Re: Board of Directors Election 2014 - Candidacy - Jean-François Fortin Tam
On 21 May 2014 06:03, Jeff Fortin nekoh...@gmail.com wrote: Le lundi 19 mai 2014 à 16:34 +0100, Ekaterina Gerasimova a écrit : As can be seen from the board meeting agenda for 2014-05-06 and will be visible from the agenda for 2014-05-20, there is an item called PiTiVi funds statement. GNOME handles money for PiTiVi and this item is related to a finer point of the interpretation of the contract between PiTiVi and GNOME which was signed by you and two others on behalf of PiTiVi. As a board member, you would always be expected to take an active role in defending GNOME's interests. How would you be handling this issue if you were currently on the board given that you have a conflict of interest? While it is true that I am one of the Pitivi project maintainers, I am, however, not a direct beneficiary of the fundraiser campaign - I am not making a cent out of it, it was agreed that Mathieu and Thibault were the ones that would be the ones undertaking the work depending on the amount raised. The only benefit I get is the experience from having helped organize it and the enjoyment of the technical improvements that are to be accomplished as a result this campaign. I do not conceive much conflict of interest there. My role is defined as follows: an authorized representative of which who is independent from [Mathieu and Thibault] (the “Authorized Representative”) is a signatory hereto, desires that [Mathieu and Thibault] and GNOME conduct the Pitivi Campaign as described in this Agreement. This is what the contract says, and as such I have always approached this relationship with the outlook of a mediator, or, so to speak, the eye of GNOME. I was nominated in this role, I did not actively seek it - and I have actually been accused of being too much on GNOME's side during the negotiations ;) Quite obviously, I would voluntarily abstain from voting on any board decisions regarding Pitivi or its fundraising campaign. I may provide context through discussion if this is allowed and desirable (ie: requested), but would rather avoid what could be considered lobbying. I hope my clarifications and pledge above are sufficient. As the board is rarely involved in the development and technical aspects of the Foundation, how would being a board member help you achieve this? Ah yes, I may have gotten carried away there and forgot that the board is generally removed from technical matters. I mentioned those topics as they are areas of interest to me - if activities as part of the Foundation Board allow me to spend some time interacting with other teams, thinking and discussing ideas for potential GNOME Goals, I'll be happy to do so - if the opportunity or scope does not allow it, well, too bad. On the other hand, even if one is not directly involved in the implementation, having an understanding/affinity with technical matters is certainly beneficial. Regarding financial analysis: As the current treasurer, I have had to do something to this effect during my year on the board. I would like to know how you would aim to get to know the process without disrupting the workflow of our employees, especially given that our administrative assistant's workload is currently very high. Beyond the publicly visible annual report and 2013 financial summary, certainly there are many internal documents that the board members have access to for such analysis purposes, without requiring complicated procedures/administrative overhead? Having to answer to the IRS' audits, surely there is a wealth of information out there that can help one have a more fine-grained assessment of the situation? Thank you for your answers Jeff, it is interesting to see how you would approach these issues. Regarding the finances, the Foundation primarily relies on the GnuCash file, which should (and currently it does) contain correct accounts to within the last couple of weeks and all sent invoices. As the treasurer, I extract a simplified version of the account statement for the board on a monthly basis. There is also information about advisory board fees and OPW invoices available elsewhere, which is easier to track for those who are not familiar with accounting software. Apart from that, there is considerable paperwork to justify the Foundation's spending which is essential if the Foundation is ever questioned about it, such as receipts and reports. The latter is mostly available publicly in the form of blogposts as it's rare for foundation members to choose to keep their reports private. Apart from that, the remaining paperwork is tax returns, of which the 990 form is public after it has been filed, and are some more detailed forms produced from our accounts which cannot be made public for privacy reasons. Various individuals have access to some of the Foundation's accounts, but this is an exception for the sake of having a backup person for those and the information should be available in our
Re: Upcoming deadline - candidates please answer the question from the foundation
Hi ! i would be travelling to Bejing today but i will try to answer questions. Dave,Ekaterina see you at GNOME.ASIA Thanks, Anish P. On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 10:16 AM, Sriram Ramkrishna s...@ramkrishna.mewrote: Yes, sorry, it's been a little busy with personal projects at home, so I haven't had as much time to answer. I've been working on answering them as I go. :) On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 2:56 AM, Andreas Nilsson li...@andreasn.se wrote: We're five days away from voting opening. While some candidates have been very active in answering questions from the foundation, other are falling behind. I will be unable to vote for you if I have no idea where you're standing. In addition to that, board-list is a high traffic list so keeping up with these questions is a good test drive for candidates :) Thank you for taking the time! - Andreas ___ 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 -- Anish Patil ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: question for candidates
