Re: State of Foundation charter
On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 5:05 AM, Jonh Wendell wrote: > Hello, folks. > > I'm taking a look at http://foundation.gnome.org/about/charter/ , which > mentions it's still a draft, from Oct 2000! > > Do we have a final version, or is it the final version so that it can be > renamed? 1) There is no official version which is newer than that. 2) Many moons ago I started collecting feedback for a final version here: http://www.co-ment.net/text/141/ but never integrated them into a final text. More comments would obviously be welcome, and if someone wanted to take on the drafting and incorporation of those comments, I doubt the board would object. (I believe I have a more modern draft on a hard drive at home, but I can't get to that until Tuesday, I'm afraid.) 3) Note that the charter has no legal force, so the fact that it is 'incomplete' is not really important. That said, I agree it would be nice to update it as a statement of our values and organizational principles, and to remove or clarify things that have changed. HTH- Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Stormy's Update: Weeks of February 15th and 22nd
2010/3/1 Stormy Peters : > GNOME Foundation IRC meeting. How did this go? (And as for feedback: I think these are terrific; please keep them coming!) Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Changes in Membership Committee
Thanks to all of you for doing a very important and very underappreciated role in the project. Luis On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 7:18 PM, Bruno Boaventura wrote: > 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
Re: GNOME Foot Logo Trademark
Big thanks are due to Brian and SFLC for perservering with this. On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 8:06 PM, Brian Cameron wrote: > > Foundation Members: > > I am happy to report that the GNOME Foot logo currently used by GNOME > has been trademarked as Reg. # 4063108 filed November 29, 2011. > > The GNOME Foundation is aware that we need to renew the GNOME word mark > (Reg. #3142483) before September 2012, and we are now working to get > this done. > > With the recommendation of the SFLC and Karen Sandler, the GNOME > Foundation is not planning to renew the trademark for the old GNOME > foot logo used with GNOME 1.x (Reg. #3142484) since this logo is no > longer actively used with any GNOME products. > > More detail about GNOME Trademarks can be found here: > > http://foundation.gnome.org/licensing/ > > Brian > ___ > 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: New Foundation Members
That's great to hear! Congratulations to the long list of new members. On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 6:11 AM, Andrea Veri wrote: > Hi, > > this is the first time we actually receive so many membership's > applications in just two weeks and I'm glad to notice that > the GNOME Foundation is increasing its value. > > But here we go with a list of the newly approved members: > > 1. Olivier Sessink (Bluefish's author, huge Bugzilla's contributions) > > 2. Antono Vasiljev (GObject Introspection, Bug triaging and fixing, > GNOME Esperanto Translator) > > 3. Christian Hergert (contributions to Glib, GTK) > > 4. Nick Richards (GTK+ and Empathy code contributions) > > 5. Eduardo Lima Mitev (Instrospection related fixed to Grilo, glib) > > 6. Guillaume Emont (Code contributions on Gstreamer and Grilo, bug > triaging and fixing, blog posts about GNOME technologies) > > 7. Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen (Deskbar-applet and Zeitgeist > maintainer, code contributions on several GNOME Modules) > > 8. Raluca Elena Podiuc (GsoC's student working on integrating Cheese > with Empathy) > > 9. Srishti Sethi (GsoC's student workin on GCompris, represented > GNOME at FUDCon India 2011) > > 10. Daniel Espinosa Ortiz (Libgda's maintainer, GNOME-DB's > contributions, bug fixing and triaging) > > 11. Chandni Verma (GNOME's OPW internship working on Empathy, GNOME's > Asia organization and Marketing contributions) > > 12. Daniel Williams (NetworkManager & ModemManager maintainer, code > and bug triaging / fixing contributions over several GNOME Modules) > > 13. Joone Hur (WebKitGTK+ and WebKitClutter contributions, GNOME > Promoter in South Korea) > > 14. Tamara Atanasoska (Anjuta's contributions during GsoC, GNOME > Promoter in Macedonia) > > 15. Guido Günther (krb5-auth-dialog's developer, NetworkManager & > ModemManager code contributions) > > 16. Damien Lespiau (Clutter-GStreamer's Maintainer) > > 17. Philippe Normand (WebKitGTK, Gstreamer) > > 18. Yu Liansu (GNOME's OPW internship, GNOME Design) > > 19. Margaret M. Ford (GNOME's OPW internship, GNOME Design) > > * Syntax is Name Surname (area of involvement) > > For any further question you may have, feel free to mail us at > membership-committee@gnome org. (or me directly) > > Andrea Veri, > on behalf of the GNOME Membership Committee > > ___ > 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: Questionnaire on motivation analysis of open source and open content
On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 1:58 PM, Bryen M Yunashko wrote: > I know this is not exactly a GNOME topic, That's correct. Please take the discussion to a different communication forum. (The details of what tool are used by a non-GNOME academic are a perfectly fine topic for discussion *with that academic* but not the entire foundation membership. This would be different if it were the Foundation or a GNOME member using such a tool, obviously.) Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Brian Cameron - Stepping down from the board
Brian- Thanks for your selfless service the past few years. Your dedication, including to some of the board's most thankless tasks, has been admirable and will be very difficult for the board to replace. Luis On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 6:15 PM, Brian Cameron wrote: > > Friends in the GNOME community: > > After serving 4 terms on The GNOME Foundation board of directors, I will > be stepping down at the end of this term. > > I would like to thank everyone in the community who has supported me > and allowed me to represent them on this board. It has been a > profoundly rewarding and truly inspirational experience to help The > GNOME Foundation and GNOME community to grow. > > The years that I have served on the board have been exciting and > productive times. I am proud to have served as president and secretary; > to have been involved with the development, release and celebration > surrounding the GNOME 3 release; and to have helped with the > development of successful GNOME programs like the Outreach Program for > Women. In my time on the board, I have witnessed so much growth within > the community. Since then, the GNOME Foundation has hired two executive > directors, started having successful annual summits in Asia, and has > more than doubled the number of hackfests held each year. Just to > mention a few highlights. > > My stepping down should not be viewed as me becoming less involved > with GNOME. I plan to continue working on GNOME for Oracle and expect > that I will continue helping the GNOME Foundation and community in > many ways. I mostly feel that it is just time for me to step down to > reclaim some of my life back. 4.5 years (including one 18-month term > in 2008-2009) is a long time to serve on The GNOME Foundation board of > directors. I believe that only Jonathan Blandford served as a board > member for a longer period of time (5 years). > > With the two most senior board members (Germán and myself) both > stepping down at the end of this term, it is especially important for > passionate people to serve the community. So I again encourage people > who are considering to run for the board to step forward. It is a great > way to increase one's involvement with GNOME and free software and to > help make sure that GNOME continues to rock. > > Brian > ___ > 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: Facilitating the Integration of Free Software into Academic Courses (was Re: Questions for the board election candidates)
On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 3:55 PM, Behdad Esfahbod wrote: > On 05/24/2012 06:49 PM, Joanmarie Diggs wrote: >> * They are not familiar with -- and thus not comfortable teaching -- >> all the tools we use. >> * They want certainty in terms of assignments and projects. >> * They want predictability with respect to a schedule. >> * They want a curriculum they can follow. >> * They do not want to be pioneers. >> >> BUT, they seem to truly dig the idea other than that. > > FWIW, Software Carpentry is one of the more successful experiment I've seen in > the "Free Software meets Academic Courses" experiments. Thought I share the > link: > > http://software-carpentry.org/ Seneca College's collaboration with Mozilla has also, by all accounts, been a raging success: http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Main_Page > behdad > ___ > 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: US Members
Didn't we have a map of member locations at some point? Or was that just p.g.o blogs? On Fri, Aug 3, 2012 at 1:03 PM, Jared Jennings wrote: > Mike, > Thanks for the response. Shoot! Wish I had known that sooner. I've been in > Columbus for 3 weeks and will be back in Sept. > I hope you have a great time. > > -Jared > > > > On Fri, Aug 3, 2012 at 3:57 PM, Michael Hill wrote: > >> On Fri, Aug 3, 2012 at 3:34 PM, Jared Jennings >> wrote: >> >> > Are there any members in the US, say around Missouri or Texas? I >> wouldn't >> > mind grabbing a drink together. >> >> Jared, I know it's a bit of a hike, but there'll be a number of us >> converging on the Open Help Conference in Cincinnati next weekend. >> Canadian and American Foundation members will be well represented. A >> couple of other new members will be there. >> >> Mike >> > > > ___ > 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: Og Maciel left the GNOME Foundation Membership Committee
Hi, Andrea- It would be helpful if you sent a reminder of what obligations members of the Membership Committee have? Luis On Thu, Oct 25, 2012 at 4:38 AM, Andrea Veri wrote: > Hi, > > Og Maciel stepped down from the Membership Committee and I would like > to take a chance to thank him for all the awesome job he did during > these months. We have one free spot to cover on the quorum and if any > motivated Foundation member (best long time members) is interested in > joining, please drop me an e-mail. > > Have an awesome day everyone, > ___ > 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: Andrea Veri - GNOME's new part-time sysadmin hire!
Terrific news! And thanks also to all the supporters of the Foundation over the year who have made this sort of hire possible - this investment in infrastructure and support is extremely important to GNOME's long-term health. On Thu, Jan 24, 2013 at 8:29 PM, Karen Sandler wrote: > In the spirit of the below email from last week, I'm extremely pleased to > announce that the Foundation is hiring Andrea to work as our new sysadmin > contractor. We've been without someone in this position since Christer > stepped down last year, and Andrea has really been sensational as a > volunteer and done a great deal of the work in the meantime. > > I'm confident that Andrea will continue to do a great job for GNOME! And > we've got a lot of work to do. > > Thanks to the rest of the sysadmin team, the GNOME board and those of you > who emailed me suggesting that we do this very thing. > > karen > > On Wed, January 16, 2013 3:58 am, Dodji Seketeli wrote: >> Andrea Veri a écrit: >> >>> I've finally managed to migrate all the services to a new machine. You >>> should be able to apply/renew your membership and request changes to >>> your >>> accounts again. >> >> \o/. This was fast! >> >>> Thanks for your patience >> >> No. Thank *you* for the awesome work and extreme dedication. > > > > ___ > 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: Agenda for board meeting April 8th
Perhaps a naive question, but I would have expected discussion of hiring a new ED - is that being handled in a separate hiring committee? Luis On Mon, Apr 7, 2014 at 12:44 PM, Andreas Nilsson wrote: > Hello Foundation members! > Next board meeting is April 8th at 16:00 UTC > > This is the agenda: > * Travel sponsorship for 2 attendees to go to 15th FISL (867 USD) > * Travel sponsorship for LGM for two attendees. > * Outstanding reimbursements > * Budget > * We still lack a budget for this fiscal year. > * OPW project has grown a lot. This is great! However, we are taking a > greater financial risk handling the money between the organizations and the > attendees. It also makes it a bigger work burden and we need to discuss how > to handle this. > * Upcoming events > * GUADEC 2014 > * GNOME.Asia > * License grant (trademark) to use the GNOME Foot for worldofgnome.org > * We were asked to license the use of a modified GNOME Foot logo for > worldofgnome.org, let's vote on it > > - 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
Re: GNOME, Bounties and paid development [Was: Re: OPW; Where does the 500$ for each GSoC goes?]
