Re: Questions for the candidates: finances
Le lundi 19 mai 2014 à 11:19 -0700, Jim Nelson a écrit : Aside from corporate sponsorship and personal donations, what area(s) would you investigate to increase and stabilize GNOME's finances? (Or do you feel these two methods are the only or best way to achieve this goal?) I tend to think that corporate donations are desirable for many reasons. I doubt I need to go at length here to point out that a handful of corps with marketing/charity/RD budgets are easier to target and convince than a thousand individuals working hard to earn every penny, that GNOME needs an ecosystem that includes not just hobbyists but also people who are paid to do maintenance professionally, and so on and so forth. I don't yet have a magical answer for an easy new funding model for GNOME (if it was so easy, there wouldn't be any problems to fix), but as part of my duties I would like to brainstorm and explore new venues. Just from the top of my head: - Check the possibility for grants from public institutions and look into corporate sponsors from outside our traditional circles, instead of limiting ourselves to our current corporate ecosystem. - Humble Indie Bundle-style in-app-store donations system, though there was some legal/technical problem with that idea, I forgot which, maybe someone here remembers? Otherwise I ought to ask hughsie again. - Online services for individuals - Out-of-the-box fundraising schemes. We might have some surprises there. However funny that might sound at first glance, I've seen golf tournaments (and other event types) providing massive amounts of funds to some non-profits. - Our somewhat nonexistent OEM story - Untapped potential, like the privacy fundraising initiative - Other fancy ideas that may arise ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for the candidates: finances
Hiya Jim! On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 11:19 AM, Jim Nelson j...@yorba.org wrote: Hello everyone, Aside from corporate sponsorship and personal donations, what area(s) would you investigate to increase and stabilize GNOME's finances? (Or do you feel these two methods are the only or best way to achieve this goal?) Corporate sponsorship tends to bring in a lot of money in and it is always beneficial to be able to increase that. If you wanted to do grass roots based fundraising, that would require setting up a better donation system than we have now. We can definitely do better, and the board has had some discussions about alternative systems last year. Some people have suggested using flattr or some other method of micro-payments that could bring in revenue. I think I threw out something about tying donations to bug fixes. You could setup marketing calls to various companies who might be using our stack and ask for donations that way for smaller amounts like 1000 dollars or 5000 dollars. In general, they do okay, but they won't be very large. You need to grow the audience to really take advantage of that strategy. Another idea might be to take advantage of funding opportunities like grants from the government or companies. We don't necessarily have to make a technology argument, we could focus on programs like OPW or our underlying philosophy of freedom. We are after all a philanthropic organization, we could make that argument. Here is a grant application from JP Morgan as an example: http://www.jpmorganchase.com/corporate/Corporate-Responsibility/grant-programs Of course this one is corporate, but I'm sure we can find others. Another idea is to fundraise at conferences, and not necessarily our tech ones. Most of fundraising is about making 1:1 connections and then making a compelling argument. sri -- Jim ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for the candidates: finances
On Mon, 2014-05-19 at 23:08 +0200, oliverp wrote: On Mon, 2014-05-19 at 11:19 -0700, Jim Nelson wrote: Hello everyone, My questions for the candidates is: Aside from corporate sponsorship and personal donations, what area(s) would you investigate to increase and stabilize GNOME's finances? (Or do you feel these two methods are the only or best way to achieve this goal?) Good question, thanks for asking. I think the first priority for the Board must be to focus on stabilizing the current sensitization. make sure invoices are paid for the OPW etc. Then I think much work can be done together with the community in both areas you mention (corporate sponsorship and personal donations). Long term, more methods can be considered. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for the candidates: finances
On Tue, 2014-05-20 at 10:48 +0200, oliverp wrote: On Mon, 2014-05-19 at 22:02 -0400, Marina Zhurakhinskaya wrote: I think we can do more with organization sponsorship and individual donations than we are doing right now. We have a product that is naturally of interest to a lot of consumers and corporate users, and of interest to hardware and application developers to be compatible with. We also have technology that is of interest to people to build their own products with or create services around. When it became known that the GNOME Foundation was in a difficult financial situation, we received an unprecedented number of individual donations. These were previously untapped donors who are very supportive of GNOME. I think we should aim to increase how much we get in private donations, and we can do that by reporting to our donors how their money is being used and having yearly fundraising campaigns. We need to dedicate our fundraising energy to these two sources because they are complimentary to the goals we have for advancing our technology. As a Foundation, even with an ED, we have lim limited resources, so we need to consider how to allocate them most effectively. I'd like to share a great article about fundraising by the Ada Initiative founders which has informed some of my views on it. http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-ada-initiative-founders-on-funding-activism-for-women-in-open-source That is a great article thanks for sharing! The Engagement Team have started a discussion [1] about how the Foundation can become more effective in the fundraising, and as part of that effort set-up a wiki page [2] with some resources on the subject (have added the post it to the wiki). I hope you are interested in joining this effort, the Engagement Team want to collaborate closely with the Board in this. 1https://mail.gnome.org/archives/engagement-list/2014-April/msg00052.html 2https://wiki.gnome.org/Engagement/FriendsOfGNOME/HowWeCanImprove ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for the candidates: finances
In my previous email responding to Kat, I touched on this very subject. First and foremost we need to determine two things: 1) How much money we are currently spending on what, and what is truly needed. 2) How much money is currently coming in, and from where - this should be broken down into categories - individual donations, and at least the top 5-10 corporate donors ought to be listed along with how much they have been and are giving. Then we should move on to determining how we can raise donations from individuals and small businesses. Donors should not have to search the website to figure out how to do so - a small, but prominent link to 'Contribute to GNOME!' would not be out of place on the site. Currently it takes at least 3 clicks to arrive at a site where you can donate - and your only choice for doing so is via paypal. Why don't we accept other payment options? Is it just that nobody has bothered to set it up? If that is the case, we should be asking for help doing so. At the very least, we should accept payments from google, facebook and amazon, and we should at least consider accepting bitcoins as well. Finally, there are other funding options available online - a quick search reveals numerous websites with ideas on how to more effectively raise funds. Utilizing every tool available to us to raise money from individuals should be our first priority. Only after we have fully explored these options should we go back to asking for yet more corporate money. Emily Gonyer On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 5:28 AM, oliverp oliver.pro...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, 2014-05-20 at 10:48 +0200, oliverp wrote: On Mon, 2014-05-19 at 22:02 -0400, Marina Zhurakhinskaya wrote: I think we can do more with organization sponsorship and individual donations than we are doing right now. We have a product that is naturally of interest to a lot of consumers and corporate users, and of interest to hardware and application developers to be compatible with. We also have technology that is of interest to people to build their own products with or create services around. When it became known that the GNOME Foundation was in a difficult financial situation, we received an unprecedented number of individual donations. These were previously untapped donors who are very supportive of GNOME. I think we should aim to increase how much we get in private donations, and we can do that by reporting to our donors how their money is being used and having yearly fundraising campaigns. We need to dedicate our fundraising energy to these two sources because they are complimentary to the goals we have for advancing our technology. As a Foundation, even with an ED, we have lim limited resources, so we need to consider how to allocate them most effectively. I'd like to share a great article about fundraising by the Ada Initiative founders which has informed some of my views on it. http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-ada-initiative-founders-on-funding-activism-for-women-in-open-source That is a great article thanks for sharing! The Engagement Team have started a discussion [1] about how the Foundation can become more effective in the fundraising, and as part of that effort set-up a wiki page [2] with some resources on the subject (have added the post it to the wiki). I hope you are interested in joining this effort, the Engagement Team want to collaborate closely with the Board in this. 1https://mail.gnome.org/archives/engagement-list/2014-April/msg00052.html 2https://wiki.gnome.org/Engagement/FriendsOfGNOME/HowWeCanImprove ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list -- Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. - Goethe Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr.Seuss Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. - Albert Einstein ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for the candidates: finances
Hi Jim On 2014-05-19 11:19, Jim Nelson j...@yorba.org wrote: Aside from corporate sponsorship and personal donations, what area(s) would you investigate to increase and stabilize GNOME's finances? (Or do you feel these two methods are the only or best way to achieve this goal?) I think that corporate donations are an effective way to raise funds for the Foundation, as they traditionally have dwarfed personal donations. While personal donations are secondary in terms of absolute value, the sheer number of individual donors is an indication of the high level of support from a wide range of people. Perhaps there is room for a middle ground, where interested parties (individuals or companies) could contribute to specific goals, and interested maintainers or contributors could pick up tasks and work on improving GNOME based on the goal ideas. To me, this is somewhere between the current fundraising campaigns, such as those for accessibility and privacy, and the idea of bug bounties. I think that the idea might have too much overhead, but it could work well at getting both new contributors and donors involved in the project. I am sure that there are lots of potential problems with it, but I hope the idea can spark some discussion. -- http://amigadave.com/ signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for the candidates: finances
Hi. On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 11:19:37AM -0700, Jim Nelson wrote: Aside from corporate sponsorship and personal donations, what area(s) would you investigate to increase and stabilize GNOME's finances? (Or do you feel these two methods are the only or best way to achieve this goal?) Reducing costs; although I think it is quite obvious that you cannot spend money that you don't receive. I see potential in various areas, such as our Friends of GNOME programme, the travel budget, or the people we pay for GNOME related work. Right now, we ship donors' gifts from the US. That's probably not the most economical option, esp. when sending things to our European donors. We could scale down travel support or have a policy that covers, say, up to 80% by default. Also, while we need committed people to do work for us, I'm not entirely convinced that we need to pay a salary. We could try to get committed community members to take over responsibility before thinking of hiring someone to do it for us. I don't think we can scale down much further now, though ;-) As for sources of income, I think we need to make it attractive for people to give (personal) donations first, before thinking of scaling up or expanding in other areas. That includes being able to receive money via something not Paypal or reaching out to our donors and tell them what we've done with the money they gave us. Cheers, Tobi ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for the candidates: finances