On 05/21/2014 05:17 AM, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: Now regarding foundation and these other projects. I've long thought that need to find a way to support these projects. I have a proposal in the works that will suggest that the Foundation will help pay for hackfests that does not benefit GNOME the product (e.g. the desktop) but does benefit GNOME the eco-system. The idea is that in exchange for the money, that everyone would participate in working in the lower levels of the stack and not necessarily the design. This is controversial because of using our finances, but there are questions on whether this will dilute the brand. But that is a separate discussion. This is very interesting, considering projects like Mate and Elementary OS have donation systems by themselves and I assume income from that [1] [2]. The other thing is that the foundation have limited funds as it is. I would love to hear other candidates view on this matter. It would be a deal breaker for me. 1. http://mate-desktop.org/donate/ 2. http://elementaryos.org/ (you donate when you download it) - Andreas ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: question for candidates
Hi. On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 11:56:16AM -0700, Andy Tai wrote: What are your views on the participation of the people of these projects, as stake holders in the direction of gtk+, in the GNOME Foundation? Should the GNOME Foundation encourage (reach out to) these people to get them involved in the GNOME Foundation so they also have a say and even contribute to gtk+ so gtk+ can continue to serve their needs well, important for the continuing successes of gtk+ in the free software world? Absolutely. And, as others have said, we were and are trying to foster relations with hackfests. I think that is good and necessary. Cheers, Tobi ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Board of Directors Elections 2014 - Candidacy - Emily Gonyer
On Tue, 2014-05-20 at 09:30 -0400, Emily Gonyer wrote: In regards to paid and unpaid contributors to GNOME, I honestly feel that unpaid contributions should be favored. I realize that is probably unlikely to occur, but it ought to. Why? Because GNOME is, at least in theory, a free software 'project'. As such, it is supposedly run, and worked on largely by volunteers. That's (fortunately) incorrect. Unfortunately of course, we all know this is not true. In practice most of the top contributors are paid to work on GNOME - as a result, most of their work is directed by corporations, I find that incredibly insulting, especially as it's the second time you say this. I'm paid to work on GNOME, and like most of my colleagues working on GNOME, I was a GNOME contributor before being paid to work on it. Suggesting that we don't have GNOME's best interests at heart is just hurtful, and incorrect. and their wants/needs and not by the thousands of individual users who have different wants/needs. But because they are paid to work on it, they have more time to do so and rise faster and receive more respect and admiration than those of us who do so 'just for fun'. This creates a lopsided portrait of the wants/needs of users. And, of course, the corporations who are paying for the work don't care what individual users think - why would they? And you really think that those evil corporations would manage to make us make changes to GNOME that we think would be detrimental to GNOME as a project? Do you want me to assign those remarks to ignorance or malice? As a result, users are ignored and the larger free software community alienated. This is, IMHO why the GNOME ecosystem has fractured so fully over the last couple of years. Where we once had GNOME we now have GNOME Shell, Unity, Elementary, Cinnamon and Mate all competing for the same handful of users. I'm not going to pretend that I know how to fix this problem. I don't. But I do know it exists, and that it has been largely, if not completely ignored by the majority of GNOME developers and certainly by the Board of Directors thus far. Perhaps most striking is the very composition of the Board of Directors itself. How many are not paid to work on GNOME by an Advisory Board member? Isn't this in some way a conflict of interest? Shouldn't the board be independent and not tied to corporate interests? Shouldn't the needs of the project come first, and not the needs of any individual corporation? On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 8:00 AM, Ekaterina Gerasimova kittykat3...@gmail.com wrote: On 20 May 2014 12:10, Emily Gonyer emilyyr...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 11:04 AM, Ekaterina Gerasimova kittykat3...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Emily, On 17 May 2014 19:42, Emily Gonyer emilyyr...@gmail.com wrote: Name: Emily Gonyer Email: emilyyr...