On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 2:35 PM, Germán Poo-Caamaño wrote: > Luis > worried that making the TODO list the Bountie list was > dangerous, because people might end up doing only the things > people pay for. Have we already started down this slop already > with company involvement? > > > https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2004-August/msg00173.html > > I think Luis Villa's concern still is valid. Almost a decade old. Jeebus. With that out of the way: it is still a valid concern, but there are ways around it - since that time a variety of crowdfunding sites have sprung up that could let people other than the Foundation pitch in and select goals. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
research proposal on non-profits [was Re: Minutes of the Board Meeting of November, 14th, 2014]
On Thu Nov 20 2014 at 11:19:57 AM Andrea Veri wrote: > * Emma Stamm's proposal for a research project around nonprofit > management > Can you elaborate on that a bit? There are, I suspect, many list members who might be able to help out or provide resources on that front. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: research proposal on non-profits [was Re: Minutes of the Board Meeting of November, 14th, 2014]
Oh, I missed that — sorry! And does not seem like quite what I had in mind. Carry on :) Luis On Thu Nov 20 2014 at 11:28:48 AM Andrea Veri wrote: > Hey Luis! > > I didn't include much details on that item because Emma mailed (as we > suggested her to do) foundation-list on the 29th of October providing > more details about her research herself. The thread she started can be > found at [1]. > > cheers, > > [1] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2014- > October/msg00031.html > > 2014-11-20 20:25 GMT+01:00 Luis Villa : > > On Thu Nov 20 2014 at 11:19:57 AM Andrea Veri wrote: > >> > >> * Emma Stamm's proposal for a research project around nonprofit > >> management > > > > > > Can you elaborate on that a bit? There are, I suspect, many list members > who > > might be able to help out or provide resources on that front. > > > > Luis > > > > ___ > > foundation-list mailing list > > foundation-list@gnome.org > > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list > > > > > > -- > Cheers, > > Andrea > > Debian Developer, > Fedora / EPEL packager, > GNOME Infrastructure Team Coordinator, > GNOME Foundation Board of Directors Secretary, > GNOME Foundation Membership & Elections Committee Chairman > > Homepage: http://www.gnome.org/~av > ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
ED search?
Someone just pinged me to ask if I knew anyone who would be appropriate for KDE's ED position, and it made me realize that I'd heard nothing about GNOME's ED position for a while. What is the status of that search? Is it ongoing? Stalled? ... Thanks- Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: ED search?
Without wanting to backseat drive, my experience is that (on net) having an ED helps with those time-consuming problems — a full-time staffer helps deal with them more quickly/consistently, and frees up the board to do other things. I hope we'll see progress on this in the new year. Luis On Tue Dec 23 2014 at 8:34:51 AM Ekaterina Gerasimova < kittykat3...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 22/12/2014, Luis Villa wrote: > > Someone just pinged me to ask if I knew anyone who would be appropriate > for > > KDE's ED position, and it made me realize that I'd heard nothing about > > GNOME's ED position for a while. What is the status of that search? Is it > > ongoing? Stalled? ... > > It has not been on the agenda for a while now for a number of reasons, > the main one being that the board has had a few very time consuming > items to work through in the last half a year (such as Groupon, for > example). > > > Thanks- > > Luis > > > ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Minutes of the Board Meeting of January, 09th, 2015
On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 3:11 PM, Andrea Veri wrote: > * ED search ? ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Minutes of the Board Meeting of January, 23th, 2015
On Wed, Feb 4, 2015 at 9:00 AM, Alberto Ruiz wrote: > - I don't think that finding an ED is easy (it's precisely because I think > it's extremely hard that I think we should putting a lot of efforts there) +1 to this. Having been involved in the last two ED hires, it's not easy. But the earlier the process starts the better. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: This week in Gnome?
Wikimedia has a pretty good "this week in", and it adds a lot of value. But it is a lot of work to do well. (I seem to recall we even used to have one in GNOME, though I can't find evidence of that offhand. Would have been at least a decade ago.) Luis On Wed, May 18, 2016, 6:33 PM Michael Catanzaro wrote: > On Wed, 2016-05-18 at 23:36 +, John McHugh wrote: > > Was thinking that maybe it would be a good idea to set up a this week > > in > > gnome blog. > > Can you make it happen? > > It sounds like a good idea to me, but it needs someone to make it > happen. > > Michael > ___ > 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: Code of Conduct Adoption Process
This is terrific to see. I'm sorry that I probably don't have time to help out much, but look forward to the final result. Luis On Mon, Sep 12, 2016 at 12:49 PM Nuritzi Sanchez < nurit...@stanfordalumni.org> wrote: > Dear Foundation Members, > > GNOME has never had a standard code of conduct for events. This has > historically placed a burden on GUADEC organizers in particular, as they > have had to draft and take responsibility for a code of conduct every year. > > This GUADEC, a group of us formed a working group to try and resolve > this, by proposing to draw up a standard code of conduct for GNOME events. > This effort has been endorsed by the Foundation Board of Directors and we > are now in the process of researching codes of conduct to inform the one we > will propose. > > *I'm writing to see if anyone else is interested in joining the Code of > Conduct working group* and to give Foundation members information about > how they can participate in the process. > > We will be meeting regularly (every other week) to push this project > forward so that we prepare it in time for the 2017 GUADEC committee to > consider, and in time to make it available during the 2018 GUADEC bid > process. The Code of Conduct for events will be a phase one project for > the working group, and we plan to work on the Code of Conduct for the GNOME > community as a phase two project. > > The committee will be doing the legwork of researching and proposing the > Code of Conduct, but Foundation members will have opportunities to give > feedback, and ultimately the Board will vote on the proposal. Below, you > can find more information on the proposal process itself. We've tried to > make it an analytical process since it can otherwise be an emotionally > charged subject. > > *If you are interested in the group's progress, but don't want to commit > to joining the group*, you can stay updated on our progress by following > the meeting minutes and other materials posted at > https://wiki.gnome.org/Diversity/CoCWorkingGroup/ > > *At this time, we encourage you to email coc-working-group-l...@gnome.org > *, or any of the committee members > privately, with any of the following you'd like us to consider: > >- Code of Conduct resources >- Details of incidents you have observed or been involved in, and >which are relevant >- Other specific feedback regarding codes of conduct > > coc-working-group-l...@gnome.org is a private mailing list for members of > the code of conduct working. Alternatively, you can share your feedback > with any working group member(s) privately, and they will provide an > anonymized summary to the working group. You can provide further > instructions to them on how you want your feedback to be shared. > Information shared with the working group might be shared anonymously with > the Board and the community unless otherwise specified (e.g. as not to be > shared, or as ok to be shared with personal identification by all affected > parties). > > You can also email us if you'd just like to learn more, or talk to us on > IRC at #diversity. > > Thank you in advance! > > Sincerely, > Nuritzi > > > > Code of Conduct for Events > > Overview > > *Why is this important? * > Having a code of conduct is an essential part of holding conferences, and > is often a sponsorship requirement. It is also important for GNOME's health > and longevity as it will ensure that the project is welcoming and inclusive > for both current and prospective GNOME members. While GNOME is generally > a friendly and welcoming place (yay!), there has been a small number of > incidents over the years where a Code of Conduct has, or should have, > helped the community. > > Each year, organizing groups had to draft their own Code of Conduct for > their event and there has often been disagreement that surrounded the > adoption of a Code of Conduct for an event. Having a standard event Code of > Conduct will remove work from the event organizers and uncertaintly for the > community members for what to expect at the event. It will also make it > easier to support event organizers, through standard processes and > theestablishment > of a dedicated support team for Code of Conduct issues. > > We want to make sure there is a consistent standard for the GNOME > community across the globe. As such, the Code of Conduct will need to > highlight areas that will change across geographic locations. We also > recognize that we need to better define what a "GNOME event" is and when > organizers will be expected to use the standard Code of Conduct. > > *Our** Plan* > We have assembled a Code of Conduct Working Group to gather feedback among > community members and propose a standard event Code of Conduct. The details > for our proposal process are below. Once the standard Code of Conduct is > approved, this team will also provide ongoing support to event organizers > with its enforcement. > > The Board has already approved us moving forward with th
Re: Open Letter to the IT community, the GNOME Foundation, and Niel McGovern
Neil's blog post, for those missing it: https://blog.halon.org.uk/2019/09/gnome-foundation-relationship-gnu-fsf/ For my part, I want to apologize to everyone involved in GNOME for not pushing GNOME to formally sever its ties with GNU a decade ago, which is the first time in my email archives I can find formal complaints about Richard's sexism. (His imperious 'I am the dictator of GNU, GNOME MUST OBEY ME' behavior leaves a nearly 20 year-long trail across my inbox as well.) Focusing on this particular offense is a mistake - there are two decades of offensive, problematic communication and ineffective leadership, of which this is only the latest. I'm glad Neil is taking that step now, am fully supportive, and very sorry that it took so long. Software freedom is central to who we are, and Richard's leadership of GNU has actively set back software freedom, both by running GNU like an ineffective personal fiefdom and by repeatedly offending many people who might have been fruitful contributors. I'm sad about this - there's an alternate history where GNOME is an active part of a strong, healthy GNU project. But GNU is neither of those things right now, and Richard is a huge part of it. It's long past time for us to send a message about it. Neil, I wonder if there's space for coordination with other "peripheral" GNU projects about this? It seems like individuals quitting their FSF membership was important to the board's action there, and perhaps organizations doing the same with GNU might be an effective way of sending the message there. Luis On Wed, Oct 2, 2019 at 8:10 AM Jake D. Parsons via foundation-list < foundation-list@gnome.org> wrote: > Greetings; > > I attached a text file with the text that gave me my basis for this > accusation > from Neil McGovern' s blog: Liberal Musings. > > I call for Neil McGovern to step down from his position as the Executive > Director of the GNOME Foundation for the betterment of software freedom, > basic civility in the community, ethics, and professionalism between the > community and the world at large. > > It is one thing for someone to not have reading comprehension skills and > it is a magnitude of another to personally jump on the bandwagon to defame, > criminally libel, and outright lie, about what RMS said in the infamous > letter. It is unethical and unprofessional for someone in an Executive > position to do so. Let me be very clear: the words used and how they were > used in this campaign against RMS are grounds for him to sue a lot of > people if he so choosed to do so. His opponents lacking his ethical rigour > know he won' t and mistake his virtue as a weakness and used criminal and > low brow methods against him. Very sore losers since they obviously cannot > argue him. > > First this is what Neil McGovern wrote: > > "This came after the president of the FSF made some pretty reprehensible > remarks saying that the “most plausible scenario is that [one of Epstein’s > underage victims] presented themselves as entirely willing” while being > trafficked." > > This poor victim was already trafficked Neil McGovern (your actions were > so despicable I refuse to call you with any civil salutation), Epstein was > prostituting her. Two separate crimes but you apparently picked one to care > about, the one that brings outrage and people stop analyzing what you are > saying as a whole based on emotion. As anyone who has lived on the > streets, or worked with street people knows, Mr.Stallman was perfectly > right in what he was saying. > > This can be easily observed by driving to a red light district and > pretending to be a client. There is also the thing called Stockholm > Syndrome where kidnapped females after release sympathize and defend their > kidnappers. Romans and the Sabines ~2, 600 years ago. It happens over and > over where the coerced is presented as willing. It is a very documented, > heavily researched, fact that is recognized from psychology too social > workers and your outrage of someone pointing out the obvious in the know > only shows it is you at fault for misinterpretation of easy adult reading > and then going overboard in your reaction. > > McGovern should have consulted prostitutes, rape victims, kidnap victims, > psychologists, people who have experience and professional credentials in > the subject matter before he unethically and unprofessionally threatens > another organization with "...Richard to step down from FSF and GNU and > let others continue in his stead. Should this not happen in a timely > manner, then I believe that severing the historical ties between GNOME, GNU > and the FSF is the only path forward." That is blackmail based on libel. > Two for two in criminal activity here and this is the Executive Director of > GNOME? The resignation of RMS only makes a point more solid; that Neil > McGovern used his professional office to further a personal, or corporate, > the source only known to him or insiders, agenda using a flash
Re: Wrapping up Bugzilla migration
