guilt in encouraging free equivalents of their proprietary components products. I fee like you took thoughts out of my mind but unlike me were able to express them very nicely. :) -- Regards, Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) FSF member#5124 ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Hello, GNOME is not connected with the anti-hunting movement; there's no reason it should have any position on the question. But GNOME is part of the GNU Project, and it ought to support the free software movement. The most minimal support for the free software movement is to refrain from going directly against it; that is, to avoid presenting proprietary software as legitimate. Gnome supports both the free software movement as well as proprietary developers, and that is why Gnome for years has encouraged the use of the LGPL license for all of its libraries. Gnome is a general purpose desktop, but it also recognizes the need for proprietary applications to use these libraries and to build and integrate properly with it. Miguel. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
2009/12/10 Richard Stallman r...@gnu.org: The presence of articles discussing vmware, for instance, conveys the message that GNOME sees nothing wrong with it. I think you've added 1 and 1 and made 7. Richard. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Am Dienstag, den 08.12.2009, 15:24 -0500 schrieb Dr. Michael J. Chudobiak: Behdad Esfahbod wrote: Say, any viewer of p.g.o can vote a post +1 or -1. Then we can gather two metrics per poster: 1) how impactful his/her posts are (avg / median / max number of votes). 2) how interested are readers in his/her posts (avg / median / min/max score. We can then have threshold to hide / collapse unpopular posts. Yes, please! Let the system fix itself through trendy crowd-sourcing, rather than having a board spank people who speak foolishly! Actually the system on Planet Maemo is a bit complexer and is not only based on thumbs up / thumbs down votes. See http://maemo.org/community/maemo-community/how_social_news_ranks_news_items/ andre -- mailto:ak...@gmx.net | failed http://www.iomc.de/ | http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Hi, Lefty (石鏡 ) wrote: As a specific example, to the question, Do you agree that viewing proprietary software as 'illegitimate', 'immoral', 'antisocial' and/or 'unethical' should be a pre-condition for syndication on Planet GNOME?, so far 151 respondents have answered No, only 19 have answered Yes. That's about an 8-to-1 ratio. I'm no statistician (well, not any more at any rate), but I know that you can construct surveys to say anything. If you ask someone Do you want to bring our boys home? in the US, people are anti-war - if you ask Should we surrender in Iraq? they're pro-war. Leading questions prove nothing. Your survey, in particular, is not particularly impartial. I would say that it is somewhere between leading and push polling. It's the type of thing you rightly criticise when it is used by Boycott Novell. Quite honestly, like others, I would just like to see this discussion end. As I said before the weekend (50 emails ago), no opinions are being changed, no new information of interest to GNOME Foundation members has surfaced. I'd like to ask both Lefty Richard to refrain from mailing to this thread again. Thank you, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Le mercredi 09 décembre 2009, à 19:47 +0100, Dodji Seketeli a écrit : Le mer. 09 déc. 2009 à 14:45:55 (+0100), Philip Van Hoof a écrit: This is nonsense. The planet-gnome slogan is: Planet GNOME is __ a window into the world, work and lives __ of GNOME hackers and contributors. This is what made the planet a successful project, initiated by Jeff Waugh (who you propose for removal ^). The way I understand what Frédéric said is, there is an (yet another one?) interesting question not answered by the p.g.o slogan. What does the planet maintainers do with people who stop being involved in the project. Quoting http://live.gnome.org/PlanetGnome I stopped contributing to GNOME two years ago. Can I still stay there? Sure, no problem. We still love you :-) Past contributors often stay involved in areas that are of interest to GNOME (even if not directly related to GNOME), so we're not worried about the content of your blog. That being said, if the editors know of a blog from a past contributor who's annoying to most Planet GNOME readers, we can feel free to remove the blog after contacting the person. Vincent -- Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Hey, Le mercredi 09 décembre 2009, à 13:32 -0500, Behdad Esfahbod a écrit : On 12/09/2009 08:48 AM, Lionel Dricot wrote: - Each GNOME member should be able to add his feed to pgo. He might want to change his feed whenever he wants to take a more specialized one or not. The consensus in the past is that we don't want to have anybody able to change the planet configuration, and that this is what has enabled Planet GNOME to stay (relatively) high quality. - Each year, a mail is sent to those member asking if they want to stay on pgo and if they consider themselves still on-topic. Lets limit it to a reminder that you're on PGO. if you want to be removed, email xxx if we have to do something like that. I'm fine with this idea. If Lucas and Jeff are fine, we can start doing it, but I'm sure that help would be welcome to gather the list of mail addresses to contact. If anybody wants to do that part of the work, please just contact the planet editors. Vincent -- Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Le vendredi 11 décembre 2009, à 17:20 +0100, Philip Van Hoof a écrit : I propose to have a vote on GNOME's membership to the GNU project. So, as far as I can tell, nobody is collecting a list of members who support such a vote proposal. I still wanted to reply there. For many of the reasons Dave wrote, I would believe splitting up from the GNU project is a bad idea. Let me add a few things... The GNOME Foundation itself is a free software supporter, and advocates for free software, and I believe this reflects the opinion of the vast majority of the GNOME community. So I would think it's safe to say that this is the position of the GNOME project. As such, I think the GNOME project definitely has its place in the GNU project, whose goal is to create a free software operating system. That doesn't mean the GNOME Foundation fights against non-free software by saying that non-free software is bad and should not be used nor exist. We have a policy of having the GNOME platform LGPL, and so it can be used by non-free applications. We're happy this way. Our way to fight against non-free software is by writing better code, that is free. Also, the GNU project is not the FSF. When reading the thread, I have the feeling that some people want the GNOME project to not be part of the FSF, or to disagree with the FSF. The GNOME Foundation is part of the FSF, and we sometimes disagree with the FSF, and we're all fine this way. (Note that the FSF is an advisory board member of the GNOME Foundation, though, and it's valuable one that we're happy to have). I think Andy wrote more on this [1], but I didn't take the time to read his post so I won't put words in his mouth :-) Cheers, Vincent [1] http://wingolog.org/archives/2009/12/13/gnu-gnome-and-the-fsf -- Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Hey, Le jeudi 10 décembre 2009, à 07:46 -0700, Stormy Peters a écrit : My post on hunting comes to mind. I self censor now because I didn't like the negative comments directed at my kids. But would you block my whole blog because a vocal portion of the community is anti-hunting and people in my family hunt? I read a few times in this thread that people are self-censoring themselves in their blog. It's possible to avoid that by using a tag-based RSS feed; so if you want to blog the way you want but not have everything appear on Planet GNOME, just contact the Planet editors, and we'll be glad to help you do this. Vincent -- Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Hi, (This is hopefully my last mail for catching up with this thread ;-)) Le mercredi 25 novembre 2009, à 12:48 +, Lucas Rocha a écrit : Hi all, The Board has recently received some complaints from members of the community about certain the inappropriate behaviors. In the context of GNOME Foundation, it's really hard to argue about how we expect our members to behave if there is no official guidelines that members are supposed to comply with. The GNOME Code of Conduct[1] has been serving very well as an informal guideline for the community but we'd like to make it an official document that new Foundation members are expected to explicitly agree[2] with before being accepted. This way we'll have a common ground for dealing with certain conflict situations and avoid trying to base our discussions on guidelines that certain members haven't explicitly agreed on. Before deciding on this, we thought it would be useful to get some feedback from the community. This is the first mail of the thread. And I'm really sad of the way the thread went. I'm certainly guilty myself of not taking time to read it and participate earlier to try to moderate things, but we should all be able to step back and moderate a thread when it apparently needs to be moderated... First, let me state it: the original proposal has nothing to do with Planet GNOME. If you have an issue with Planet GNOME, you're free to state it publicly, of course, but you can also directly contact the editors. We even put some documentation to answer most questions: http://live.gnome.org/PlanetGnome And if you read that page, you'll see that the editors expect people on Planet GNOME to respect the Code of Conduct. I'm not aware of a case where we removed a post or a blog because of this, but if this needs to happen, then fine, we'll do it. (and yes, the editors are not perfect, and are not always replying in time, and are doing mistakes and all that, so keep this in mind please ;-)) Now, back to the original proposal. The idea is that we want the GNOME project to be a cool place. With great people. Where newcomers feel welcome. And all that. I'd love a rainbow, and illimited ice cream, btw. That what is already behind the Code of Conduct. The Code of Conduct is only stating the obvious. There's nothing revolutionary there. There are surely some cases where it doesn't help us. We can also all have a bad day and not respect the Code of Conduct at some point -- if this happens, as long as we can acknowledge that we could have had a more appropriate behavior, it's fine. If you think that having a Yes, I agree that I should try to be polite requirement for GNOME Foundation membership is bad, then, well, okay; that just means you might share one of the values of the GNOME Foundation. Is it the end of the world? No. Does that make it impossible to contribute to GNOME? No. (Hint: you don't have to be a GNOME Foundation member to contribute.) This is really all about explaining to the world what are values are, and trying to lead by the example. This is not about adding rules. Vincent -- Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On 12/14/2009 04:34 PM, Vincent Untz wrote: Also, the GNU project is not the FSF. When reading the thread, I have the feeling that some people want the GNOME project to not be part of the FSF, or to disagree with the FSF. The GNOME Foundation is part of the FSF, and we sometimes disagree with the FSF, and we're all fine this way. Humm, *now* I'm confused. What does it mean that The GNOME Foundation is part of the FSF? As for GNOME being a GNU project, what that means is explained here: http://www.gnu.org/help/evaluation.html behdad (Note that the FSF is an advisory board member of the GNOME Foundation, though, and it's valuable one that we're happy to have). I think Andy wrote more on this [1], but I didn't take the time to read his post so I won't put words in his mouth :-) Cheers, Vincent [1] http://wingolog.org/archives/2009/12/13/gnu-gnome-and-the-fsf ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Addition to the Code of Conduct (was Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership)
Le mercredi 25 novembre 2009, à 17:35 -0500, Behdad Esfahbod a écrit : I also like to see two more ideas added to CoC: - Learn to agree to disagree. - Criticize ideas, not people presenting them. I support this change. I'm just unsure how we can update the Code of Conduct, since people signed the old version and we obviously can't pretend they approved those additions. Should we just version the Code of Conduct? Or is this a non-issue? Vincent -- Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Le lundi 14 décembre 2009, à 16:56 -0500, Behdad Esfahbod a écrit : On 12/14/2009 04:34 PM, Vincent Untz wrote: Also, the GNU project is not the FSF. When reading the thread, I have the feeling that some people want the GNOME project to not be part of the FSF, or to disagree with the FSF. The GNOME Foundation is part of the FSF, and we sometimes disagree with the FSF, and we're all fine this way. Humm, *now* I'm confused. What does it mean that The GNOME Foundation is part of the FSF? Gah. I obviously missed the not. It should read: The GNOME Foundation is not part of the FSF. Apologies for the confusion :-) As for GNOME being a GNU project, what that means is explained here: http://www.gnu.org/help/evaluation.html Thanks for the link, that's something I was looking for and I couldn't find easily! Vincent -- Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 1:56 PM, Behdad Esfahbod beh...@behdad.org wrote: On 12/14/2009 04:34 PM, Vincent Untz wrote: Also, the GNU project is not the FSF. When reading the thread, I have the feeling that some people want the GNOME project to not be part of the FSF, or to disagree with the FSF. The GNOME Foundation is part of the FSF, and we sometimes disagree with the FSF, and we're all fine this way. Humm, *now* I'm confused. What does it mean that The GNOME Foundation is part of the FSF? As for GNOME being a GNU project, what that means is explained here: http://www.gnu.org/help/evaluation.html Note that we've always ignored about 90% of this page with no ill effects for either us or GNU. Which is really my position on the whole thing: the adults in this project have always treated requests from GNU the same way we treat requests from any other community member- if it makes sense, we do it; if it doesn't make sense, we ignore it. Usually we ignore it quietly. I will try to refrain from speculating as to why this particular suggestion was ignored so loudly, but I'd suggest that quietly is better. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Addition to the Code of Conduct (was Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership)