- Original Message - From: Jim Nelson j...@yorba.org To: Foundation List foundation-list@gnome.org Sent: Monday, May 19, 2014 2:19:37 PM Subject: Questions for the candidates: finances Hello everyone, First, I'd like to voice my support for Dave Neary's question. I also believe finding an executive director may be the most important task for the incoming board. From some earlier discussion it sounds like the other defining task will be stabilizing GNOME's finances. Others have asked questions about improving the foundation's financial situation, but almost every response is about locating more corporate sponsorship and increasing personal donations. My concern is that those paths are well-trod and potentially lean, and that novel ways of financing should be explored. At least one candidate (Emily Gonyer) stated a desire to ween GNOME off of corporate sponsorship. My questions for the candidates is: Aside from corporate sponsorship and personal donations, what area(s) would you investigate to increase and stabilize GNOME's finances? (Or do you feel these two methods are the only or best way to achieve this goal?) I think we can do more with organization sponsorship and individual donations than we are doing right now. We have a product that is naturally of interest to a lot of consumers and corporate users, and of interest to hardware and application developers to be compatible with. We also have technology that is of interest to people to build their own products with or create services around. When it became known that the GNOME Foundation was in a difficult financial situation, we received an unprecedented number of individual donations. These were previously untapped donors who are very supportive of GNOME. I think we should aim to increase how much we get in private donations, and we can do that by reporting to our donors how their money is being used and having yearly fundraising campaigns. We need to dedicate our fundraising energy to these two sources because they are complimentary to the goals we have for advancing our technology. As a Foundation, even with an ED, we have lim ited resources, so we need to consider how to allocate them most effectively. I'd like to share a great article about fundraising by the Ada Initiative founders which has informed some of my views on it. http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-ada-initiative-founders-on-funding-activism-for-women-in-open-source Thanks, Marina -- Jim ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for the candidates
Hi, (just want to start by thanking the membership elections committee for the organization of the elections! Make sure to hug them when you meet them) Apologies for the length of some answers ;-) And more apologies for sending this late (it was stuck in my drafts folder for way too long) Le vendredi 29 mai 2009, à 18:17 +0100, Susana Pereira a écrit : 1. For outgoing board members: what have been the upsides/good things from your previous stint at the Board which you would like to see carried forward into this term ? This is so a hard question because it's hard to remember what I did as a board member ;-) (not because I didn't do anything, nor because I did so many things -- simply because I don't remember everything) I think helping some hackfests happen is probably one of the best things. I'm also happy about some background work that was done around the GNOME infrastructure, although I'm not sure I should get credited for this. 2. If you are a new candidate: what specific SMART (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_(project_management)) goals would you like to put for yourself? Or, in other words, how would you like to measure yourself and, let others know how you are doing ? (not a new candidate) 3. What part of being a board member do you think will be most difficult for you? How do you plan to compensate for that? The most difficult thing would probably be that it will drain my energy at some times. Ice cream can help, I heard. (or being less active for a few days) 4. Do you have any experience on management teams or boards at non-profits? If so, can you give an example of a change you affected in that role? If not, what makes you think that you will be a good board member? What single change do you want to affect during your term? I've been on the Foundation Board since 2006, and I would think it's my main experience here. But I've also chaired some teams in GNOME (membership committee and release team, mainly). Not quite sure what to reply here: it's a bit like the first question, where I don't remember a specific example. However, I believe I can be a good board member because I'm full of love for our project and I'm dedicated to it. Also because it seems some friends of mine think I'm doing a good job there (but then, maybe they don't want to hurt me :-)) (The What single change... question sounds like question 5 below, so not replying here) 5. What are the specific areas of the Foundation's focus and strategy where you think you can contribute as a change agent ? Change agent? Hrm. Honestly, it's hard to say what I can contribute as a change agent since I've been in the board in the past few years and I don't plan any big focus change in what I'd do. (not saying things have been perfect -- changes should certainly happen, but I'd find it weird to start playing that role only now, for the elections and not earlier) 6. Do you think we need to make the being a member of the Foundation feel more valuable, and how do you think we should do that? What would you change about the Foundation to make it more useful to members. I think I used to think yes. And I'm now not so sure. I mean, there are things that might make sense (in the way we spend our money, like for travel sponsorship, as Germán mentions) and things that we already do (like gnome.org address, blog on blogs.gnome.org, and possibly various other things) But on the other hand... I saw some people apply for membership only because they wanted a gnome.org address, and not because they care about the Foundation. And this makes me a bit sad (not blaming the people, though: I can understand why you'd want to have a gnome.org address after contributing for 5 years...). Going back to the travel sponsorship example: I'd very much prefer to have the best-qualified person for a specific topic getting sponsored even if he's not a member, than a random member. Because in the end, it's better for the project that this best-qualified person goes to the event. Being a member of the Foundation is about wanting to be part of an organization that helps the GNOME project achieve its goals, and in some way, it's about publicly showing your love for the project. Or something like this ;-) It's not about expecting to receive something. And we don't require anything in exchange: membership is free, you only have to fill a form with details once, and then quickly fill it every two years. So, in general, I would reply no. But there are cases where the membership is a criteria that helps decide if people can access some resources because we need a criteria for this and we have no other objective criteria (eg, to have a blog on blogs.gnome.org). And there might be cases where we can offer things to members which just make sense for members (eg, some automatically generated PDF for GNOME business cards, if anybody feels like working on something like this). 7. Do you have any plans on how can the board help bring
Re: Questions for the candidates
On 06/09/2009 11:31 PM, Behdad Esfahbod wrote: What do you think GNOME should do to support the broader cause of free/libre software, and the freedom of computer users? I think the look, our source code is Free Software argument has lost a lot of appeal in where GNOME has headed in the past and continues to head. Free-ness is just one of the multiple reasons why GNOME is Good. Usability, a11y, i18n, etc are equally important. So I don't think GNOME can afford supporting the free/libre software cause more than, say, FSF does. Reading this after a good night's sleep, I think I didn't exactly write what I mean. What I mean is: While freedom is not our only selling point from a marketing point of view, it's perhaps the most important ingredient of how GNOME works, and we should embrace it where we can. I support GNOME's involvement with the broader cause of software freedom. I like us get more involved in issues like software patents or DRM, perhaps by partnering with FSF. Thinking about it with my board hat on though, chances of that happening will be much much higher if FSF just asked us. We never got any request, and well, been busy enough with other stuff. behdad On the freedom side however, that's where GNOME cares. A lot. Open standards, open formats, no lock-in, etc, are *very* important to achieve our goals of usability, a11y, etc, and I like to see GNOME work more closely with FSF and other parties on fighting against free standards issues as well as freedom of owning one's data. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for the candidates
Hi Everyone, I'm late to the party; man, did I ever know elections can be so exhausting? And so much fun?! Oh wait, I don't mean this one. I mean the Iran presidential elections on Friday later this week... Normally that even doesn't change my schedule, but for reasons that are better postponed to a PGO blogpost, it ate ALL of my weekend and is still giving me a fuzzy feeling this week. Anyway, I apologize for replying so late. I was counting the number of people who have replied to da Q's and it always looked like a couple or so. Time flies... So here we go. Questions - 1. For outgoing board members: what have been the upsides/good things from your previous stint at the Board which you would like to see carried forward into this term ? As I noted in the previous threads, I think the current board had a very productive balance. Things where not falling on the floor anymore, no one felt burned out, and I personally felt very happy being on the board. Now, that's mostly because of all the trouble Stormy took off the board's shoulder, but also because as a board we developed simple rules and tricks to improve our own productivity, and that's what I like to see carried forward into this term. I give three examples: - In previous boards (specially when there were 11 seats), there was this problem where decisions couldn't be made on time because not enough directors replied to a proposal. Durin the 2007 board we developed, and during 2008 we perfected, this protocol of replying with whatever comments we may have, but include one of +1, -1, or +0 as our binding vote. When a decision receives four +1's, the proposer automatically takes that as an approval and moves on. More recently we even started replying +1=1, then next person would do +1=2, etc. You get the idea. Problem solved. - Da board typically meets every other week. In the past there have been times where people misremembered which week we were in is it the off week or the on?, or totally forgot the meeting, or had the wrong week in their calendar because we ended up canceling a meeting because only two people called in... Anyway, to solve that, in one such meeting, we decided that I'll send a meeting reminder on the Monday of the week we are supposed to meet. I added a reminder to my calendar and have been sending the reminders, asking Meeting this week. Who'll be there? New agenda items? And that simple one-line email every other week did it. Now when we meet we know who is supposed to be there and who can't make it. Problem solved. - I understand that it has been accepted for a board member to be away from board happenings for an extended period of time. But in the recent while, we've developed an expectation of people notifying the other board members if they cannot commit their fair share to the board for a period of weeks, and that has been very helpful not blocking on individuals and getting things done. Again, problem solved. To summarize, while it feels so good to think oh great, seven of these 10 slaves^Wcandidates will become directors and then everything is their problem to fix, it's simply not how it happens. We don't have any superpowers. At least I dont :-). What I can offer however is 1) keeping the board functional no matter how busy I am, and 2) offering my judgment. 2. If you are a new candidate: what specific SMART (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_(project_management)) goals would you like to put for yourself? Or, in other words, how would you like to measure yourself and, let others know how you are doing ? Haha, don't have to answer this one :-D. Poor new guys. 3. What part of being a board member do you think will be most difficult for you? How do you plan to compensate for that? I've only been on the board for 2.5 years now, but when you think about it: I started as a first-timer in a board that had decision-making problems, 6 months in the treasurer resigned, and two months later the president. Same year I guess, I dropped the ball on the ECMA34 press release thing. And while jdub and other directors saved my a** by never pointing fingers at me, it left a deep mark on my mind. I like to think that I've learned a lot from that experience. And then, the board work is simply much lighter these days, thanks to Rosanna and Stormy taking over most of the non-hacker-friendly tasks. So I find the actual work quite pleasing these days. The biggest problem is still finding time for it. I recently started a part-time MBA program on the side. So my *free* time is definitely nonexistent. However, in the 6 weeks that I've been in the program, I find myself Getting more Things Done. And when I look at it, it's obvious why: when I don't have much time at my hand, I actually weight things first before committing time to them. That has resulted in *way* less procrastinating. And let me assure you,
Re: Questions for the candidates
I'd like to add an optional tenth question: 10. If the foundation built a bike shed, An european or an african one ? what color would you paint the roof? Red no blue argh ! ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for the candidates