RIP old buddy! On Mon, May 17, 2021 at 7:45 AM Bartłomiej Piotrowski wrote: > Hi all, > > I have been looking at Bugzilla migration requests today and have some > related announcements. > > First of all, if for some reason you are still using Bugzilla, you > should stop and move to GitLab. I hope it's not a surprise to anyone. > > Infrastructure team will be accepting bugs migration requests till the > end of May 2021. After this date, we intend to turn bugzilla.gnome.org > to static HTML page and decommission its infrastructure. A specific date > will be announced in June. > > I know some of these requests are not resolved for years, but I'm slowly > going through the queue. Please let me know if we should prioritize > specific migrations or if you have any questions. > > Thanks, > Bart > ___ > 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
change of affiliation
FYI, effective the end of this week I'll be resigning from Novell and becoming a true independent, aka 'unemployed'. :) It is my hope that this will free up more energy and time for work on core GNOME, so I expect that if there is any impact on my relationship with GNOME, it will be a very positive one. Longer term, while I am keeping my options open and not explicitly ruling out a return to professional software development should the right opportunity present itself, I expect my next affiliation will be with a university, sometime during 2006. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Minutes of the Board meeting 2005 Feb 2
I have no particular horse here, but I will note that if we want to use wiki for serious documents, we must have high quality RCS, and mediawiki and whatever ubuntu use have that, and live.gnome.org does not, which is a serious bummer. Also, Jeff, AFAICT, mediawiki (being the engine behind the biggest wiki in the world) seems to have a decent rep; dismissing it as 'fruit loops' is silly. Luis On Tue, 8 Feb 2005 08:55:32 +1100, Jeff Waugh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > On Mon, 2005-02-07 at 11:28 -0500, Jody Goldberg wrote: > > > - Getting Road map in Wiki > > > : Luis seems to be making progress. The old roadmap is on the wiki > > > and > > > needs to be updated. > > > > Having spent some time evaluating Wikis the last two weeks, I have to say > > GNOME is running perhaps the worst possible Wiki software on > > live.gnome.org. I would recommend that if the group ever looks at moving > > to a new piece of software, Twiki and MediaWiki be considered. Twiki has > > an awesome file-attachment feature and both are just superior in most ways > > to MoinMoin. > > Moin is simple, works well, has a good security history, is easily hacked > on, has a file attachment feature, ACLs, etc. I did the rounds of wiki > softare too, but chose Cheerios, not Fruit Loops. > > - Jeff > > -- > linux.conf.au 2005: Canberra, Australiahttp://linux.conf.au/ > > "A 'lame' server is a server that is SUPPOSED to be authoritative, but, > when asked, says: 'Me? I know nothing, I'm from Madrid!'" - Ralf > Hildebrandt > -- > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/advisory-board > > >From time to time confidential and sensitive information will be discussed > on this mailing list. Please take care to mark confidential information as > confidential, and do not redistribute this information without permission. > ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Minutes of the Board meeting 2005 Feb 2
If the thread must be continued, please don't cc ad-board. I've dropped them from this reply. On Mon, 07 Feb 2005 17:13:03 -0600, Shaun McCance <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Mon, 2005-02-07 at 17:07 -0500, Luis Villa wrote: > > I have no particular horse here, but I will note that if we want to > > use wiki for serious documents, we must have high quality RCS, and > > mediawiki and whatever ubuntu use have that, and live.gnome.org does > > not, which is a serious bummer. > > > > Also, Jeff, AFAICT, mediawiki (being the engine behind the biggest > > wiki in the world) seems to have a decent rep; dismissing it as 'fruit > > loops' is silly. > > I have to second this. MediaWiki also has a much more sane syntax. > For something that's supposed to make my life easier, I've had to > spend quite a lot of time trying to figure out which combinations > of characters are syntactically valid. It reminds me of Perl, and > that isn't a compliment. > > -- > Shaun > > ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Press release: Victory for democratic influence on software patents
This is great, Anne. Congrats on any part you played in this. Luis On Fri, 04 Mar 2005 16:20:36 +0100, Anne Østergaard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > DENMARK will ask for software patents directive to become B-item in European > Council of Ministers > -- > Press release: > > Victory for democratic influence on software patents. > > The Danish Parliament (by the EU Committee) has decided to change the > mandate of the Danish government to ensure that on the next meeting in > the EU Council the software patent directive will be discussed as a > B-item instead of passing as an A-item without any discussion. > > Other parliaments have passed resolutions opposing the software patent > directive. But Denmark is the first country to call for a B-item and > thereby reopening the discussion. If just The Netherlands, Germany, > Poland, and Spain backs the Danish request, there will not be a > qualified majority in favor of passing the directive without discussion. > > "This is a victory for the democratic process in the European Union. > Both in Denmark and the rest of Europe there have been a tremendous > interest in this issue.- IT-Political Association is ecstatic now that > there is a very good chance that the all the citizens in Europe will > have a chance to participate in the discussion of the directive," Ole > Tange, board member in IT-Political Association says. "We do not view > this as a failure for the proponents of the directive; if their > arguments are valid they would still have been valid after a democratic > discussion. Though so far we have not seen valid arguments." > > Niels Elgaard Larsen, Anne Østergaard, and Ole Tange from IT-pol.dk > spoke to the EU Committee in Folketinget.dk as part of a delegation also > counting Peter Ussing from PROSA.dk and Peter Mogensen from > Digitalforbruger.dk > > -- > Best > > Anne Østergaard > > IT-Politisk Forening > > (00 45 35 42 88 73) > -- > Anne Østergaard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > ___ > 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 Desktop Usability Survey
On Sun, 27 Mar 2005 18:19:55 +0100 (BST), Alan Horkan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > We sincerely apologize if you receive more than one copy of this > > announcement. > > The foundation list seem like as good a place to ask as any so here's my > question: For future reference what one list would it be best to post > these kinds of announcements on? Is it this list? I'd say 'none of the above'; there are news sites (footnotes, lwn, email people privately to get it on planet.gnome) that are much more appropriate than shoving impersonal spam to an inappropriate list. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Certification for GNOME apps
On 7/13/05, Glynn Foster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Heya, > > Dudes, you should work with Brian Cameron from Sun on this - I'm pretty > sure he'll pick up this thread, but he's done a HUGE amount of work in > this space already. > > I personally think a step by step effort working down through your list > is awesome - rather than doing everything at the one time, get the > initial ISV porting guide out for Level 0 *now*. > > Level 1+ is a hell of a lot harder to start thinking about because > you're basically guaranteeing a compatibility roadmap for ISVs, and I've > found [in my experience], that involves a lot more thought. > > FWIW, I don't think this is just a marketing thing - this involves a lot > of commitment from the developers too, and a level of understanding that > I'm not quite sure is there yet. There can be a useful intermediary between 'having no docs at all' and 'here is a documentary that explains what we promise to support for ever and ever, amen.' I believe the goal here is to document what we do now, and how to usefully integrate with that. Is that necessarily going to please 100% of ISVs? No. (Possibly not even 50%.) Will it be useful anyway? IMHO, yes. While we should definitely get Bryan's input and attempt to accomodate it as much as practicable, lets please not bog this down by aiming to please the iron-clad expectations of very serious ISVs when the current state is so abysmal for *all* consumers of GNOME libraries. Luis > > One of the marketing efforts that the Foundation Board discussed during > > GUADEC is the possibility of having "certification levels" for GNOME > > applications. Apps that get rated higher are "nicer" or "more > > GNOME-like"; hopefully we can use the rating metrics to let users gauge > > how well a particular app integrates with the rest of their GNOME > > desktop. > > ___ > 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: Certification for GNOME apps
On 7/13/05, Glynn Foster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Is that necessarily > > going to please 100% of ISVs? No. (Possibly not even 50%.) Will it be > > useful anyway? IMHO, yes. While we should definitely get Bryan's input > > and attempt to accomodate it as much as practicable, lets please not > > bog this down by aiming to please the iron-clad expectations of very > > serious ISVs when the current state is so abysmal for *all* consumers > > of GNOME libraries. > > Yeah, but you know as well as I do, that those serious ISVs are exactly > the people we need to target There are many kinds of ISVs we need to target, as has been pointed out elsewhere in the thread. Yes, our documentation and API/ABI issues are most glaring when we deal with, say, adobe, and yes, adobe and others of that source are incredibly important for the core mission of getting GNOME and other free software more widely used. But delaying efforts to deal with other ISVs, like ffox, ooo, etc. (who are also important, but slightly more flexible) in the meantime is self-defeating. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Membership drive
On 7/21/05, Dave Neary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I don't know who the best people to talk to about this are, but it would > be great to have a membership drive for the foundation in September or > October. Not to be a pain in the ass, Dave, but... Given that the membership is charged with making important decisions about the direction of the foundation and the stewardship of the foundation's resources, I'm fairly skeptical about any move to increase membership for the sake of increased membership. So, why are we seeking to increase the number of members, exactly? The rest of your email seems to assume 'more members' == 'good', and I'm not sure I follow that, given that much of the current membership is apathetic and uninvolved[1] and increasing the numbers doesn't actually solve that. I'd prefer we figure out why we have membership (besides the obvious legal/voting reasons), what we offer the membership, and what the membership offers 'us' (the community, the foundation, etc.), then talk about having a membership drive if it is still appropriate.[2] [1] I mean, as members- obviously they are active as hackers, as translators, bug people, whatever. [2] And yes, I'm pulling a GNOME here, but given the important legal and structural role of the membership, it seems reasonable. > Can we move away from the "can I be in your club" model to the "come > join us" model, where existing members can invite people to join, rather > than the person needing to ask? Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Membership drive
On 7/24/05, David Neary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi, > > Luis Villa wrote: > > Given that the membership is charged with making important decisions > > about the direction of the foundation and the stewardship of the > > foundation's resources, I'm fairly skeptical about any move to > > increase membership for the sake of increased membership. So, why are > > we seeking to increase the number of members, exactly? > > One of the problems the foundation has is explaining how being a > foundation member is relevant. If too many GNOME participants aren't > members, then the foundation (and notably, the board, elected by the > foundation members) isn't going to act in a way that reflects the wishes > of the majority of GNOME contributors, making the foundatioon irrelevant. > > Another thing is that foundation membership is kind of the only metric > we have for measuring whether someone is "part of GNOME" or not, and at > present it's not a particularly good metric. The metric for whether or not someone is 'part of GNOME' is, and should be, fluid, and based around participation, not titular membership in an organization. The titular membership is only a proxy for the actual, important membership, since we need one for voting for the board. I've yet to see any other useful reason to have a 'membership' list. I think part of the problem is that you're confusing 'healthy community' with 'healthy foundation.'[1] The community itself is quite healthy, I think, and if the foundation is not, then maybe the problem is that the foundation is not important to the goals of the foundation, and the solution is reducing and redefining the role of the foundation, instead of attempting to falsely inflate it's significance in ways that are distortionary to the meaning and goals of the community. Let me put it another way: what problems does our community have that can be solved *only* by a foundation with a fixed, defined membership list? Are any of those problems solved better with a bigger membership? (I'd suggest that making the membership more 'representative' is noble, but unless it can be shown that a more representative membership would change voting or participation patterns, it's not actually solving any problems.) Let me be clear- I'm not *against* increased membership, per se; in particular being more representative is probably worthwhile. But I'd much prefer to (1) work on increasing the size of the community[2] and (2) work on making the foundation more relevant to said community. If those two happen, then foundation membership will increase, and increase naturally, not because we thought our numbers were bad. Luis [1] you cited the marketing team (well, communication/advocacy/marketing) on your blog as proof of success of *the foundation*. I think that's insane :) The marketing team is proof of success of the *community*, and would exist with or without the foundation. Arguably, by privileging certain individuals in ways not related to their actual participation, the marketing team's existence and activity have been *impeded* by the foundation, if anything. [2] go gnome-women! go doc team! go marketing team (esp. the folks working on the website)! on dancer! on dasher! and prancer and vixen! ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
(tangentially) was Re: Membership drive
