Re: Changes in Membership Committee
Thanks for the great work Bruno! --lucasr 2010/3/23 Bruno Boaventura : > Hello! > > It was a pleasure for me hold the chairman position of Membership > Committee in the last two years. > Recently we had a meeting to resolve some issues. One of these things > were to elect another chairman to the committee. > I'm in the committee yet, but the chairman now is Andrea Veri. > > The new Membership Committee is: > > Bruno Boaventura (that's me!!!) > Tobias Mueller > Susana Pereira > Pedro Villavicencio > Andrea Veri (chairman) > > If you want to know better the Committee, please visit our wiki page [1]. > > At your service, > > Bruno Boaventura > GNOME Foundation Membership Committee > > > [1] http://live.gnome.org/MembershipCommittee > ___ > 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
Resigning from the Board
Hi all, I've been thinking a lot about what to do about my participation on GNOME Foundation's Board of Directors in face of the fact that my wife and I are expecting our first baby in February. After careful consideration, I decided to resign. I want to be fully focused on my family (especially in the first few months) without feeling bad for doing Board stuff while I could be with my family or not doing Board stuff while I'm spending time with my family. So, considering my priorities now, I feel that I would be more useful to the Board by stepping down and letting another person with a lot of energy to take my position on Board for the rest of this mandate. The Board has decided to appoint Jorge Castro to replace me. He's highly motivated and I'm sure he'll give good contributions as a member of the Board. I've had a great time in my two and a half years on Foundation Board. It was a great way to support the community in several ways and to work with some very nice people. The GNOME Foundation is getting better everyday and I feel very proud to be part of it. Cheers! --lucasr ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Code of Conduct and Foundation membership (Summary)
Hi all, It's quite obvious that the original thread ended up branching into several separate topics. I thought it would be useful to summarize some of the key points on each topic in an attempt to bring a more practical perspective to the whole discussion. This is not an official message from the Board. It's just me trying to make some sense out of the tons of messages in the thread and, maybe, bring a more useful (or at least more clear) "closure" to the discussed topics. -- The original topic: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership The message I sent to start discussion was quite specific: we, the board, wanted to know the opinion of the community on having the Code of Conduct[1] as an official document that current/new Foundation members would have to agree with in order to gain membership. It was strange to see that several people framed the discussion in the context of Planet GNOME only. Actually, the intention was to have a broader discussion on how useful it would be to have CoC as an official guideline for members, independently on where/how they are communicating (planet, mailing lists, irc, etc) with the community. Here's what I could summarize in terms of most interesting points: - Effectiveness: some questioned the actual effectiveness of having an official CoC in dealing with conflict situations. A point was made that more rules doesn't necessarily result in a healthier community. - Enforcement mechanism: some people think it wouldn't make sense require all Foundation members to "sign" the CoC if there's no clear enforcement mechanism. - Who enforces the CoC: opinions are a bit mixed regarding who would be responsible for enforcing CoC. Some people think the Board should do it. Others are absolutely against this idea. My impression is that the topic has not been discussed properly. The discussion deviated to parallel (indirectly related) topics. Maybe it's because it's a very tricky topic (quite hard to reach consensus). Or perhaps we haven't come up with a good enough solution yet. Maybe that's something the Board should discuss a bit further and come up with a more concrete proposal for discussion. Another possibility is to have a focused group of Foundation members and Board members interested in the topic to work on a proposal. Opinions? -- Code of Conduct suggestions At some point the thread shifted more specifically towards Code of Conduct itself. Behdad made a suggestion to add two more points to CoC: - Learn to agree to disagree. - Criticize ideas, not people presenting them. Pierre suggested that both items are added to the list of example behaviours under "Be respectful and considerate". This is something that should be officially proposed for general consideration. Behdad, maybe you could do that? :-) -- Planet GNOME suggestions And then the discussion moved to Planet GNOME. I could find some concrete suggestions to improve Planet GNOME in different ways: - Rating system on posts Planet. It would be some sort of Digg-like Planet. Readers would be able to rate posts down or up. Posts with general positive rating would be appear up on the page. Some people raised concerns that readers using feed reads would not be able to quickly rate posts. - Annual reminder asking people if they still want to be aggregated on Planet. This would allow editors to remove blogs from people not willing to be on Planet anymore. Those are topics that editors (me, Vincent and Jeff) will definitely be discussing soon. I'm personally in favor of the annual reminder idea. Not sure about the rating system. Hope to have news about those ideas soon. -- GNOME as part of GNU In response to Stallman's statement that Planet GNOME should not aggregate content about non-free software (because GNOME is part of GNU), Philip informally proposed a vote to decide on GNOME's membership to the GNU project. The idea of the vote have some support. Concerns were raised about the negative impact that such vote could cause in the community. It seems to me that this topic deserves a more careful discussion before moving forward in any new direction. This is not the kind of topic that should be decided on in the middle of a long thread that was supposed to be discussing something totally different. Especially considering that there is no official call from FSF or GNU maintainers to remove GNOME as part of GNU project. So, there's no hurry really. Also, someone would have to officially propose the vote to members, which hasn't actually happened. It would be useful to know how generally interested the Foundation members are in this topic. That's all I guess. Feel free to add stuff I missed in this quick summary. Cheers! --lucasr [1] http://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Meeting Minutes Published - October 29, 2009
Hi, 2009/11/24 Vincent Untz : > Le mardi 24 novembre 2009, à 23:53 +0100, Andy Wingo a écrit : >> Hi Brian, >> >> Thanks for the detailed and readable notes! >> >> On Fri 13 Nov 2009 22:27, Brian Cameron writes: >> >> > Minutes for Meeting of October 29th, 2009 >> [...] >> > More generally, we need to make sure that GNOME Foundation members >> > sign the GNOME Code of Conduct, and perhaps make it a requirement >> > for new members to sign. Also need to update the GNOME blog and >> > planet so that it is more clear that people should follow the >> > GNOME Code of Conduct. >> >> A couple of thoughts: >> >> First, the planet has always been under editorial control; it has a >> maintainer, like any other module -- actually a few of them. >> >> Therefore, what is or is not on the planet may fairly be seen to be >> under the purview of the maintainer(s), who are there due to their >> respected position in the field of their module, in this case in the >> "public discourse" of GNOME. So they can promote or censure certain >> kinds of speech as they see fit. > > Yep. And it is expected by the current editors that blog posts that > appear on Planet GNOME respect the Code of Conduct :-) It's mentioned in > the guidelines for Planet GNOME in the wiki, but it's not mentioned in > the current footer. > >> Secondly, binding or pseudo-binding resolutions on the Foundation >> membership should probably be ratified by the Foundation membership >> itself via some more formal process. As it is I don't think a majority >> have "signed" the CoC. (FWIW, I have.) > > Nod. Actually, I think there was an action item about starting a > discussion here on this topic... I guess the mail is in the draft folder > somewhere, it should hopefully arrive soon ;-) I've just created a new thread for the "official" discussion on this topic. Please, continue there. --lucasr ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Hi all, The Board has recently received some complaints from members of the community about certain the inappropriate behaviors. In the context of GNOME Foundation, it's really hard to argue about how we expect our members to behave if there is no official guidelines that members are supposed to comply with. The GNOME Code of Conduct[1] has been serving very well as an informal guideline for the community but we'd like to make it an official document that new Foundation members are expected to explicitly agree[2] with before being accepted. This way we'll have a common ground for dealing with certain conflict situations and avoid trying to base our discussions on guidelines that certain members haven't explicitly agreed on. Before deciding on this, we thought it would be useful to get some feedback from the community. Thanks, --lucasr on behalf of the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors [1] http://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct [2] http://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct/Signatures ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for the candidates