Hi Jorge, Jorge O. Castro wrote: I've never served on a board or any kind of governing body before, so my first answer would be what would people want the goals to be? Do you think that your experience with Ubuntu has given you some insight onto what you will be able to achieve as a board member? What I expect is that the board will be transparent enough so that it is obvious to people when I am being effective at my job; as such when I make a mistake I expect to know it relatively quickly so I can fix it. Do you have any suggestions about how to increase transparency without increasing workload? 4. Do you have any experience on management teams or boards at non-profits? If so, can you give an example of a change you affected in that role? If not, what makes you think that you will be a good board member? What single change do you want to affect during your term? I've not been involved in a non-profit before. Perhaps you can find an example from your role in the Ubuntu community? A time when you had to affect change, how you went about it, and what was the outcome? I would like to see the Foundation be more aggressive with GNOME consumers like distros and other organizations for participation and funds. I would like more aggressive campaigning to ISVs, ODMs, OSVs, etc. on why they want to be part of GNOME and why they want to build on our platform. I have strong opinions on GNOME as a platform (see below). What change in approach would you suggest to get us to improve in this area? I know, having done some of this in the past, that getting commitments of time money from ISDs is not straightforward. Even trying to get complaints which they might have isn't easy. How do you think this fits with the typical time commitments of a board member (10 to 20 hours per week, I'd guess)? Whatever issues we have with the platform we need find it and fix it, I would start by asking non-GNOME developers why they don't choose to develop on our platform, and then fix those problems. We hear third-party developers complaining[1] about problems all the time (and they have so for years), but are we really making an effort to fix this? Do you need to be on the board to help with this or drive this agenda? It sounds like the kind of thing we have wanted to do with GNOME Mobile for quite a while. The difficulty as I've said is getting people who actually use the platform to figure out what needs doing/changing/fixing, and there's another issue - developers of commercial applications go where there's a market. There's an iPhone market for apps. There's a market for windows applications. There's a thriving market for Mac applications. There's a market for enterprise web and server applications on Linux. There's no market for graphical Linux applications. So you need to identify: - Large group of users of Linux/GNOME based platforms - Common set of APIs that developers can use to develop complete applications across that range of platforms Our problems are: - Many GNOME based platforms, but no communication to users or developers that the platforms in common - No information on size of user base - No easy way to deliver software across all the platforms - No complete set of APIs that are shared by all which allow a developer to write an application that'll work everywhere. The nearest thing a mobile developer has to that is Java. Android is trying to address that issue. And iPhone has ignored the many platforms problem to create one kick-ass product that lots of people want. * Transparency. Enough said about this, it's a requirement. * Governance. I don't mean in a boring rulebook kind of way, but are GNOME communities set up to handle things like conflict resolution, resource handling, etc. * Marketing. The word needs to be out there. * Culture. I like it how when I meet a new GNOME person I've never met that we already share many values by default. It should always be like this. * Barrier-breaking. There are people out there wanting to be involved in GNOME but don't know how or they are shy or they think their ideas will be ridiculed, etc. etc. The onus is on us to ensure that people have the opportunity to work on something they care about and be successful. Aside from transparency and maybe governance, which of those needs you to be on the board to start working on it? 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: Questions for the candidates
On 05/29/2009 01:17 PM, Susana Pereira wrote: 1. For outgoing board members: what have been the upsides/good things from your previous stint at the Board which you would like to see carried forward into this term ? I was not previously member of the board. 2. If you are a new candidate: what specific SMART (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_(project_management)) goals would you like to put for yourself? Or, in other words, how would you like to measure yourself and, let others know how you are doing ? I would say T: time. Getting things done when they should be and/or making sure they can be. This include updating the rest of the board or members of things in progress, including the various stages. But seriously, do we need to spend time on that? I think we can have a more straightforward way to do things and get then done. 3. What part of being a board member do you think will be most difficult for you? How do you plan to compensate for that? To be honest, I have no idea. Maybe everything. I'm a passionate hacker, and the board is a non-hacker duty. So that would be a change. 4. Do you have any experience on management teams or boards at non-profits? If so, can you give an example of a change you affected in that role? If not, what makes you think that you will be a good board member? What single change do you want to affect during your term? I don't have any experience on management teams or boards at non-profits. Gotta have to start somewhere. I think my motivation is what will make me a good board member. 5. What are the specific areas of the Foundation's focus and strategy where you think you can contribute as a change agent ? Change agent? Looks like one want a revolution. I'm not here for that, at least not a quick one. I think that at first, like any of the runner for the election that have never been elected, bring in new eyes, new ideas as how I can contribute. 6. Do you think we need to make the being a member of the Foundation feel more valuable, and how do you think we should do that? What would you change about the Foundation to make it more useful to members. First I see foundation members being mostly left out of the decisions. One of the things that could be done is to increase their involvement by having a foundation-member mailing list, with moderators (just in case) and no public archive that would be used to really discuss the matters that the members have. This is one idea. As to be more useful to members, it is harder to say. Beside the sponsorship for GUADEC, I see little that the Foundation can do for individuals. For corporate members, that's the role of the advisory board. 7. Do you have any plans on how can the board help bring the GNOME platform and desktop in the top of opensource desktop and mobile application development? The foundation could work more to bring on board more major industry partners (several of them are already on the advisory board), educating and informing. I have seen companies that seem to (be willing to) use GNOME and Gtk for their (mobile) platform, and I had never heard of them before (nor did other people that are actually in the field). These are the one that should be approached by the Foundation. 8. Do you think the GNOME Foundation and the GNOME projects get enough representation at events? If not, how would you fix that? No. How to fix that? Better coordinate with the local members and figure out of way to help them. The GNOME Event Box has played a pivotal role in representing GNOME on shows and event, and I think it has gone around the world several time by now. To fix that, I'd start by collecting the calendar of the event with real data, like attendance, target audience, needs, and start from there. 9. What, in your view, are the top 5 requirements (from a strategic perspective) for the GNOME communities world-wide ? Without particular order: -Presence: represent GNOME at local events (FLOSS or not) As answered in question 8, that's a place where the Foundation can and should help. Of course this might lead to tough decision due to the limited resources. -Openness: be open to new contributors, new ideas. It is the contributors that make the project alive and kicking. -Friendliness: make sure there is friendliness. One of the great asset of the Free Software in general is that it is founded on communities and that even if some compete in some aspect, they still share the same goal: going forward. And for that there is friendly cooperation. And it must be added, friendliness with other FLOSS communities, including for the competing desktop. (I still believe that the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit, GUADEC joint with aKademy is a great idea as to would help foster a collaboration on the foundations of Free Desktops) -Proximity: be close geographically to the people. That mean more local groups with more local events (a group can be
Re: Questions for the candidates - let's start the discussion(s)
Questions: -- 1. For outgoing board members: what have been the upsides/good things from your previous stint at the Board which you would like to see carried forward into this term ? Not applicable. 2. For outgoing board members: What achievement can you point to during your term that you're proud of, and why? Not applicable. 3. For outgoing board members: What can you point to in your own performance that you are unhappy with? Can you give details? Not applicable. 4. If you are a new candidate: what specific SMART (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_(project_management)) goals would you like to put for yourself? Or, in other words, how would you like to measure yourself and, let others know how you are doing ? To increase the transparency of processes and information coming from the board. Whenever it were not possible to make them public, at least mention the number of activities being kept private (in order to compare or obtain a ratio of public versus private information). Keep track of activities related to Gnome funded or not by the Foundation and help people to make them public as soon as they happen. Specially, get and publish reports of activities funded when they take place. Report the activities done as a board member in a similar fashion that our Executive Director. Probably not as frequent as her, but once every two weeks or at least once a month. 5. Do you have any experience on management teams or boards at non-profits? If so, can you give an example of a change you affected in that role? If not, what makes you think that you will be a good board member? What single change do you want to affect during your term? I have been one of the directors of a six-year long project involving 13 Chilean universities, and it requires consensus through communication and trade-offs and a lot of patience. I want to improve the transparency about the work as board director. I feel that people who have not been involved in board has not a very clear idea about the duties and the common tasks. Probably are too obvious that nobody talks about it, but if people ask what a Executive Director does, why not trying to do the same as a board member? If there is a gap, I want to fill it. 6. Can you give an example of a time when you had trouble working with individuals in the community in the past? What were the circumstances, what did you do to resolve the situation, were you happy with the outcome? I can not recall a situation where I had a trouble with individuals in the community (I infer we are talking Gnome's community). I does not mean I will not have it. However, I think in most cases this is a matter of communication. 7. Can you describe a team project that you successfully started and led? How did you handle it when people thought something should be done a different way? I founded the first (and currently the biggest) FLOSS/Linux conference in Chile and I organized the first three events with the same base team, but I had to deal with different kind of moods of our FLOSS local community. If I could change something, I would change the name of the conference. 8. Can you describe a time when someone promised you they'd do something and they didn't deliver on time? How did you handle it? If there is no feedback (even if requested), I try to figure out by alternative paths if a communication has taken place or if there is any issue involved. It must be done nicely, because there are people and sensibilities involved, but, on the other hand, you want the things done. 9. Often life gets in the way of some of our responsibilities. In the past, have you signed up for something and then not had time to do it? How did you handle that situation? Yes, both successfully and unsuccessfully. As I stated before, this is a matter of communication. Let people know what are you doing, what are your timings and what problems are you facing; that helps to keep the situation under control. The problem happens when nobody receive any feedback in a reasonable period of time. 10. One of the board's roles is to interact with the advisory board and the sponsoring companies. Do you have experience giving regular updates to management or outside people? Do you have experience asking for money or sponsors for an event? Can you describe those experiences? Several questions in one. Yes, at work in projects funded by foreign resources. When I have been asked for getting funds from sponsors, I have started trying to reduce costs before and maximizing (as much as possible) the budget available and then evaluating possible sponsors according to what is needed. I have organized several events and I helped to several others and the funding model may change according the place. Getting sponsor will depend of the grade of relationship between organizers, venue and companies. I do not think I can extrapolate my local experience to North America, Europe, Asia,