On 7/24/05, Luis Villa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Let me be clear- I'm not *against* increased membership, per se; in > particular being more representative is probably worthwhile. But I'd > much prefer to (1) work on increasing the size of the community[2] and > (2) work on making the foundation more relevant to said community. If > those two happen, then foundation membership will increase, and > increase naturally, not because we thought our numbers were bad. By the way, I think we're getting some things done on both of these scores. On (1), recruitment on the marketing team has increased, and we're finding more things to do with these people. Bug squad is undergoing one of its periodic revivals. Nautilus team seems to have undergone a renaissance, which is the last thing on earth anyone expected :) In the near future, hopefully more documentation will help bring more people into our big tent. And we're at least talking about (though currently having a lot of disagreement about) increasing the coverage of the release process and bringing more people in that way, though exactly how that helps increase identification with GNOME is still one of those sticking points. I'm sure there are other areas that could be pointed at as well. I think in general we're still not doing as much outreach here as we could (too many maintainers still think that newbies are an irritation instead of a resource ;) but it is definitely headed in the right direction. On (2), still a long way to go, but yeah, again- right direction. Budget information is trickling out, and we're engaging in concrete plans to do things beyond GUADEC. We still need to be able to do things like 'show what we spend money on beyond GUADEC and administration', and enhance those aspects of our operation. Past that, more than anything else, we need to push foundation PR- the foundation needs to market itself to the community and convince the community that it is relevant. I think we need to highlight 'foundation money did this, foundation employee did that', and do that repeatedly. We don't, and that makes people think foundation is irrelevant, which is part of why we see such disinterest in becoming a foundation member, I think. So I do think we're on pace to increase the foundation membership naturally if we keep focusing on these two things and doing them well. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Membership drive
On 7/29/05, Dave Neary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi, > > Luis Villa a écrit : > > The titular membership is only a proxy > > for the actual, important membership, since we need one for voting for > > the board. I've yet to see any other useful reason to have a > > 'membership' list. > > So the keyu question then is "what does the GNOME Foundation do for its > members? You seem to be saying that since the members' only purpose is > to vote, we don't need a huge number, A huge number would be wonderful, but it should be because people want to be involved, not because we think a huge number validates what we do. > and since what the foundation does > is generally for the community, and not for the foundation membership, > we're always going to be more or less irrelevant to our membership. All members are also members of the community, so if we are relevant to the community, we are relevant to our membership. > The only reason to become a GNOME Foundation member, then, is to have a > say in who gets on the board. Is that what you're saying? That is basically it, yes. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Foundation Budget
On 8/9/05, Owen Taylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Tue, 2005-08-09 at 09:17 +1200, Glynn Foster wrote: > > Hey, > > > > On Mon, 2005-07-25 at 17:14 +1200, Glynn Foster wrote: > > > Hey, > > > > > > > Budget information is trickling out, and we're engaging in concrete > > > > plans to do things beyond GUADEC. We still need to be able to do > > > > things like 'show what we spend money on beyond GUADEC and > > > > administration', and enhance those aspects of our operation. Past > > > > that, more than anything else, we need to push foundation PR- the > > > > foundation needs to market itself to the community and convince the > > > > community that it is relevant. I think we need to highlight > > > > 'foundation money did this, foundation employee did that', and do that > > > > repeatedly. We don't, and that makes people think foundation is > > > > irrelevant, which is part of why we see such disinterest in becoming a > > > > foundation member, I think. > > > > > > While we're on the subject, is there likely to be financial report > > > anytime soon? Only asking as I uploaded a recent statement, and it would > > > be good to get a mail from the Foundation to accompany it and explaining > > > some of the details involved. Tim? > > > > Ping? Are are we just going to be treated to the figures in > > > > http://foundation.gnome.org/finance/gnome-foundation-fiscal-year-04-and-03.pdf > > > > and expect to know what they all mean? > > I think people will have to tell us what they think needs explaining. Some questions offhand (many of these are answerable by going through the existing reports for 2003/2004, but I'd love to see them pulled out and more easily discoverable.) * what percentage of our money goes towards administration? Other major expenditure categories? * what was our surplus/deficit for the year? (in other words, how vulnerable are we if one or two major sponsors pull out?) * what percentage of revenue comes from different sources? (FOG, GUADEC, Advisory Board, etc.?) And what types of revenue do we have- in-kind, recurring pledges, one-time pledges, etc.? (that one is a little more obscure, I'll grant :) * what are our assets? Our balances? do we have outstanding liabilities? (i.e. what resources can we draw on in a pinch, or if a great idea comes to the board?) * what are the trends on all of these? Are we making more money, less money? more or less of our revenue coming from FOG? spending more/less? are we saving money for a rainy day or big opportunity, or are we draining our savings? slightly OT: * where is our money? if tim gets hit by a bus, who rescues it? [linux.org.au posts this information their webpage, which reminded me of this question.] * when do we expect a proposed budget for the next fiscal year? I'm sure I'll think of more. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Foundation Budget
On 8/12/05, Luis Villa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I think people will have to tell us what they think needs explaining. Another one is travel and trade show budgets- I know we sent Tim to LWE SF in 2004, for example- is that money under conference/trade shows? travel? This is unclear in the 2004 budget. Also, and this is more just a question about the old budgets than a general question- the 2002 budget says there is no GUADEC revenue and does not break out GUADEC contributions separately, the 2003 budget shows ~$25K in 'earned' conference revenue, but 0 in separate GUADEC contributions, and 2004 shows only $7K in 'earned' conference revenue and $60K in GUADEC contributions. I assume these fluctuations are just because we accounted for GUADEC differently in 2002, 2003, and 2004, and in the future we'll just book everything as we did in 2004? Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Foundation Budget
[For informative purposes of the foundation, I figured I'd answer these as best as possible for the previous three years.][This would all have been easier had the data been presented as a .gnumeric file instead of pdf :) On 8/12/05, Luis Villa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > * what percentage of our money goes towards administration? including payroll taxes and the payroll service: 2004: 47.8% Average since 2002: 48.9% > Other major expenditure categories? GUADEC is the only other very large category, but is hard to break out separately because of changes in accounting over the years. We did finally get the budgeting right (which is hard in this case) in 2004, so we'll be better off there in the future. In 2004, non-admin GUADEC expenses were 24.6% of our overall expenses. Also in 2004, non-admin bounty expenses were 7% of overall expenses, and about 16% of revenue. The other ~20% of expenses went to a variety of things- in order of size, insurance, GIMP, 'supplies', postage/shipping, etc. > * what was our surplus/deficit for the year? (in other words, how > vulnerable are we if one or two major sponsors pull out?) Our average surplus over the past three years has been ~$23K. So if we lose an ad board member (we have reason to think we'll be adding at least some in the near future) we're still OK. > * what percentage of revenue comes from different sources? (FOG, > GUADEC, Advisory Board, etc.?) in 2004, Ad Board was a little under a fifth of our revenues; down from a little under half in 2003 and 2/3rds in 2002. [Though I think perhaps in 2002 GUADEC donations from our board was lumped in with the Ad Board fees?] FOG has been much smaller, though in 2004 it was nearly 1/2 as much money as Advisory Board (~$15K as opposed to $30K). I expect that revenue from both this and merchandise sales should rise in fiscal 2006. > And what types of revenue do we have- > in-kind, recurring pledges, one-time pledges, etc.? 'unearned' revenue- i.e., revenue that in theory is unpredictable from year to year, unlike our ad board pledges- was 76.0% of revenue last year, up from 32 and 37 the years before. I guess that much of that leap is probably because of changes in how GUADEC revenue is booked, though. Tim, is that correct? > * what are our assets? Our balances? do we have outstanding > liabilities? (i.e. what resources can we draw on in a pinch, or if a > great idea comes to the board?) These I still have no idea about, though our ongoing surplus suggests we should have a large positive balance on hand, which is great to see. > * what are the trends on all of these? Are we making more money, less > money? more or less of our revenue coming from FOG? spending > more/less? are we saving money for a rainy day or big opportunity, or > are we draining our savings? Because of the changes in where/how GUADEC is accounted for, I decided not to generate too much of these. The overall trends, though, are obviously increased expenditures and increased revenues, mostly driven by GUADEC. Throwing out some data- Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Foundation Budget
On 8/12/05, Luis Villa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 8/12/05, Luis Villa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > I think people will have to tell us what they think needs explaining. One other question: how did we do at the end of the year, compared to our predicted budgets for the year? We don't really have this data for 2004, because we didn't actually do a budget (to the best of my recollection) but we did do one for this year, so maybe some comparisons would be good. [Obviously this is a hard one, because GUADEC is so unpredictable, but it would be good to see how we did everywhere else.] Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Foundation Budget
On 8/18/05, Tim Ney, GNOME Foundation <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Fri, 2005-08-12 at 11:14 -0400, Luis Villa wrote: > > > Another one is travel and trade show budgets- I know we sent Tim to > > LWE SF in 2004, for example- is that money under conference/trade > > shows? travel? This is unclear in the 2004 budget. > > I did not attend LWE SF in 2004. You're right, I misremembered- it was LWE NYC, right? > > the 2003 budget shows ~$25K in 'earned' conference revenue, but 0 in > > separate GUADEC > > contributions, and 2004 shows only $7K in 'earned' conference revenue > > and $60K in GUADEC contributions. I assume these fluctuations are just > > because we accounted for GUADEC differently in 2002, 2003, and 2004, > > and in the future we'll just book everything as we did in 2004? > > In 2003, there was earned revenue from room bookings at Trinity College > in Dublin. Housing payments and some registration fees in 2004 were > paid directly to the college in Kristiansand. In 2004, the GUADEC > earned revenue of 7K was exhibition space rental. With the growth of > the foundation's activities in 2004 to include projects other than > GUADEC, the financial statement now reflects those program activities - > GUADEC, Bounties, GIMP. Yup, got that. Thanks for the clarification, Tim- Luis > ___ foundation-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Foundation Budget
Hi, Tim- Thanks for the feedback. On 8/18/05, Tim Ney, GNOME Foundation <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Fri, 2005-08-12 at 16:03 -0400, Luis Villa wrote: > > > in 2004, Ad Board was a little under a fifth of our revenues; down > > from a little under half in 2003 and 2/3rds in 2002. [Though I think > > perhaps in 2002 GUADEC donations from our board was lumped in with the > > Ad Board fees?] > > The foundation's first reporting period in 2002 included AB fees > collected over two calendar years. Ah. > There has been attrition in paid AB > membership, for example - Compaq, Mandrakesoft and OSDN/VA Linux. Yes, knew that. Glad to hear that we are making some progress on reversing that. > > 'unearned' revenue- i.e., revenue that in theory is unpredictable from > > year to year, unlike our ad board pledges- was 76.0% of revenue last > > year, up from 32 and 37 the years before. I guess that much of that > > leap is probably because of changes in how GUADEC revenue is booked, > > though. Tim, is that correct? > > The increase in corporate contributions is a result of my fundraising > with new support for GUADEC from IBM and RedHat and increased support > from Novell in 2004. The local government and company subsidies in > Norway for GUADEC were paid directly to Agder University College. > Nokia and Imendio became new financial contributors in 2005. Hrm. Interesting. So in general we are slowly increasing fundraising success, but not in ways that are repeatable? Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Changing the name of GUADEC
On 9/5/05, David Neary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I would like to propose changing the name of GUADEC. There are many > reasons to do this, here are 5: > > 1. There is no link to GNOME in the name, or to being a conference In both the current name and the proposed name, you have a G, that's it. So if this is the problem, the proposed new name doesn't solve it. > 2. No-one knows what it means, which means the first question people ask > isn't "when is it?" or "where is it?" or "who's going?" it's "what does > it mean?" Ditto. Besides these obvious flaws, I'd really hate to see fundamental tinkering with things like this while we still don't have a basic idea of what the heck GUADEC is and who it is meant to be for. I think the GUADEC planners need to come up with a mission statement for the board to discuss and approve/disapprove of, one that discusses (1) the aims and goals of guadec (2) the target markets of guadec and (3) some rationales for the above. I continue to hear all kinds of 'we'll change this' and 'we'll do that' when it seems like no one is on the same page about why what is happening is being done. I think if GUADEC's mission is made clear, this discussion will take care of itself- we'll have a notion of who GUADEC is primarily for, and why we're doing it for them, and then it'll be fairly obvious whether or not the current name works. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What is GUADEC?