@gmail.com Affiliation: None Dear Foundation, I'm interested in serving on GNOME's board of directors for the first time, in order to help steer GNOME in a more open and community led direction. It is my opinion that GNOME has strode too far towards a corporate-driven project and away from its community-led roots. As of now, GNOME is, in my opinion too beholden to a small handful of large corporations which forces the project to ignore large swaths of our users in preference to them. The end result being that GNOME has lost a tremendous portion of its respect and goodwill in the wider free software community. As a member of the GNOME board of directors I will actively work against this tide and towards the more open, community-driven project that GNOME once was and I hope will be again. I understand your concerns with regards to corporate involvement in the project direction. Based on the available financial information, the corporate sponsorship enables the Foundation to employ an executive director and an administrative assistant. Without this sponsorship, much of the administrative work would need to be taken over by the Foundation membership and the current board is already facing the challenges resulting from having only one employee at this time. How do you aim to achieve your goals without alienating the companies that enable the Foundation to have employees to do the administrative work and offer financial support to our membership? GNOME is Free software, with a broad base of unpaid and paid contributors. It seems that you wish to change the proportions of GNOME contributors from the two backgrounds, how do you aim to achieve this? I think we need to take a good, hard look at what we're spending money on and evaluate what is truly needed vs wanted. Once we figure out how much money we need to be spending, we can evaluate our current funds, where they are coming from and how to raise more. This information is publicly available for up to the end of 2013 at
Re: About possible participation in Rest the Net campaign
On Tue, 2014-05-20 at 20:24 -0500, Michael Catanzaro wrote: I'm basically satisfied as long as our Bugzilla uses SSL Our Bugzilla has many other flaws as we run an unsupported version. andre -- Andre Klapper | ak...@gmx.net http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: About possible participation in Rest the Net campaign
On Tue, 2014-05-20 at 20:24 -0500, Michael Catanzaro wrote: On Wed, 2014-05-21 at 00:33 +0200, Andrea Veri wrote: snip (It'd also be a bit silly to run a $2 privacy campaign and then not participate in this, but I guess there are real disadvantages to abusing SSL: increased power costs, correct?) We don't pay the power costs (even if they would exist with SSL). I imaging that the problem is rather the cost of administration. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: question for candidates
On Wed, 2014-05-21 at 10:32 +0200, Andreas Nilsson wrote: On 05/21/2014 05:17 AM, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: Now regarding foundation and these other projects. I've long thought that need to find a way to support these projects. I have a proposal in the works that will suggest that the Foundation will help pay for hackfests that does not benefit GNOME the product (e.g. the desktop) but does benefit GNOME the eco-system. The idea is that in exchange for the money, that everyone would participate in working in the lower levels of the stack and not necessarily the design. This is controversial because of using our finances, but there are questions on whether this will dilute the brand. But that is a separate discussion. This is very interesting, considering projects like Mate and Elementary OS have donation systems by themselves and I assume income from that [1] [2]. The other thing is that the foundation have limited funds as it is. I would love to hear other candidates view on this matter. It would be a deal breaker for me. In the past, we would try to sponsor GNOME folks for hackfests that are wider than GNOME itself, and in some cases, important people in the community around those building blocks. For example, the location hackfest, built around work on Geoclue2, has plenty of non-GNOME attendees: https://wiki.gnome.org/Hackfests/Location2014 I believe it also happened for the Color management hackfest: https://wiki.gnome.org/Hackfests/ColorManagement2012 Obviously, it's better when the contributor's home organisation can pay for costs rather than GNOME. It might not always be the case however. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: question for candidates
On Tue, 2014-05-20 at 17:08 -0400, Emily Gonyer wrote: On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 2:56 PM, Andy Tai a...@gnu.org wrote: Hi, I would like to post this question to the candidates: GNOME's core toolkit, gtk+, is used by numerous projects. Currently gtk+ development seems to be driven mainly by the GNOME desktop. However, gtk+ also play critical roles in other free software projects, like MATE, XFCE, and the Cinnamon desktop, and large applications like GIMP, Inkscape, etc. What are your views on the participation of the people of these projects, as stake holders in the direction of gtk+, in the GNOME Foundation? Should the GNOME Foundation encourage (reach out to) these people to get them involved in the GNOME Foundation so they also have a say and even contribute to gtk+ so gtk+ can continue to serve their needs well, important for the continuing successes of gtk+ in the free software world? They are (or ought to be) just as involved in the development of GTK+ as the developers of GNOME Shell are, and their opinions, wants, needs etc ought to be valued. The GNOME project is not (or at least, should not) be exclusively about GNOME Shell, but include anyone and everyone who uses GNOME technologies. The sever fracturing of the community which has taken place over the last 3-4 years is not healthy for our community, nor for theirs. Everyone who is using GTK+ ought to be included in ongoing discussions as to its development. They should be invited to GUADEC and encouraged to submit talks, and become foundation members. As long as they contribute to GNOME or its direct eco-system (eg. contributing to MATE, Elementary, etc. isn't contributing to GNOME, contributing to GTK+, NetworkManager, PulseAudio or GStreamer is). As a member of the board, I will do my best to engage with them and encourage them to do so, while also doing my best to ensure that their voices, thoughts, concerns, etc are heard, understood and thought of in any and all changes going forwards. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