Re: Questions for the candidates - let's start the discussion(s)
Hello, 10 questions are being selected and will be sent to this list as soon as possible. Those who have already answered can put their answers on the wiki. I'm sorry for any inconveniences this may have caused. --- Susana On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 2:38 AM, Alberto Ruiz ar...@gnome.org wrote: To be honest... even reading all the answers is a hard task... :/ Next year let's stick to 10. 2009/5/29 Brian Cameron brian.came...@sun.com: The final list of candidates for the upcoming elections is available here: http://foundation.gnome.org/elections/2009/candidates.html We will now start a series of discussions amongst the candidates. Thanks to all the people who participated by submitting their questions! This year's list of questions is a bit longer than in previous elections. However, with a longer list, we hope to cover all of the questions our community has in just one thread and one list. We ask you to answer as many as you can. Without further ado, let's begin the discussion. Thanks for doing this. My answers to these questions can be found on my Wiki candidate page: http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Elections2009/BrianCameron I think it is easier to maintain the answers there if that is okay. Brian ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list -- Un saludo, Alberto Ruiz ___ 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: Questions for the candidates - let's start the discussion(s)
Hi, Brian Cameron wrote: I think it is easier to maintain the answers there if that is okay. One of the things I've liked in the past is the right to reply - a candidate answers a question, and someone bounces back with a follow-up or another candidate manifests his disagreement, and a debate ensues. That kind of thing can't happen in a wiki. I would really prefer the membership team to cut down the list of questions to between 5 and 10, and have everything happen on the mailing list. 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: Questions for the candidates - let's start the discussion(s)
Hi Dave, On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 9:33 AM, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote: (...) I would really prefer the membership team to cut down the list of questions to between 5 and 10, and have everything happen on the mailing list. You're totally right, I'm sorry if it's taking some time but the short list will be sent as soon as possible. I only mentioned the wiki because some candidates already answered all the questions and so they can store the answers that are not on the short list in there. Cheers, Susana 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 ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for the candidates
I'd like to add an optional tenth question: 10. If the foundation built a bike shed, what color would you paint the roof? D ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for the candidates
Great answer. Next? D On 5/29/09 3:21 PM, Andy Tai wrote: Shouldn't the candidates be expected to oppose the foundation building this, as it is a misuse of the foundation's resources? On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 11:25 AM, David Bolterd...@gnome.org wrote: I'd like to add an optional tenth question: 10. If the foundation built a bike shed, what color would you paint the roof? ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for the candidates
I will leave the answers to the original 24 questions on my Wiki in case anybody wants to read. http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Elections2009/BrianCameron Following are my answers to the abbreviated list of questions: Questions - 1. For outgoing board members: what have been the upsides/good things from your previous stint at the Board which you would like to see carried forward into this term ? Working with the Foundation CEO, Stormy Peters, has been the most exciting development in the past term of the GNOME Foundation. As Stormy learns her way around the GNOME community and the board further adjusts to having more employees, I think there will be a lot of opportunities to get things done in the next term. A lot has been done to develop a stronger Foundation, especially in the areas of marketing and travel planning. We need to continue to develop strong teams of volunteers to help with getting tasks done and getting people more involved with the GNOME community. 2. If you are a new candidate: what specific SMART (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_(project_management)) goals would you like to put for yourself? Or, in other words, how would you like to measure yourself and, let others know how you are doing ? I think the most important goal is to make myself available to get tasks presented to the board completed in a timely fashion, and to take responsibility for enough tasks that my contributions adds value to the process. Goals include: * I would like to fill the role of an officer in the next term, perhaps as treasurer or secretary. * Continue working in a management capacity with Stormy. * Work to improve the transparency of board activities and to help develop a stronger Foundation which provides more significant services to members and the overall GNOME community. * Getting the Foundation more focused on process improvement so that we deliver the highest quality desktop with minimal effort. * Continue making GNOME events successful. * To foster a stronger community of volunteers to help with making GNOME the best desktop for users needs and to better encourage new people to get involved with the community 3. What part of being a board member do you think will be most difficult for you? How do you plan to compensate for that? Although I have had some experience in the past term with organizing events, it is something that is new to me. I plan to focus energy on getting more involved with event planning in the next term. Since many events are annual, I think that my experience on the board for the past term will help. 4. Do you have any experience on management teams or boards at non-profits? If so, can you give an example of a change you affected in that role? If not, what makes you think that you will be a good board member? What single change do you want to affect during your term? I have served in the past term on the GNOME Foundation board. I think the single-most important change I want to affect in the next term is to revitalize the Foundation by helping to build a stronger marketing community and to enhance what it means to be a part of the Foundation. I frequently brain-storm with Stormy about these topics, and there has already been discussion about these ideas on the marketing-list. However, there is much more to do. Adding additional structure to the Foundation so that it is easier for members to gain recognition for their work, and to develop new opportunities for volunteers to engage in the community. 5. What are the specific areas of the Foundation's focus and strategy where you think you can contribute as a change agent ? I think that developing a stronger marketing and usability communities is a critical area of work right now within the GNOME community. As we approach GNOME 3.0, a lot of our focus and strategy should be based on input from the marketing and usability teams. With new technologies such as clutter, it is important to focus on things like the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) and make sure GNOME has a solid base. 6. Do you think we need to make the being a member of the Foundation feel more valuable, and how do you think we should do that? What would you change about the Foundation to make it more useful to members. I think that it is important for the Foundation to explore new ways to provide services and value to Foundation members. The Foundation needs to ensure the community is provided with the tools that people need to further improve the community. For example, marketing materials so that community members can get more directly involved with marketing. Likewise, there are opportunities to develop teams of volunteers to get things done, such as system administration. Developing such teams and providing volunteers with ways to gain recognition in the community are important. Also, we need to improve process and infrastructure so that board
Re: Questions for the candidates
My answers to the original 24 questions are available on Wiki: http://tinyurl.com/ksy8o3 And the answers to the abbreviated list are the following: Questions - 1. For outgoing board members: what have been the upsides/good things from your previous stint at the Board which you would like to see carried forward into this term ? Not applicable. 2. If you are a new candidate: what specific SMART (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_(project_management)) goals would you like to put for yourself? Or, in other words, how would you like to measure yourself and, let others know how you are doing ? To increase the transparency of processes and information coming from the board. Whenever it were not possible to make them public, at least mention the number of activities being kept private (in order to compare or obtain a ratio of public versus private information). Keep track of activities related to Gnome funded or not by the Foundation and help people to make them public as soon as they happen. Specially, get and publish reports of activities funded when they take place. Report the activities done as a board member in a similar fashion that our Executive Director. Probably not as frequent as her, but once every two weeks or at least once a month. 3. What part of being a board member do you think will be most difficult for you? How do you plan to compensate for that? It will sound naive, but at this moment, I can see as the most difficult part the synchronization for meetings, in particular, phone meetings. I use only cell-phone at home, but I hope I will compensate through VoIP. 4. Do you have any experience on management teams or boards at non-profits? If so, can you give an example of a change you affected in that role? If not, what makes you think that you will be a good board member? What single change do you want to affect during your term? I have been one of the directors of a six-year long project involving 13 Chilean universities, and it requires consensus through communication and trade-offs and a lot of patience. I want to improve the transparency about the work as board director. I feel that people who have not been involved in board has not a very clear idea about the duties and the common tasks. Probably are too obvious that nobody talks about it, but if people ask what a Executive Director does, why not trying to do the same as a board member? If there is a gap, I want to fill it. 5. What are the specific areas of the Foundation's focus and strategy where you think you can contribute as a change agent ? Communication and transparency. As I said in my statement, I think the communication from board to community has improved over the years. But there is room for improvements. Lastly, our Executive Director have been writing weekly about her work, the board members could do the same (by turns or another method). It is good to see the things are moving forward, not matter if slowly or quickly. Without feedback, it is hard to evaluate it. As an outsider point of view, I would like to have available for free scrutiny as much information as possible from our Foundation. I have never been a director before, hence I lack of details in this matter (if this is feasible or reasonable). I can contribute filling this gap. I do think there is privacy involved when some member of the advisory board or external entity ask for it in the middle of a negotiation. But, once it happened, I can work to give a detailed explanation of the process taken and not only the results. 6. Do you think we need to make the being a member of the Foundation feel more valuable, and how do you think we should do that? What would you change about the Foundation to make it more useful to members. It think something is going on in that direction: giving higher priority to Foundation member's when somebody ask for sponsorship. It is not set in stone, but it helps people to realize that if they deserve to be sponsored, then they contribute enough to be a member. Also, I am aware there are contributors who do not feel contributing enough or still they does not feel as involved in the community as they expect, specially when they compares themselves against the most vocals or our rock stars. This is specially true in local communities that spread Gnome around their countries but still they feel in the limbo. 7. Do you have any plans on how can the board help bring the GNOME platform and desktop in the top of opensource desktop and mobile application development? I think it is important to empower the marketing team in order to have a consistent way of communication at different levels (user, management, and development). 8. Do you think the GNOME Foundation and the GNOME projects get enough representation at events? If not, how would you fix that? I am biased, but in those events I have knowledge in SouthAmerica, Gnome has a good representation.