On 9/8/05, Tim Ney, GNOME Foundation <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Thu, 2005-09-08 at 09:34 +0200, Dave Neary wrote: > > > a large portion of the attendees were either completely uninterested > > in the first two days, or completely uninterested in the 3rd. > > The evaluation forms submitted stated did not state that. Owen, jrb and > I have tabulated the GUADEC evaluation forms to publish soon. The people who were bored out of their minds (including all the government types) *left* before the end of the conference. I heard of one speaker who said on stage into the mic 'there aren't many people here, are there.' That was a totally, totally embarassing moment. Let's be very clear- we have a conference for hackers that interests several hundred people, and we have a separate conference for business and government that interests dozens, and there is very little overlap between those two groups. I'm not clear why we continue to insist that they be done together, when doing them separately would allow us to do each of them much better than we currently do them. > > If it's outreach, who are we reaching out to? > > Certainly people like the those at GUADEC 6 who wrote: > > "I've only been a recent GNOME user, but this conference has made me really > enthusiastic > about becoming a part of it." > > "Coming from the German administration, I am aware of the fact that I have > been > "OSS-socialized" within a KDE environment. Therefore, it was very interesting > for me > to get to now some faces and aspects of a different community." Handfuls of anecdotes and a completely flawed survey do not disprove what I think everyone plainly sees- that the attendance on the government and business day is *embarassing* to us, and that most of the people who attended would have come away with a bad impression of GNOME. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What is GUADEC?
On 9/8/05, Dave Neary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi, > > Tim Ney, GNOME Foundation a écrit : > > On Wed, 2005-09-07 at 16:05 +0200, Quim Gil wrote: > >>For some the GUADEC is an opportunity to meet, for others is a way to > >>get new contributors, for others is a way to get some money for the > >>Foundation, for others is a way to enhance a common vision of GNOME, for > >>others > > > > That's a fair summary of what the board has discussed, as recently as > > June. Jonathan Blandford once termed GUADEC as GNOME's mothership, an > > annual place to meet and recharge batteries. It has played at least > > four important roles for GNOME and the foundation over the last six > > years: > > > > *Technical > > *Outreach > > *Community (Social) > > *Fundraising > > > > Press announcements about the event state: > > > > About GUADEC > > The GNOME User and Developer Europe Conference (GUADEC) is an annual > > gathering of GNOME developers, enthusiasts and individual, business, > > education and government users worldwide. It provides a forum for > > members of the GNOME project to showcase their work and to discuss the > > future of GNOME development. Housed in a different European country each > > year, GUADEC is a catalyst for the future development and direction of > > GNOME. > > The point is, Tim, that is is huge. It's wide open. And aiming too wide > is at the root of the problems that there have been with GUADEC over the > past two years, where a large portion of the attendees were either > completely uninterested in the first two days, or completely > uninterested in the 3rd. Amen. > Aiming a conference at "developers, enthusiasts and individual, > business, education and government users worldwide" is madness. We might > as well say "everybody", and be done with it. Amen. > If it's outreach, who are we reaching out to? Amen. > There is no argument on at least 2 of the points - everyone who goes > sees GUADEC as a technical, social conference. No-one disagrees with > having outreach either - but I would prefer to see us reaching out to > people just off our radar - converting GNOME users into advocates, > converting local free software developers into GNOME developers, and > converting local hobbyists into free software and GNOME users. > > The ROI for the enterprise & government outreach has been small, and I'm > not sure we should continue it. Amen. For 1/2 the cost, we could run summit-style (low-cost, high-fun) events on every continent (including a big one in Europe as the 'mother ship'), and for 1/4 the cost, we could send a handful of GNOME community leaders to every major free software conference to hold a 'linux desktop day' for local government and business leaders, having a much better impact on them than we do at GUADEC currently*- imagine the impact of Miguel in a room with 30 business and government leaders in a room designed for 30 leaders, instead of a 9/10ths empty room for 300; imagine (since we only rented a room for 30) being able to afford to do that in Canada, and Germany, and India, and Australia- all of which have major free software conferences who would be more than happy to help us set up such a day. And with the 1/4 left over we could do all kinds of interesting outreach things- hacker days at very tech-oriented free software conferences to bring in new blood; interesting marketing materials for small local conferences to spread the word about things like FOG and gnome-love; liveCDs sent to every major technology news outlet; training days for businesses and deployers at things like LWE- the list is very long. Anyway... I'm glad this discussion has come out into the open. I've been saying some of these things at board meetings for some time now and it has not impacted the organization of the past two GUADECs; maybe this time something will change. Luis (who was thrown off guadec-planning@, probably by accident, but thinks that maybe staying off of it will lengthen his lifespan) * not to mention get better funding, as we'd be waving the flag of our sponsors all over the world, not just in one nation once a year. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
poor man's SWOT analysis of GUADEC
While I'm flaming away elsewhere, I thought it might be constructive to write down some of the thinking that has led me to the conclusions that we are drifting very badly with GUADEC right now. A simplistic SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis might let me get some of this onto the record while still letting me sleep tonight and be productive tomorrow. It is also the kind of thing that other people can usefully add things onto, I think- so feel free to comment/add/subtract. For a little more background on what a SWOT is, I found this article helpful: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_05.htm The basic idea, though, is just as a tool to help you list and focus important issues facing you. So: Strengths: * gets existing community together and recharges the batteries very well * gets very good speakers, both for government/business days and for technical days * many indications that technical newbies who come to the conference get excited and continue to partcipate, and at least one stunning success in terms of deployments (Extremadura) * strong history, known 'brand' within technical free software circles * reasonably successful at fundraising, particularly in getting financial help from local governments and reliably getting funding from a small number of key corporate partners * known as a place that an organization can go to (Nokia, Sun, Real) if they want to get broad access to the whole GNOME community in a cost-effective way Weaknesses: (no particular order) * embarassing attendance at government/business sessions * reduced spending this year on 'core' expense of getting contributors to the conference * some hackers think it is too structured and want more free/hacking time * some outsiders think it is too unstructured and wonder what is going on :) * few tutorials, so hard for new people to learn skills, even if the conference motivates them a great deal * compared to the large amounts of talk, little concrete hacking or planning gets done * only really happens in one country in Europe, so not very effective in outreach to the rest of the world or possibly even to many places in Europe, because of cost of travel * no brand awareness outside of free software circles * very small budget (if any) to market the conference outside of free software circles * organizing teams are very inconsistent about interfacing with local volunteers * old hacking room (where everyone was tethered by ethernet) is now distributed because we expect wireless everywhere, so no central gathering places like there used to be Opportunities: * no one else is really effectively reaching out to governments in most of the world, talking specifically about free software desktops as either a tool for them to use, or as a means of national economic empowerment * continue to see large deployments and corporate interest that we should be able to leverage- sun, real, nokia, in successive years- who will be next year's big news? * lots of interest outside the first world- india, indonesia, etc. * still large bodies of potential volunteers to reach out to, ISVs to speak to, companies to fundraise from, etc., etc. Threats: * getting extremely expensive, which makes us very dependent on corporate sponsorship, which may be fickle * KDE fairly effective at many small linux shows around europe, and aKademy very large/successful * many other conferences more successful at reaching a broad-ranging audience and attracting a broad range of free software or competitive technologies- if Moz/Web 2.0/OSX/whatever is the new platform, and Moz/Web2.0/OSX/whatever is at every conference in the world and we are mostly at GUADEC, does that weaken us? * success of Boston Summit may reduce perceived need for Americans to come to GUADEC Anyway, I hope this reveals some of my thinking about the background for where we are and where we could be going, and hope it is of use to someone who might feel challenged to make GUADEC and perhaps other conferences all that they can be. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What is GUADEC? (was: Re: Changing the name of GUADEC)
On 9/7/05, Dave Neary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Besides these obvious flaws, I'd really hate to see fundamental > > tinkering with things like this while we still don't have a basic idea > > of what the heck GUADEC is and who it is meant to be for. > > I think the GUADEC planners need to come up with a mission statement > > for the board to discuss and approve/disapprove of > > Who's going to do that? Why does this have to be top-down? Aside from > Tim, Quim, myself and Anne, who are the GUADEC planners? Slightly OT, but what the hell: If there is anything that GUADEC should be, it is a way to grow existing communities and create new ones, be they communities of hackers, deployers, interested governments, whatever. That the current people running GUADEC have failed to create a community around running and creating GUADEC, such that that community is basically three people + the new guy, is a pretty sad statement about the ability of said group to succeed in the core goal of GUADEC. > Even in that > group, there are wildly differing oppinions of GUADEC. And I don't trust > the board to come up with a representative outlook of GUADEC - any such > mission statement should be opened up to the peanut gallery. > > I would much prefer such a mission statement to be bottom-up. Me too, but experience shows that doesn't work. That is why groups delegate, either to elected representatives (who represent the bottom-up) or to the people actually doing the work. I'd note, honestly, that if the people doing the work currently[1] had a more clear /and effective/ vision[2], we wouldn't be having this discussion. The current organizational team is not representative of the broader GNOME community, nor does it demonstrate much understanding of the needs of the community, nor of the resources the community can provide. So while I'd love to be wrong, it probably isn't a great place to look for this vision and mission. That means it probably falls to the board. The board has of course discussed this repeatedly over the last few years, but we've failed to write anything down- maybe that's something we should do at Summit this year. I'd of course be downright excited to be proven wrong, and have either this list or the current organizers, or potential new organizational blood, come up with something clear and meaningful. So if you're out there reading this and have been to some GUADECs and think you have some idea of a clear, achievable, meaningful mission statement for GUADEC and can back it up, BRING IT- we want someone with your verve and guts to start this off. :) Luis [1] Quim, Dave, please don't take this the wrong way- you're relative newcomers here, and you're the reason this discussion is happening at all, so you guys are moving things in the right direction. [2] The mission Tim elucidated later in the thread, as Dave points out, sounds nice but so broad as to be difficult/impossible to achieve- it doesn't build on our strengths nor focus on the achievable, both of which are important criteria for a successful, meaningful mission statement. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
change of affiliation
Hey, all- I'm going from 'affiliated with my couch' to taking a technical lead/consulting/occasional admin position at the Berkman Center for Internet And Society at Harvard Law School.[1] The position won't leave me much time for GNOME stuff, but at least enough to continue fulfilling my duties on the board for the remainder of this term. Hopefully it will also give me the background and contacts to continue doing good things for GNOME and the Free Software end-user experience in the long term, even though I'll certainly be off IRC and many lists in the short term. And it may force me to learn to be more efficient in my GNOME time so I can continue to be involved when I go back to school. We'll see about that one :) Anyway, wish me luck... :) Luis [1] http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: change of affiliation