On Wed, 2014-05-21 at 01:39 -0400, Richard Stallman wrote: To cooperate formally with a Linux Foundation event would run into a problem -- they would probably want to call the GNU/Linux system Linux, and we should not accept that. I look forward to the FSF's financial contributions to GNOME conferences. I'd definitely want the GNOME Foundation Board to accept one of its sponsors using Linux if it meant the durability of those GNOME conferences. They support Free Software as well. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Board of Directors Elections 2014 - Candidacy - Emily Gonyer
Of course people should be able to be paid to work on free software. That's great. But when one or two large companies pay the majority of developers, it becomes hard to argue that it is still a 'community led' project, let alone one which is independent. And that's where GNOME is right now. On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 6:35 AM, Richard Hughes hughsi...@gmail.com wrote: On 21 May 2014 10:14, Bastien Nocera had...@hadess.net wrote: Suggesting that we don't have GNOME's best interests at heart is just hurtful, and incorrect. Agreed. I've never once been told by anyone at Red Hat to do something that I didn't think was in the best interests of GNOME as a project. Richard -- 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: Board of Directors Elections 2014 - Candidacy - Emily Gonyer
On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 5:15 AM, Emily Gonyer emilyyr...@gmail.com wrote: Of course people should be able to be paid to work on free software. That's great. But when one or two large companies pay the majority of developers, it becomes hard to argue that it is still a 'community led' project, let alone one which is independent. And that's where GNOME is right now. If you are afraid that one entity has too much influence, you can recruit other companies to invest as much. The other option mentioned is the Wikimedia option. I believe they only collect donations from individuals. However, as far as I know, they never had other organizations paying people's salaries, so I don't know if that's an option for GNOME. Stormy ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Board of Directors Elections 2014 - Candidacy - Emily Gonyer
Yes, you're part of the community. But you're being paid by a large corporation to work on it, and as a result are beholden to them at least as much as to the rest of the community. Red Hat is not the only thing that matters in the GNOME world. Or, it shouldn't be. But for the last several years, Red Hat's wants/needs have trumped what anyone else wants/needs, including the larger user base of GNOME which is what (I believe) has driven it to fracture into so many DE's over the last 3-4 years. We need to make sure that people who aren't working for Red Hat have a say. Make sure that people who aren't being paid to work on free software have a voice. Sure, those of us who are not currently paid can speak up on mailing lists, but we're (mostly) roundly ignored. This is what has driven the community apart. This is the problem. On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 7:18 AM, Bastien Nocera had...@hadess.net wrote: On Wed, 2014-05-21 at 07:15 -0400, Emily Gonyer wrote: Of course people should be able to be paid to work on free software. That's great. But when one or two large companies pay the majority of developers, it becomes hard to argue that it is still a 'community led' project, let alone one which is independent. And that's where GNOME is right now. Are we (those paid contributors) not part of the community? Are non-paid volunteers the only ones that can be part of the community? I don't understand your answer here. On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 6:35 AM, Richard Hughes hughsi...@gmail.com wrote: On 21 May 2014 10:14, Bastien Nocera had...@hadess.net wrote: Suggesting that we don't have GNOME's best interests at heart is just hurtful, and incorrect. Agreed. I've never once been told by anyone at Red Hat to do something that I didn't think was in the best interests of GNOME as a project. Richard -- 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: Question for candidates
On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 7:01 AM, Bastien Nocera had...@hadess.net wrote: On Wed, 2014-05-21 at 01:39 -0400, Richard Stallman wrote: To cooperate formally with a Linux Foundation event would run into a problem -- they would probably want to call the GNU/Linux system Linux, and we should not accept that. I look forward to the FSF's financial contributions to GNOME conferences. I'd definitely want the GNOME Foundation Board to accept one of its sponsors using Linux if it meant the durability of those GNOME conferences. They support Free Software as well. Absolutely. We ought to happily accept the support of anyone and everyone who supports free software, even if their ideals do not line up absolutely perfectly with GNOME's. ___ 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: Board of Directors Elections 2014 - Candidacy - Emily Gonyer