Hi, Apologies for the delay... 2009/5/29 Susana Pereira : > Hello, > > Here is the updated list of questions. Hopefully, this one will let us > discuss important issues without taking too much time from our > candidates. > > You can find the list of candidates for the upcoming elections here: > > http://foundation.gnome.org/elections/2009/candidates.html > > > 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 ? > 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 coolest thing I have more actively participated as a Board member is the new Friends of GNOME program. I've helped (and still help) mostly with the production of the gifts (mugs, t-shirts, postcards, etc) and the deployment and maintainance of the website. I helped with a bunch of other things which I can't recall now :-P > 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? My end of 2008 and beginning of 2009 were quite tough (changing jobs, moving to another country, etc) so I ended not being as present as I wanted on board activities. This is something not likely to happen during this term. So I expect to be much more present and active. > 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? Yes, I'd say I have some experience on team coordination. Actually, I've been doing it since my school times :-) In GNOME, I've been module maintainer, Board member, release team member, Membership Committee member, release organizer of GNOME Journal, GNOME Brasil coordinator, GNOME Roadmap coordinator, Summer of Code admin, and some other stuff. I'm a good listener and, maybe because of that, GNOME people feel comfortable to talk to me. I always try to keep an eye on the all major activities inside the GNOME community. I think that helps me, as a Board member, to better support 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 I can be helpful with making sure the Board communicates efficiently with the community by talking to the right people depending on the topic at hand. As I said before, the fact that I've worked on different teams inside the community helps a lot in this regard. I'm especially interested in how we can improve our "officlal" communication with Foundation members and the general public. I'm sure there's a lot of things we can do in this area (Dave has made some interesting suggestions). The main question is how to do that without overloading the Board too much. Honestly, I don't have concrete proposals yet but I'll be happy to discuss that with members. I'm now coordinating the development of the new GNOME website. I'm not sure I'm doing this solely with Board hat. Honestly, I don't know which hat I'm using in this case :-P Anyway, as a Board member, I want to make sure we have a clear, consistent, and apealing message about our project and community in our website. > 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 the Foundation is already quite useful to the community. Especially, through all the people, hackfests, and conferences we sponsor. Foundation membership is taken into account in our decisions for those things. The Foundation is there to support the community. Foundation members should feel comfortable in contacting the Board whenever any support (not necessarily sponsorship) is needed in order to make a GNOME-related activity happen (conference, hackfest, contacts, speakers, people, etc). > 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? For now, I'm trying to focus on our new website in order to present our project, products and community in the most creative, appealing and consistent way. Having a good presentation is an essential step towards wider desktop and platform adoption. This includes having an exciting marketing plan for GNOME 3.0 as well. This is a discussion that is already happening in the marketing list btw (thanks to Paul and Stormy). > 8. Do you think the GNOME Foundation and the GNOME projects get > enough representation at events? If not, how
Re: GNOME leadership [was Re: So what do people *except* me want from the foundation?]
Hi, 2009/6/8 Luis Villa : > 2009/6/5 Luis Villa : >> At any rate, I agree completely that we need some strong leaders to develop >> in GNOME. But the Foundation is not the place for it. I think the right >> question is 'why have leaders not come from other sources? what can the >> Foundation do, if anything, to help other leaders emerge and get the support >> they need to do their work?' I have no easy answers to either of these, >> though. > > Or to put it more bluntly, now that I think of it: why don't we have a > BDFL? Why have we chewed up and spit out all the potential candidates > for the title? Another important question is: leader of what? BDFL of what? I honestly don't see how only one leader could alone set the direction for desktop, platform, mobile, web, marketing, release management, etc. We're just too big today. I've commented before[1] that we should definitely consider having more clear/official leadership on specific domains of the project. --lucasr [1] http://blogs.gnome.org/lucasr/2008/06/15/notes-on-the-future-of-gnome-problems-and-questions/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
Hi Dave, 2009/6/2 Dave Neary : > Hi, > > john palmieri wrote: >> >> I'm of the same mind here. There are a number of people who I don't like >> to read on blogs and whatnot but I would rather us as a community figure out >> productive ways of dealing with it as opposed to lording our own views over >> those who don't have as much pull in the community. Red tape and draconian >> censorship measures is not the way to handle the issue. If our blogs and >> mailing lists are no longer exciting and informative then there is something >> more fundamentally wrong than who we give a voice to. > > Who talked about red tape and draconian censorship? > > I commend Philip for succeeding in framing this debate around the > punishments rather than around the reasons why they might happen. > > Let me be as clear as possible: > > There are people in our community who are losing faith in the community's > ability to have reasoned technical debate and design discussions because of > vacuous 100 mail threads, and IRC being dominated by half a dozen people > whose principal contribution to GNOME is to be on IRC all the time. Others > are being driven away from the community for our tolerance of "he who shouts > loudest" politics, flame wars and provocative and offensive blog posts. > > I believe that these people should have a group that they can turn to, argue > their points, and ask for that group to do something about it. I believe > that the task is the role of the foundation, and the board is well placed to > assume that role now. > > When I say "do something about it", that may be simply to point out to the > people involved that they're not being productive. It may be to publicly > shame people for antisocial behaviour. It may be to tell the complainer that > they're making a big deal about nothing. But right now if you are being > driven away from GNOME forums or from the GNOME project in general, you have > no-where to turn. How is that red tape? How is it draconian censorship? IMO, there's a big difference between counterproductive behavior and disrespectful behavior. People can be very counterproductive without being disrespectful (moving focus of discussion to irrelevant technical details, being against a proposal for personal reasons, etc). For example, I agree with Olav that d-d-l became too noisy and counterproductive too many times lately. And I guess some highly relevant contributors didn't participate on certain discussions simply because the discussion was too noisy (dozens of messages from people just giving random opinions) and lacking focus (someone picking on something irrelevant, etc). In general, people are not being disrespectful IMO. This kind of problem can be solved with stronger moderation and well-defined guidelines on mailing lists (which I guess depends on the type of discussion, dunno) which is just not happening on d-d-l for instance. IMO, disrespectful behavior includes being sarcastic or ironic, making personal accusations in public, making pejorative comments about a proposal instead of disagreeing with counter-arguments, etc. I see this kind of behavior sometimes on our mailing lists but they are exceptions, not the common behavior. Maybe what I'm trying to say is: I think we're being counterproductive too often, not necessarily disrespectful. And yes, this is a problem that needs a solution. My opinion is that we just need stronger and consistent moderation depending on the context. Some examples (a bit stretched for clarity) Example 1: - Person A proposes a new module for GNOME 3.2 on d-d-l - Person B replies with "This module is crap, ridiculous" - Release team members (who are responsible for organizing the module propositions) reply (in private?) to Person B with "Please, try to keep discussion productive with actual arguments for/against the module". Example 2: - Person A proposes a new i18n guideline on gnome-i18n mailing list - Person B replies with "You proposal is total shit" - GNOME i18n coordinators (who are responsible for the team coordination) reply (in private?) to Person B with "Please, try to keep discussion productive with actual arguments for/against the i18n proposal". Cheers! --lucasr ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