On Mon, 2009-12-14 at 22:56 +0100, Vincent Untz wrote: Should we just version the Code of Conduct? Or is this a non-issue? I believe we don't need to update the Code since those 2 additions are expected behaviours from the existing Be respectful and considerate element. Maybe should these 2 additions be added to a list of example behaviours that serve the code? Pierre-Luc 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: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On 12/14/2009 05:26 PM, Philip Van Hoof wrote: But what if advocating free software means that the minimal support GNOME should do for GNU, is to claim that proprietary is illegitimate? Exactly. I have been supporting Free Software for over ten years, and will probably do for the rest of my life. But, as an Iranian witnessing what's going on in Iran right now, I can't agree to any kind of anti-something or against-something or death-to-something. Tolerance is key. When someone asks me so why should I use GNOME instead of KDE, or why should I use Linux instead of Windows, my only reply is use whatever works better for you. I'm sick of fanaticism, and my friends in Iran are being beaten and killed because of it. I can't justify being a fanatic when it comes to software freedom. These days, Free Software does many things better than the alternatives. Many of my friends use it because they find it better. And that simply makes me happy. But when someone chooses to use OS X, I respect their freedom of choice. behdad ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership (Summary)
It seems that a better idea is to consider the Planet not part of GNOME. That way GNOME does not have to deal with whatever is in the planet, like slashdot does not control and is not responsible for the messages by its posters. GNOME controls the official web page content. This planet is not part of that. Easier for everyone. On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 4:41 PM, Lucas Rocha luc...@gnome.org wrote: Hi all, It's quite obvious that the original thread ended up branching into several separate topics. I thought it would be useful to summarize some of the key points on each topic in an attempt to bring a more practical perspective to the whole discussion. This is not an official message from the Board. It's just me trying to make some sense out of the tons of messages in the thread and, maybe, bring a more useful (or at least more clear) closure to the discussed topics. -- The original topic: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
That's where the cash for things like my FSF-E Fellowship, EFF membership, Creative Commons membership, etc., come from, see? These are worthy causes, but I would not encourage anyone to use non-free software even to get money to give to a worthy cause. However, the issue here isn't about what you use or what I use, it's about what GNOME should say to the world about proprietary software. The Planet is not GNOME and it is not an advocacy organ; it doesn't advocate anything, Maybe it wasn't set up specificy for the purpose of advocacy, but it is a major part of GNOME's face to the world. What it says has have a substantial effect on what people think GNOME is all about. This includes its implicit messages as well as explicit statements. The communication of a statement is not limited to what it formally states; the fact that it was made, and made in a certain place and time, implies other meanings. For instance, if you talk about something and make no criticisms, people take that to mean you have no strong disapproval of it. I don't know how often proprietary software is mentioned favorably there. If the problem happens at intervals of years, maybe very little response is needed. Maybe the GNOME Board should respond by posting a response when non-free software gets favorably mentioned. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
We wanted Gnome to be a free software stack, and that was our requirement. Gnome itself was assembled out of the available components plus the requirements of the community that emerged early on. GNOME was made out of available components and new components. In particular, we discussed plans for new libraries, and decided how to license them. We didn't include Red Hat in that discussion, since it was a GNU Project matter. However, from what you said, the decision we made for free software reasons would also have satisifed what Red Hat wanted for its GNU/Linux distribution. The individual pieces of Gnome are no longer just used by Gnome, or designed merely to be part of Gnome, they are built to be reusable not only by KDE, but also by server applications, or mobile applications; And they are licensed to allow proprietary developers to use them. I hope that you are making an overstatement when you claim that GNOME has lost all influence over the licensing of components developed for GNOME. It would be a shame if GNOME can only drift with the current. I also hope it is an overstatement to say that all GNOME components have been licensed in ways that fail to give any advantage to free software packages over proprietary software. If true, that would mean useful opportunities to boost other free software have been wasted. But even if those things are true, they can be changed in the future. GNOME can recover influence on licensing decisions. New components will surely be developed for GNOME, and GNOME can ask developers to follow licensing practice designed to help the free software cause. The motives for the policy we decided in 1997 or 1998 are still valid: we want proprietary programs to be able to work with GNOME, and we want to help free software developers compete technically with proprietary software. Thus, libraries needed for an app to work with GNOME should be licensed so proprietary apps can use them. Libraries that help people develop apps, or help the apps work better, should be limited to use within free software, so as to give our fellow free software developers an advantage. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
You're also stretching the term censorship and related terms to an area where it does not pertain. For an organization to stand by its values, and not say things which conflict with those values, is not censorship. Fine. We can simply call it prior restraint if you prefer, then. Neither one fits. Prior restraint is US legal terminology for a particular kind of censorship. For an organization to stand by its values is not censorship at all. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On 12/13/09 8:22 AM, Richard Stallman r...@gnu.org wrote: Unable to come up with and too dumb are your own additions, which clearly were not present in the events themselves. Clearly, a lot of misunderstanding was present in the events themselves. To what do you attribute this wide-spread misunderstanding, if not stupidity, ignorance or a general lack of adequate erudition on the part of the audience? ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Sun, 2009-12-13 at 08:33 -0800, Lefty (石鏡 ) wrote: On 12/13/09 8:22 AM, Richard Stallman r...@gnu.org wrote: Unable to come up with and too dumb are your own additions, which clearly were not present in the events themselves. Clearly, a lot of misunderstanding was present in the events themselves. To what do you attribute this wide-spread misunderstanding, if not stupidity, ignorance or a general lack of adequate erudition on the part of the audience? This is fast becoming among the least productive email threads I've read in a long time. Can we please bring it to a close? Thanks Jonathon ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
As it says in the footer of Planet GNOME: *Planet GNOME is a window into the world, work and lives of GNOME hackers and contributors http://planet.gnome.org/heads/. *Planet GNOME automatically reposts blog entries from the GNOME community. Entries on this page are owned by their authors. We do not edit, endorse or vouch for the contents of individual posts. It seems to me we already have a disclaimer in place. I, for one, would like Planet GNOME to stay as is - no voting, no censoring, no tagging. I *am* interested in the work and lives of GNOME hackers and contributors whether or not their work is proprietary or free software. I know since I was added to pgo earlier this year I tend to self-censor myself a little bit more, but I don't want pgo to be 100% GNOME (or free software) specific. I appreciate knowing the hobbies of my fellow hackers, whether it's hunting, cooking or what not. Planet GNOME may be a GNOME activity but it's an aggregation of the *personal blogs of GNOME contributors and we have a disclaimer in place. I'd like to see it stay just as it is. Paul On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 10:21 AM, Richard Stallman r...@gnu.org wrote: Bottom line: Planet GNOME does not exist for the sake of supporting your, or the FSF's, agenda, and you're attempting to solve a non-existent problem. We launched GNOME to serve the free software movement's aims. (We launched the FSF and the GNU system for the same reason.) And Planet GNOME is a GNOME activity. So it seems to me that these aims can't be a-priori irrelevant to Planet GNOME. ___ 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: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Heya, On 13.12.2009 16:33, Lefty (石鏡 ) wrote: To what do you attribute this wide-spread misunderstanding, if not stupidity, ignorance or a general lack of adequate erudition on the part of the audience? Misunderstandings can be a result of many factors, including differences in language, culture, political views, personal believes, etc. Having that sorted out, I don't see any good reason why this sub-thread exists. What's the main question we're discussing here? If there is none, I'd happily make my MUA kill it. Cheers, Tobi -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkslG8UACgkQPuBX/6ogjZ4EOwCeJGeQqnSgSnb+YbiySXiO+PRu oxgAoKMVvEjpoh0SDcROy+RRzzi4kAtj =eNZD -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On 12/13/09 8:22 AM, Richard Stallman r...@gnu.org wrote: That's where the cash for things like my FSF-E Fellowship, EFF membership, Creative Commons membership, etc., come from, see? These are worthy causes, but I would not encourage anyone to use non-free software even to get money to give to a worthy cause. I knew you'd feel that way, which is why I send my money to FSF-Europe, rather than the FSF. However, the issue here isn't about what you use or what I use, it's about what GNOME should say to the world about proprietary software. One more time: Planet GNOME The GNOME Foundation GNOME I don't know how often proprietary software is mentioned favorably there. If the problem happens at intervals of years, maybe very little response is needed. Maybe the GNOME Board should respond by posting a response when non-free software gets favorably mentioned. Non-free software can't even be favorably mentioned? A discussion of the relative merits of GIMP and Photoshop is inadmissible if it admits, however grudgingly, that Photoshop has some advantages or features that GIMP does not...? We're disallowed from saying that Xcode on OS X is, in fact, an excellent development environment...? No one can comment in a positive way on a new cell phone or digital camera, without the Board of Directors of the GNOME Foundation coming down on them? Wow. You and I have extremely different ideas about freedom, Mr. Stallman. I don't know how often proprietary software is mentioned favorably there. I see. Do you actually ever _read_ Planet GNOME, Mr. Stallman...? Perhaps you should call for a ban of the use of the term open source there, or of Linux unless it's in specific reference to the kernel, as a minimal requirement to support free software. Those happen a _lot_ more often. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