Re: Questions for the candidates
Hey, On Fri, 2009-05-29 at 18:17 +0100, Susana Pereira wrote: Questions - 1. For outgoing board members: what have been the upsides/good things from your previous stint at the Board which you would like to see carried forward into this term ? I would like to keep seeing more participation, enabling current contributors to get more involved, such is the case of the refresh in the membership committee and the new travel committee. Also, keeping good communication with a broader public (yes, I'm thinking Latin America here). 2. If you are a new candidate: what specific SMART (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_(project_management)) goals would you like to put for yourself? Or, in other words, how would you like to measure yourself and, let others know how you are doing ? 3. What part of being a board member do you think will be most difficult for you? How do you plan to compensate for that? Trying to get more involved with the Board without losing focus in stuff, I constantly try to sit down and think about what I'm currently doing in my life in general to be aware of how much free time and focus I have to offer for new tasks or current ones. 4. Do you have any experience on management teams or boards at non-profits? If so, can you give an example of a change you affected in that role? If not, what makes you think that you will be a good board member? What single change do you want to affect during your term? I've been working with local groups, had a chance to resurrect a local lug in 2006 and until 2008 were I stopped actively coordinating activies there, and of course my Board work for the last 6 months. I think I'll be a good member because I have the time needed (based on my experience so far), I trust my communication skills and feel that now that I had the last 6 months as 'training' I can do a great job from day 1. A concrete thing to affect could be enabling more people to get more involved with the Foundation or with the Project itself. 5. What are the specific areas of the Foundation's focus and strategy where you think you can contribute as a change agent ? I don't feel like I'm a specialized agent and hence could revolutionize a concrete area, but I have interest for this period (like I said in my Candidacy mail) in marketing, fundraising, working with committees (and enabling new contribution oportunities) and trying to get out a second GNOME LA Tour. 6. Do you think we need to make the being a member of the Foundation feel more valuable, and how do you think we should do that? What would you change about the Foundation to make it more useful to members. I think we can try to make our communication channels more evident, so people can feel more confident to approach the Foundation to try to get sponsorship (in money or just institutional backup) for activities. Like Germán said, local groups around here usually feel a lot distant from the most visible people in our community, language barrier and other stuff usually discourages them to try to get closer. Although we all know most of us are quite friendly, this is something we just find out after having been together for a certain time. 7. Do you have any plans on how can the board help bring the GNOME platform and desktop in the top of opensource desktop and mobile application development? Helping define our set of offers for such markets would be a key factor for that. Also, trying to get our software to run and being more hackable in more platforms (yes, I mean Windows) will inevitably get us more developers and spotlight than just being limited to unix systems. This has been key to Python, Django, etc and I think we should start thinking on that also. 8. Do you think the GNOME Foundation and the GNOME projects get enough representation at events? If not, how would you fix that? I don't know too many big conferences, but where I have been to (EncuentroLinux in Chile, Latinoware in Brasil) there has been a good number of people working as a local GNOME group. I think this is linked somewhat with the previous question, I can imagine local GNOME groups being more agressive in their promotion of the project if they could offer something to Windows developers or users. For example promoting Evince as a good PDF reader for Windows or gEdit. 9. What, in your view, are the top 5 requirements (from a strategic perspective) for the GNOME communities world-wide ? I'm reading this as communities (hence user groups or promotion groups not development of/or business), I think most of us could agree that we could use more of: 1. defining our offer of products more precisely (software, solutions); 2. having more 'instant deliverables' for users and developers, for example downloading a .exe of Evince or a .exe of the complete PyGTK bundle to show your Windows friend how cool and good our software is; 3. promoting get-together local events, where people can start to know
Re: Questions for the candidates - let's start the discussion(s)
Hi Susan, Susana Pereira wrote: snip 24. Is there anything else you think is important to tell us but which you feel has not been covered by the previous questions? Wasn't there a plan to choose the 10 best out of all the questions? I can imagine answering 24 questions will take a lot of time. 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: Questions for the candidates - let's start the discussion(s)
Another possibility is that you start replying to the questions you want to reply on your candidate wiki page. That way, you can answer one question at once, take the time you want, proofread the day after, etc. Hi Dave, On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 8:16 AM, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote: Wasn't there a plan to choose the 10 best out of all the questions? I can imagine answering 24 questions will take a lot of time. Yes, I understand it is a big, time consuming list. The reasoning for sending it this way is that in last elections the membership committee sent 10 questions, and then many people started new threads sending their own questions which is more confusing than having a single list. Of course that we can pick 10 questions and re-send only those. It was not my intention to cause too much of a burden to our candidates. I just think that, as you can see here[1] , people really like to see their own questions answered. [1] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2007-November/thread.html Cheers, Susana 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 ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for the candidates - let's start the discussion(s)
Hi Susan, Susana Pereira wrote: Yes, I understand it is a big, time consuming list. The reasoning for sending it this way is that in last elections the membership committee sent 10 questions, and then many people started new threads sending their own questions which is more confusing than having a single list. Last year, right after the candidates list closed, Bruno posted a list of 10 questions which, presumably, the committee came up with: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2007-November/msg00153.html There was no gathering filtering of questions, so if people had questions that the membership committee hadn't thought of, they felt like they hadn't had a chance to ask them. Nothing will stop people asking other questions, or reacting to answers, but at least with this filter synthesis you can avoid duplicates ensure you're asking the most relevant/popular questions. 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: Questions for the candidates - let's start the discussion(s)
On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 3:46 PM, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote: Last year, right after the candidates list closed, Bruno posted a list of 10 questions which, presumably, the committee came up with: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2007-November/msg00153.html There was no gathering filtering of questions, so if people had questions that the membership committee hadn't thought of, they felt like they hadn't had a chance to ask them. If memory serves right, the context of the questions have always been picked from the discussions off the planet and various GNOME lists. -- http://www.gutenberg.net - Fine literature digitally re-published http://www.plos.org - Public Library of Science http://www.creativecommons.org - Flexible copyright for creative work ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for the candidates - let's start the discussion(s)
To be honest... even reading all the answers is a hard task... :/ Next year let's stick to 10. 2009/5/29 Brian Cameron brian.came...@sun.com: The final list of candidates for the upcoming elections is available here: http://foundation.gnome.org/elections/2009/candidates.html We will now start a series of discussions amongst the candidates. Thanks to all the people who participated by submitting their questions! This year's list of questions is a bit longer than in previous elections. However, with a longer list, we hope to cover all of the questions our community has in just one thread and one list. We ask you to answer as many as you can. Without further ado, let's begin the discussion. Thanks for doing this. My answers to these questions can be found on my Wiki candidate page: http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Elections2009/BrianCameron I think it is easier to maintain the answers there if that is okay. Brian ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list -- Un saludo, Alberto Ruiz ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to the candidates
On Mon, 2007-11-26 at 16:31 +0100, Anne Østergaard wrote: On Mon, 2007-11-26 at 09:48 -0500, John (J5) Palmieri wrote: On Thu, 2007-11-22 at 23:52 +0100, Anne Østergaard wrote: Questions to the candidates: Will you apply for the position as new Executive Director for GNOME? No Will you apply for any paid position within GNOME while serving as board member? No Will you attend at least 90% of the board calls? Yes Can you accept competing official ISO standards? Yes, as long as they are open and free of intellectual property concerns. It is then up to the developers what direction they wish to go in. The board should not set technical direction but rather reflect the will of the community while offering moral guidance as well as advice from expert advisers. If they are fully interoperable there might not be a legal problem, but rather a political problem for the society about the costs. Well in that case we will also have an other situation to deal with, in the case where the dominant standard has near monopoly status. Then it becomes a question about monopoly versus free and open competition. We have all seen that even with a clear cut monopoly case in The European Court of Justice recently, it is not easy to have the loosing part change its conduct. Even if it eventually does so, it will take an awful long time and it will probably not be to 100%. You are completely correct and I think the community can make the right choices here that 6 elected people can not. I do however think the foundation is well within it's power to make statements based on community experts recommendations but for the most part should let things be settled in the community. -- John (J5) Palmieri [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to the candidates
On Thu, 2007-11-22 at 23:52 +0100, Anne Østergaard wrote: Questions to the candidates: Will you apply for the position as new Executive Director for GNOME? No Will you apply for any paid position within GNOME while serving as board member? No Will you attend at least 90% of the board calls? Yes Can you accept competing official ISO standards? Yes, as long as they are open and free of intellectual property concerns. It is then up to the developers what direction they wish to go in. The board should not set technical direction but rather reflect the will of the community while offering moral guidance as well as advice from expert advisers. What is your position towards official standards that do not meet the gennerally accepted definition of a free and open standard. Such as Microsoft OOXML? If it is not free and open then the board should not endorse it. However that is not to say the board should not engage working groups which are working on such non-free standards. If it is in our interest we should provide the resources to shift such standards in the free and open direction. -- John (J5) Palmieri [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to the candidates
On Mon, 2007-11-26 at 09:48 -0500, John (J5) Palmieri wrote: On Thu, 2007-11-22 at 23:52 +0100, Anne Østergaard wrote: Questions to the candidates: Will you apply for the position as new Executive Director for GNOME? No Will you apply for any paid position within GNOME while serving as board member? No Will you attend at least 90% of the board calls? Yes Can you accept competing official ISO standards? Yes, as long as they are open and free of intellectual property concerns. It is then up to the developers what direction they wish to go in. The board should not set technical direction but rather reflect the will of the community while offering moral guidance as well as advice from expert advisers. If they are fully interoperable there might not be a legal problem, but rather a political problem for the society about the costs. Well in that case we will also have an other situation to deal with, in the case where the dominant standard has near monopoly status. Then it becomes a question about monopoly versus free and open competition. We have all seen that even with a clear cut monopoly case in The European Court of Justice recently, it is not easy to have the loosing part change its conduct. Even if it eventually does so, it will take an awful long time and it will probably not be to 100%. Anne ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to the candidates
On Nov 22, 2007 5:52 PM, Anne Østergaard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Questions to the candidates: Will you apply for the position as new Executive Director for GNOME? Will you apply for any paid position within GNOME while serving as board member? For those who don't know, before going to law school I did in fact indicate my interest in serving as the executive director. After having spent a bazillion dollars on law school, my interest in going directly into non-legal, non-profit work is... low :) So, no. Will you attend at least 90% of the board calls? Having volunteered to be the secretary, obviously my goal is to attend all board calls. But as the other candidates have already noted, life comes at you sometimes, so inevitably some meetings are missed. Can you accept competing official ISO standards? What is your position towards official standards that do not meet the gennerally accepted definition of a free and open standard. Such as Microsoft OOXML? Jeff and Vincent have more than adequately addressed these- they are too vague for me to give more detail than they already have. Suffice to say that I believe deeply in free, innovative, and competitive standards, and I will act appropriately. I will note that I think that the recently released board statement is fairly balanced and appropriate, given the circumstances. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to the candidates