Hi Dave, (This is just my personal opinion. No official Foundation Board hat here...) As I said on irc today, I like your message. It's your way to present your expectations towards the board and how you think the Foundation could be better as an organization. I think feedback from Foundation members is very important and, unfortunately, we don't see this happening very often... I preferred to make some comments on the global content of your message. Didn't get into details. 2009/5/28 Dave Neary : > So - this is perhaps not the best time to start this discussion, but then > again maybe it's absolutely the best time. This is a call to foundation > members who are happy, unhappy or disaffected to say what they think the > foundation should be doing that it isn't, shouldn't be doing that it is, and > generally what you've been unhappy & happy with over the past number of > years. Just a nitpick: when you say Foundation here, I get the impression you actually mean Foundation Board. All points bellow are about the Board... > Me first! > > I think that the foundation should be more involved in conflict resolution > and policing the tone of the community. I have talked to too many people who > don't read pgo, or have turned off individual blogs, don't use IRC any more, > or avoid certain mailing lists, because they are unhappy with the tone & > content of discussions & posts. If someone is behaving in a way which is > negatively affecting a significant portion of the GNOME community, the board > should be the place to go where you can complain, and have your complaint > publicly recorded (in the minutes of a board meeting, for example) with > anonymity, investigated and evaluated, and if necessary, have the guilty > party censured and/or punished. Currently, this social policing role has > been completely ignored by the foundation and its leaders. I don't see the Board as community moderators. Really. I tend to agree that some communication channels (especially mailing lists) get a bit too noisy some times. This makes some highly active contributors to stay away from certain discussions because of that. But the moderation in those cases depends on the context. If this problem happens in the i18n mailing list, the i18n coordinators should do the moderation. If it happens on desktop-devel-list, maybe the release team should moderate the discussion. If things get *really* rough, then it's the case to take this to Board. But even in those cases, it's questionable what the Board is supposed (or even "allowed") to do on *community* level. The Board can definitely take action on Foundation level. Example: the Board could decide to not sponsor a certain person anymore because of a really bad attitude inside the community. However, I don't see the Board prohibiting this same person from participating on daily GNOME development (banning from mailings, removing git account, etc). IMO, there's a subtle (but very important) difference between community leaders and Foundation Board. Board members happen to be community leaders in a many cases. But that's not necessarily true for all cases. My impression is that, because Board members are usually community leaders, some people tend to project the community leadership to Foundation Board which is a sort of "dangerous" assumption because it's not the role of Foundation Board to set direction but to support the direction chosen by the community in the best way possible. > I think that the foundation should be more frugal, and I expect the board to > transmit the frugal values to the membership. I was a supporter of being > much firmer in asking people to pay part of their travel when being funded > by the foundation, or to seek other funding elsewhere (from conference > organisers, for example). I don't think that being funded by the foundation > should be a due or a reward, foundation funds are an enabler. > > I would like to see greater financial and administrative transparency. I > don't see any reason why the foundation's gnucash file should be private, > for example - and if there is, then at the very least there should be a > quarterly financial update summarising everything that's happened in the > last quarter. As a donor, I would like to know where my money is going, > who's had travel funded, for what purpose, and so on. I want to know that > we're planning to spend 15,000 on conference t-shirts so that I can say > "hold on, I know a t-shirt supplier who might be cheaper - let me get a > quote". > > I want to see seven board members actively communicating, and I want to see > the board be more reactive when a board member is inactive for long periods. > There is no procedure for temporarily replacing an inactive board member, or > if there is, it's never been activated. > > In all my boards, there were 1 or 2 board members who just stopped reading > (or at least replying to) board email for periods of months. I recall one > particular occasion where a board memb
Candidacy: Lucas Rocha
Name: Lucas Rocha Mail: lucasr gnome org Nick: lucasr Blog: http://blogs.gnome.org/lucasr More: http://live.gnome.org/LucasRocha Affiliation: litl Summary I've been part of the Foundation Board for almost 2 years now. My impression is that the Foundation is gradually improving every year as an organization. GNOME is in a very important moment now with a lot of important changes to come. I think I can be very helpful on making sure Board supports the community in the best way possible towards the GNOME 3 goals. Details I've been an active GNOME contributor since 2005. Since then I got involved in a bunch of different (technical and non-technical) activities inside the project by maintaining (gnome-session, gjs, eog and zenity) and contributing to some of our software modules, doing release management, co-coordinating projects (Google Summer of Code in GNOME, Planet GNOME, GNOME Journal, GNOME Roadmap, GNOME Brasil, ...), side-contributing to some teams (Web, Marketing, ...), organizing events, and other misc stuff. In the specific GNOME Foundation scope, I've been a member of the Membership Committee for more than 1 year, from which a resigned some time after I became part of the Board since July 2007. Currently, I work for litl, a startup developing some cool stuff based on GNOME and other FLOSS technologies. I'm from Brazil! While on Foundation Board, I worked on: - A11y outreach program - New Friends of GNOME - Annual report - General communication with the community - Daily board decisions / communication Cheers! --lucasr ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
New Affiliation
Hi all, As you probably know, I left Nokia in the end of March. I now work for LiTL (www.litl.com), a startup company developing a consumer product that involves hardware, software, and online services. I'm the only Board member affiliated to this company so no issues here. Thanks, --lucasr ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Foundation Annual Report 2007 released!
Hi all, Important: there's no GNOME Foundation revenue attached to the price of the printing services at Lulu.com. This means that you're not donating anything to GNOME Foundation by ordering your hard copy from Lulu.com! --lucasr 2008/3/10, Lucas Rocha <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Hi all, > > Last year, Dave Neary and others started this new tradition by > producing the first GNOME Foundation annual report which has got very > positive response from community. So, we decided to follow the new > tradition by preparing the GNOME Foundation annual report 2007! > > I've been slowly working on it for a few months with invaluable > contributions from several people. The report is now available in > GNOME Foundation's website: > > http://foundation.gnome.org/about/gnome_annual_report_2007.pdf (1860 KB, > PDF) > > We'll soon send nice hard copies of the report to the Advisory Board > members and existing GNOME event boxes. Our plan is to also print a > bunch of extra copies to be used for promoting GNOME on events around > the world. Feel free to request some copies for your local GNOME > event. > > This year, we chose Lulu.com as the printing service in order to allow > us to easily print more copies on demand and to make it possible to > anyone to order personal hard copies by just paying for the printing. > You can buy a hard copy of this report directly from Lulu.com here: > > http://www.lulu.com/content/2038054 > > Many thanks to: > - the writers: Federico Mena-Quintero, Sayamindu Dasgupta, Vincent Untz and > Behdad Esfahbod; > - the photographers: Frederic Crozat, Michael Dominic, Vincent Untz, > Kushal Das, > Juan Carlos Inostroza and Garrett LeSage; > - the designer: Andreas Nilsson; > - the text reviewers: Paul Cutler and Stephanie Watson; > - the adviser: Dave Neary. > > I hope you enjoy it! > > --lucasr > ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
GNOME Foundation Annual Report 2007 released!
Hi all, Last year, Dave Neary and others started this new tradition by producing the first GNOME Foundation annual report which has got very positive response from community. So, we decided to follow the new tradition by preparing the GNOME Foundation annual report 2007! I've been slowly working on it for a few months with invaluable contributions from several people. The report is now available in GNOME Foundation's website: http://foundation.gnome.org/about/gnome_annual_report_2007.pdf (1860 KB, PDF) We'll soon send nice hard copies of the report to the Advisory Board members and existing GNOME event boxes. Our plan is to also print a bunch of extra copies to be used for promoting GNOME on events around the world. Feel free to request some copies for your local GNOME event. This year, we chose Lulu.com as the printing service in order to allow us to easily print more copies on demand and to make it possible to anyone to order personal hard copies by just paying for the printing. You can buy a hard copy of this report directly from Lulu.com here: http://www.lulu.com/content/2038054 Many thanks to: - the writers: Federico Mena-Quintero, Sayamindu Dasgupta, Vincent Untz and Behdad Esfahbod; - the photographers: Frederic Crozat, Michael Dominic, Vincent Untz, Kushal Das, Juan Carlos Inostroza and Garrett LeSage; - the designer: Andreas Nilsson; - the text reviewers: Paul Cutler and Stephanie Watson; - the adviser: Dave Neary. I hope you enjoy it! --lucasr ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
GNOME @ Google Summer of Code 2008
Hi all, As you probably know, Google is organizing one more edition of their Summer of Code (GSoC) program. More information about the program can be found here: http://code.google.com/soc/2008/ GNOME has participated in all GSoC editions as a mentoring organization with some nice results in terms of contributions and new contributors. So, we want to participate this year too! Our first organization kickoff meeting will happen on March 6 at 18h UTC in the #soc-admin channel (irc.gnome.org). We're looking for volunteers to help us to organize GNOME's participation in GSoC 2008. So, if you want to help in any way, join us! Cheers! --lucasr ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
GNOME Outreach Program: Accessibility - List of tasks published!