On 9/12/05, Luis Villa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hey, all- > > I'm going from 'affiliated with my couch' to taking a technical > lead/consulting/occasional admin position at the Berkman Center for > Internet And Society at Harvard Law School.[1] The position won't > leave me much time for GNOME stuff, but at least enough to continue > fulfilling my duties on the board for the remainder of this term. Was pointed out that this might have been unclear- I'm definitely staying on the board, at least for this term. It's other stuff that will suffer, at least for a while. We'll see after that :) Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reducing the board size
On 9/14/05, Daniel Veillard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Wed, Sep 14, 2005 at 09:01:38PM +0200, David Neary wrote: > > I'm in favour of reducing the board to 7 people. I would like to see us > > have a referendum on the issue next month. > > > > The board has huge problems being pro-active. Any issue which is > > slightly contentious has an opposition in a board of 11 people. It's > > inevitable. And when there is opposition, there are many voices, and > > when there are many voices, there is no resolution. > > My experience is rather that all board members are busy members of the > community, so getting people do do things is hard. If you get 7 persons > instead of 11 you reduce also the amount of available time from board > members. People running for the board will need more time upfront to > fullfill their board member requirements. I have not had time to review the records, but I'm pretty sure that at least two board members have taken zero action items all year, and a couple have taken very few, and that this has been fairly consistent every year I've been on the board (though it has been different people each year, that's just how it is.) So at least in an average year you could cut the board down to seven people with very, very little impact on the amount of work done. In addition, as Dave mentioned, I think that cutting down the number of people would increase actual campaigning, which is, I think a good thing. Amount of time available for board work would certainly be something that people might campaign on- certainly, I'd be less likely to vote for someone who I know is very busy, so we might actually get (gasp) selection of the board, instead of the current 'virtually whoever self-nominates gets in' situation, which I think is damaging to the ability of the board to function as a coherent, motivated unit. Finally, I'd suggest that it is also quite possible that a board with fewer people might more actively seek out and charter new teams more actively, instead of 'hoarding' some of the work. A board that did less work itself and did more to distribute work would both need less time and (I think) be more effective in the work it did do. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reducing the board size
On 9/15/05, Richard M. Stallman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > It sounds like increasing the size of the board by 3 people could > achieve both of the goals that Dave was talking about: to get more > things done, and to have more contested seats **(provided enough people > decide to run so as to make a real contest).** [Emphasis mine] This last is the true problem. I know that in each of the past two years there have been at least two candidates each year (and more last year) who placed their name in nomination only because they felt it would be embarassing if there were fewer nominees than seats on the board, and/or because they felt the 'last' nominee would be a very poor representative on the board. I certainly found myself in this category last year. To put it another way, in the current system, we're *electing* people every year whose primary qualification is that they self-nominated and are not completely unknown. We've not had an election in two years where fewer than 1/2 of the candidates were elected, and in that year, 11 of 23 were selected. So instead of focusing on picking the most qualified, we're focusing on disqualifying the handful of least qualified. That's a terrible way of picking a quality board that can work well together and get things done. If we picked a smaller number of candidates, we'd have actual competition based on criteria like time available, views on issues facing the board, etc., and I think that would be very healthy for the board. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What is GUADEC?
On 9/14/05, Quim Gil <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Let's be very clear- we have a conference for hackers that interests > > several hundred people, and we have a separate conference for business > > and government that interests dozens, and there is very little overlap > > between those two groups. I'm not clear why we continue to insist that > > they be done together, when doing them separately would allow us to do > > each of them much better than we currently do them. > > I agree with this reasoning in general terms. > > But referring to the GUADEC7 @ Barcelona it just happen we have an event > for business and government going on next to the GUADEC, but not > overlapping it. A former weakness convertd in a strength. > > So please, let's think of a GUADEC track dedicated to business / > government / IT managers happening physically in the IGC's heart focused > on enlighten / exorcise them. Absolutely! I definitely don't want to imply that we should neglect these areas, and like you say, this is a particularly good opportunity to do it. But we should plan under the assumption that these tracks are not very interesting to hackers, and budget room size appropriately, including alternate tracks and such for hackers. > During the weekend Jordi Mas and the local groups are already thinking > of activities for the local users, grow their interest and get them > involved. I've seen that and it rocks. I'm sorry that I personally will not have as much time to be involved as I'd hoped; it seems like it will be a great conference in that way. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: poor man's SWOT analysis of GUADEC
On 9/13/05, Tim Ney, GNOME Foundation <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Weaknesses: (no particular order) > > * reduced spending this year on 'core' expense of getting contributors > > to the conference > > Some GUADEC costs associated with Stuttgart were lower than > Kristiansand, but not because there were fewer subsidies. The number > and amount of individual subsidies has increased over the last three > years. I'd gotten the impression from something dave had written that subsidy spending had decreased by about 40% this year. If that was incorrect, I humbly apologize. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Petition for referendum
On 9/29/05, Mark McLoughlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > [1] - Yes, its not entirely accurate. Some people on the hypothetical > board-of-seven may not have run for election at all if the board size > was smaller. You know that's inaccurate, Mark. Everyone who has good friends on the board knows that every year at least a couple board members are elected who put their names in nomination mainly because the first 10+X candidates contain at least X people who are, well, not good for some reason or another[1], and they fear that if they don't self-nominate, one or more not good people will get elected. This isn't to say these candidates/board members have been bad people- they feel a deep responsibility to GNOME, which is why they sacrifice and run for the board when they'd rather not, and usually, because they feel a deep responsibility, they are conscientious board members. But if we had a smaller board size, every person on the board would actually *want* to be on the board, and we'd actually have to think hard about who we want to vote for, instead of who we don't want to vote for. I think that would be a huge improvement on many levels. Luis [1] They might be percieved to be incredibly disruptive and impossible to work with on issues of strategy, for example, or might be percieved as being very immature. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
foundation affiliations list/page?
Do we need an affiliations page listing our various foundation-level affiliations? Obviously we talk about our sponsors (and call FSF and debian sponsors when they aren't really quite), but we have other affiliations ( http://www.oss-institute.org/ for example), and it seems like it would be good to give them some google juice and show who we are allied/organized with. OSSI is the only thing I can think of offhand, though I know we at one point had a relationship with SPI, and I know there is at least one other I'm blanking on at the moment. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: foundation affiliations list/page?
On 10/20/05, Vincent Untz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Thu, October 20, 2005 16:08, Luis Villa wrote: > > Do we need an affiliations page listing our various foundation-level > > affiliations? Obviously we talk about our sponsors (and call FSF and > > debian sponsors when they aren't really quite), but we have other > > affiliations ( http://www.oss-institute.org/ for example), and it > > seems like it would be good to give them some google juice and show > > who we are allied/organized with. > > I agree adding such a page would be good. Cool, glad I'm not nuts. > > OSSI is the only thing I can think of offhand, though I know we at one > > point had a relationship with SPI, and I know there is at least one > > other I'm blanking on at the moment. > > I thought we still had a relationship with SPI? I'm not clear on what our relationship is with them right now; obviously we're still on good terms (I'm on their trademark committee) but I don't know if we still have some kind of formal affiliation/partnership. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Vote NO on referendum to reduce board members
On 10/26/05, Vincent Untz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I agree that they don't have enough chances because a lof of members > vote during elections as if it were a popularity contest. And they > probably do this because they don't see what actions the board is > doing or should do, and who would be good at the job. > > But I also believe that the people who can not be elected because of > this can do a great job for the Foundation. There's no need to be on the > board! A-men. Actually, I think we've usually got it completely backwards- the board should be some of the *least* active people in the foundation, providing oversight and guidance only. Almost all the work the board currently takes on should be delegated to committees (like the release and elections teams) that take guidance from the board and regularly report back to the board, but don't require election. I'll be pushing in this direction if elected next year. Just for the record, also, I'll restate what I said earlier- I'm voting yes here because, quite simply, there are not 11 qualified AND motivated candidates every year. There have in most years been 12-13 qualified candidates, many of whom ran because they feared the alternative- unqualified candidates being on the board. Until we start seeing years where 20 extremely qualified and motivated people are running, we need to cut down on the number of people on the board so that everyone who is on the board is active and motivated, and so that there is a real competition of ideas to get onto the board. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Why I'm Voting "NO"
On 10/26/05, Jeff Waugh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > 3. Are there any other changes, rather than reducing the number of elected > > board members, that would address some of the problems Neary is raising? > > The alternative that I support is a more structured decision making process, > with a standard four member 'executive', consisting of an elected President, > Vice President, Secretary and Treasurer. I believe this will greatly improve > the Board's ability to execute, ensure that it represents the broad range of > views in the GNOME community, emphasise its role as an administrative body, > and demand service and responsibility from its executive. I agree that this is important, and I'll be running on a very similar platform in the next election, but this doesn't solve the problem of the number of involved/qualified people. If anything, it makes it worse by increasing the demands on at least some of the people involved. Long-term, we should have an 11-member board again- but only after we've established that we consistently have a large number of active, qualified, committed candidates. We have to admit that we don't right now, and act accordingly. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: About candidate's affiliation
On 11/4/05, Quim Gil <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I'm thinking of running for election and I have only one doubt about > affiliation. > > I'm a full time member of a micro cooperative company (5 partners as > average). We develop work in various projects relating to free software. > Should I state then that my affiliaton is interactors.coop or is this > only interesting to identify members of companies with higher > implication in GNOME add possibilities of getting 40% of the board? We have asked in the past that everyone identify their employment affiliation, but pragmatically speaking it only matters for those companies with multiple candidates. Luis > I don't mind saying I'm affilated to interactors.coop or saying I'm > independent. This is just to know the right think to do when a candidate > like me is in this situation. > > Thanks. > > -- > Quim Gil http://interactors.coop | http://desdeamericaconamor.org > > > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list > > > > ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: "Producing open source software"
Hadn't realized this was available on the web. Thanks for passing it along, Dave. Luis On 11/8/05, Dave Neary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi, > > http://producingoss.com/html-chunk/index.html > > Karl Fogel wrote a book on producing free and open source software, > which discusses everything from technical and social infrastructure to > handling money and managing colunteers. > > It's an interesting read, so far. It's particularly interesting in the > context of our recent reduction in the size of the board, which will > require us to better manage delegation of foundation tasks. > > Cheers, > Dave. > > -- > David Neary > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > ___ > 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