In the interests of a broader collection of data, I've shelled out of my own pocket to set up a professional-level SurveyMonkey account (the use of which I will happily share with the Foundation, at least until the annual subscription runs out, if it wishes to conduct surveys of its own). I've set up a survey to collect some data on how people view the suggestions that have been made regarding the governance of Planet GNOME, and I encourage anyone who's interested to participate. The survey can be found at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Z7WHPDF So far, we've gotten over 170 responses, and public opinion doesn't seem to be generally running in favor of Mr. Stallman's proposal, at a rate of roughly four against to one in favor, in the best of circumstances. The survey attempts to probe a little more deeply, but if the results are indicative of anything, Mr. Stallman's views here represent a minority opinion. As a specific example, to the question, Do you agree that viewing proprietary software as 'illegitimate', 'immoral', 'antisocial' and/or 'unethical' should be a pre-condition for syndication on Planet GNOME?, so far 151 respondents have answered No, only 19 have answered Yes. That's about an 8-to-1 ratio. I'll publish more detailed results before the week is out. On consideration, I now believe there's no need to call for a vote of the Foundation membership. Since the problem doesn't seem to exist, there's no need to do anything with Planet. Similarly, I see no need to expend any further energy on the GNOME's community's part on dealing with this. If the GNU Project finds the current level of expression on Planet GNOME intolerably unsupportive of the free software movement, for whatever reasons, they can certainly take whatever steps they feel are necessary. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On 12/13/2009 06:04 PM, Lefty (石鏡 ) wrote: In the interests of a broader collection of data, I've shelled out of my own pocket to set up a professional-level SurveyMonkey account (the use of which I will happily share with the Foundation, at least until the annual subscription runs out, if it wishes to conduct surveys of its own). Err. Next time just let me know! If people remember, I set up a survey system (LimeSurvey; Free Software) on my GNOME account to run the DVCS survey. We later used that to do the Desktop Summit survey. I'm offering it to all Foundation members now: if you need something surveyed Foundation-wide, just ask and I'll set you up with an account. At some point I may hook it up to LDAP and let people freely use it. But we're currently far from having a single gnome.org account... Cheers, behdad ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Gnome supports both the free software movement as well as proprietary developers, and that is why Gnome for years has encouraged the use of the LGPL license for all of its libraries. The decision you and I made, in the early days, was to use the LGPL for the more basic and general libraries, so that proprietary programs could work with GNOME, but to use the GPL for more advanced libraries so that they would give an advantage to free applications. We decided this, not as a way to support proprietary developers, but rather to compete with KDE and Qt. Proprietary software developers could use Qt (by buying a license). If they could not use GNOME's basic libraries, that would put GNOME at a disadvantage, and the result could be that KDE with proprietary Qt might triumph. Now that Qt is free software, beating it in competition is less crucial. We might not have a reason to use the LGPL for some of these libraries if we were deciding it now. So I hope that the GNOME policy about library licensing has not moved towards more use of the LGPL than in the past. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Is GNOME part of any anti-proprietary software movement? that terminology didn't come from me. I would rather describe what we are doing in positive terms: GNOME is part of the free software movement, which strives to give users freedom. I don't think so and I've never seen it like that. I guess you have not heard how GNOME came to be. We launched GNOME to defend the free software community against a particular proprietary program, Qt; against the danger that people might come to regard that proprietary program as essential for a usable GNU/Linux system. So GNOME not merely part of a system that we developed for the sake of freedom. GNOME was developed specifically to protect freedom. There are no clearer examples of software which exists for the sake of freedom than GNOME. I think the GNOME Foundation should do more to inform the community about this. Currently, it seems, the message is not getting across. If people can look at Planet GNOME, and the rest of what the Foundation says, and get the impression that neutrality on this issue is one of GNOME's founding principles, it behooves us to do more to inform people what the founding principles really are. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
I believe Stormy was quite clear and on point: It sounded to me as though she were arguing against the sort of prior restraint that you seem to be attempting to impose here. I think GNOME activities should not grant legitimacy to non-free software. This is a minimal form of support for the cause of software users' freedom -- minimal in the sense that anything less would hardly be support. However, the implementational ideas you are attacking did not come from me. You're also stretching the term censorship and related terms to an area where it does not pertain. For an organization to stand by its values, and not say things which conflict with those values, is not censorship. My use of Final Cut is completely legitimate. I would not trade my freedom for convenience like that. However the issue here is not what you use, or what would I use; it is what GNOME should advocate. We're working for a world in which software users aren't asked to choose between freedom and convenience, and GNOME should support that goal, as well as being a collection of programs which help make it so. Thus, GNOME should not present a program as legitimate if it requires users to choose in that way. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
We _were_ attempting to finalize a Code of Conduct which could be provided to speakers, in the hope of avoiding future instances of the sort of harmless fun we experienced during Mr. Stallman's keynote at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit, as I recall. What happened there is that some people misunderstood a joke in my speech, and others mistakenly accused me of intentionally disparaging people. Rules of conduct can't prevent misunderstandings, but they can help us deal with them better. If those who accused me had followed the draft Code of Conduct (http://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct), particularly this rule Disagreement is no excuse for poor behaviour or personal attacks. Remember that a community where people feel uncomfortable is not a productive one. and this one If something seems outrageous, check that you did not misinterpret it. Ask for clarification, but do not assume the worst. they might have responded differently to the misunderstanding, and things would have been over very quickly. All the points in the draft Code of Conduct seem good to me. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Stormy, we seem to be miscommunicating. I said that people should not promote non-free software on Planet GNOME. You seem to be arguing against something different. For instance, My post on hunting comes to mind. I self censor now because I didn't like the negative comments directed at my kids. But would you block my whole blog because a vocal portion of the community is anti-hunting and people in my family hunt? GNOME is not connected with the anti-hunting movement; there's no reason it should have any position on the question. But GNOME is part of the GNU Project, and it ought to support the free software movement. The most minimal support for the free software movement is to refrain from going directly against it; that is, to avoid presenting proprietary software as legitimate. I think Planet GNOME should have a rule to this effect. There are many ways to implement such a rule, of which block the whole blog is about the toughest one we might consider. I'd suggest rather to try a mild approach; I'm sure that can do the job. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:12:16 -0500, Richard Stallman r...@gnu.org wrote: GNOME is not connected with the anti-hunting movement; there's no reason it should have any position on the question. But GNOME is part Is GNOME part of any anti-proprietary software movement? I don't think so and I've never seen it like that. If it's the case, then GNOME should reject contribution from any contributor that work with or for proprietary software. We should also be sure that any GNOME technology is definitely not possible to use within a proprietary software. of the GNU Project, and it ought to support the free software movement. The most minimal support for the free software movement is to refrain from going directly against it; that is, to avoid presenting proprietary software as legitimate. Supporting something was never meant as fighting something else. *Never* That's maybe your may of supporting free software but it's not mine, meaning neither yours or mine is the official vision of GNOME. And it's definitely not *THE* way of supporting free software. I think Planet GNOME should have a rule to this effect. There are many ways to implement such a rule, of which block the whole blog is about the toughest one we might consider. I'd suggest rather to try a mild approach; I'm sure that can do the job. As I said earlier, I think that the less rules, the better. But it seems that we have different goals. I don't believe that planet.gnome should be planet.anti-proprietary-software. I think it should be the planet of the people involved in the GNOME project, punt on de lijn. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On 12/11/09 7:12 AM, Richard Stallman r...@gnu.org wrote: Stormy, we seem to be miscommunicating. I said that people should not promote non-free software on Planet GNOME. You seem to be arguing against something different. I believe Stormy was quite clear and on point: It sounded to me as though she were arguing against the sort of prior restraint that you seem to be attempting to impose here. GNOME is not connected with the anti-hunting movement; there's no reason it should have any position on the question. GNOME is not connected with the anti-VMWare movement, nor (that I'm aware of) any anti-proprietary software movement. But GNOME is part of the GNU Project, and it ought to support the free software movement. It does support free software, and does an effective job of it. The most minimal support for the free software movement is to refrain from going directly against it; that is, to avoid presenting proprietary software as legitimate. This is simple nonsense. Software is software, and people write about what they do. I use free software, and I also use things like Final Cut Pro, for which there's no equivalent. You seem to feel I should be barred from writing anything about film-editing, since it involves proprietary software. My use of Final Cut is completely legitimate. There's no equivalent piece of free software, and even if there were, surely my tools are my choice, are they not? Your attempts to control what gets posted are completely out of line. I think Planet GNOME should have a rule to this effect. There are many ways to implement such a rule, of which block the whole blog is about the toughest one we might consider. I'd suggest rather to try a mild approach; I'm sure that can do the job. This suggestion, which verges on a demand for censorship in the name of freedom, is completely appalling. I have no interest in seeing Planet GNOME turned into a outpost of Bad Vista, thanks. If muzzling people is a condition of being part of the GNU project, then maybe we should rethink _that_ aspect of things. Maybe the FSF should start its own planet and set its own rules there rather than attempting to impose its various litmus tests on the contributors to Planet GNOME. I haven't got even the slightest interest in seeing this job get done, and I'd be opposed to anyone's trying it. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Hi, Lionel Dricot wrote: On Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:12:16 -0500, Richard Stallman r...@gnu.org wrote: GNOME is not connected with the anti-hunting movement; there's no reason it should have any position on the question. But GNOME is part Is GNOME part of any anti-proprietary software movement? I don't think this discussion is particularly helpful. It does not look likely that anyone's mind will be changed, or that Planet GNOME's policy will evolve. All that we can hope for and advocate is that people whose blogs are aggregated to Planet GNOME are people who adhere to the principles of the free software movement. And if that's the case, there is no reason that they would use their (Planet GNOME aggregated) blog to promote software which does not measure up against those principles. If people feel that they cannot separate their professional lives from their personal lives on their blog, then perhaps it is appropriate that they tag posts to do with their professional work on non-free software with a different tag to that which is aggregated on Planet GNOME. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Fri, 2009-12-11 at 10:12 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote: But GNOME is part of the GNU Project, and it ought to support the free software movement. The most minimal support for the free software movement is to refrain from going directly against it; that is, to avoid presenting proprietary software as legitimate. I understand your position. I think you might not understand the position of a lot of GNOME foundation members and contributors. Their position isn't necessarily compatible with your position that GNOME should avoid presenting proprietary software as legitimate. The way I see it is that most members want GNOME to stay out of that philosophic discussion. Although GNOME usually advises to work upstream and to do things opensource when possible, as much as possible. This is just a personal point of view, of course. You, as one of the key FSF people, appear to be keen[1] on enforcing a strict policy on how GNU's member-projects should behave. So ... I propose to have a vote on GNOME's membership to the GNU project. I think Planet GNOME should have a rule to this effect. I think it's clear that I disagree. Philosophically. There are many ways to implement such a rule, of which block the whole blog is about the toughest one we might consider. I'd suggest rather to try a mild approach; I'm sure that can do the job. Let's first get a consensus from our members on GNOME's status as being or not being a well-behaving GNU project, or having its own identity. Cheers, Philip [1] You write minimal support. Minimal to me means: either you do this, or you're out. Feel free to correct me. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