Will you apply for the position as new Executive Director for GNOME? If elected to the Board, this will be my first time to learn the intricacies of the job and get acquainted with what such a role really implies. So it is fairly safe to say that I would not run for such position yet. :) Will you apply for any paid position within GNOME while serving as board member? I believe the answer for this one is the same as the one above. Will you attend at least 90% of the board calls? I believe my time zone will allow me to be present at pretty much most meetings. also, the company I currently work for is very accommodating and understanding and I should be able to attend these meetings. Can you accept competing official ISO standards? Absolutely! I can see how having and supporting several ISO standards can be rough on those writing the code, but we should not close a door if we have a good percentage of users relying on such standards. However, we can definitely educate them about the ones we support that are free and hopefully win them over. This is why I'd like to see more support going for the guys behind Abiword, Glom, Gnumeric, Epiphany, etc... Open Office and Firefox are GREAT examples of good software but I happen to believe that we already have great software in our code base that has been delegated to second place. How about we promote a an event where people who are involved with the software mentioned before plus anyone who can be of help and offer insight can sit down and jot down what needs to be done in order to bring them out of the closet? Err... apologies for going off on a tangent. :) What is your position towards official standards that do not meet the gennerally accepted definition of a free and open standard. Such as Microsoft OOXML? As I had mentioned before, if we have a genuine need to support it, I'm 100% behind it. Cheers, -- Og B. Maciel [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] GPG Keys: D5CFC202 http://www.ogmaciel.com (en_US) http://blog.ogmaciel.com (pt_BR) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to the candidates
quote who=Anne Østergaard Will you apply for the position as new Executive Director for GNOME? Will you apply for any paid position within GNOME while serving as board member? Unlikely, although I have considered it in the past. It would be foolish to rule anything out. Enough people have asked me about it that it seems to be in the realm of possibility. Will you attend at least 90% of the board calls? I'd try, but as anyone who has been on the Board will attest (and those who have been on the Board while living in GMT+10 and above would INSIST) it is difficult to attend *every* meeting in between the average business, travel and personal commitments of GNOME Board members. Hopefully the meeting time will be somewhat more compatible with my timezone... but looking at the list of candidates, I somewhat doubt it. ;-) Can you accept competing official ISO standards? Absolutely. It is ISO's role to facilitate the development of standards in a coherent, transparent manner, not to determine the market demand for a given standard. I think it's extremely short-sighted to protest OOXML on the basis of competing standards given that standards exist for technologies that we are very likely to want true Free standards for in the future - for example, video encoders and decoders. What is your position towards official standards that do not meet the gennerally accepted definition of a free and open standard. Such as Microsoft OOXML? That is an extremely loaded question, so I can only refer to my sigquote for the appropriate response. - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 If you have any poo, fling it now. - Mason the Chimpanzee, Madagascar ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to the candidates
Hi, Le jeudi 22 novembre 2007, à 23:52 +0100, Anne Østergaard a écrit : Questions to the candidates: Will you apply for the position as new Executive Director for GNOME? No. Will you apply for any paid position within GNOME while serving as board member? I'd say it's highly unlikely, although it's hard to be sure. I won't apply for a job if I helped creating the job description, that's sure. (And of course, I wouldn't participate in the decision process). But again, it's really unlikely that this will happen. Will you attend at least 90% of the board calls? I'll try, but it's impossible to say yes. The goal is to attend 100% of the calls, but sometimes, life outside GNOME makes it impossible to attend a call. Can you accept competing official ISO standards? I'm not quite sure why ISO matters here. It certainly happens to have two competing standards, even if the two weren't standardized by the same body. Take RSS and Atom, eg.: the first format has become a de facto widely adopted standard, and the second, standardized by the IETF, is also widely used. Sure, it's a pain to have to support both, but it happens. (I know, RSS is not a single format, and there are at least 3 variants of it, but you get my point ;-)) So, yes, I can accept. But it's more convenient to have only one. What is your position towards official standards that do not meet the gennerally accepted definition of a free and open standard. Such as Microsoft OOXML? I'm not sure what free standard means (is this related to patents? Is this free as in libre or free as in gratuit?). Also, I'm assuming you want to talk more specifically about file formats and not all types of standards. I'm all for open formats, and, to be honest, the fact that a format is standardized is not that important to me. That being said, and obviously, I'd very much prefer to have something not being standardized if it's not open. (don't know if this answers your questions, if not feel free to ask for clarifications) 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: Questions to the candidates
Hello :) On 11/22/07, Anne Østergaard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Questions to the candidates: Will you apply for the position as new Executive Director for GNOME? No, I don't think so. Will you apply for any paid position within GNOME while serving as board member? No, if I'm elected that's because other members are willing to trust me to be on the Board for a given period of time and I think I should respect that and complete this time as long as it's possible (life always have surprises). Will you attend at least 90% of the board calls? I will try to, the goal is to be there at 100% of the calls. I think my timezone helps (GMT-5) and also that I have flexibility with my free time. Can you accept competing official ISO standards? It's better to have just one, but if by some reason there's more than one, well we either reject one and leave part of our users out or we use both and give users freedom to choose. Similar to what others said in the first question-pack thread. What is your position towards official standards that do not meet the gennerally accepted definition of a free and open standard. Such as Microsoft OOXML? I don't like them :). I'm really mad when I receive documents in freedom unfriendly formats and when I open them they are all mutant and horrible, it's a shame to have this impossed over people that is not aware of the problem. So the answer would be no, I don't like this kind of stuff at all. Feel free to ask for clarification if I didn't understood any of your questions correctly. Diego ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for the candidates - let's start the discussion(s)
[1] What are your plans to answer the question put forward at the last GUADEC about Why should one become a member of the GNOME Foundation ? I don't think we should be trying to sell foundation membership. I became a member of the foundation because that makes me feel part of the project and that makes me proud of it. Would you be in a position to elaborate on your plans/projects to make membership more interesting for the GNOME Community ? I don't have any immediate plans in that direction, no. [2] What do you think is the most important item on the Board's agenda right now ? Gnome website and online documentations. As someone fairly new to the project without technical involvement, I find it extremely hard to find my way around the project. I found it through to gnome-love and a bunch of other lists, but just because someone told me about them. What will you do more or better than the previous boards ? I aim to be more effective on issues that need constant follow-up and communications. [3] How do you manage your time and that of others ? I am very responsible myself. And I am used to pinging others to get the job done. Are you good at working with others including those who might have a differing opinion than yours and try to reach consensus and agree on actions ? I am very open to hearing other's ideas, trying to understand their point of views clearly and making them understand mine, but finally I walk by the majority's opinion. [4] How are you going to manage your current contributions to GNOME once you become a Board Member ? At the moment I do not have much contributions to GNOME other than enthusiasm. I plan to help in the GUADEC organization again this year. Once in the board I will still help there, in other capacities. [5] What do you think is the most important market for GNOME over the coming year OLPC is the single most important market this year IMO. and what do you feel you can do to help GNOME achieve better presence ? This is a great opportunity to take a look back and ask all our plenty of translation teams how we can help their kids be more productive through the use of OLPC. Right now, some GNOME hackers are targeting OLPC for a port of their application, but we are not actively developing for that. I think OLPC is doing a lot of innovation, and GNOME can be a bigger part of it. [6] What are your plans to encourage and mentor contributions to GNOME from Latin America, Africa and Asia ?How would you increase community participation ? An effective way would be to get in touch with the translator teams, contact the right people, find out their needs, invite them to GUADEC and give them questioners to spread out among the potential GNOME contributors that they know and finally get them involved in GNOME. In such countries, school and universities are very important targets too. We have to find proper links to help us introduce GNOME to more students who will be the most effective and fast spreaders of it. I believe students will be pretty good bug reporters to begin with and we can find some good developers and contributors among them. [7] What areas do you see lacking currently in a complete Free Software Desktop ? What would your role be (should you be elected) in addressing the issues ? I am more an end user of GNOME. What I see lacking in my day to day work is a bug-free and handy email client. That's not really something the board wants to make decisions about I guess. [8] What are your planned activities to promote use of GNOME in small and medium business environments which potentially deliver many users to GNOME ? I don't have a plan. I will leave it to other, experienced, board members and do my best to transforms those plans into actions. [9] What sources of funds do you as a Board Member (should you be elected) try to establish ? What areas do you think require most fund-love ? I cannot think of any new sources of funds, but I think hiring the bizdev will greatly boost the financial situation. [10] Please rank your interests: * GNOME evangelizing to government, enterprise, small business and individual * GNOME marketing and merchandising of branded items (nationally and internationally) * GNOME legal issues like Copyright and Patents * GNOME finances and fund raising * Alliance with other organisations 1) GNOME marketing and merchandising of branded items (nationally and internationally) 2) GNOME finances and fund raising 3) GNOME evangelizing to government, enterprise, small business and individual 4) Alliance with other organisations 5) GNOME legal issues like Copyright and Patents [11] How much familiar are you with the day-to-day happenings of GNOME ? How much do you follow and participate in the main GNOME mailing lists ? I read the Planet I am on marketing-list, gnome-journal-list, foundation-list gnome-love mail list. Though I don't read/reply
Re: Questions for the candidates - let's start the discussion(s)
quote who=Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay [1] What are your plans to answer the question put forward at the last GUADEC about Why should one become a member of the GNOME Foundation ? Would you be in a position to elaborate on your plans/projects to make membership more interesting for the GNOME Community ? I don't think membership should be mandatory to contribute to GNOME on any level in the community, but must be for organisational participation in the GNOME Foundation (such as voting or running for election to the Board). I don't think we need to make membership shiny (such as providing oodles of irrelevant benefits to members), because membership ought to be a mark of pride, not a coupon club. That said, membership comes with some relevant benefits that are useful and/or important, such as access to some GNOME services (email aliases and soon, Jabber accounts -- there are some things I need to fix before Jabber accounts can be generally available to members though). I do think we need to do a better job of letting GNOME contributors know that they can participate in the organisation that supports and represents them by becoming members. Based upon the responsibilities expressed in our charter, the GNOME Foundation can and likely will make decisions that affect the entire community, so it is important to be a member. [2] What do you think is the most important item on the Board's agenda right now ? What will you do more or better than the previous boards ? Our immediate #1 priority is to hire a bizdev director, who will focus on funding opportunities for the Foundation, and maintain relationships with companies and organisations around the world. This will be a major contribution from the GNOME Foundation to the project, and to all of the organisations that rely on us, from major distributors to local consultancies, government deployments to individual developers. That said, I think there's an important point to be made here: If during the course of one year, the GNOME Foundation Board manages our resources wisely and usefully, and represents the project well, then it has succeeded. There will always be opportunities to go beyond that, but with those opportunities come risks. This is not to say that the Board should slack off for a year, but I do think it's important to balance grandiose schemes with our core mission: support and representation of the GNOME community... I do realise I'm saying that with a reputation for taking on ambitious goals. :-) I hope this answer has an impact on how you vote: Elect candidates you know, who you've worked with in the community, and who represent your values and aspirations for the project. Elect candidates you can easily approach about issues that matter to you. Shared values and trust are ultimately the most important things about the Board. [3] How do you manage your time and that of others ? Are you good at working with others including those who might have a differing opinion than yours and try to reach consensus and agree on actions ? I've had a very hard time making Board meetings at 05:00 in the latter part of this year, due to changes in my schedule and work commitments. I'm not happy about that, as I've held myself to much higher standards in the past -- I'm hoping we'll be able to negotiate a better time if I'm elected this year, but I'm used to my timezone being the odd one out. :-) The second part of the question is more interesting. When 95% of our values and vision are shared, differing points of view on that last 5% can sometimes be tough, but ultimately extremely satisfying, because (and this may sound odd) they are often at the most philosophical edges of what we share. On the odd occasion, the Board agrees to build a bikeshed but can't agree on the colour, but these instances are thankfully rare. I value vigorous discussion among Board members, because it demonstrates that we are passionate about what we're doing, that the desires and values of the community are in our minds, and that we value getting it right. It's hard doing that in a distributed organisation, and sometimes we get cranky at each other, but I think it's worth it. Last year I wrote about the difference between decision-oriented people (decisive) and discussion-oriented people (consultative). That still plays an important part in how I approach issues. I have the capacity for both, but lean towards the latter. [4] How are you going to manage your current contributions to GNOME once you become a Board Member ? Since passing the release management baton, I have been able to spend more time on system administration issues (in particular, making our mail server rock the casbah), but in many ways my current contributions to GNOME are in one way or another related to the Board. [5] What do you think is the most important market for GNOME over the coming year and what do you feel you can do to help GNOME achieve better presence ? There are a number of markets