candidacy statement
Luis Villa Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Law School It should be noted that I maintain some organizational ties to Fedora and SUSE (neither paid), and am an Ubuntu user, so maybe I should count 1/3rd for affiliations for each of those ;) Why I want to be on the board: Because I think the board is broken, and after three terms, I think I finally have some ideas on how to fix it. :) What I think the board should look like in a year: The board should be a group of people whose main role is oversight, inquiry, and delegation, not doing. In the past, candidacy statements have been of the form of 'I will get the board to do X', which I'm now pretty convinced is the wrong tack. The board should be in the business of encouraging other people to do X, giving advice on X when asked, and overseeing things to make sure X is generally accomplished in a manner which serves the needs and desires of the foundation membership. The board should not generally be in the business of acting itself. I think that the belief that the board should act itself has in the past skewed expectations of the board, prevented good people from running, and perhaps most damagingly, generally reduced the amount of new people brought on board and gotten involved with the running of the Foundation. The release team is the model here- the board doesn't do releases itself, it delegates that task to others. This relationship might need to be re-formalized- there is no longer a formal board representative on the release team, and the release team no longer regularly reports to the board, as it used to, so arguably the board is failing in the oversight role (though obviously the release team has been doing a great job, so practically speaking this is not a problem.) But in general the model the board followed here ages ago was the right thing- identify a problem, recruit good people to solve the problem, and let it go. The elections committee is in the same mold. GUADEC is potentially also a model here, sort of, but also points out how we can go wrong. The board has basically delegated that task (good), and has given advice when asked. The board has, however, failed to exercise oversight- there has been no formal feedback mechanism between board and GUADEC team, and so (arguably) GUADEC has strayed from its intended mission, with no process in place to check that drift, or even to provide feedback to let the GUADEC organizers know that perhaps there are problems. Things that are definitely not models, and which must be fixed: our oversight of finances and employees has been poor. We're getting there with both- Tim's feedback to the board is much more regular now, and financials are posted now. Neither is perfect, IMHO, and we should continue to push each. [Employee management is one probably exception to the rule to delegate, delegate, delegate.] As far as problems the foundation faces, I'd like to see a formal marketing team, and potentially a fundraising team as well, charged with organizing and improving GNOME's performance in each of those areas, and reporting back to the board regularly. Likely each of those teams would have board members on them (I'm certainly not saying board *members* should stop doing things :) but they would be partcipants and representatives who should lead or not lead independent of their status as board members. I'll try to post a summary comparing my goals for last year and my achievements tonight or tomorrow, but hopefully this will do for now :) Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [Fwd: Re: Beginning of the 2005 GNOME Foundation elections]
On 11/16/05, Andreas J. Guelzow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Wed, 2005-16-11 at 13:14 +0100, Dave Neary wrote: > > > > Quim Gil wrote: > > > Gosh, we are not the EU Parliament or the US Congress. Neither have we > > > 28 candidates to choose from. If we keep kicking off candidates for > > > procedural reasons we will end up not needing to vote at all. > > > > Hear, hear. A bit of perspective will go a long way. What ever happened > > to trust? > > It went out of the window with all the talk about "untrustworthy > candidates" in the recent referendum debate? To be very, very clear, I never said anyone was untrustworthy, just that people were running out of a sense of obligation. If anything, those people are so dedicated to GNOME that they are more trustworthy than the average candidate, not less. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Number of valid nominees [Was: Advisory referendum, not decision [Was: Beginning of the 2005 GNOME Foundation elections]]
On 11/17/05, Dominic Lachowicz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi Dave, > > > I count 12: Jeff, Federico, Behdad, German, Christian, Vincent, Luis, > > Jonathan, Bastien, Anne, Quim, Dave (me) > > Only 8 have sent any mail to foundation-announce, which is required by > the election's rules. So Jeff's, Anne's, German's, and Luis' > candidicies appear to be either invalid or incomplete by the > foundation's rules. Or perhaps they are blocked by some mailing-list > admin bot. > > http://foundation.gnome.org/elections/2005/rules.html > http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2005-November/thread.html I have sent it to both lists. I can't speak to whether or not it went through. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to answer
Candidacy Questions [My apologies for answering these so late; I've been on vacation and away from email since they were posted.] > 1) Why are you running for Board of Directors? Because I care very deeply about the future of GNOME and the future of Free Software (which I feel are fairly intimately tied together.) I have devoted the last four years of my life to GNOME and I believe that the board can and should be one of the primary ways for me to continue that dedication. > What will you do more or > better than previous years Boards have done? I will strive this year to do vastly less, actually. I think the board has tried to take on too much, and forgotten the lesson learned during the 2.0 cycle with the success of the release team- the role of the board should be to set goals, delegate aggressively, and answer questions and give guidance- not to do things itself. > 2) How familiar are you with the day-to-day happenings of GNOME? How much > do you follow and participate in the main GNOME mailing lists? Less so than I did when GNOME was my full-time job, obviously. This is particularly evident in my participation in the lists- I'm much less active than I used to be. However, I still spend major chunks of every day paying attention to what is going on in GNOME- reading all the major lists, reading planet, talking with people in IRC, following and testing new software releases, etc. If the board truly is to transition into an advisory and delegatory role, then this is (I believe) sufficient. > 3) What sources of funds do you as a candiate try do establish? And what > will you spend it on? Not counting revenue from the shop and Friends of > GNOME. Think more like the recent move by Mozilla or a subscription based > bounty system. First off, I don't think shop and FOG revenue should be discounted. Each of those should be major sources of revenue bringing in many tens of thousands of dollars a year, at least. This year's board (mostly Dave, though we all helped give advice on the process) pushed hard for this to happen, and though we've had a setback recently, I still think that this should be something the Foundation should do. [Though I'd again point out that this is not something the board should be necessarily doing itself- it should be finding volunteers, giving them goals and advice, letting them drive the process, and overseeing it.] FOG should be massively bigger than it is- currently it is a very amateur program as far as non-profit fundraising goes, and as we consider life post-Tim, we should lay some groundwork for how to improve it. [I've been pushing for some time to get CiviCRM installed so that we can move forward on this front, but we've not yet found a volunteer to push this project forward. If you're reading this and think you're the right person, let us know :)] Secondly, the biggest change we need to make in our revenue generation is to more aggressively work with partners to target specific problems. The board needs to be able to go to Sun, IBM, Novell, RH, etc., and say 'we need money to hire someone to fix problem X.' We have experimented with this in a very limited way this year, by hiring Shaun to write better developer docs (which I pushed for aggressively this year, and which thankfully Federico has now taken the lead on.) That is still very much a work in progress, but I think that will inform how we raise and spend such money in the future, and in general, it is the right way to proceed- identify a very specific problem, find the money, find the right person, and pursue it. It may be that in certain cases the specific problem might be 'community development', and we hire someone on a more permanent basis for that, but in general we should not be following mozilla's route and hiring technical staff to set technical direction. Besides hiring people to resolve specific, limited issues, we need to work more aggressively to improve our global event presence. We started that this year (in a very small way) with the event box, and we need to move forward to work with folks like FOSS.in and other large global conferences to ensure that GNOME is well represented there. This is again the kind of thing that the board shouldn't be doing itself- the board should be finding interested people, recruiting them, and saying 'we feel this route would be best for GNOME- do you think you can do it?' (and then obviously giving them fairly wide leeway to pursure that goal, within reason.) There are a number of ways we can spend money on this- the event box was one, flying people to conferences as speakers is another, and obviously funding small non-GUADEC events where appropriate is another. > 4) Gnome is mostly a european and US based project, but seems to have > some following in Latin America and India. How will you as a candidate > grow the contribution base, especially in Asia, Africa and South America? Perhaps a different and more provocative way to ask this question is 'is there any
Re: GNOME Foundation Elections - Preliminary results
On 12/11/05, Žygimantas Beručka <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Sk, 2005 12 11 22:48 +0200, Baris Cicek rašė: > > > Luis Villa (119 votes) - Harvard Law School > > Jeff Waugh (115 votes) - Canonical Ltd > > Federico Mena-Quintero (106 votes) - Novell, Inc. > > Jonathan Blandford (105 votes) - Red Hat > > David Neary (102 votes) - Cegelec SA > > Anne Østergaard (97 votes) - Easterbridge.dk > > Vincent Untz (93 votes) - Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble > > Quim Gil (77 votes) - Interactors s.coop. > > Behdad Esfahbod (66 votes) - Sharif FarsiWeb > > Germán Poó Caamaño (59 votes) - Universidad del Bío-Bío > > Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller (55 votes) - Fluendo S.L. > > Bastien Nocera (46 votes) - Red Hat > > Dominic Lachowicz (43 votes) - Teragram Corporation > > Ech.. I was expecting at least a bit of fresh blood this year, > unfortunately it didn't turned out this way. Too bad. :) However, it is > not the thing what disappointed me the most. What I'm really > disappointed with is that Vincent has got the least amount of votes from > all new board members and that Dom with the least votes of all. As I said in my candidacy statement, to a certain extent the board's primary focus should be stewardship, and I don't see a huge problem with getting our stewardship from our 'old blood.' This board's challenge, particularly as it has become smaller, will be to reach out to those who weren't elected and other leaders in the community and find other, non-board (aka, more useful ;) ways for them to be involved. I'd expect that all of these people will be involved in the board in some way, shape, or form by the end of next year; if they aren't, then would be the time to be disappointed. More personally, I'd like to thank everyone who voted for me- I hope I'll be able to fulfill your expectations. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Foundation Elections - Preliminary results
On 12/12/05, Luis Villa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 12/11/05, Žygimantas Beručka <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Sk, 2005 12 11 22:48 +0200, Baris Cicek rašė: > > > > > Luis Villa (119 votes) - Harvard Law School > > > Jeff Waugh (115 votes) - Canonical Ltd > > > Federico Mena-Quintero (106 votes) - Novell, Inc. > > > Jonathan Blandford (105 votes) - Red Hat > > > David Neary (102 votes) - Cegelec SA > > > Anne Østergaard (97 votes) - Easterbridge.dk > > > Vincent Untz (93 votes) - Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble > > > Quim Gil (77 votes) - Interactors s.coop. > > > Behdad Esfahbod (66 votes) - Sharif FarsiWeb > > > Germán Poó Caamaño (59 votes) - Universidad del Bío-Bío > > > Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller (55 votes) - Fluendo S.L. > > > Bastien Nocera (46 votes) - Red Hat > > > Dominic Lachowicz (43 votes) - Teragram Corporation > > > > Ech.. I was expecting at least a bit of fresh blood this year, > > unfortunately it didn't turned out this way. Too bad. :) However, it is > > not the thing what disappointed me the most. What I'm really > > disappointed with is that Vincent has got the least amount of votes from > > all new board members and that Dom with the least votes of all. > > As I said in my candidacy statement, to a certain extent the board's > primary focus should be stewardship, and I don't see a huge problem > with getting our stewardship from our 'old blood.' This board's > challenge, particularly as it has become smaller, will be to reach out > to those who weren't elected and other leaders in the community and > find other, non-board (aka, more useful ;) ways for them to be > involved. I'd expect that all of these people will be involved in the > board in some way, shape, or form by the end of next year; if they > aren't, then would be the time to be disappointed. > > More personally, I'd like to thank everyone who voted for me- I hope > I'll be able to fulfill your expectations. And even more importantly, I'd like to thank the elections team, who did practically triple duty this year- dealing with a new voting system, running the referendum, and then the election itself. The election team members are definitely some of the unsung heroes of GNOME. If you bump into them on the lists or in IRC, give them a big virtual pat on the back. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: gnome-logos package