(repost, I didn't use the right E-mail address) On Fri, 2009-12-11 at 10:12 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote: But GNOME is part of the GNU Project, and it ought to support the free software movement. The most minimal support for the free software movement is to refrain from going directly against it; that is, to avoid presenting proprietary software as legitimate. I understand your position. I think you might not understand the position of a lot of GNOME foundation members and contributors. Their position isn't necessarily compatible with your position that GNOME should avoid presenting proprietary software as legitimate. The way I see it is that most members want GNOME to stay out of that philosophic discussion. Although GNOME usually advises to work upstream and to do things opensource when possible, as much as possible. This is just a personal point of view, of course. You, as one of the key FSF people, appear to be keen[1] on enforcing a strict policy on how GNU's member-projects should behave. So ... I propose to have a vote on GNOME's membership to the GNU project. I think Planet GNOME should have a rule to this effect. I think it's clear that I disagree. Philosophically. There are many ways to implement such a rule, of which block the whole blog is about the toughest one we might consider. I'd suggest rather to try a mild approach; I'm sure that can do the job. Let's first get a consensus from our members on GNOME's status as being or not being a well-behaving GNU project, or having its own identity. Cheers, Philip [1] You write minimal support. Minimal to me means: either you do this, or you're out. Feel free to correct me. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Philip van Hoof writes I propose to have a vote on GNOME's membership to the GNU project. I'd second this. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Hi, Philip Van Hoof wrote: I propose to have a vote on GNOME's membership to the GNU project. Such a vote, whatever the outcome, would have little effect on the GNOME project. The debate during the vote could cause a lot of harm discord for the GNOME community. An outcome whereby GNOME is no longer a GNU project could cause a lot of harm to the free software and open source movements in general - there would be massive negative publicity. Since there is very little up-side and substantial down-side, both real and in terms of image (which is an important consideration, I think), I do not think that we should vote on this issue. Don't we have more concrete issues to address? Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Fri, 2009-12-11 at 17:40 +0100, Dave Neary wrote: Hi Dave! (Are you coming to FOSDEM? We need another of those IRL chats, no?) Philip Van Hoof wrote: I propose to have a vote on GNOME's membership to the GNU project. Such a vote, whatever the outcome, would have little effect on the GNOME project. I'd agree. The debate during the vote could cause a lot of harm discord for the GNOME community. I actually do agree, yes. I don't think being afraid of that is sufficient reason to sidestep this issue We're an intelligent group of people. We can deal with this. An outcome whereby GNOME is no longer a GNU project could cause a lot of harm to the free software and open source movements in general - there would be massive negative publicity. I agree but we cannot be blind when the leader of the Free Software Foundation is requesting that the minimal thing GNOME should do, is to support it by, and I quote, avoiding presenting proprietary software as legitimate. I fully understand that ignoring Richard's request is the easy way. But his request cannot be ignored any longer. He really wants this as a minimal commitment from GNOME. No matter what feels good for us. We've been ignoring this for too long. Such a commitment is, as far as I understand our community, not entirely compatible with the current mindset of a lot of its members, so ... I think we should be intellectually honest; by doing this vote. Since there is very little up-side and substantial down-side, both real and in terms of image (which is an important consideration, I think), I do not think that we should vote on this issue. Don't we have more concrete issues to address? I ask the same about the apparent necessity to address certain moral issues like policing the behaviour of our members and introducing a set of punishments for bad behaviour. That doesn't mean it can't be discussed. It can. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On 12/11/09 8:40 AM, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote: Don't we have more concrete issues to address? We _were_ attempting to finalize a Code of Conduct which could be provided to speakers, in the hope of avoiding future instances of the sort of harmless fun we experienced during Mr. Stallman's keynote at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit, as I recall. It seems that Mr. Stallman would prefer to discuss ways and means to throttle contributors to Planet GNOME of whose postings he happens not to approve, however. I understand your interest in pouring oil on troubled waters here, Dave, but neither Philip nor I are the ones who raised this issue. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On 12/11/2009 11:32 AM, Lefty (石鏡 ) wrote: Philip van Hoof writes I propose to have a vote on GNOME's membership to the GNU project. I'd second this. Quick procedural note: If you really want to pursue this, according to the bylaws you need support of 5% of the membership IIRC to put something to vote. I'm not sure the vote would be binding though. I thought I point that out since that's your rights as members of the foundation. That said, I agree with Dave. behdad ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Fri, 2009-12-11 at 12:32 -0500, Behdad Esfahbod wrote: On 12/11/2009 11:32 AM, Lefty (石鏡 ) wrote: Philip van Hoof writes I propose to have a vote on GNOME's membership to the GNU project. I'd second this. Quick procedural note: If you really want to pursue this, according to the bylaws you need support of 5% of the membership IIRC to put something to vote. I'm not sure the vote would be binding though. Okay, thanks for the information. I thought I point that out since that's your rights as members of the foundation. That said, I agree with Dave. I'll support whoever proposes this as a vote. Being a member I'd like to propose this vote (but apparently I need '5% - 1 person' of the other members, I don't know how they can officially support the proposal). As a reply to the legitimate concerns you and Dave have: o. I don't think being afraid of that is sufficient reason to sidestep the issue. We're an intelligent group of people. We can deal with this. o. I think we should be intellectually honest. We owe it to ourselves. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 10:01 AM, Lefty (石鏡 ) le...@shugendo.org wrote: On 12/11/09 9:32 AM, Behdad Esfahbod beh...@behdad.org wrote: Quick procedural note: If you really want to pursue this, according to the bylaws you need support of 5% of the membership IIRC to put something to vote. I'm not sure the vote would be binding though. Is there anything in the bylaws as to how this support might be collected and demonstrated? If not, I doubt _anything_ will ever get put to a vote... Presumably it is assumed you use the resources provided by the gnome project including but not limited to mailing lists and irc. Also the Foundation publishes a full membership list with contact information. According to that list there are 357 members of the GNOME foundation. If you can't get 17 or 18 people to agree that your idea is worthy enough to put up to a vote given the community orientated nature of the GNOME project, then maybe the idea isn't worth considering or at least not a priority for the project. I don't think anyone--with the possible exception of Mr. Stallman--subscribes to the notion that the GNOME Foundation approves of, endorses, or supports every posting syndicated to Planet GNOME. Nor have I noticed conspicuous calls on Planet for this sort of rule to address a looming threat posed by the inappropriately unfree. I do not believe RMS thinks this is so. His position as I understand it is that it is bad publicity for the FOSS movement if such a public facing venue like Planet GNOME is used to promote proprietary software. Obviously we all have our own positions which is what this discussion has been addressing. Les ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 11:12 AM, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote: There is precedent for a membership petition for an election. I ran one to have the board size reduced some years ago: http://live.gnome.org/BoardSizePetition At the time I was told I needed 10% of the membership: http://foundation.gnome.org/about/charter/ says 10%. I couldn't find a reference to either number in the bylaws. Stormy ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Hi, Richard Stallman wrote: Stormy, we seem to be miscommunicating. I said that people should not promote non-free software on Planet GNOME. [snip] But GNOME is part of the GNU Project, and it ought to support the free software movement. The most minimal support for the free software movement is to refrain from going directly against it; that is, to avoid presenting proprietary software as legitimate. I think Planet GNOME should have a rule to this effect. There are many ways to implement such a rule, of which block the whole blog is about the toughest one we might consider. I'd suggest rather to try a mild approach; I'm sure that can do the job. To put this discussion in perspective, the question does not come up very often (if at all). The last case I can think of where a proprietary piece of software got substantial attention on pgo was the release of the free ($0) VMWare client 3 years ago I think? Aside from that, proprietary software is mentioned all the time, but I would not consider mentioning (say) that Adobe Acrobat Reader is using GTK+ on Linux is promoting Adobe - if anything, it's promoting GNOME. The problem is restricted to sporadic mentions of new releases of proprietary software using substantial components of the GNOME platform, developed by people who are members of the GNOME community. As you say in the last paragraph above, a mild case by case approach is more than sufficient to handle the problem. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Hello Lefty, On Fri 11 Dec 2009 16:37, Lefty (石鏡 ) le...@shugendo.org writes: On 12/11/09 7:12 AM, Richard Stallman r...@gnu.org wrote: The most minimal support for the free software movement is to refrain from going directly against it; that is, to avoid presenting proprietary software as legitimate. This is simple nonsense. Software is software, and people write about what they do. I use free software, and I also use things like Final Cut Pro, for which there's no equivalent. You seem to feel I should be barred from writing anything about film-editing, since it involves proprietary software. My use of Final Cut is completely legitimate. There's no equivalent piece of free software, and even if there were, surely my tools are my choice, are they not? Your attempts to control what gets posted are completely out of line. The four points in the code of conduct are: # Be respectful and considerate # Be patient and generous # Assume people mean well # Try to be concise Lefty I think you are doing well regarding the fourth :) I would submit that Richard has behaved in accordance with these rules[*], but always after I read your mails or blogs on the subject, it ends up sounding very combative. I know you probably don't mean it that way, and I don't want to put you on edge. I'm just sayin'. And in the interest of *topic*, well, I think we have strayed from the initial proposal. Best regards, Andy [*] I consider the GCDS incident as adequately atoned for by Richard's apology. YMMV. -- http://wingolog.org/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On 12/11/2009 01:14 PM, Stormy Peters wrote: On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 11:12 AM, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org mailto:dne...@gnome.org wrote: There is precedent for a membership petition for an election. I ran one to have the board size reduced some years ago: http://live.gnome.org/BoardSizePetition At the time I was told I needed 10% of the membership: http://foundation.gnome.org/about/charter/ says 10%. I couldn't find a reference to either number in the bylaws. You're right. My bad. I was misremembering. The bylaws say 5% is needed to call for a meeting, something like that. behdad Stormy ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Le 09/12/2009 20:35, Brian Cameron a écrit : I think we are mashing together a bunch of issues. So, in effect, are we looking for: [0] a way to measure what could be appropriate content for Planet GNOME [1] a way to prevent non-free or equivalent software being marketed via the Planet [2] a way to handle the consequences if there is either inappropriate content [3] a way to handle the consequences if there is a pitch for software that is orthogonal to GNOME values Is it possible to provide filters so that people who are interested in different types of blog entries can focus on what is interesting to them? Some people may only be interested in seeing technical information, and others may not want to see distro-specific things, etc. If it is done on the browser side (which cookies and some JS magic), it would exclude RSS readers. And to have it at the Atom/RSS level, it would mean having two different planets configuration. -- Frederic Crozat Mandriva ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Planet GNOME is about people and we display everyone's full blog feed as it represents them. There are people that work on proprietary software as well as GNOME and that's who they are. I don't think we should reject people because they don't agree with us 100% of the time. My post on hunting comes to mind. I self censor now because I didn't like the negative comments directed at my kids. But would you block my whole blog because a vocal portion of the community is anti-hunting and people in my family hunt? Now, if they aren't doing any GNOME work and all they talk about it non-free, non-GNOME software, that's different. Stormy On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 8:38 PM, Richard Stallman r...@gnu.org wrote: The people who work at VmWare also very often posted (and still post) about their work and appear on Planet GNOME. They should not do this, unless VmWare becomes free software. GNOME should not provide proprietary software developers with a platform to present non-free software as a good or legitimate thing. Perhaps the statement of Planet GNOME's philosophy should be interpreted differently. It should not invite people to talk about their proprietary software projects just because they are also GNOME contributors. ___ 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: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Behdad Esfahbod a écrit : On 12/07/2009 01:32 PM, Frederic Crozat wrote: Le 27/11/2009 10:53, Murray Cumming a écrit : On Wed, 2009-11-25 at 16:50 -0200, Tristan Van Berkom wrote: Alternative proposal: lets deal with the problem at hand and get our story straight about what is planet.gnome.org, what can be posted there (i.e. no porn and vulgar language etc.) and how we can help to enforce a reasonably exact policy on an exact resource which is planet.gnome.org. planet.gnome.org is hard to moderate. Editors can only remove an entire blog. It would be easier if the software allowed the existing editors to remove a single blog post. Let's be honest too : there are a bunch of people which used to be active GNOME members, who changed their focus to other projects and are still in Planet GNOME for no reason. Maybe PGO editors should start cleaning the old cruft (no offense intended).. But I find it interesting to know, say, what Miguel is up to these days. I don't think it's just me... What about a Planet Old Gnome Farts ? People would get there from PGO one year after their last active contribution. JP PS: this idea is a little rough and may need some patching... at least the name, please! ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