On Wed, 2014-05-21 at 07:15 -0400, Emily Gonyer wrote: Of course people should be able to be paid to work on free software. That's great. But when one or two large companies pay the majority of developers, it becomes hard to argue that it is still a 'community led' project, let alone one which is independent. And that's where GNOME is right now. Are we (those paid contributors) not part of the community? Are non-paid volunteers the only ones that can be part of the community? I don't understand your answer here. On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 6:35 AM, Richard Hughes hughsi...@gmail.com wrote: On 21 May 2014 10:14, Bastien Nocera had...@hadess.net wrote: Suggesting that we don't have GNOME's best interests at heart is just hurtful, and incorrect. Agreed. I've never once been told by anyone at Red Hat to do something that I didn't think was in the best interests of GNOME as a project. Richard ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
With regards to priorities of the GNOME Foundation, Last I heard, the case of the OPW cash flow problems was being taken care of, unlike what news sites would have you believe. It seemed like a matter of time for sponsors follow-up activities to resolve the situation, and AFAICT we're 75% there. It would be easy for me to mention it's my personal priority, but I won't - it would be a lie to say that I can immediately make a difference in an issue that is in the process of being solved as we speak. I'm not sure how urgently a replacement for the ED can be found, given that GNOME needs to be very careful about its expenditures and that the ED would need to be able to offset his/her own salary, which requires a fair amount of flair. See my candidacy application for more, but if I have to pick, among my areas of interest, the one I find the most important: fundraising and financial security, including investigating where we could diversify or where there are untapped resources. This is much easier said than done, obviously. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Board of Directors Elections 2014 - Candidacy - Emily Gonyer
I'm not going to quote the emails about company control and Red Hat's contributions in particular as I think it's gotten fairly heated and my thoughts are more easily generally expressed. I think we need both to be successful - companies that are invested in GNOME technologies who are users and contributors and who care about it because it is useful to their business and individual contributors who are here because they are jazzed about our awesome mission. We need to work on both now to try to figure out how to get wider adoption of GNOME and how to show that we're an important project that is worth a hobbyist's time and is fun to be a part of. As Emily and Sri have mentioned, we really need to put a premium on encouraging people when they first show an interest, something I think we've gotten better at but still need a lot of improvement on. We need to go out of our way to take an interest and to be advocates for GNOME to new individuals and new companies. I've been scratching my head over this for a while. Speaking at conferences and being present where people meet and talk about important technologies have been the approaches I've pursued but I think there's a lot more that can be done. A lot of it involves promoting culture that is welcoming, which I think we were leaders of once upon a time and have gotten much better with more recently. We definitely want to make the companies already invested in our space feel good about their contributions while making sure the infrastructure is in place for no corporate control. I'd love it if we could do something like put together a team of volunteers who are ready to help companies adopt GNOME, whether it's to go and talk to decision makers or to go and give an occasional demo or training session. I recognize that this is a lot of work and nontrivial to organize (we have to make sure the right people are representing us) but it's part of what I think GNOME has been missing. With the right enthusiasm from the membership this is something that can be done. I also will say that the boards and foundation memberships that I've worked with have been more productive when everyone has a positive attitude. Being critical of the way things are and what other people say is necessary for insightful discussion and change but finding the core of what someone is saying and helping to find positive ideas for that change is essential. In general positive communicators are more persuasive and create a better collaborative environment. I've been a bit dismayed about the negative tone of a lot of the emails regarding candidacy, not just this thread. I want to be on a board that has differing views but can communicate in a way that inspires cooperation. karen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Board of Directors Elections 2014 - Candidacy - Emily Gonyer
Do you have examples of situations where Red Hat (or any other company or corporation for that matter) has trumped what most of the community wants/needs? If you do, what do you think the board could/should do about it? 2014-05-21 13:24 GMT+02:00 Emily Gonyer emilyyr...@gmail.com: Yes, you're part of the community. But you're being paid by a large corporation to work on it, and as a result are beholden to them at least as much as to the rest of the community. Red Hat is not the only thing that matters in the GNOME world. Or, it shouldn't be. But for the last several years, Red Hat's wants/needs have trumped what anyone else wants/needs, including the larger user base of GNOME which is what (I believe) has driven it to fracture into so many DE's over the last 3-4 years. We need to make sure that people who aren't working for Red Hat have a say. Make sure that people who aren't being paid to work on free software have a voice. Sure, those of us who are not currently paid can speak up on mailing lists, but we're (mostly) roundly ignored. This is what has driven the community apart. This is the problem. On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 7:18 AM, Bastien Nocera had...