Hi all, For those interested in participating in the GNOME Outreach Program: Accessibility, you probably want to have a look at the list of tasks that has just been published in the program's website: http://www.gnome.org/projects/outreach/a11y/ So, now what? Read the program rules very carefully and claim one of the available tasks. Proposals acceptance is open now! --lucasr ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
GNOME Foundation Meeting Minutes :: 2nd January 2008
GNOME Foundation Meeting Minutes :: 2nd January 2008 Members of current board and previous attending. Present * Behdad Esfahbod * Anne Oestergard * John Palmieri * Vincent Untz * Jeff Waugh * Brian Cameron * Lucas Rocha Missing * Quim Gil * Glynn Foster Regrets * Luis Villa Minutes 1) Conference Calls The new Board needs to find a way to proceed with the conference calls for the meetings. So far, Sun has been provinding the infrastructure. ACTION: Brian to check with Sun about conference calls infra for Board meetings 2) Summer Event in Peru Diego Escalante requested sponsorship from GNOME Foundation to bring latin american GNOME contributors to a summer FLOSS event in Peru. The Board has aproved a $3000,00 sponsor for this event. Diego is also discussing with GNOME Chile about a Latin American tour of some key GNOME contributors from Europe and/or US. A request related to that will come as soon as they have more concrete information. ACTION: Vincent to send a confirmation to Diego about this sponsorship request 3) Sysadmin Hiring Vincent sent a message to sysadmins asking their opinion before going on with the hiring process. Jeff thinks that, because of lack of structure and leadership in the sysadmin group, it's really hard to get a collective opinion from them, only individual opinions. For Jeff, we should guess the best we can and go ahead and start the hiring process. Vincent suggested to wait some more time before going ahead. 4) Annual Report 2007 Lucas said the design work starts on January 15th. The content is mostly done. The idea is to release the Annual Report in the beginning of February. The printing service to be used is still undefined. Anne suggested asking Advisory Board members about potential printing services. Jeff suggested asking Andreas Nilsson about local printing services in Sweden (as they might be cheaper than in Australia). ACTION: Lucas to ask Andreas Nilsson about printing services in Sweden ACTION: Lucas to send a message to AB members about printing services 5) GTK+ Hackfest Behdad said everything is going fine. He should follow up with Mathias Hasselmann to find and book the venue. 6) Planet GNOME Maintainership Jeff talked with Lucas and Vincent about co-maintaining Planet GNOME. The guidelines are being worked out by Jeff. Andreas and Tuomas worked on the guidelines for the hackergotchis, which is good. 7) GNOME @ FOSDEM FOSDEM is in good hands. Some people from GNOME-NL are taking care of the GNOME booth. A call for talks is about to be sent by Christophe Fergeau. ACTION: Vincent to check with KDE guys about meeting them at FOSDEM to talk about joint activities 8) Bostom Summit 2008 Jeff said is good time to make the booking of the venue. The expected date is Columbus Day holiday's weekend. ACTION: John to talk with Jonathan and Zana about the Summit venue booking 9) GUADEC 2008 GUADEC dates were officially announced. Lucas said it would be nice to have a press release for GUADEC in Istambul. There is a proposal to use a proprietary system for handling GUADEC 2008 registrations and billing. John said he only feels it's ok if we publish a major plan to use free software in the future editions of the conference. It seems that None of the current FLOSS systems help on the billing part. Jeff said there's no option for FLOSS systems for what we want. In his opinion, the current Drupal at guadec.org is badly deployed which makes things more complicated. Jeff suggests to host the guadec.org website in a GNOME's Wordpress MU and make it the conference web frontend. The payment and agenda systems would be separate from the CMS. John thinks any solution we choose now should be reusable for next editions. The final decision is up to GUADEC organizers. On the GUADEC financial management side, Anne suggests to take all payments to GNOME Foundation's office in Boston and then transfer to the GUADEC organizers as they need. Anne suggests to ask Zana to contact our Bank to know our options. ACTION: John to contact Zana about financial handling between GNOME Foundation and GUADEC organizers ACTION: John to ask Baris about their timeline around the website, registration, and billing systems ACTION: Behdad to work on the initial version of the GUADEC press release ACTION: Lucas to suggest Baris to prepare some flyers to promote GUADEC in Istambul 10) Membership Committee situation According to Lucas, the MC is not in a good situation. For some reason, the new volunteers are not processing the membership applications and handling daily requests. ACTION: Lucas to check with new volunteers if they need any help ACTION: Jeff to make sure the new MC volunteers have their accounts, in case this is blocking their work 11) Thanks to parting directors This was the last meeting with the 2007 boa
Re: The Final Logo for GNOME Asia Summit
Hi Emily, Congratulations for the logo! It's pretty nice! :-) --lucasr 2007/12/13, Emily chen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Hi all, > > Thanks for everyone's support, we finally got 307 votes on the logos of > GNOME Asia Summit. The winner is : Bamboo + GNOME logo carved on rounded > Asia stamp. Please click below link to get more detail information: > http://www.gnome-cn.org/gnome-asia-summit/logo-voting-result/ > > This logo is meaningful : > 1. The color green means grow and looks spunky. Green is our way to go; > 2. It has Asia feature. Bamboo means successively and hand over hand in > Asia; > 3. It is suitable to print in T-shirt and brochure. > > Congratulations to the designer Diki, you will get free register to > GNOME Asia Summit 2008! > We also appreciate Behnam's support and design, your logos are really > artistic designs. > > Thanks, > Emily > > Notes: The logo need some minor modifications based on the brand > guidelines. http://live.gnome.org/BrandGuidelines . Thanks for Jeff and > Duffy's suggestions. > > -- > marketing-list mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list > ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Vote the logo for GNOME Asia Summit -- Deadline is 9th Dec, 2007
Hi Dave, > Lucas Rocha wrote: > > I'd like to propose something simpler: > > > > http://www.gnome.org/~lucasr/misc/gnome-asia-summit.png > > I don't mean to be a spoilsport, but the modifications to the foot to > make it an A go outside what I'd consider the minimal modifications > which we recommend in the branding guidelines. Aside from the fact that > these logos aestetically aren't my favourites, I think we should be > careful how we present the GNOME brand in Asia, and make sure we build > brand recognition through familiarity. Those are very good points. Anyway, I just proposed this simpler variation of this GNOME-ish "A" because I thought it could be better proposed. > My favuorites were the two bamboo ones (esp. the stamp shaped one) and > yin & yang, by the way ;) Indeed. The bamboo ones are quite nice. :-P --lucasr ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Vote the logo for GNOME Asia Summit -- Deadline is 9th Dec, 2007
Hi Emily, > Please vote your favorite logo for GNOME Asia Summit from here : > > http://www.gnome-cn.org/gnome-asia-submit/gas-logo-vote/ > > Thanks for Yang Hong's great help on build this vote system! > > We will announce the final logo on Monday, the winner will get free > registration to GNOME Asia Summit, Beijing 2008. I'd like to propose something simpler: http://www.gnome.org/~lucasr/misc/gnome-asia-summit.png I didn't find the sources for the current proposals so the image is quite rough (and of course I'm a lousy image editor). Well, if it's too late to propose, no problem. :-) Obviously, I don't consider this an original proposal. If this one wins, the prize should go to the person who designed the gnome-ish "A". Cheers! --lucasr ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Money spending, questions for the candidates