I don't believe Frederic was pointing at Miguel. There are people who have left the Gnome community working on products that don't use any Gnome technology posting blog post/ads for said product on PGO. I wonder whether these products are free software. If not, they certainly shouldn't promote them on Planet GNOME. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 6:49 PM, Richard Stallman r...@gnu.org wrote: I don't believe Frederic was pointing at Miguel. There are people who have left the Gnome community working on products that don't use any Gnome technology posting blog post/ads for said product on PGO. I wonder whether these products are free software. If not, they certainly shouldn't promote them on Planet GNOME. I think we are mashing together a bunch of issues. So, in effect, are we looking for: [0] a way to measure what could be appropriate content for Planet GNOME [1] a way to prevent non-free or equivalent software being marketed via the Planet [2] a way to handle the consequences if there is either inappropriate content [3] a way to handle the consequences if there is a pitch for software that is orthogonal to GNOME values I can certainly agree to the need to have a Code of Conduct, communities have one, either implicit or, explicit. But, unless there is a clearly delineated process to handle the exceptions, a Code of Conduct is just a document. -- sankarshan mukhopadhyay http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Le 08/12/2009 16:08, sankarshan a écrit : 2009/12/8 Pierre-Luc Beaudoinpierre-...@pierlux.com: On Tue, 2009-12-08 at 03:23 -0500, Behdad Esfahbod wrote: But I find it interesting to know, say, what Miguel is up to these days. I don't think it's just me... I don't believe Frederic was pointing at Miguel. There are people who have left the Gnome community working on products that don't use any Gnome technology posting blog post/ads for said product on PGO. [0] Unless specific names are pointed out to the Board or, on this list, the shadow boxing will be more harmful So, let's start (this is list done quickly by me and I haven't contacted anybody from it), as basis: - Robert Love - Christopher Blizzard - Miguel De Icaza - Nat Friedman - Daniel Veillard - Edd Dumbill - Glynn Foster - James Henstridge - Jeff Waugh - Mark McLoughlin - Scott James Remnant [1] How does one define that they have left the GNOME community ? this list is based on people either no longer blogging at all or not blogging about GNOME and not being active in GNOME. I don't have any problem about people who blogs about non-political oriented things in their life, as long as GNOME is one of those things... I'm not even sure I should still be on Planet GNOME (even if I'm release team member), since most of my posts aren't about GNOME but about the distribution I work on. And I sometime feels those posts could be seen as propaganda for my distribution. Regarding what bedhad said, nothing prevent people to read those people blog outside Planet GNOME (like Planet Mono or anything else). -- Frederic Crozat Mandriva ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, 2009-12-09 at 08:19 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote: I don't believe Frederic was pointing at Miguel. There are people who have left the Gnome community working on products that don't use any Gnome technology posting blog post/ads for said product on PGO. I wonder whether these products are free software. If not, they certainly shouldn't promote them on Planet GNOME. Nonsense. The people who work at VmWare also very often posted (and still post) about their work and appear on Planet GNOME. There's nothing wrong with that. Same goes for Nokia and many other companies involved. Forbidding those contributors to talk about their work goes directly and philosophically against the Planet GNOME is a window into the world, work and lives of GNOME hackers and contributors slogan of the project. You see that word work there? Right. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, 2009-12-09 at 14:27 +0100, Frederic Crozat wrote: So, let's start (this is list done quickly by me and I haven't contacted anybody from it), as basis: - Robert Love - Christopher Blizzard - Miguel De Icaza - Nat Friedman - Daniel Veillard - Edd Dumbill - Glynn Foster - James Henstridge - Jeff Waugh - Mark McLoughlin - Scott James Remnant Many of these people are and have been top GNOME people. You'd be insane if you wanted to remove them from the planet. If you want to destroy GNOME as a community, you're on the right track. [1] How does one define that they have left the GNOME community ? this list is based on people either no longer blogging at all or not blogging about GNOME and not being active in GNOME. I don't have any problem about people who blogs about non-political oriented things in their life, as long as GNOME is one of those things... I'm not even sure I should still be on Planet GNOME (even if I'm release team member), since most of my posts aren't about GNOME but about the distribution I work on. And I sometime feels those posts could be seen as propaganda for my distribution. This is nonsense. The planet-gnome slogan is: Planet GNOME is __ a window into the world, work and lives __ of GNOME hackers and contributors. This is what made the planet a successful project, initiated by Jeff Waugh (who you propose for removal ^). If you want to fundamentally change the planet, why don't you start your own planet and convince the world that yours is better? Regarding what bedhad said, nothing prevent people to read those people blog outside Planet GNOME (like Planet Mono or anything else). Nothing prevents you from starting your own planet. I'm pretty sure that you can even get a neat subdomain under GNOME's from the admins. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
I don't agree at all with the current direction of the discussion. For me, pgo is about people. Yes, I'm interested to learn that Nat will soon get married. Yes, I'm interested to hear about Mandriva on Frédéric's posts because I don't use it at all but at least I keep an eye on it thanks to his blog. Even the mono-bashism of Miguel is sometimes interesting : it allows me to know what is happening when I want to know. I like to practise my Dutch by reading Reinout's post and to see if UTF-8 works correctly when seeing Indian's poems. I'm happy to meet a fellow GNOME developer at FOSDEM and saying : So, you like Karaté/Running/Vegan Cooking ?. I know some planets that choose to have a code of conduct about what should be posted or not (like planet Ubuntu-f or planet-libre.org). They all ended by not selecting the people on a quality basis but selecting posts that respect the subject of the planet. It results in very-low quality planet, not interesting and, more importantly, without any soul, any spirit. Planet.gnome has a spirit. There's something (called it soul if you want). Don't break it. Remember planet.climate-change joke? That was huge and enjoyable. My solution is the following : - Each GNOME member should be able to add his feed to pgo. He might want to change his feed whenever he wants to take a more specialized one or not. - Each year, a mail is sent to those member asking if they want to stay on pgo and if they consider themselves still on-topic. But don't clean whiter than white. There's always off-topic stuffs or stuff you don't want to read. Just don't read them. Richard don't want to read stuffs about Mono? I understand, it's his choice and I respect it. He's not forced to read them. GNOME is about people. Sometimes, people are doing other stuffs than free software coding (aren't you?). When I'm at work, I often talk with co-worker about sports, about what I will eat tonight. When I go to #gnome-hackers, often the discussion is completely off-topic. Last night, on #gtg, I discussed about chocolates with someone arguing that there's good chocolate in Italy (can you believe that?). It was fun. I'm in GNOME because it's fun. GNOME is fun. PGO is fun. Please, please, please, keep the fun. World is collapsing? It's doing that for 2.000.000 years already! So, keep the fun… Lionel On Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:27:43 +0100, Frederic Crozat fcro...@mandriva.com wrote: Le 08/12/2009 16:08, sankarshan a écrit : 2009/12/8 Pierre-Luc Beaudoinpierre-...@pierlux.com: On Tue, 2009-12-08 at 03:23 -0500, Behdad Esfahbod wrote: But I find it interesting to know, say, what Miguel is up to these days. I don't think it's just me... I don't believe Frederic was pointing at Miguel. There are people who have left the Gnome community working on products that don't use any Gnome technology posting blog post/ads for said product on PGO. [0] Unless specific names are pointed out to the Board or, on this list, the shadow boxing will be more harmful So, let's start (this is list done quickly by me and I haven't contacted anybody from it), as basis: - Robert Love - Christopher Blizzard - Miguel De Icaza - Nat Friedman - Daniel Veillard - Edd Dumbill - Glynn Foster - James Henstridge - Jeff Waugh - Mark McLoughlin - Scott James Remnant [1] How does one define that they have left the GNOME community ? this list is based on people either no longer blogging at all or not blogging about GNOME and not being active in GNOME. I don't have any problem about people who blogs about non-political oriented things in their life, as long as GNOME is one of those things... I'm not even sure I should still be on Planet GNOME (even if I'm release team member), since most of my posts aren't about GNOME but about the distribution I work on. And I sometime feels those posts could be seen as propaganda for my distribution. Regarding what bedhad said, nothing prevent people to read those people blog outside Planet GNOME (like Planet Mono or anything else). ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, 2009-12-09 at 14:07 +, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote: about their work and appear on Planet GNOME. There's nothing wrong with that. Same goes for Nokia and many other companies involved. I wonder if there's a misunderstanding here. No one said that companies shouldn't be allowed to post. Richard said that Planet GNOME shouldn't be used to promote non-free software (i.e. software that denies freedom by witholding source code or witholding permission to use/modify/distribute). This means some software from Nokia shouldn't be promoted on Planet GNOME, but Nokia (like many other companies) also develops and distributes lots of free software. No one's objecting to promoting Nokia's work on free software for GNOME. That's why I wrote talk about their work. There's no misunderstanding. Mentioning that they are using some piece of LGPL software to build a closed source component is fine. Personally I most definitely want to know about such things. As for what Miguel works on (to go back to the origin of the proposal): The vast majority of what he's blogging and working on *is* free and/or opensource software or about free and/or opensource software being used in the field. Making it forbidden to use planet-gnome for that is like wanting to deny a reality. If GNOME wants to be relevant, it must not boycott reality. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On 12/09/2009 09:07 AM, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote: about their work and appear on Planet GNOME. There's nothing wrong with that. Same goes for Nokia and many other companies involved. I wonder if there's a misunderstanding here. No one said that companies shouldn't be allowed to post. Richard said that Planet GNOME shouldn't be used to promote non-free software (i.e. software that denies freedom by witholding source code or witholding permission to use/modify/distribute). But mono *is* Free Software according to the FSF definition! behdad ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On 12/09/2009 08:48 AM, Lionel Dricot wrote: I don't agree at all with the current direction of the discussion. For me, pgo is about people. Yes, I'm interested to learn that Nat will soon get married. Yes, I'm interested to hear about Mandriva on Frédéric's posts because I don't use it at all but at least I keep an eye on it thanks to his blog. Even the mono-bashism of Miguel is sometimes interesting : it allows me to know what is happening when I want to know. I like to practise my Dutch by reading Reinout's post and to see if UTF-8 works correctly when seeing Indian's poems. I'm happy to meet a fellow GNOME developer at FOSDEM and saying : So, you like Karaté/Running/Vegan Cooking ?. I know some planets that choose to have a code of conduct about what should be posted or not (like planet Ubuntu-f or planet-libre.org). They all ended by not selecting the people on a quality basis but selecting posts that respect the subject of the planet. It results in very-low quality planet, not interesting and, more importantly, without any soul, any spirit. Planet.gnome has a spirit. There's something (called it soul if you want). Don't break it. Remember planet.climate-change joke? That was huge and enjoyable. EXACTLY. EXACTLY. EXACTLY. My solution is the following : - Each GNOME member should be able to add his feed to pgo. He might want to change his feed whenever he wants to take a more specialized one or not. - Each year, a mail is sent to those member asking if they want to stay on pgo and if they consider themselves still on-topic. Lets limit it to a reminder that you're on PGO. if you want to be removed, email xxx if we have to do something like that. behdad But don't clean whiter than white. There's always off-topic stuffs or stuff you don't want to read. Just don't read them. Richard don't want to read stuffs about Mono? I understand, it's his choice and I respect it. He's not forced to read them. GNOME is about people. Sometimes, people are doing other stuffs than free software coding (aren't you?). When I'm at work, I often talk with co-worker about sports, about what I will eat tonight. When I go to #gnome-hackers, often the discussion is completely off-topic. Last night, on #gtg, I discussed about chocolates with someone arguing that there's good chocolate in Italy (can you believe that?). It was fun. I'm in GNOME because it's fun. GNOME is fun. PGO is fun. Please, please, please, keep the fun. World is collapsing? It's doing that for 2.000.000 years already! So, keep the fun… Lionel On Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:27:43 +0100, Frederic Crozatfcro...@mandriva.com wrote: Le 08/12/2009 16:08, sankarshan a écrit : 2009/12/8 Pierre-Luc Beaudoinpierre-...@pierlux.com: On Tue, 2009-12-08 at 03:23 -0500, Behdad Esfahbod wrote: But I find it interesting to know, say, what Miguel is up to these days. I don't think it's just me... I don't believe Frederic was pointing at Miguel. There are people who have left the Gnome community working on products that don't use any Gnome technology posting blog post/ads for said product on PGO. [0] Unless specific names are pointed out to the Board or, on this list, the shadow boxing will be more harmful So, let's start (this is list done quickly by me and I haven't contacted anybody from it), as basis: - Robert Love - Christopher Blizzard - Miguel De Icaza - Nat Friedman - Daniel Veillard - Edd Dumbill - Glynn Foster - James Henstridge - Jeff Waugh - Mark McLoughlin - Scott James Remnant [1] How does one define that they have left the GNOME community ? this list is based on people either no longer blogging at all or not blogging about GNOME and not being active in GNOME. I don't have any problem about people who blogs about non-political oriented things in their life, as long as GNOME is one of those things... I'm not even sure I should still be on Planet GNOME (even if I'm release team member), since most of my posts aren't about GNOME but about the distribution I work on. And I sometime feels those posts could be seen as propaganda for my distribution. Regarding what bedhad said, nothing prevent people to read those people blog outside Planet GNOME (like Planet Mono or anything else). ___ 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: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Le mer. 09 déc. 2009 à 14:45:55 (+0100), Philip Van Hoof a écrit: This is nonsense. The planet-gnome slogan is: Planet GNOME is __ a window into the world, work and lives __ of GNOME hackers and contributors. This is what made the planet a successful project, initiated by Jeff Waugh (who you propose for removal ^). The way I understand what Frédéric said is, there is an (yet another one?) interesting question not answered by the p.g.o slogan. What does the planet maintainers do with people who stop being involved in the project. Sometimes people who are not anymore active in a project declare clearly that they are no longer willing to be involved because of x,y,z reason. That's the easy situation. But what happens when nothing is said? Maybe this question is worth examining. I think it's a tough question because it hard to not make it become an emotionnal topic. In any case, if the answer is People who were once involved keep their related attributes ad vitam eternam, we must say it clearly to avoid this confusion. If you want to fundamentally change the planet, why don't you start your own planet and convince the world that yours is better? To me, saying this is just like saying go die elsewhere, I don't want to listen to you. I don't think trying to fix what mostly works already is necessarily fundamentally a bad thing. Nobody is asking you to agree, but it can be interesting nonetheless to let people expose their opinion without asking them to shut up, basically. Dodji ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On 12/09/2009 01:47 PM, Dodji Seketeli wrote: The way I understand what Frédéric said is, there is an (yet another one?) interesting question not answered by the p.g.o slogan. What does the planet maintainers do with people who stop being involved in the project. Sometimes people who are not anymore active in a project declare clearly that they are no longer willing to be involved because of x,y,z reason. That's the easy situation. But what happens when nothing is said? So, I'm still syndicated on Monologue even though I haven't blogged anything about Mono since July 2006. I wouldn't care if they kicked me off, but I've never felt compelled to actually figure out how to make that happen on my own. Assuming there are other people who behave like that, it's entirely possible that if we just sent mail to everyone on PGO once a year saying Hi, you're on PGO, we just want to make sure you still want to be. If you don't want to be there any more, just let us know that this would get rid of some of the extra-crufty people. -- Dan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, 2009-12-09 at 13:32 -0500, Behdad Esfahbod wrote: On 12/09/2009 08:48 AM, Lionel Dricot wrote: I know some planets that choose to have a code of conduct about what should be posted or not (like planet Ubuntu-f or planet-libre.org). They all ended by not selecting the people on a quality basis but selecting posts that respect the subject of the planet. It results in very-low quality planet, not interesting and, more importantly, without any soul, any spirit. Planet.gnome has a spirit. There's something (called it soul if you want). Don't break it. Remember planet.climate-change joke? That was huge and enjoyable. EXACTLY. EXACTLY. EXACTLY. EXACTLY +1, and a big whatever - Each year, a mail is sent to those member asking if they want to stay on pgo and if they consider themselves still on-topic. Lets limit it to a reminder that you're on PGO. if you want to be removed, email xxx if we have to do something like that. I fully agree with this solution. Thanks, behdad. You hereby have my vote and support for next board elections. As usual. Because you're one of the few people who's pragmatic and realistic to earn my vote. Not one of those crazy people. Sorry for being direct. It's just my personality. Thank you. Let's now go back to solving some real problems in GNOME. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Is it possible to provide filters so that people who are interested in different types of blog entries can focus on what is interesting to them? This could be a useful feature for many reasons, but it doesn't address the issue of articles that grant legitimacy to non-free software. The presence of articles discussing vmware, for instance, conveys the message that GNOME sees nothing wrong with it. Unless we can count on all readers to filter those articles out, the filters don't deal with the issue. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
The people who work at VmWare also very often posted (and still post) about their work and appear on Planet GNOME. They should not do this, unless VmWare becomes free software. GNOME should not provide proprietary software developers with a platform to present non-free software as a good or legitimate thing. Perhaps the statement of Planet GNOME's philosophy should be interpreted differently. It should not invite people to talk about their proprietary software projects just because they are also GNOME contributors. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Richard said that Planet GNOME shouldn't be used to promote non-free software (i.e. software that denies freedom by witholding source code or witholding permission to use/modify/distribute). But mono *is* Free Software according to the FSF definition! Yes, it is. There's nothing wrong with Mono itself. What we need to be careful of is depending on C#. (See http://www.fsf.org/news/dont-depend-on-mono.) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On 12/07/2009 01:32 PM, Frederic Crozat wrote: Le 27/11/2009 10:53, Murray Cumming a écrit : On Wed, 2009-11-25 at 16:50 -0200, Tristan Van Berkom wrote: Alternative proposal: lets deal with the problem at hand and get our story straight about what is planet.gnome.org, what can be posted there (i.e. no porn and vulgar language etc.) and how we can help to enforce a reasonably exact policy on an exact resource which is planet.gnome.org. planet.gnome.org is hard to moderate. Editors can only remove an entire blog. It would be easier if the software allowed the existing editors to remove a single blog post. Let's be honest too : there are a bunch of people which used to be active GNOME members, who changed their focus to other projects and are still in Planet GNOME for no reason. Maybe PGO editors should start cleaning the old cruft (no offense intended).. But I find it interesting to know, say, what Miguel is up to these days. I don't think it's just me... behdad ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Tue, 2009-12-08 at 03:23 -0500, Behdad Esfahbod wrote: But I find it interesting to know, say, what Miguel is up to these days. I don't think it's just me... I don't believe Frederic was pointing at Miguel. There are people who have left the Gnome community working on products that don't use any Gnome technology posting blog post/ads for said product on PGO. Pierre-Luc 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: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
2009/12/8 Pierre-Luc Beaudoin pierre-...@pierlux.com: On Tue, 2009-12-08 at 03:23 -0500, Behdad Esfahbod wrote: But I find it interesting to know, say, what Miguel is up to these days. I don't think it's just me... I don't believe Frederic was pointing at Miguel. There are people who have left the Gnome community working on products that don't use any Gnome technology posting blog post/ads for said product on PGO. [0] Unless specific names are pointed out to the Board or, on this list, the shadow boxing will be more harmful [1] How does one define that they have left the GNOME community ? -- sankarshan mukhopadhyay http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 8:08 AM, sankarshan foss.mailingli...@gmail.comwrote: [1] How does one define that they have left the GNOME community ? If this is a concern that many have, maybe it would be simple enough to send an annual reminder to people that are aggregated on Planet GNOME to let them know that they are on Planet GNOME, why they are there (they are part of the GNOME community), what the code of conduct is and let them know how they can remove their blog. Stormy ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Behdad Esfahbod wrote: Say, any viewer of p.g.o can vote a post +1 or -1. Then we can gather two metrics per poster: 1) how impactful his/her posts are (avg / median / max number of votes). 2) how interested are readers in his/her posts (avg / median / min/max score. We can then have threshold to hide / collapse unpopular posts. Yes, please! Let the system fix itself through trendy crowd-sourcing, rather than having a board spank people who speak foolishly! - Mike ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 1:46 AM, Behdad Esfahbod beh...@behdad.org wrote: On 12/08/2009 10:08 AM, sankarshan wrote: 2009/12/8 Pierre-Luc Beaudoinpierre-...@pierlux.com: On Tue, 2009-12-08 at 03:23 -0500, Behdad Esfahbod wrote: But I find it interesting to know, say, what Miguel is up to these days. I don't think it's just me... I don't believe Frederic was pointing at Miguel. There are people who have left the Gnome community working on products that don't use any Gnome technology posting blog post/ads for said product on PGO. [0] Unless specific names are pointed out to the Board or, on this list, the shadow boxing will be more harmful [1] How does one define that they have left the GNOME community ? Exactly. The more I think about the issues raised in this thread, the more I believe a voting system (similar to what maemo is doing perhaps) may be all we need. Say, any viewer of p.g.o can vote a post +1 or -1. Then we can gather two metrics per poster: 1) how impactful his/her posts are (avg / median / max number of votes). 