@hadess.net wrote: On Wed, 2014-05-21 at 07:15 -0400, Emily Gonyer wrote: Of course people should be able to be paid to work on free software. That's great. But when one or two large companies pay the majority of developers, it becomes hard to argue that it is still a 'community led' project, let alone one which is independent. And that's where GNOME is right now. Are we (those paid contributors) not part of the community? Are non-paid volunteers the only ones that can be part of the community? I don't understand your answer here. On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 6:35 AM, Richard Hughes hughsi...@gmail.com wrote: On 21 May 2014 10:14, Bastien Nocera had...@hadess.net wrote: Suggesting that we don't have GNOME's best interests at heart is just hurtful, and incorrect. Agreed. I've never once been told by anyone at Red Hat to do something that I didn't think was in the best interests of GNOME as a project. Richard -- 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 -- Cheers, Alberto Ruiz ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
On 2014-05-21 13:04, Jeff Fortin wrote: Le dimanche 18 mai 2014 à 12:58 -0400, Dave Neary a écrit : So my question to all of you is: what are the main characteristics you will be looking for in the next executive director? When looking for a profile, there are a number of dials to twiddle: * Technical proficiency reputation in the community, including free software cultural alignment * Strategy experience - the ability to formulate and communicate a direction for GNOME * Administrative and organizational experience * Business acumen and experience growing a commercial ecosystem * Communication/marketing/evangelism experience * Cost Of these, which do you feel are the most important for GNOME right now I think that expecting an ED candidate to have all of those qualities/skills nailed down simultaneously would be a difficult proposition to entertain. It's basically asking for a 20-years-experienced C*O to lift mountains at non-profit compensation rates and very high risk. Let's be honest: whoever that person might be, there's a heck of a challenge in terms of fundraising; we're far from the situation we were in back in 2009 or so. Karen et al have my respect for weathering the very harsh times GNOME has gone through in recent years. The board, too, requires diversity in the skillset of its members. It's a team effort. I hope my skills and interest in biz/mkt/mngt/design/etc. will be good complements to those of other board members. So in my eyes, in our current circumstances, I would say these are what are valuable traits: business acumen/experience growing a commercial ecosystem; communication skill (I consider that to be a side-effect of the previous item), admin/org experience. Maybe cost in theory, but in practice, what I just described is kind of a biz dev/salesperson... good luck finding an experimented person to fill that role in a cost-constrained scenario! I agree that it's hard to find the right person on our budget but I think there are a lot of different ways that it can play out, as others suggest. To me, understanding the GNOME community (and thus being able to work with all of us to accomplish GNOME's goals) and being passionate about free software (to understand and be able to advocate for adoption and funding) are at a premium. I think we should not be too rigid about our expectations and see who responds to a call for applicants - there are a lot of different ways to do the job right. We need someone to keep convincing our current donors to give (when I joined as ED we'd already lost adboard members and some of our current ones were threatening to leave), to build the connections with our allies to get to the donation level and to help steer GNOME in a direction that individuals and others will want to give. I personally wished many times that I was more technical in my role so I could dive in and help on things that were in the public interest or of concern to one of our partners, rather than agitate for those fixes to be made by others (I haven't really coded in a decade). One thing- it would be great to have someone who is a good public speaker, in order to advocate for GNOME, but also to get invited to the places where people and companies are meeting. With the exception of GNOME's events, the vast majority of my travel was funded by the conferences and having keynotes meant that I could reach more people. Then again as someone else said, traveling takes away time from other things. It is indeed a balancing act :) karen ___ 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: Question for candidates
Le 21 mai 2014 07:40, Richard Stallman r...@gnu.org a écrit : [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] for downstream, there's the SUSE conference or the Fedora Flock; To cooperate formally with the SUSE conference would pose an ethical problem because SUSE contains lots of nonfree software. To have the event in proximity to the SUSE conference, without any public relationship with it, would not have such a problem. SUSE is a company, not a product, therefore it can not contains nonfree software. You seems to be incorrectly mixing a company (SUSE), an community project (openSUSE) done only with free software, community events around this project (openSUSE conference and summit) and friend projects like freedesktop meeting which was supported by SUSE which hosted the event in its Nuremberg office. (for the record, I'm a contributor to openSUSE and also working for SUSE). -- Frédéric Crozat ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