Hi, 2007/12/3, Lucas Rocha <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Hi, > > > The questions: > > > > o. Given that the Foundation of GNOME has plenty of money, will you if > >elected vote to spend this money on important projects? > > > >Being mostly interested in mobile targets and GNOME Mobile, I could > >certainly come up with some projects that might both increase > >deployment of our GNOME technologies on mobile devices and increase > >the amount of contributors. > > > >Both reasons are, I think, part of the reason why our Foundation > >exists. > > > > - Development on language bindings, like a binding generator for > > for example Android and other mobile targets (plenty of our > > components don't require Gtk+ yet could run on this target) > > > > - Funding development on development tools (like the new Anjuta) > > > > - Development on a WinCE port of Gtk+ > > > > - Development on a P.I.P.S. (Symbian with POSIX) port of Gtk+ > > > > - Improve the existing Win32 target of Gtk+ > > > > - Employ a maintainer and/or additional developers for Gtk+'s > > development > > > > - Pay people to travel to schools and universities to educate > > students about GNOME (serious educating, not just doing cheap > > presentations) > > > > - ... (for making these decisions we need people who'll make real > > and hard decisions) > > First of all, the "plenty of money" that the GNOME Foundation > currently has is not enough to pay a lot of people to do many > different things. Second, I'm still not convinced that it's good, > safe, and healthy to have the GNOME Foundation paying certain people > from the community to develop software. Specially considering that > GNOME is heavily based on volunteer work. > > As I said before, the GNOME Foundation role is to make sure that the > community has the needed infrastructure for its daily work and to > support community activities as much as it can. > > > o. What is your opinion on an examination that could carry the title: > >"GNOME Mobile certified software developer exam" > > I don't like the general idea of certifications. I think the > contributions that one gives to a certain FLOSS project is more than > enough to prove its compentence on a certain software development > area. > > > o. How are you planning to help the GNOME community overcome the fact > >that we have relatively few technical leadership? > > > >- By waiting for the integration our softwares to turn into > > something that looks a lot like that O.S. called CHA-OS? > > ? > > >- By letting companies like Nokia, Novell, ... set our goals? > > I think this is what's happening right now. Might be fine imo. > > I don't really know what you mean here. Anyway, I disagree with the "I > think this is what's happening right now" part anyway. I don't really > see those companies setting our goals. IMO, GNOME is totally open for > volunteer and individual efforts which can have a lot of influence in > the project and hence setting our goals too. > > > Note that, however, our users sometimes get confused by this: > > > >o. People thinking that Miguel De Icaza, Novell and GNOME are one > > entity. (I love your work Miguel, don't get me wrong. A lot of > > GNOME people do) > > > >o. Too late announcing of GNOME developers joining the OOXML > > discussions (I think it's great that we are among the people. > > defining this, don't get me wrong. But our "technical > > leadership", the one that we lack, should have made our > > position clear to the audience (our users) before getting > > Slashdotted by the religious ones in the land of freesoftware. > > > > I think that we are having quite a handicap by this, and that we > > should do something about it. This year. > > > > How will you do that? What is your strategy? > > As I said before, IMO, there was a communication problem about the > participation on the ECMA TC45 (actually it was more about the > timing). There's no "strategy" needed here. It's more about having > clear and consistent communication. > > > Notes on my mind: > > > > o. Technical leadership != one person dictatorship, we can work with > > committees too. Let's be open minded in ste
Re: Money spending, questions for the candidates
Hi, > The questions: > > o. Given that the Foundation of GNOME has plenty of money, will you if >elected vote to spend this money on important projects? > >Being mostly interested in mobile targets and GNOME Mobile, I could >certainly come up with some projects that might both increase >deployment of our GNOME technologies on mobile devices and increase >the amount of contributors. > >Both reasons are, I think, part of the reason why our Foundation >exists. > > - Development on language bindings, like a binding generator for > for example Android and other mobile targets (plenty of our > components don't require Gtk+ yet could run on this target) > > - Funding development on development tools (like the new Anjuta) > > - Development on a WinCE port of Gtk+ > > - Development on a P.I.P.S. (Symbian with POSIX) port of Gtk+ > > - Improve the existing Win32 target of Gtk+ > > - Employ a maintainer and/or additional developers for Gtk+'s > development > > - Pay people to travel to schools and universities to educate > students about GNOME (serious educating, not just doing cheap > presentations) > > - ... (for making these decisions we need people who'll make real > and hard decisions) First of all, the "plenty of money" that the GNOME Foundation currently has is not enough to pay a lot of people to do many different things. Second, I'm still not convinced that it's good, safe, and healthy to have the GNOME Foundation paying certain people from the community to develop software. Specially considering that GNOME is heavily based on volunteer work. As I said before, the GNOME Foundation role is to make sure that the community has the needed infrastructure for its daily work and to support community activities as much as it can. > o. What is your opinion on an examination that could carry the title: >"GNOME Mobile certified software developer exam" I don't like the general idea of certifications. I think the contributions that one gives to a certain FLOSS project is more than enough to prove its compentence on a certain software development area. > o. How are you planning to help the GNOME community overcome the fact >that we have relatively few technical leadership? > >- By waiting for the integration our softwares to turn into > something that looks a lot like that O.S. called CHA-OS? ? >- By letting companies like Nokia, Novell, ... set our goals? > I think this is what's happening right now. Might be fine imo. I don't really know what you mean here. Anyway, I disagree with the "I think this is what's happening right now" part anyway. I don't really see those companies setting our goals. IMO, GNOME is totally open for volunteer and individual efforts which can have a lot of influence in the project and hence setting our goals too. > Note that, however, our users sometimes get confused by this: > >o. People thinking that Miguel De Icaza, Novell and GNOME are one > entity. (I love your work Miguel, don't get me wrong. A lot of > GNOME people do) > >o. Too late announcing of GNOME developers joining the OOXML > discussions (I think it's great that we are among the people. > defining this, don't get me wrong. But our "technical > leadership", the one that we lack, should have made our > position clear to the audience (our users) before getting > Slashdotted by the religious ones in the land of freesoftware. > > I think that we are having quite a handicap by this, and that we > should do something about it. This year. > > How will you do that? What is your strategy? As I said before, IMO, there was a communication problem about the participation on the ECMA TC45 (actually it was more about the timing). There's no "strategy" needed here. It's more about having clear and consistent communication. > Notes on my mind: > > o. Technical leadership != one person dictatorship, we can work with > committees too. Let's be open minded in stead of the "I'm against > everything" point of view. > > If the right people are in that committee, nobody will be against > anything. > > o. I'm still hoping for GMAE/GNOME Mobile to be(come) that committee > for mobile related components. Why not do ... > > o. one for the Desktop > > o. one for the translators and documentation writers > > o. one for that futuristic Online Desktop > > o. one for the language bindings and development tools > > o. On importance level: I think that without such technical leadership, > GNOME will fragment into a huge amount of unconnected projects. > > I think this will eventually render most our components irrelevant. > > I don't want to end with panic-speech but I just did. I'll continue my > philosophic text with ... passion > > We are a bunch of passionate people. I've
Re: two questions for candidates