Re: Questions for the candidates - let's start the discussion(s)
On Sat, 2006-11-25 at 17:00 +, Joachim Noreiko wrote: I notice that most recent minutes on the website are December 2005. Do you want to fix that and ask me again? ;) Could the board just ask the foundation's administration assistant to keep that list of meeting minutes updated, please? -- Murray Cumming [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.murrayc.com www.openismus.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for the candidates - let's start the discussion(s)
On Wed, 2006-11-22 at 12:53 +0530, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay wrote: [1] What are your plans to answer the question put forward at the last GUADEC about Why should one become a member of the GNOME Foundation ? I think the current offerings: being able to vote for elections and to get a @gnome.org address are quite attractive to someone passionate about GNOME. Much of our problem here I guess is the not-in-the-face application page and the very slow response time. To improve that, others have already suggested, and I did too a while ago. Offering membership to anyone with lots of bug activity, those who get CVS access, and apply for financial support, etc. will help there. Also, I'm fine, and actually support limiting any financial/costly support to foundation members. E.g. sending people to conferences, or sending them the event box should be limited to foundation members. BUT, only if we have a application process that is so fast that one can become a member as needed, if they qualify. More than that, I don't think there's much more we can offer, nor do I think that it's a problem. Would you be in a position to elaborate on your plans/projects to make membership more interesting for the GNOME Community ? I will pursue the above changes if I get on Board, yes. The recent change of lowering the contribution requirements is already toward these goals. Making sure that the queue is kept very short is next. I think we can do that. [2] What do you think is the most important item on the Board's agenda right now ? The online store + the website revamp. The website is on track and progressing fast, thanks to Quim. The online store however doesn't seem to be on target right now. That's something to look into fast IMO. These two components put together define our existence on the web, and that's becoming more and more important every day. We have cool blogs, we have cool artists, we have cool software. We need to let everyone know about them. What will you do more or better than the previous boards ? Not having been on board, I really can't tell. And given the current board, I'm not sure there's anything I can do better honestly. But I can promise my dedication, and the same work quality that I put in other things that I do. [3] How do you manage your time and that of others ? I'm getting better at this, although starting a full-time job did pressure my earlier habits. Right now, I use mails in my inbox inside Evo and tabs open in Firefox (two applications that I have to kill and restart with my limited memory...) to hold my short-term and immediate TODO items, and Google calendar for the longer term events. I'm most productive over IRC and email, although I can handle infrequent phone meetings. Are you good at working with others including those who might have a differing opinion than yours and try to reach consensus and agree on actions ? I am. I love free software for the working-with-others part, and have been doing that on technical terms very successfully. On the less technical grounds, I understand that there may not be one true way, and I'm ready to compromise, and to respect a consensus. [4] How are you going to manage your current contributions to GNOME once you become a Board Member ? My maintenance duties take a very small part of my time, and are easy to manage. Development and bug fixing however is what takes most of my time. I'm lucky enough to do much of of these as part of my day job at Red Hat. I'm allowed to spend a reasonable amount of my day time on board matters, if elected. If more time needed, I have to find an afternoon or a few hours from the weekend. Both are fine. [5] What do you think is the most important market for GNOME over the coming year and what do you feel you can do to help GNOME achieve better presence ? OLPC definitely, and also more embedded devices. We are fortunatley in pretty good contact with OLPC. The board can make sure that OLPC test systems are sent to strategic GNOME developers that may not be interested in asking for one personally. People working on presence, power management, tagging, etc. [6] What are your plans to encourage and mentor contributions to GNOME from Latin America, Africa and Asia ? How would you increase community participation ? We are pretty on track for Latin America from what I see. As for Africa and Asia, I think we should identify passionate people there, and bring them to GUADEC, and send people there to run small events. That seems like the best way to let people there know we are interested in having them and pass the message. If we manage to attract enough people to start a local community, it's downhill from there. [7] What areas do you see lacking currently in a complete Free Software Desktop ? What would your role be (should you be elected) in addressing the issues ? Multimedia I would say. Now this is a very special issue. We cannot approach it the easy
Re: Questions for the candidates - let's start the discussion(s)
--- Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The Board does not directly get involved in the technicalities I'd actually like to stop there and ask: why not? Certainly getting involved with the board shouldn't require technical knowledge. But there is a need to plan the development of Gnome, and I'm not sure who is doing this. The last few releases have lacked direction, features are added without consideration of their integration into the desktop and future development, and hard decisions are not being taken. If not the board, then who? [1] What are your plans to answer the question put forward at the last GUADEC about Why should one become a member of the GNOME Foundation ? Would you be in a position to elaborate on your plans/projects to make membership more interesting for the GNOME Community I really don't know. I've been a member of the Foundation for some months and other than a warm fuzzy feeling I don't know what it's done for me. As a Foundation member I'd like to feel that I'm a small part of the community and organization that plans and steers Gnome development. I'm hoping that the single news page we're planning as part of the redevelopment of www.gnome.org will bring more information about what the Foundation does to Gnome contributors and beyond. [2] What do you think is the most important item on the Board's agenda right now ? What will you do more or better than the previous boards ? I notice that most recent minutes on the website are December 2005. Do you want to fix that and ask me again? ;) More recent material I've been able to find doesn't really mean much to me as an ordinary Gnome contributor. It would seem that the Foundation needs to do more to keep Gnome contributors informed. [3] How do you manage your time and that of others ? Are you good at working with others including those who might have a differing opinion than yours and try to reach consensus and agree on actions ? I tend to have several things at the front of my to-do list, and pick one in accordance to how much time I know I have to spend in front of Gnome. But my work tends to fork off in different directions when I start to find bugs in the app I'm working on. As for teamwork and disagreements, I'm always willing to look at things from another person's point of view and reconsider whether my idea is the best approach. But there'll be times when after discussion, I stand firm. (See me Quim debating the secondary navbar for wgo, for example.) [4] How are you going to manage your current contributions to GNOME once you become a Board Member ? With difficulty, if the GDP doesn't get new recruits. I don't want work on documentation or the website to slip. Attracting writers to free software projects is hard. We're not providing the right environment for them. [5] What do you think is the most important market for GNOME over the coming year and what do you feel you can do to help GNOME achieve better presence ? It would be really nice if some of Gnome's markets were nearer to me so I could have direct experience of them... From what I read, our best 'way in' seems to be government and public bodies at the moment. I'd like us to get to a point where a Gnome-based OS is a serious alternative for home users, but I don't see that happening this year. [6] What are your plans to encourage and mentor contributions to GNOME from Latin America, Africa and Asia ? How would you increase community participation ? All I can say about this issue is that I've previously noticed the large gaps over these areas on the world map of Gnome contributors. Our translations for languages such as Portuguese, Thai, or Punjabi (to pick a few) looks to be pretty good, so what's missing? Perhaps a translated www.gnome.org will help, and lowering barriers to all contributors regardless where they come from. [7] What areas do you see lacking currently in a complete Free Software Desktop ? What would your role be (should you be elected) in addressing the issues ? I feel Gnome is squeezed in on two sides. We sit above X11, whose legacy issues hold us back, and GTK, which doesn't fully serve our needs. Between us and the users, distros rebrand and override what we produce. And in the middle, there's us. Our file system stuff doesn't let us do things that users expect, like shortcuts, or opened documents keeping up with a moved file. Our HIG is out of step with current work, and too many parts of the desktop have been allowed to grow without proper foundation in the desktop as a whole. I'm often astounded to discover new features planned for Gnome which I would have assumed to be part of it already: Network Manager informing my chat and IRC apps that I'm disconnected, for example. My role in these... I had hoped that this cycle I would find the time to get some work on the HIG started. But lots of user manuals have come out of the woodwork, and not enough of the Gnome Web redevelopment
Re: Questions for the candidates - let's start the discussion(s)
oh dear please keep the candidate discussion OFF foundation-announce thanks, Wayne On 11/22/06, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, The list of candidates for the elections are available here: http://foundation.gnome.org/elections/2006/candidates.html With this mail, one hopes to start off the series of discussions amongst the candidates in the fray for the Board. The underlying vein in the series of questions is that they are *not* technology (ie hacker/developer) centric. The Board does not directly get involved in the technicalities, the bunch of questions are more board-related. In the spirit of the 2003 mail from Telsa Gwynne the questions are mostly positive in nature. The first question is from Baris (via a discussion/chat on IRC) *** BEGIN QUESTIONS *** [1] What are your plans to answer the question put forward at the last GUADEC about Why should one become a member of the GNOME Foundation ? Would you be in a position to elaborate on your plans/projects to make membership more interesting for the GNOME Community ? [2] What do you think is the most important item on the Board's agenda right now ? What will you do more or better than the previous boards ? [3] How do you manage your time and that of others ? Are you good at working with others including those who might have a differing opinion than yours and try to reach consensus and agree on actions ? [4] How are you going to manage your current contributions to GNOME once you become a Board Member ? [5] What do you think is the most important market for GNOME over the coming year and what do you feel you can do to help GNOME achieve better presence ? [6] What are your plans to encourage and mentor contributions to GNOME from Latin America, Africa and Asia ? How would you increase community participation ? [7] What areas do you see lacking currently in a complete Free Software Desktop ? What would your role be (should you be elected) in addressing the issues ? [8] What are your planned activities to promote use of GNOME in small and medium business environments which potentially deliver many users to GNOME ? [9] What sources of funds do you as a Board Member (should you be elected) try to establish ? What areas do you think require most fund-love ? [10] Please rank your interests: * GNOME evangelizing to government, enterprise, small business and individual * GNOME marketing and merchandising of branded items (nationally and internationally) * GNOME legal issues like Copyright and Patents * GNOME finances and fund raising * Alliance with other organisations [11] How much familiar are you with the day-to-day happenings of GNOME ? How much do you follow and participate in the main GNOME mailing lists ? [12] Can you elaborate about your plans to provide the Board with a focus that steers development choices and works with allied organisations in order to define and adapt (and or adopt) standards ? *** END QUESTIONS *** Let the discussions begin ... Regards Sankarshan -- From Untruth, lead me to the Truth, From Darkness, Lead me towards the Light, From Death, Lead me to Life Eternal. ___ foundation-announce mailing list foundation-announce@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-announce ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to the candidates