2) how interested are readers in his/her posts (avg / median / min/max score. We can then have threshold to hide / collapse unpopular posts. That part can even be done using JavaScript and you can the threshold on the page and more posts will collapse/uncollapse... Really ? Most people read posts in Google reader (offline) and may not even be interested to vote for every author. -- Sankar P http://psankar.blogspot.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On 12/09/2009 01:37 AM, Sankar P wrote: Say, any viewer of p.g.o can vote a post +1 or -1. Then we can gather two metrics per poster: 1) how impactful his/her posts are (avg / median / max number of votes). 2) how interested are readers in his/her posts (avg / median / min/max score. We can then have threshold to hide / collapse unpopular posts. That part can even be done using JavaScript and you can the threshold on the page and more posts will collapse/uncollapse... Really ? Most people read posts in Google reader (offline) and may not even be interested to vote for every author. No one *has* to vote. And we can have different feeds for different thresholds. behdad ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 12:23 PM, Behdad Esfahbod beh...@behdad.org wrote: On 12/09/2009 01:37 AM, Sankar P wrote: Say, any viewer of p.g.o can vote a post +1 or -1. Then we can gather two metrics per poster: 1) how impactful his/her posts are (avg / median / max number of votes). 2) how interested are readers in his/her posts (avg / median / min/max score. We can then have threshold to hide / collapse unpopular posts. That part can even be done using JavaScript and you can the threshold on the page and more posts will collapse/uncollapse... Really ? Most people read posts in Google reader (offline) and may not even be interested to vote for every author. No one *has* to vote. And we can have different feeds for different thresholds. Coming back to the starting point - what is the problem to which the solution is being discussed ? -- sankarshan mukhopadhyay http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog Sent from Brisbane, Qld, Australia ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On 12/09/2009 01:56 AM, sankarshan wrote: On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 12:23 PM, Behdad Esfahbodbeh...@behdad.org wrote: On 12/09/2009 01:37 AM, Sankar P wrote: Say, any viewer of p.g.o can vote a post +1 or -1. Then we can gather two metrics per poster: 1) how impactful his/her posts are (avg / median / max number of votes). 2) how interested are readers in his/her posts (avg / median / min/max score. We can then have threshold to hide / collapse unpopular posts. That part can even be done using JavaScript and you can the threshold on the page and more posts will collapse/uncollapse... Really ? Most people read posts in Google reader (offline) and may not even be interested to vote for every author. No one *has* to vote. And we can have different feeds for different thresholds. Coming back to the starting point - what is the problem to which the solution is being discussed ? Read the thread? behdad ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 12:44 PM, Behdad Esfahbod beh...@behdad.org wrote: Coming back to the starting point - what is the problem to which the solution is being discussed ? Read the thread? I have been following the thread since the inception. The intent of the (rhetorical ?) question was to bring forth the fact that we are discussing solutions of myriad variety without looking at whether it can be solved non-programmatically. Hence, the question. -- sankarshan mukhopadhyay http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog Sent from Brisbane, Qld, Australia ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On 12/09/2009 02:25 AM, sankarshan wrote: On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 12:44 PM, Behdad Esfahbodbeh...@behdad.org wrote: Coming back to the starting point - what is the problem to which the solution is being discussed ? Read the thread? I have been following the thread since the inception. The intent of the (rhetorical ?) question was to bring forth the fact that we are discussing solutions of myriad variety without looking at whether it can be solved non-programmatically. Hence, the question. The immediate question I was responding to was whethere/how blog posts of people not involved with GNOME anymore / not part of the GNOME community should be removed from PGO. I think what I proposed is an adequate solution to that. Sure it doesn't fix many other problems raised in the thread. behdad ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Le 27/11/2009 10:53, Murray Cumming a écrit : On Wed, 2009-11-25 at 16:50 -0200, Tristan Van Berkom wrote: Alternative proposal: lets deal with the problem at hand and get our story straight about what is planet.gnome.org, what can be posted there (i.e. no porn and vulgar language etc.) and how we can help to enforce a reasonably exact policy on an exact resource which is planet.gnome.org. planet.gnome.org is hard to moderate. Editors can only remove an entire blog. It would be easier if the software allowed the existing editors to remove a single blog post. Let's be honest too : there are a bunch of people which used to be active GNOME members, who changed their focus to other projects and are still in Planet GNOME for no reason. Maybe PGO editors should start cleaning the old cruft (no offense intended).. -- Frederic Crozat Mandriva ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Hi, Behdad Esfahbod wrote: Other than Telsa and partially Ross, have any other ones expressed to you or publicly that they left GNOME at least partly because of the tone of discourse? Yes. Or rather, because of the culture which has become GNOME's over the past 5 years or so. And when did Jorge drifted away from GNOME? Last I checked he was around just fine. And Google blackhole had no part? Jorge left, disgusted, around 2005, and came back via Ubuntu in 2007. Jorge, is that a fair summary? Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Hi, Mukund Sivaraman wrote: Dave, you left the GIMP project because of issues with a contributor. Do you really think that person would have been deterred from behaving so, if he/she had signed such a document? He would not have signed any such document - he would have found the idea ridiculous (and said so) that having access to gimp.org resources meant having any responsibility at all to the good name culture of the GIMP development community. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, 2009-11-25 at 22:48 +, Alan Cox wrote: 1. People speak on their own behalf, not on behalf of GNOME. Unless they ARE talking on behalf of GNOME (say, board, release team, etc), Indeed On things like the planet that can be addressed by suitable tags and styling (as could inappropriate content - if there is a 'rant filter' option or similar) I agree with this 4. In any kind of discussion and/or medium, one should learn who's words matter. Is he the maintainer of the module? Is he a developer? Does he generally offer useful insight? Does he know what he's talking about? Do others take this person seriously? When you learn to ignore the noise, life is beautiful again. With the kernel hat on this is why LWN and Jon Masters summaries are so important. They distill the relevant material from the bloodbath that is linux-kernel (and which btw does put off a lot of people and cause big issues with some cultural groups). Please btw don't use Linux kernel as a shining example of why rules are not needed. The kernel works despite not because of the list attitude. Also there may be no code of conduct but certain people have at times been taken aside at conferences and educated on how they are coming across. This happens at our GNOME conferences too. Not as group meetings, but individual contact. This has most impact and no Code of Conduct or enforcement amendment can compete. - Learn to agree to disagree. - Criticize ideas, not people presenting them. I would likely support such amendments to our code of conduct. We worked hard to get the often ignored Assume people mean well bullet point in our Code Of Conduct: Although often ignored, it's also the most important one. Learning to agree to disagree goes alongside assuming people mean well. And perhaps also - Remmeber that different cultures have different attitudes, styles and touchy subjects. Yes, good point. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Hi, Lucas Rocha wrote: The GNOME Code of Conduct[1] has been serving very well as an informal guideline for the community but we'd like to make it an official document that new Foundation members are expected to explicitly agree[2] with before being accepted. This way we'll have a common ground for dealing with certain conflict situations and avoid trying to base our discussions on guidelines that certain members haven't explicitly agreed on. My views on this are already well known: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2009-May/msg00066.html It seems like the issue isn't making people promise to be nice, it's what happens when they aren't. And once again the board has taken the easy way out, by not being judgemental about reported behaviour. In this case, I'd like to see the board clearly come out say we don't have a problem with this, or we have a problem with this (while saying what this is), instead of having a wishy-washy solution. Mostly I agree with Emmanuele Jason on this. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 7:48 AM, Lucas Rocha luc...@gnome.org wrote: it's really hard to argue about how we expect our members to behave if there is no official guidelines that members are supposed to comply with. That seems like a cop-out to me, at least as phrased. Does this mean if there's a codified set of guidelines in the future but it doesn't address something explicitly, then your hands are tied in addressing it? Inappropriate is inappropriate, whether it's pointed out ahead of time or not. Yes, a set of guidelines is a good idea, but this shouldn't hold up the board addressing behaviors that are clearly inappropriate, guidelines or no. Best, Zonker -- Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier j...@zonker.net openSUSE Community Manager Get openSUSE 11.2! http://bit.ly/EOV8a Twitter: jzb | Identica: jzb About: http://www.dissociatedpress.net/about/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Hi Lucas On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 12:48:45PM +, Lucas Rocha wrote: The GNOME Code of Conduct[1] has been serving very well as an informal guideline for the community but we'd like to make it an official document that new Foundation members are expected to explicitly agree[2] with before being accepted. I think this is taking it too far. The Code of Conduct being presented as a set of guidelines is OK, but it is not wise to make it policy. The GNOME project is not a sect, to control what I can and cannot say/do in public. The current code of document[1] has some incredible guidelines such as the advice against using RTFM, which arguably has nothing to do with bad behavior. Also, instructions such as Be patient and generous are vague by themselves. Your measure of patience may be quite different from mine. These are OK as guidelines, but not as policy. 1. http://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct Mukund ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 9:29 AM, Mukund Sivaraman m...@banu.com wrote: I think this is taking it too far. The Code of Conduct being presented as a set of guidelines is OK, but it is not wise to make it policy. The GNOME project is not a sect, to control what I can and cannot say/do in public. We are talking about GNOME hosted platforms. Planet GNOME, blogs.gnome.organd the GNOME mailing lists are all forums we host and I think we can (and do) expect a certain standard of conduct on them. For example, if someone started spamming the Foundation list, we would block them. (Public does not mean you can do whatever you want. In most public places there are laws you have to follow.) Stormy ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