Hi, 2007/11/26, Richard Stallman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > 1. Would you change anything in the GNOME Foundation statement about > OOXML? I would change the date it was released. :-) I think the most serious problem about GNOME Foundation participation on ECMA TC45-M was that it wasn't properly explained and clarified to the community at the time it started. The statement came after a lot of noise. About the content, no, I wouldn't change the core message. Anyway, I've already given my opinion about OOXML on the previous set of questions. > 2. How do you think the GNOME Foundation should support the Free > Software Movement in general? - By supporting the GNOME community on bringing outstanding user experience 100% based on Free Software - By promoting the GNOME Project around the world so that universities, NGO's, governments, social movements, private companies, and other organizations know that they can perform their daily tasks with Free Software - By promoting the GNOME Project around the world so that we can bring more contributors to our (and other) communities --lucasr ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: A question to candidates
Hi, 2007/11/23, Vincent Untz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Le vendredi 23 novembre 2007, à 14:42 +0100, Murray Cumming a écrit : > > On Fri, 2007-11-23 at 01:18 +0100, Vincent Untz wrote: > > [snip] > > > Taking too much time to decide: it sometimes happen that we wait for a > > > meeting or for another event to take a decision, while the decision is > > > pretty trivial. It might be related to my first item, since pinging > > > people so they say +1/-1 could be enough. > > [snip] > > > > This is generally caused by the habit of only making decisions in > > meetings, instead of making decisions on the mailing list. And a > > tendency to think that all decisions must be unanimous. > > > > It works like this. Something is discussed. It becomes an unstructured > > debate and the meeting runs out of time. Someone says "Well, let's make > > a decision at the next meeting". But everyone knows that nothing will be > > done in the meantime to make that more likely, and half the meetings are > > postponed (or don't have the relevant people attending). > > As Jeff mentioned, this year, we had quite a lot of decisions on the > mailing list. But while it could have been done in 1-2 days, it > sometimes take one week. This is what we can improve. Thanks Vincent and Jeff for clarifying this (saved me the time to write an explanation). That's exactly what I meant. :-) --lucasr ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: A question to candidates
Hi Dave, > I did send these to the membership committee, but voting's nearly open, > and I think they're important, so I guess I'll just ask... Ok. > The foundation's role is essentially to facilitate the enthusiasm of the > GNOME project, as Andrew Cowie blogged earlier [1]. This consists of two > major elements - managing/improving the finances that the foundation > has, and identifying areas where those finances can help remove > roadblocks or encourage productive contribution. > > After two years without a full-time employee, the foundation's finances > are in a decent state, with $150K cash and $50K receivables [2]. > > What do you see as the best way to spend this money? In terms of hiring, > do you prefer hiring a sysadmin, or an executive director? What other > priorities do you have for expenditure this year, outside of our usual > cost centers (GUADEC + salaries + travel sponsorship)? I think the best way to spend this money in 2008/2009 is: - To support (presential) activities that will facilitate contributors to move the desktop and platform forward. - To support activities that will streghten the local user groups around the world. About the hiring, it really depends. At first sight, I would prefer to hire an executive director because it would have more impact on GNOME Foundation actions (marketing, business partnerships, conferences, etc). However, if we can't find a really good person for the position, I would prefer to hire a sysadmin. Of course, one thing doesn't necessarely exclude the other. > A second question to all candidates: what do you see as the weak points > of the current board, and how do you propose addressing those weak points? Weak points: - Sometimes certain things get stalled because we (Board) don't get enough feedback (+1's or -1's) among us. We should have more effective ways of making those daily micro-decisions and getting things done more quickly. - We could delegate more often. When delegation is possible, the Board should have some sort of list of potential volunteers for certain types of actions. For example: business partnerships (Dave, Quim, Jonathan, ...), Artwork (Andreas, Jakub, Vinicius, ...), user group contacts, etc. Actually, I think I'll start doing this straight away. :-) - We could be more pro-active on proposing actions to the community. You solve this by proposing actions. :-P I'm planning to propose some small developers summits to some maintainers. Cheers! --lucasr ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to the candidates
Hi, 2007/11/23, Anne Østergaard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > 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 don't plan to change my job next year. > Will you attend at least 90% of the board calls? There are no expected changes in my weekly time table for 2008. Considering that, I think I'll have enough time to work on the Board. > Can you accept competing official ISO standards? Actually, I would say that we need to be really careful when defending the opposite idea (one true universal standard for everyone) because this can turn against us when trying push new/existing Free/Open standards (as Jeff already mentioned). So, yes, I can accept competing standards but it really depends on the case. > 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 think I have already given my opinion about OOXML. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
GNOME Foundation Meeting Minutes :: 10th October 2007
Hi all, I'm really sorry for the delay. The draft got lost in my Gmail account and completely forgot to send it. It won't happen again. :-/ --lucasr - GNOME Foundation Meeting Minutes :: 10th October 2007 Present: Behdad, Lucas, Anne, Vincent, Zana, Glynn (for 10 minutes) Regrets: Jeff Absent: Quim 1) Zana's Report Things are going well. No further comments from board members. Zana reported that we're running out of the mugs that are given to "Benefactor" donators. She suggested the creation of a new design for the next stock of mugs. 2) Advisory board meeting Board needs to schedule an Advisory Board (AB) still in 2007. Need to know from AB members what they would be interested to have in the agenda and possible dates. ACTION: Vincent to send a mail to AB asking for suggestions for the agenda and possible dates 3) Sponsorship for FOSS India Board agreed to sponsor the FOSS India conference with $4000,00. ACTION: Zana to contact Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay to make sure the money is transfered on time 4) Hiring a Sysadmin Vincent didn't have time to push this forward. Anne thinks it would be really good to have this hired Sysadmin to take care of things that has been bringing complaints from community members. ACTION: Vincent to follow up discussion with GNOME sysadmins and possibly with Advisory Board 5) GNOME Foundation Annual Report 2007 Lucas didn't have time to push this forward. Anne suggested that Glynn's GUADEC presentation about Board activities should be in report. Other content suggestions were: summary of sponsors in general (a11y summit, java summit, etc). Lucas said he needs someone from the board to write a summary of AB happenings in 2007. Glynn suggested Lucas to define more concrete tasks so that people could just take and get them done. ACTION: Lucas to restart the work on the report and assign volunteers with more clear tasks 6) Results for Membership Vote Regarding Change to Bylaws It seems the results will be positive about the proposed changes in the bylaws. Anne said we should do an official announcement about the next board period that will last 18 months. Lucas said we should wait for the final results to be published to do this announcement. ACTION: Anne to send the official announcement, after the vote results are published, stating that the next elected board will serve for 18 months 7) New HDDs for buildbot machine The buildbot machine (build.gnome.org) had a very small HDD (32GB) and needed new ones. The board agreed on buying new HDDs for build.gnome.org as requested by Olav Vitters on October 8. Owen Taylor and Matthew Galgoci took care of logistics for the purshase and installation of the new HDDs. 8) Boston Summit Wrap up Behdad gave an overview of the Summit: attendees did nice work. More preparation needed. For next year, we need better planning and more clear schedule. Big thanks to Google for sponsoring the party which was very nice. Wireless didn't work one day. Coffee service was really good. GNOME Java Summit actually started after summit but it seems they were quite productive. Big thanks to Zana and Owen for the great organization work. Anne thinks would be good to start looking for good summit venue long before. 9) AOB Zana to start maternity leave soon. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Foundation Elections 2007. Let's start the debate!