1. How much time can you dedicate to the board each week? I can spend a total of 5 hours easily. 4. Explain how you expect to meet you goals. If we manage to make the board more open, which seems to be agreed as a most by almost all candidates, then I don't see the baord work much different that other happenings in the project. We set goals, discuss, find interested people, decide/delegate. Like we are all already doing in other aspects of the project. 6. Please assess GNOME: a. What are its strengths The healthy community, the freedom, the timely release process, the usability/accessibility/internationalization/localization. b. What are its weaknesses Lack of decision-making power in the project as a whole. Lack of progress in areas that no individual cares enough to spend time on. So web pages may stay out of date for years, or the commits list broken for months. c. What are its opportunities I see a lot of opportunities for GNOME on small devices, also in educational and governmental institutaions. They are of course all known. And there's also the long-term goal of taking over the desktop market :). d. What are its threats Main treat I see is the software patents. 7. Name the best album you purchased in the last year. Dan Bern (Dan Bern): http://danbern.com/discography.html#danbern --behdad http://behdad.org/ Commandment Three says Do Not Kill, Amendment Two says Blood Will Spill -- Dan Bern, New American Language ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to the candidates
Hi there, En/na Curtis Hovey ha escrit: 1. How much time can you dedicate to the board each week? In the first half of 2006 I will be part time dedicated to GUADEC coordination - http://desdeamericaconamor.org/blog/node/164 . Part of this time can drop easily to board related tasks. 2. How flexible is your time; can you dedicate extra time one week and less the next? I'm self-employed and I work from home. I 'only' need to negotiate scheduler with my partner and my son (I take care of him mainly afternoons, so her mother can work also). 3. Please rank your interests: a. GNOME evangelizing to government, enterprise, small business, and individuals b. GNOME marketing and merchandising of branded items nationally and internationally c. GNOME legal issues like copyright and patents d. GNOME finances and fund raising e. Alliance with other organizations. Answered in the 'official' questions. 4. Explain how you expect to meet you goals. Being pragmatical defining the goals. Sometimes an organisation needs to dream in order to move forward. The good thing about GNOME is that the community is full of dreamers. This means the board don't need to dream but to be pragmatical an efficient, finishing what has been started and not starting (yet) what can't be properly finished. 6. Please assess GNOME: a. What are its strengths Products (desktop GTK+ apps), community, vision, philosophy, gnu, brand, art, i18n b. What are its weaknesses identity, dependency of distros, public voice, gnome.org, welcoming newbies, distance from users, opacity, foundation, board, sound, games c. What are its opportunities FOSS reference, public corporate big deployments and migrations, accessibility, multilingüism, triumph of standards, freedesktop.org, P2P, FOAF, Web 2.0. d. What are its threats division, corporativisation, hidden agendas, misuse of resources, patents, winning the empire becoming the empire 7. Name the best album you purchased in the last year. gtk-gnutella -- Quim Gil - http://desdeamericaconamor.org signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to the candidates
Questions 1, 2, 3 and 5 answered in previous mail. 4. Explain how you expect to meet you goals. * I will more effectively communicate the role and scope of the Board among the directors, Foundation members and Advisory Board. * I will encourage the adoption of an elected executive as part of the Foundation's constitution. * I will continue to evangelise and represent the GNOME community as best I can. 6. Please assess GNOME: Tough one. Not going to do a complete SWOT analysis here, just the basics! a. What are its strengths * Awesome community and organisational structure * Excellent relationships with distributors and other organisations * Predictable and reliable release schedule * Deeply ingrained culture of attention to user experience and design * Universal Access - usability, accessibility, internationalisation b. What are its weaknesses Being good enough, a little bit more secure than the competition and Free (beer and speech) won't win the difficult 'middle sector' of the market. c. What are its opportunities cf. Project Topaz (or really, 10x10) presentation from GUADEC 2005. d. What are its threats The changing desktop market and vicious competitors armed to the hilt with patents. 7. Name the best album you purchased in the last year. Well, I really enjoyed Love.Angel.Music.Baby by Gwen Stefani. But the *best* album I bought in the last year was actually one I repurchased because I gave the original to a friend. To Hal and Bacharach (1998), a tribute album to Hal David and Burt Bacharach by a bunch of Aussie artists and bands. It is *awesome*. Two standout tracks: The Whitlams - I'll Never Fall In Love Again The Avalanches - Do You Know The Way To San Jose - Jeff -- Ubuntu USA Europe Tour: Oct-Nov 2005http://wiki.ubuntu.com/3BT Everything I knew about TCP/IP I had downloaded the same day I started hacking the net code. - Alan Cox ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to the candidates
Hi, On sam, 2005-11-19 at 09:04 -0500, Curtis Hovey wrote: 1. How much time can you dedicate to the board each week? My time is quite flexible. But I think I can give ~1 hour per day. There are obviously some days where I won't be able to have time for the board, and some other where I'll have more time. It also depends on what kind of activity is needed: it's easier to answer some mails than to talk with lawyers, eg :-) 2. How flexible is your time; can you dedicate extra time one week and less the next? Pasted from [1]: Sure I can. This will of course have an impact on my other contributions, but this is already how I'm working. 3. Please rank your interests: a. GNOME evangelizing to government, enterprise, small business, and individuals b. GNOME marketing and merchandising of branded items nationally and internationally c. GNOME legal issues like copyright and patents d. GNOME finances and fund raising e. Alliance with other organizations. Pasted from [1]: All of the items are important for the Foundation :-) Here's how I rank them, as in here's what I'm most interested in: b, a, e, d, c 4. Explain how you expect to meet you goals. I certainly expect other people to meet most of my goals :-) The idea is really to get people more involved in what the Foundation is doing. In [1], I talked about having more things discussed on foundation-list and about having someone help with events everywhere in the world (I wrote someone, but a small team would work too ;-)). I'll also continue to spread the word about GNOME in France (and french-speaking countries, if I can), but I'll do this even if I'm not elected :-) 5. Name one of your accomplishments if you have ever served on the board. I was not on the board. 6. Please assess GNOME: a. What are its strengths + Its community. + Its philosophy. + How we (at least try to) care about a lot of stuff: translations, documentation, accessibility, etc. (although we could certainly do a good job) + Love :-) b. What are its weaknesses + I feel we should see our users more and make them happier. I've written something about this: http://www.vuntz.net/journal/2005/10/19/328-make-it-fun + we should make simple tasks more visible so that new contributors can try to get involved more easily. And review their work asap. I have no magic solution for this, though. c. What are its opportunities I believe GNOME can be used in a lot of places (think big deployments, but also really smaller ones). Having a lot of users will bring us more contributors (as Quim previously noted). I also think having the GNOME technologies used in some other places (like what Nokia is doing) can only improve our work. d. What are its threats So, I'm not sure about threats. But there are clearly some difficulties, like convincing our future users to switch to GNOME :-) Also, pasted from [1]: I don't see real threats, but some difficulties: formats that are not open, hardware with closed specification, etc. 7. Name the best album you purchased in the last year. Ah, easy: La Grand-Messe (Les Cowboys Fringants) [1] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2005-November/msg00101.html 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: Questions to the candidates
Hey Curtis, Funny that people are answering an e-mail sent after yours, before yours ;) Anyway, here's my answers. On Sat, 2005-11-19 at 09:04 -0500, Curtis Hovey wrote: 1. How much time can you dedicate to the board each week? About 5 hours, obviously, a bit more flexible than that in reality. 2. How flexible is your time; can you dedicate extra time one week and less the next? See above. 3. Please rank your interests: a. GNOME evangelizing to government, enterprise, small business, and individuals b. GNOME marketing and merchandising of branded items nationally and internationally c. GNOME legal issues like copyright and patents d. GNOME finances and fund raising e. Alliance with other organizations. a. is definitely not the job of the board, the marketing list is doing a good job at that, but we would certainly do a good job at selling GNOME if the question was raised to us. b. is a one-off problem (or rather, a problem that could short-term every year, as we would need to assess long-running previous decisions like this one), and as far as I know, research was already pretty advanced in finding a company that would handle all the hard bits for us. c. and e. are connected, in my opinion, as I would like the GNOME foundation to join the Open Invention Network, as a way for GNOME and other free desktops to allow us to counter advances and patents put in place by Apple,Microsoft and other desktop application players. I don't like patents, but, in some countries they exist, and we should fight fire with fire on that ground: http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/press.html 4. Explain how you expect to meet you goals. Through connections. My employer is one of the members of that consortium, and I hope to be able to get the community access to patent filing via GNOME Foundation. 5. Name one of your accomplishments if you have ever served on the board. N/A, I guess. 6. Please assess GNOME: a. What are its strengths Openness. b. What are its weaknesses Seeing the big picture, in some cases, and the lack of maintainership and/or drive on some projects. c. What are its opportunities Plentiful, if... d. What are its threats Complacency. 7. Name the best album you purchased in the last year. Hard one, so I'll name 2 instead: Kaiser Chiefs - Employment and Raw as f**k (remixed) - Freestylers Cheers --- Bastien Nocera [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to the candidates
El sáb, 19-11-2005 a las 09:04 -0500, Curtis Hovey escribió: 1. How much time can you dedicate to the board each week? 5 or 6 hours a week. I'm thinking 1 hour each day and a extra hour any time is needed. According to Glynn Foster[1] between 4 or 5 hours a week should be needed. 2. How flexible is your time; can you dedicate extra time one week and less the next? It normally happens to me; so I can. But, to be honest, sometimes it doesn't happen at the same time is needed. For instance, my schedule doesn't fit very well with the release schedule; when I have more time is when GNOME is frozen, and viceversa. But I guess the Board is not ruled by the release time. But any clue or information from people who has been in the board would be nice to know. There is an exception: in my holidays I've been completely out of network the last years, so probably at that time I won't be able to do anything. (February). 3. Please rank your interests: a. GNOME evangelizing to government, enterprise, small business, and individuals b. GNOME marketing and merchandising of branded items nationally and internationally c. GNOME legal issues like copyright and patents d. GNOME finances and fund raising e. Alliance with other organizations. a. GNOME evangelizing to government, enterprise, small business, and individuals d. GNOME finances and fund raising e. Alliance with other organizations. b. GNOME marketing and merchandising of branded items nationally and internationally c. GNOME legal issues like copyright and patents IMHO, letter 'c' it is quite important, but I have no competence there because I'm not a lawyer and I can help better in any other instance described above. Letter 'a' is to wide; probably it could be divided in different parts, each one with different priority. 4. Explain how you expect to meet you goals. Certainly, I wonder how to accomplish my goals. In my opinion, it should be easy to make more transparent the way the board works; announcing each task as soon is possible through the foundation-list and also through blogs, wiki, etc. But not waiting much time in write about that. In many cases, the minutes are ok. But, sometimes there are news that should be spread as soon as possible. For instance, ask to extend the candidacy deadline; to avoid confuse to anyone. I'd been in the other side of local communities, and I'd try to be a point of communication with different communities to work coordinated. 5. Name one of your accomplishments if you have ever served on the board. I've never being part of the board. 6. Please assess GNOME: a. What are its strengths As a organisation: It has a strong community. It has a successful release process that has been consolidated through the years and it proved that was possible to do in a Free Software project. It has a big deployment. It has a good support from companies. b. What are its weaknesses Besides it has a strong community, there is a feeling that is hard to get involved and being part. IMHO, It is harder to get new blood nowadays than it was in the past. People who have been working in ISV's usually complains about how unfriendly is GNOME as platform with them. It's much better than in the past; but still is shown as a weakness. c. What are its opportunities As usual, change the world through innovation and simpleness. d. What are its threats (Some of) Big deployments depends strongly on the current policy party (in places such as Brazil). Any change of their leadership could affect directly on any deployment. That happened in some parts Brazil. There is nothing we can do except to continue improving our desktop and innovating to make their decisions harder each time. 7. Name the best album you purchased in the last year. Pink Moon (Nick Drake). [1] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2005-October/msg00149.html -- Germán Poó Caamaño http://www.ubiobio.cl/~gpoo/ Concepción - Chile ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