I believe that this discussion is becoming far too bloated. How often do we have to deal with offended people? What energy will we spend to deal with each case on a case by case basis? Answer is A. How much energy will we spend to try to design a law/rule that might fit every use case and will be discussed each time we have a case? Answer is B. I expect A B by at least one order of magnitude. What is exactly the problem here? Sometimes some people are offended by the content of planet GNOME? OK, it has always be the case but it's a problem. A rare one but still a problem. What effect will have deciding of rules, CoC or punishment on that particular problem? I don't see how it could have an effect. There will still be offending stuff from time to time on pgo. This was never a problem in the past as it was handled on a case by case basis. Anyway, there are always people offended by everything. When you have to type a command once a year, you don't start developing a framework that will handle every possible situation. (it has already been done, it's called J2EE) Cheers, Lionel On Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:36:41 -0700, Stormy Peters stormy.pet...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 9:29 AM, Mukund Sivaraman m...@banu.com wrote: I think this is taking it too far. The Code of Conduct being presented as a set of guidelines is OK, but it is not wise to make it policy. The GNOME project is not a sect, to control what I can and cannot say/do in public. We are talking about GNOME hosted platforms. Planet GNOME, blogs.gnome.organd the GNOME mailing lists are all forums we host and I think we can (and do) expect a certain standard of conduct on them. For example, if someone started spamming the Foundation list, we would block them. (Public does not mean you can do whatever you want. In most public places there are laws you have to follow.) Stormy ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 9:51 AM, Lionel Dricot pl...@ploum.net wrote: What is exactly the problem here? Sometimes some people are offended by the content of planet GNOME? OK, it has always be the case but it's a problem. A rare one but still a problem. What effect will have deciding of rules, CoC or punishment on that particular problem? I don't see how it could have an effect. I think the problem isn't the offending material but rather that people expect the board to take action when there is offending material. The board wants to represent the community and so would like to make sure there are clear guidelines on the behaviour the community expects and what we'd like to have happen when people don't follow those guidelines. Hopefully the guidelines will also make sure there is less offending material. Stormy ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Hi, Lionel Dricot wrote: How often do we have to deal with offended people? What energy will we spend to deal with each case on a case by case basis? Answer is A. How much energy will we spend to try to design a law/rule that might fit every use case and will be discussed each time we have a case? Answer is B. I expect A B by at least one order of magnitude. You forget how much energy is lost forever to the community because good people walk away after an unpleasant experience? It is telling that the main reason departing editors give when signing off Wikipedia is: Wikipedia is becoming a more hostile environment, contends Mr. Ortega, a project manager at Libresoft, a research group at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid. Many people are getting burnt out when they have to debate about the contents of certain articles again and again. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125893981183759969.html They have concrete measurements of participation, we don't. So we don't know how many developers are inactive now, and were formerly active, or why they left. But we certainly have anecdotal evidence of people who have publicly left because they could no longer work in the GNOME environment. I can give you 10 names off the top of my head. You don't think that's a problem? Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
I'm against an enshrined code of conduct which suddenly kicks you out of GNOME, or gets you shunned. A Terms of Service for hosted sites which gets your account unsubscribed for that site might be better if it is very narrowly defined, e.g. no spamming, no porn, etc. However as we move into the realm of who offended who it gets dicey and predicated on the sentiments of who is making the final call. We've survived the oGalaxys and Bowie Poags of the past and I don't think I have seen any worse conduct. I'm defering to the board if they really feel they need an enshrined document but there should be a vote on the final draft if we go in this direction. On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 11:51 AM, Lionel Dricot pl...@ploum.net wrote: I believe that this discussion is becoming far too bloated. How often do we have to deal with offended people? What energy will we spend to deal with each case on a case by case basis? Answer is A. How much energy will we spend to try to design a law/rule that might fit every use case and will be discussed each time we have a case? Answer is B. I expect A B by at least one order of magnitude. What is exactly the problem here? Sometimes some people are offended by the content of planet GNOME? OK, it has always be the case but it's a problem. A rare one but still a problem. What effect will have deciding of rules, CoC or punishment on that particular problem? I don't see how it could have an effect. There will still be offending stuff from time to time on pgo. This was never a problem in the past as it was handled on a case by case basis. Anyway, there are always people offended by everything. When you have to type a command once a year, you don't start developing a framework that will handle every possible situation. (it has already been done, it's called J2EE) Cheers, Lionel On Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:36:41 -0700, Stormy Peters stormy.pet...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 9:29 AM, Mukund Sivaraman m...@banu.com wrote: I think this is taking it too far. The Code of Conduct being presented as a set of guidelines is OK, but it is not wise to make it policy. The GNOME project is not a sect, to control what I can and cannot say/do in public. We are talking about GNOME hosted platforms. Planet GNOME, blogs.gnome.organd the GNOME mailing lists are all forums we host and I think we can (and do) expect a certain standard of conduct on them. For example, if someone started spamming the Foundation list, we would block them. (Public does not mean you can do whatever you want. In most public places there are laws you have to follow.) Stormy ___ 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: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
That is why the proposal that I just put on the table explicitly talks only of official GNOME forums of communication which is, incidentally, exactly like a terms of service. 2009/11/25 john palmieri john.j5.palmi...@gmail.com I'm against an enshrined code of conduct which suddenly kicks you out of GNOME, or gets you shunned. A Terms of Service for hosted sites which gets your account unsubscribed for that site might be better if it is very narrowly defined, e.g. no spamming, no porn, etc. However as we move into the realm of who offended who it gets dicey and predicated on the sentiments of who is making the final call. We've survived the oGalaxys and Bowie Poags of the past and I don't think I have seen any worse conduct. I'm defering to the board if they really feel they need an enshrined document but there should be a vote on the final draft if we go in this direction. On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 11:51 AM, Lionel Dricot pl...@ploum.net wrote: I believe that this discussion is becoming far too bloated. How often do we have to deal with offended people? What energy will we spend to deal with each case on a case by case basis? Answer is A. How much energy will we spend to try to design a law/rule that might fit every use case and will be discussed each time we have a case? Answer is B. I expect A B by at least one order of magnitude. What is exactly the problem here? Sometimes some people are offended by the content of planet GNOME? OK, it has always be the case but it's a problem. A rare one but still a problem. What effect will have deciding of rules, CoC or punishment on that particular problem? I don't see how it could have an effect. There will still be offending stuff from time to time on pgo. This was never a problem in the past as it was handled on a case by case basis. Anyway, there are always people offended by everything. When you have to type a command once a year, you don't start developing a framework that will handle every possible situation. (it has already been done, it's called J2EE) Cheers, Lionel On Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:36:41 -0700, Stormy Peters stormy.pet...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 9:29 AM, Mukund Sivaraman m...@banu.com wrote: I think this is taking it too far. The Code of Conduct being presented as a set of guidelines is OK, but it is not wise to make it policy. The GNOME project is not a sect, to control what I can and cannot say/do in public. We are talking about GNOME hosted platforms. Planet GNOME, blogs.gnome.organd the GNOME mailing lists are all forums we host and I think we can (and do) expect a certain standard of conduct on them. For example, if someone started spamming the Foundation list, we would block them. (Public does not mean you can do whatever you want. In most public places there are laws you have to follow.) Stormy ___ 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 ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:03:47 +0100, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote: Hi, Lionel Dricot wrote: How often do we have to deal with offended people? What energy will we spend to deal with each case on a case by case basis? Answer is A. How much energy will we spend to try to design a law/rule that might fit every use case and will be discussed each time we have a case? Answer is B. I expect A B by at least one order of magnitude. You forget how much energy is lost forever to the community because good people walk away after an unpleasant experience? It is telling that the main reason departing editors give when signing off Wikipedia is: Wikipedia is becoming a more hostile environment, contends Mr. Ortega, a project manager at Libresoft, a research group at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid. Many people are getting burnt out when they have to debate about the contents of certain articles again and again. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125893981183759969.html They have concrete measurements of participation, we don't. So we don't know how many developers are inactive now, and were formerly active, or why they left. But we certainly have anecdotal evidence of people who have publicly left because they could no longer work in the GNOME environment. I can give you 10 names off the top of my head. You don't think that's a problem? I had exactly the same problem with wikipedia : http://ploum.frimouvy.org/?222-why-i-don-t-contribute-to-wikipedia-anymore And you know what? The problem is that there is too much rules. So people feel empowered and don't think anymore about the situation, they stick to the rule. The more you add rules, the more you will increase hostility against newcomers. Do you think that many people were turned out of the GNOME community because of an hostile experience? I don't think so. (I might be wrong, I just never met anybody that has a bad experience). Wikipedia is probably the project with the most rules and you see what happens. Lionel ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, 2009-11-25 at 12:05 -0500, john palmieri wrote: I'm against an enshrined code of conduct which suddenly kicks you out of GNOME, or gets you shunned. A Terms of Service for hosted sites which gets your account unsubscribed for that site might be better if it is very narrowly defined, e.g. no spamming, no porn, etc. However as we move into the realm of who offended who it gets dicey and predicated on the sentiments of who is making the final call. We've survived the oGalaxys and Bowie Poags of the past and I don't think I have seen any worse conduct. I'm defering to the board if they really feel they need an enshrined document but there should be a vote on the final draft if we go in this direction. I (fully) agree with John here. The lawyer-talk proposal of Jason is a no for me personally. It's also not the document that I've put my name under when I signed the Code of Conduct any longer if that amendment is indeed added. On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 11:51 AM, Lionel Dricot pl...@ploum.net wrote: I believe that this discussion is becoming far too bloated. How often do we have to deal with offended people? What energy will we spend to deal with each case on a case by case basis? Answer is A. How much energy will we spend to try to design a law/rule that might fit every use case and will be discussed each time we have a case? Answer is B. I expect A B by at least one order of magnitude. What is exactly the problem here? Sometimes some people are offended by the content of planet GNOME? OK, it has always be the case but it's a problem. A rare one but still a problem. What effect will have deciding of rules, CoC or punishment on that particular problem? I don't see how it could have an effect. There will still be offending stuff from time to time on pgo. This was never a problem in the past as it was handled on a case by case basis. Anyway, there are always people offended by everything. When you have to type a command once a year, you don't start developing a framework that will handle every possible situation. (it has already been done, it's called J2EE) Cheers, Lionel On Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:36:41 -0700, Stormy Peters stormy.pet...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 9:29 AM, Mukund Sivaraman m...@banu.com wrote: I think this is taking it too far. The Code of Conduct being presented as a set of guidelines is OK, but it is not wise to make it policy. The GNOME project is not a sect, to control what I can and cannot say/do in public. We are talking about GNOME hosted platforms. Planet GNOME, blogs.gnome.organd the GNOME mailing lists are all forums we host and I think we can (and do) expect a certain standard of conduct on them. For example, if someone started spamming the Foundation list, we would block them. (Public does not mean you can do whatever you want. In most public places there are laws you have to follow.) Stormy ___ 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 -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Hi Stormy On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 09:36:41AM -0700, Stormy Peters wrote: We are talking about GNOME hosted platforms. Planet GNOME, blogs.gnome.organd the GNOME mailing lists are all forums we host and I think we can (and do) expect a certain standard of conduct on them. For example, if someone started spamming the Foundation list, we would block them. Would you agree that things such as filtering for spam (on lists, IRC, etc.), and removal of badly behaving people already happen, and these are not specific to GNOME foundation members? It should be commonsense to anyone that bad signal/noise will be punished, when other peers don't like it. How does requiring GNOME foundation members to sign this document help? (Public does not mean you can do whatever you want. In most public places there are laws you have to follow.) Nod, but this is a bad analogy. In public places, one must behave according to the law, but (having not understood that this applies to only GNOME infrastructure) I didn't want GNOME to make these rules. Mukund ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
