Re: Question for candidates
2011/5/27 Richard Stallman r...@gnu.org: I'd like to ask the candidates this question: * What do you think GNOME should do to help promote the ideals of free software, beyond being composed of free programs. *Many* free software applications and programs are not ready for the big market share yet. Honestly I don't personally see a world completely made by free software, there are several things I couldnt even do on my daily routine if my machines at home were running only free modules, software or drivers. If there is a piece of software which is proprietary but makes life easy to several users why wouldn't you adopt it? As I said in one of my previous e-mails no one should impose his point of view, if an X user is happy running a non-free software on his home machine (running a Linux OS) because he feels more comfortable doing so, he should be *free* to run it. In the end, I would like to point out some great free software projects I would love to see promoted more: Snowy [1], Tomboy Online and identi.ca. [2] cheers, Andrea [1] https://live.gnome.org/Snowy [2] https://identi.ca ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
On 05/28/2011 04:34 AM, Richard Stallman wrote: I'd like to ask the candidates this question: * What do you think GNOME should do to help promote the ideals of free software, beyond being composed of free programs. I agree with Andre that successful promotion of Free Software goes through making great software. Lots of people obviously do not care much about ideology or vendors lock-in, however some are somewhere in the middle (between caring about ideology versus convenience) and those should be the one we focus on at the moment. I feel the GNOME Foundation and the GNOME community generally already does a good job in promoting the Free Software ideology together with the software they make available to people. That could probably be improved by actively doing joint-marketing and collaborating with other software freedom promoting organizations. We could also work together with the FSF on making positive marketing campaigns showing how using the GNOME desktop gives a better user experience while safeguarding users freedom. And I'll extend this to the online services question by saying that a cloud based GNOME solution (the day when we have a solution) should be the assurance of having users privacy safe and keeping ownership of your own data (or portability to your own hosted services). Definitely something in line with what the FSF believes in and worth promoting together. Pockey ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Two Questions for the Board Candidates
On Thu, 2011-05-26 at 10:38 -0700, Lefty wrote: First: Since the issue of divisive attitude[s] such as Richard sometimes seems to [promote?] when he talks about 'GNU/Linux' came up, I'd be interested to know what, if anything, candidates for the Board propose to do to address the ongoing waste of time and energy in the community over trivia like Linux versus GNU/Linux, free versus open source, and the like. This extends to things like litmus tests on mailing lists derailing discussions into observations about which email clients or operating systems participants might be using at the time they post, for example. Attempts to divide the community and delegitimize individuals and their viewpoints are common, and becoming increasingly so in the past few years. Bad feelings have driven many away from the level of involvement in the community they've previously had. Do candidates see this as a problem? Do they have any proposals for addressing it? By default I awesome that people mean well and have good intentions by fighting for what they think is right. The nature of things lets this sometimes end up off-topic and heated which is not only a problem for the foundation mailinglist (similar things happen from time to time on desktop-devel-list). Though I have been only actively following the foundation mailing list for a short period of time (my earlier absence was partially intended to be a self-protection to not having to see some people that I consider friends acting weirdly), my impression is that the situation has definitely improved recently. However earlier warning comments to stay on-topic, to not take things personal or get personal, and to keep GNOME's Code of Conduct in mind, combined with more moderation in case this is repeatedly ignored, might be helpful. Second: Do candidates have any view as to how the disastrous attempts at engagement by GNOME with the mobile space might be improved on? The GNOME Mobile and Embedded Initiative went nowhere, and arguably handed the mobile device space to Google and Android by forfeit. Since that time, there have been various attempts to get community-based, mainstream open source onto mobile devices, all of which have pretty much died. The sole remaining effort seems to be MeeGo, and GNOME has no apparent direct involvement there. Do candidates have any thoughts on the future of GNOME with respect to the mobile space? It's the fastest-growing portion of the general computing device market, and the main platform choices are proprietary or as good as. One of the issues raised by Canonical with respect to the GNOME 3 shell for Ubuntu was that it wasn't felt to be as appropriate for tablets and the like as Unity... The GNOME Mobile initiative was not a success. With a redefined GNOME Core (as per the moduleset redefinitions for 3.0) it is now clearer what GNOME is meant to be and which parts of our platform are meant to be adapted by customers (companies producing or shipping mobile solutions). Some companies use GNOME technology in their products but were/are reluctant to get more involved in the community so the foundation should push outreach. This also refers to companies not using GNOME but considering it so all parties become more aware of problems in adaption (both of technical and social nature) and finding ways how to improve the situation together. Refering to MeeGo, though I would call the direct level of involvement between MeeGo and GNOME low there are levels of interactions (e.g. bug reports upstreamed for GNOME components) that surely can be extended. andre -- mailto:ak...@gmx.net | failed http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper | http://www.openismus.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for all board candidates
On Thu, 2011-05-26 at 05:43 -0700, Jeff Schroeder wrote: 1.) For incumbents, have you missed any meetings? What is your % of missed vs attended meetings and why? For new challengers, how much time can you dedicate to working on the board each week? How do you plan on spending that time? I expect this to take a few hours per week. In case times are rough I can always spend less work in other areas that I am involved in (that was basically the case for the release-team for the last weeks before the GNOME 3.0.0 release). 2.) Other open source / free software projects run their meetings in the open via IRC (such as Fedora's FESCO I believe). Would you consider that, and if not, what about recording how board members vote on a given topic. This includes +1 / -1 / abstains and perhaps give a small comment on any -1 or abstain. The board will always have to handle some topics that cannot be public from the very beginning. Traditionally for meetings I prefer IRC to phone - it takes longer, but it's easier to document and to see who says what. Back in those days when I was in politics we always had a public part of our meetings that was open for everybody to join (listening only though for guests, speaking just after an invitation to do so), followed by a non-public part (if needed). Previous board members are likely in a better position to comment whether this could be feasible for board meetings, but that's my idea. In my opinion, as an open foundation, the transparency of the board is absolutely critical _where possible_. Leaders should always set the example for members. Totally agree. :) andre -- mailto:ak...@gmx.net | failed http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper | http://www.openismus.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Two Questions for the Board Candidates
On Sun, 2011-05-29 at 00:28 +0200, Andre Klapper wrote: By default I awesome that people mean well Errm. Replace awesome by assume, obviously. :) andre -- mailto:ak...@gmx.net | failed http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper | http://www.openismus.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 2:34 PM, Richard Stallman r...@gnu.org wrote: * What do you think GNOME should do to help promote the ideals of free software, beyond being composed of free programs. I think we should make awesome free software. I think there's a group of people that believe very strongly in free software and will use GNOME just because it's free software. But most of the world will use GNOME because it works well for them. (For many different reasons: accessibility, cost, features, ...) To them, the fact that it's free software will be an additional benefit, something that makes them feel good about the software they use, but unlikely to be the only reason they decide to use GNOME. We should include that in any marketing we do, but I think most of our marketing should be focused on the problem our software solves. Stormy ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