Hi, 2007/11/19, Bruno Boaventura <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > With the final list of candidates announced, it's time to submit > questions about the GNOME Foundation and GNOME Project to this years > prospective Board of Directors. > > The list, a summary of each candidate's statement and a link to each > candidate's candidacy can be found at: > > http://foundation.gnome.org/elections/2007/candidates.html > > Here we'll go: > > [1] How much impact would being a member of the GNOME Foundation Board > have on your current contributions to GNOME ? As I already mentioned in my candidacy announcement, I've been trying to help the GNOME community to find its own direction and as a Board member I expect to pro-actively organize or just facilitate face-to-face meetings for boosting different aspects of our software stack. Also, after my participation on the Board for some months, I think I can be really helpful on getting the daily Foundation tasks done which involves mostly replying different kind of requests (from community and other organizations) and properly communicating our activities. > [2] Online Desktop and Services are being talked about as the next > large step in GNOME - what is your vision for Online Desktop and > Services and how would you measure them ? I think the Online Desktop initiative is a great opportunity for us to enwide the scope of GNOME project from a specific desktop environment to a broader user experiences set. This means taking advantage of this huge amount of funny, socially powerful, useful information and services available on the Web. Embracing Online Desktop also means trying to bring a new set of goals to GNOME which are related to a more social and entertaining user experience, something that, in my opinion, has been lacking in GNOME for a long time. Currently, GNOME achieves very well the goal of proving a desktop environment that "just works" in most of the cases. However, there's still a long way until we're cool, sexy and atractive enough to catch the attention of home/domestic users who just want to have fun and share "stuff" with their friends. Online Desktop can help a lot in this regard. IMO, we should always keep a "platform thinking" about Online Desktop. This means that it's really important to provide as many "platform enablers" as possible so that companies, FLOSS communities and other organizations can create their own services and easily "link" them to our desktop. I would be really happy if in 2009 (?) I see something like "Click here to Install the WEB_SERVICE_NAME plugin for GNOME" in Flickr, Youtube, Facebook, Jaiku, etc. I think the GNOME Foundation (and the Board) can help the Online Desktop initiative by bringing this topic for discussion to the Advisory Board members, promoting cooperation among companies. FLOSS projects and other organizations, and making sure that hackers have the necessary infrastructure available. Also, there's a lot to discuss about the wider topic of free (as in freedom) web services (something that Luis is already investigating?). > [3] What are the SMART goals that you desire to set for yourself > should you be elected to the Board ? I've already mentioned those in my candidacy announcement. I'll just copy here to avoid linking to another page. As I said, some of them are about keeping the good current work, others are proposed improvements and others are both. Reactive perspective: - Respond quickly to requests about sponsorships, partnerships, general questions, etc. Proactive perspective: - Incremental production of annual report to make it easier to have something in the end of the year; - Take care of transparency, provide useful information about current Board activities, and bring topics for discussion to membership when applicable; - Organize and/or facilitate topic-based summits with relevant contributors for boosting, hacking, setting direction of diffents parts/aspects of our desktop and platform. Those summits could be self-contained or take place on existing FLOSS conferences. The topics could be things like: "real-time communication", "panels and applets", "GNOME mobile", "eye candy", "online desktop", "python bindings", "multimedia experience", etc. - Keep in touch with user groups to know what they need for their local activities. > [4] If you were part of the GNOME Board last year and a candidate > again, what would you like to put as your achievements as a Board > member ? In my 4 months as a Board member, it took sometime for me to understand how the Board works and to be confortable for getting real tasks. In the last couple months I've been replying the requests that came in, coodinating the annual report and actively participating on Board discussions. I would say that now I feel like a Board member. :-P > [5] Do you think it is important to mentor and coach potential leaders > in the GNOME community ? If yes, what do you think the role of the > Board be in this t
Annual Report Kickoff
Hi all, It's time to start working on our 2007 annual report! Last year we had a very nice report. So, let's make it even better this year! I've created a wiki page to organize the work: http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/AnnualReport2007 Any kind of contribution is welcome! There are several ways to help: - Assign yourself to write one of the sections - Add links, references and other information sources to help writers to produce the content - Add new ideas, suggest, review the content - Anything else! :-) If you have any questions, feel free to contact the Annual Report Team (Silvia, Sayamindu and me). Cheers! --lucasr ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Can we improve things?
Hi, 2007/9/13, Alvaro Lopez Ortega <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Vincent Untz wrote, On 13/09/07 11:00: > > Le mercredi 12 septembre 2007, à 17:37 -0400, Behdad Esfahbod a écrit : > >>> Because despite Gnome is people, I think that for most people, Planet > >>> Gnome is primarily about Gnome. > >> No. The way planet started, it was about people. Or friends in fact. > >> I personally am not interested in reading an all technical Planet GNOME. > >> For example, more than reading about latest boring feature in Evolution, > >> I prefer reading cool cooking recipes or mind wrestling puzzles, *on > >> p.g.o*. It's a way to keep track of what my fellow hackers are doing. > > > > Totally agree. I really like to read cooking recipes every now and then, > > or to learn about how life is going on for a friend. Of course, there > > are some entries I just skip (eg, Lucas' ones -- just kidding!). > > +1, Agree. Do you mean you skip my entries too? --lucasr - I'm sorry, I couldn't help it... :-P ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Git vs SVN (was: Can we improve things?)
Hi, I hate to do this but... again... please move this discussion to a more appropriate mailing list like d-d-l or gnome-infrastructure. Thanks, --lucasr 2007/9/11, Sanford Armstrong <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > On 9/8/07, Jeff Waugh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > > I simply meant that less people are familiar with D-SCM tools and that > > > they are somewhat harder for a newbie to learn than C-SCM tools. > > > > This is an unfortunate cultural relic created by arch/tla, and hilariously > > promulgated by git. Sure, fewer people are familiar with them, but the good > > ones are not harder to learn. > > I'm not really talking about the UI of the D-SCM tool, but about some > fundamentals of the distributed model. Getting code and pushing code > seems to always require an additonal step. Users have to learn about > branching and merging up front, whereas in SVN this would come later > in their education. If I were a newbie developer I would find this > confusing. As I've stated, I don't have much experience with D-SCM, > but these are the instructions to get started hacking on one project > using bzr... > > $ bzr init-repo --trees some-project > $ cd some-project > $ bzr checkout http://url/to/some-project > $ bzr branch mainline working > $ cd working > $ ./configure > $ make > > ...compared to the same steps using svn... > > $ svn co http://url/to/some-project/trunk some-project > $ cd some-project > $ ./configure > $ make > > There's just a higher cognitive investment for a newbie getting > started with D-SCM. As bzr/git/etc become more common in the FLOSS > communities, this won't be as much of an issue, though. And the > advantages of the distributed model have been well covered here. :-) > > Sandy > ___ > 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: Git vs SVN (was: Can we improve things?)
Hi all, Could you please move this discussion to d-d-l and/or gnome-infrastructure? This mailing list is definitely not the place to discuss SCM in GNOME. Thanks, --lucasr 2007/9/10, Olav Vitters <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > On Mon, Sep 10, 2007 at 08:29:35AM +0300, Kalle Vahlman wrote: > > 2007/9/8, Olav Vitters <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > > On Sat, Sep 08, 2007 at 04:47:31PM +0300, Kalle Vahlman wrote: > > > > And this all is naturally from the developer/maintainer POV, as > > > > translators and documentors do not benefit from this as much. But as > > > > the general opinion seems to be, they shouldn't be forced to use SCM:s > > > > directly anyway. > > > > > > That is a theoretical discussion. Ideally GNOME has a D-SCM now and all > > > translators use a websystem that automatically translators. It doesn't > > > exist. > > > > Of course it is theoretical since there's no hope (nor sense) in > > switching over to anything before there are tools. As is pointed out, > > it would make things worse for non-developres. > > D-SCM systems exist. Such a translator tool does not. Especially as > someone has to write that tool, I do not like discussions that involve a > tool 'someone will write' (well, unless one of the damned-lies people > shows a clear proposal; including authentication bits). > > > But that doesn't mean the discussion needs to be punted indefinetly, > > and statements like "I don't want to learn a new SCM" are really not > > contributing to a discussion of the benefits a new tool would give to > > developers. At least I thought we were discussing exactly that. > > I disagree. It translates to easy of use. Why should I have to care how > a SCM works? A tool should either warn me strongly before doing > something wrong, or prevent it outright. It should have a --help that is > understandable. The man pages should have the most common usages, etc. > > I'm all for some D-SCM tool that provides benefits to people who > understand (D-)SCM in&out, but I need to use it as well. Perhaps git now > is good enough, no idea. But just discussing benefits of some tool > without discussing ease of use is ignoring part of the users. > > > > Although there is now some progress towards D-SCM, I don't see > > > such a websystem happening. Also am not sure if a websystem is the most > > > appropriate way. > > > > I'd much rather see something like SCM support for gtranslate which > > would give a comfortable tool to translate and send changes to the > > server. > > > > -- > Regards, > Olav > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list > ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Foundation Board Meeting Minutes :: 7/6/07
Hi all, There's a *big* difference between willing to increase collaboration between GNOME and KDE and merging their main conferences in one. I think this merge would bring really bad effects on our community. - Our conference would lose GNOMEsh identity. This is a subtle but essential aspect of GUADEC: it's where/when we meet the GNOME community. We cannot lose that. - Not everyone in GNOME community is interested in KDE. I understand that we, as a free desktop project, should be interested in KDE but we can't expect/enforce everyone in GNOME to think like this. Because we have similar goals than KDE, this does not mean we should meet at the same time and place in a generic/big free desktop conference. There are better places and times for putting both projects together and the really interested people will be there for sure. - If we're having problems on organizing our conference, let's try to solve them in the best possible way in our own boundaries. IMO, merging with KDE will bring more problems than solving from the communities point of view. Specially on defining the agenda. Just my 0,2 cents. --lucasr 2007/6/11, Lucas Rocha <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Hi, > > > 4) GNOME and KDE Conference > > > >There has been some discussion about a possible merge of GNOME > >and KDE conferences. This has been discussed at the advisory > >board level, along with the KDE e.v. members list. If there is > >considerable opposition from both sides, then it isn't worth > >exploring further. Jeff mentioned that it's likely to come up > >at DAM4. > > > >ACTION: Jeff to follow up about a possible GNOME and KDE > >conference merge at DAM4. > > Does this mean that your're proposing a new merged KDE/GNOME > conference? Or is this a matter of scheduling GUADEC and aKademy at > the same time and place? Or is this a GUADEC replacement with this > merged conference? This is not clear in the minutes. > > I think it would make sense to have both conferences scheduled in way > that it would be easier for us, GNOMErs, to attend both. But I don't > think we should have only one merged KDE/GNOME conference. Even though > we aim to increase the collaboration with KDE, we're still different > projects, with different development and organization aproaches. > > My 2 cents, > > --lucasr > ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Foundation Board Meeting Minutes :: 7/6/07
Hi, > 4) GNOME and KDE Conference > >There has been some discussion about a possible merge of GNOME >and KDE conferences. This has been discussed at the advisory >board level, along with the KDE e.v. members list. If there is >considerable opposition from both sides, then it isn't worth >exploring further. Jeff mentioned that it's likely to come up >at DAM4. > >ACTION: Jeff to follow up about a possible GNOME and KDE >conference merge at DAM4. Does this mean that your're proposing a new merged KDE/GNOME conference? Or is this a matter of scheduling GUADEC and aKademy at the same time and place? Or is this a GUADEC replacement with this merged conference? This is not clear in the minutes. I think it would make sense to have both conferences scheduled in way that it would be easier for us, GNOMErs, to attend both. But I don't think we should have only one merged KDE/GNOME conference. Even though we aim to increase the collaboration with KDE, we're still different projects, with different development and organization aproaches. My 2 cents, --lucasr ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
GNOME @ Summer of Code 2007 - Update
Hi all, It's been a while since the Summer of Code 2007 started. So, it's a good time to give you a quick update about what's been happening. We received 174 applications this year - just a little bit less than last year (181). The overall quality of the applications is good. Therefore, we expect to have some really nice projects in 2007. :-) As decided in the first GNOME SoC organization meeting [1], the final list of chosen applications will be decided by a selection committee composed by ~10 well-known GNOME community members. The selection committee members were either invited by the SoC admins or explicitly volunteered to be part of the committee. The SoC selection committee is composed by: - Christian Kellner - Murray Cumming - Christian Schaller - Paolo Borelli - Raphaël Slinckx - Bryan Clark - Lucas Rocha - Federico Quintero - Shaun McCance - Behdad Esfahbod - Thomas Wood - Ryan Lortie - Vincent Untz It's good to remark that the participation of the community (with ranking and valuable comments) has been helping us a lot. Thank you! We are giving our best in the selection process and we expect to be giving the results in the next couple days. Cheers! --lucasr [1] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2007-February/msg00024.html ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Minutes of SoC meeting - 2007/Mar/06
Hi all, Here are the minutes I took from the meeting we had today on irc in #soc. Further discussion about GNOME SoC should happen in gnome-soc-list from now on. = Present: Behdad Esfahbod Vincent Untz Shaun McCance Danilo Segan Clare So Sandy Armstrong Tristan Van Berkom Olav Vitters Ryan Lortie Lucas Rocha Christian Kellner Mads Chr. Olesen (Other inactive attendees were there too) 1) Actions from previous meeting * ACTION: Vincent to talk with sysadmins about getting a sandbox repository or main repository access for students (DONE) Vincent started a thread on gnome-infrastructure about it and will ensure that the infrastructure is ready before May. http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-infrastructure/2007-March/msg4.html * ACTION: Behdad to ask mizmo about a poster (DONE) Two proposals: 1. http://people.redhat.com/duffy/gnome-brand/soc2007/soc2007-poster_a4.png 2. http://desrt.mcmaster.ca/random/poster-draft.png DECISION: Use proposal 1 with "Google Summer of Code" on it, and mentioning more explicitly the money involved. * ACTION: Lucas to ping web people about putting SoC on the front page (NOT DONE) SoC announcement should be added to p.g.o front page ASAP. * ACTION: Vincent to send a mail to know who would like to be in the selection committee (DONE) Vincent and Behdad will choose a mixed list of volunteers and invited people for the selection committee. Volunteers from the meeting: Lucas, Christian, Ryan, Tristan and Vincent. * ACTION: Vincent to create the mentors mailing list (DONE) Waiting response from sysadmins. 2) New Actions * ACTION: Vincent to ask if it will be possible to merge back with full history from the separated directory * ACTION: Vincent to ask sysadmins to reset gnome-soc-list password (DONE during meeting) * ACTION: Behdah to subscribe GNOME as a mentoring organization (DONE during meeting) 3) Organization of the SoC promotion from a GNOME perspective The proposed promotion plan comprises: - banner and test on w.g.o frontpage ASAP - banner on p.g.o - blogs with poster - poster translations - posters everywhere where it makes sense - announcement in mailing lists (gnome-announce-list, gugmasters-list) Ryan created a wiki page to coordinate the GNOME SoC ad campaign effort in universities: - http://live.gnome.org/SummerOfCode2007/UniversityAdvertisement * ACTION: Vincent to make a call for translations on the GNOME SoC poster * ACTION: Behdad to ping p.g.o people to put a banner about SoC * ACTION: Ryan to blog about university campaign page (DONE during meeting) 4) Collect ideas on SoC/WSOP-like programmes that could be proposed to the board E-mail ideas to Vincent, Behdad and/or the board. 5) Review of the instructions we've put online for students * ACTION: everyone should take some time to review the wiki SoC2007 page: http://live.gnome.org/SummerOfCode2007 6) AOB According to Christian, "Danilo stinks and isn't at all as handsome as some pictures of him *MIGHT* indicate!" * ACTION: Christian to find pictures of Danilo where he exposures his real not-that-good-looking face ;-) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Board Meeting Minutes :: 15th February 2007
Hei, >Membership Committee > >Baris had worked on renewals, but his laptop was recently stolen so he has >to start again. There's a membership committee meeting next week where >this will be discussed, along with other topics (like membership >applications taking a long time to be processed, and new members for the >committee). Vincent will again be the board representative for the >membership commitee this year. I can/want help the membership commitee if needed. Just let me know. --lucasr ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME and the free software movement
Hi, 2006/11/27, Richard Stallman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Freedoms 1 and 3, the freedom to study and change the source and the > freedom to distribute modified versions, involve programming. People > can exercise them only to the extent of their programming skill. But > when others change the program and release a modified version, you can > then install it if you think it is better, even if you don't know how > to program. Just a complementary argument: Freedoms 1 and 3 not necessarily involve programming. l10n work doesn't involve programming and is essential for users, specially if they're from cultures/places that are not targeted by usual software companies. My 0,02 cents! ;-) --lucasr ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Event Box for North America
Hi, I think the situation is different in Europe than in Latin-America. I do not think that is feasible to do it at least in South America (I would like to be wrong, anyway). I strongly agree. :-) In South America the distances are very different than in Europe and our custom offices are not as friendly with us as I supossed they are between europeans (because of the CE). Yes, this is true. Although I like the idea of having a Latin America Event Box, I don't think it's feasible. IMHO, we should look for two simpler/cheaper event boxes for each country (Chile and Brazil). We'd need to define what "simpler" means here. We from Brazil are very interested in having a marketing kit for several (small|medium|large) brazilian free software conferences. :-) At FISL (for example), we didn't have any marketing material in our GNOME mini-booth. :-/ If we are really interested in the Event Box, the less we must to do is to figure out the cost of each item, prepare a proposal and ask the board if this is feasible. At least to be serious. Agreed. I can help on this. My 1/29 cents. :-) --lucasr ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