On 12/17/05, Quim Gil <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > About Ray's package and Luis Villa's post: > http://tieguy.org/blog/index.cgi/524 > > I think the Foundation needs official logos owned by the Foundation to > be used by the official GNOME projects in order to give consistancy to > the GNOME brand. > > But I also think that we should make a more extensive use of the right > to implement authorised modifications stated in > http://live.gnome.org/LogoGuidelines . For instance, the GUADEC needs a > logo, the foot is a good starting point but the word "GNOME" conflicts > with "GUADEC", and a designer will have a hard time to come up with a > cool proposal that fully keeps the original logo. > > And I definitely think we should encourage the community to express > themselves with logo variations that will be clearly unnofficial but > respected by the Foundation unless we find they are offensive or > something, and then "we'll lart you publicly" (if you deserve it). > > I'm not sure about the legal implications of this (is this a "lesser" > trademark license?), but from a marketing perspective sounds like the > consistant and useful way to proceed. IANAL (yet), but... under US trademark law (and most European trademark law, as I understand it) basically all users of the mark must ask us for permission before use. We cannot adopt a permission scheme which allows any use of the logo which might be confusing to consumers without our permission. So this basically rules out any sane community-oriented permissioning scheme. I go into that in some more detail in the paper i linked in the blog post, if you have more time to read it. Trademark law doesn't give us the flexibility we want, which leaves us with options (as I see it) that are basically: * pursue the Mozilla route (strong trademark), which I feel will alienate our contributors and completely violate the implied social contract which the GPL has created around our shared community goods (i.e., compare/contrast how we license our code and the foot- which should be more important? why would we choose to license one more liberally than the other?) * collaborate with our lawyers to create and pursue a completely novel/untested/potentially completely undefensible license that uses a novel legal approach to give the community flexible rights without (I have approached one other free software group about collaborating along these lines but it hasn't really gone anywhere, unfortunately) * give up the legally enforceable mark and use a political party approach- accept that there will be some uses we don't like and can't control, but use the mechanisms of party (speech, platform creation, etc.) to control the mark as much as possible outside of traditional trademark law. HTH- Luis > En/na Ray Strode ha escrit: > > > The reason I'm bringing this up is because gnome-screensaver has > > recently gained a "floaters" screensaver that depends on having a > > scalable version of the gnome-foot logo. > > -- > Quim Gil - http://desdeamericaconamor.org > > > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list > > > > ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: gnome-logos package
On 12/17/05, Luis Villa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > IANAL (yet), but... under US trademark law (and most European > trademark law, as I understand it) basically all users of the mark > must ask us for permission before use. We cannot adopt a permission > scheme which allows any use of the logo which might be confusing to > consumers without our permission. So this basically rules out any sane > community-oriented permissioning scheme. I go into that in some more > detail in the paper i linked in the blog post, if you have more time > to read it. > > Trademark law doesn't give us the flexibility we want, which leaves us > with options (as I see it) that are basically: > > * pursue the Mozilla route (strong trademark), which I feel will > alienate our contributors and completely violate the implied social > contract which the GPL has created around our shared community goods > (i.e., compare/contrast how we license our code and the foot- which > should be more important? why would we choose to license one more > liberally than the other?) In the interests of fairness, I should elucidate the strengths of this approach more clearly. These are the key reasons the board (aside from me) mostly leans towards our current strategy: * substantially less risk. We completely avoid the risk of something like the Debian Core Consortium happening to us. Either of the other two strategies leave us with some tools to reduce risk (untested legal strategy in the second suggestion, moral coercion in the third) but they are not as strong. * more control over our messaging- we (mainly the board, or a hypothetical trademark committee) has strong control over who uses our stuff, so we can ensure that if the foot is used, it is used in a manner that most positively presents the foot, using our marketing strategy, our phrasing, hypothetically our color scheme, etc. I think there is one more, but I can't think of it off the top of my head- brain still fuzzy from a cold. Luis > * collaborate with our lawyers to create and pursue a completely > novel/untested/potentially completely undefensible license that uses a > novel legal approach to give the community flexible rights without (I > have approached one other free software group about collaborating > along these lines but it hasn't really gone anywhere, unfortunately) > > * give up the legally enforceable mark and use a political party > approach- accept that there will be some uses we don't like and can't > control, but use the mechanisms of party (speech, platform creation, > etc.) to control the mark as much as possible outside of traditional > trademark law. > > HTH- > Luis > > > En/na Ray Strode ha escrit: > > > > > The reason I'm bringing this up is because gnome-screensaver has > > > recently gained a "floaters" screensaver that depends on having a > > > scalable version of the gnome-foot logo. > > > > -- > > Quim Gil - http://desdeamericaconamor.org > > > > > > ___ > > foundation-list mailing list > > foundation-list@gnome.org > > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list > > > > > > > > > ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: gnome-logos package
On 12/17/05, Bill Haneman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi Luis: > > IMO there may be yet another option, i.e. the 'Debian' route, where we > have one logo package (the default?) that's not trademarked (though IMO > the 'GNOME' name should remain trademarked), and one, downloadable from > gnome.org, which is trademarked and therefore (perhaps ironically) not > part of the "community" packages. > > Whether this is desirable probably depends on who you ask, but at least > it would have the opt in/opt out approach; users and distros could vote > with their, uh, well you know what I mean... I believe I suggested this in my paper, though I forgot about it this morning. I believe Debian is not substantially pleased with this approach ATM, though I forget why- any debianites care to elaborate/correct me? Luis > Luis Villa wrote: > > > > >Trademark law doesn't give us the flexibility we want, which leaves us > >with options (as I see it) that are basically: > > > >* pursue the Mozilla route (strong trademark), which I feel will > >alienate our contributors and completely violate the implied social > >contract which the GPL has created around our shared community goods > >(i.e., compare/contrast how we license our code and the foot- which > >should be more important? why would we choose to license one more > >liberally than the other?) > > > >* collaborate with our lawyers to create and pursue a completely > >novel/untested/potentially completely undefensible license that uses a > >novel legal approach to give the community flexible rights without (I > >have approached one other free software group about collaborating > >along these lines but it hasn't really gone anywhere, unfortunately) > > > >* give up the legally enforceable mark and use a political party > >approach- accept that there will be some uses we don't like and can't > >control, but use the mechanisms of party (speech, platform creation, > >etc.) to control the mark as much as possible outside of traditional > >trademark law. > > > >HTH- > >Luis > > > > ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: gnome-logos package
On 12/17/05, Luis Villa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 12/17/05, Bill Haneman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi Luis: > > > > IMO there may be yet another option, i.e. the 'Debian' route, where we > > have one logo package (the default?) that's not trademarked (though IMO > > the 'GNOME' name should remain trademarked), and one, downloadable from > > gnome.org, which is trademarked and therefore (perhaps ironically) not > > part of the "community" packages. > > > > Whether this is desirable probably depends on who you ask, but at least > > it would have the opt in/opt out approach; users and distros could vote > > with their, uh, well you know what I mean... > > I believe I suggested this in my paper, though I forgot about it this > morning. I believe Debian is not substantially pleased with this > approach ATM, though I forget why- any debianites care to > elaborate/correct me? Urgh, I knew I shouldn't have written these posts this weekend; my brain is still too fuzzy to think straight. There are a couple other options: * collective mark: basically, the mark indicates that you're a member of a given group, instead of that the product comes from a given manufacturer. * certification mark: basically, the mark indicates that the good meets certain specified standards (like using federico's proposed gnome standards from last year) instead of it coming from a specified manufacturer Either of these could be used in parallel with another strategy. Luis (probably more later tonight) > > Luis Villa wrote: > > > > > > > >Trademark law doesn't give us the flexibility we want, which leaves us > > >with options (as I see it) that are basically: > > > > > >* pursue the Mozilla route (strong trademark), which I feel will > > >alienate our contributors and completely violate the implied social > > >contract which the GPL has created around our shared community goods > > >(i.e., compare/contrast how we license our code and the foot- which > > >should be more important? why would we choose to license one more > > >liberally than the other?) > > > > > >* collaborate with our lawyers to create and pursue a completely > > >novel/untested/potentially completely undefensible license that uses a > > >novel legal approach to give the community flexible rights without (I > > >have approached one other free software group about collaborating > > >along these lines but it hasn't really gone anywhere, unfortunately) > > > > > >* give up the legally enforceable mark and use a political party > > >approach- accept that there will be some uses we don't like and can't > > >control, but use the mechanisms of party (speech, platform creation, > > >etc.) to control the mark as much as possible outside of traditional > > >trademark law. > > > > > >HTH- > > >Luis > > > > > > > > ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: gnome-logos package
On 12/17/05, Alan Cox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Sad, 2005-12-17 at 11:32 -0500, Luis Villa wrote: > > IANAL (yet), but... under US trademark law (and most European > > trademark law, as I understand it) basically all users of the mark > > must ask us for permission before use. We cannot adopt a permission > > scheme which allows any use of the logo which might be confusing to > > consumers without our permission. So this basically rules out any sane > > community-oriented permissioning scheme. I go into that in some more > > detail in the paper i linked in the blog post, if you have more time > > to read it. > > Other people have successfully dealt with granting of blanket > permissions. Fedora for example allows anyone to make 'Fedora' CDs under > a blanket agreement that requires the CD be a true copy and any media be > warranted. (1) bit-for-bit copies don't trigger serious trademark concerns because there is no risk that they would dilute or confuse, so they are a little different. GNOME doesn't really distribute anything that we could cover with such a case. (2) My entire concern with our current trademark policy is that it centralizes control and permissible innovation, and raises the barriers to participation. Our community is successful in large part because we decentralize control, decentralize innovation, and lower barriers to innovation. We should be very skeptical of any policy which centralizes and raises barriers. > It gets truely horrible once you want flexibility because the role of a > trademark is to define what something is and if it can be anything then > it is meaningless. The gnome trademark policy attempts so far have been > utterly farcical however. Well, we do now have a defensible/non-farcical policy. So we've made the lawyers happy. I don't think it actually satisfies the needs of anyone else, though. > It ought to be possible to find a way to license a mark or form of the > mark that can be sensibly used. Again that has been done by companies > before (one 1990's example of direct relevance was the Novell 'yes it > works with Netware' program). That would likely be a certification mark, which has different rules than 'traditional' trademark. > Having a logo for a program which is a > "gnome program" and for "gnome developer" ought to be doable given the > right definition, and "foundation member" is definitely one that can be > done today as the foundation has a defined membership. These are certification/collective marks, as I mentioned in my last email. We can do those. (Sadly, we didn't know about them when we started the last round of this process, and for some reason our lawyers never told us.) There is still a need for a 'general purpose' mark, though (no one is going to use the 'gnome certified' mark for a menu or background, for example), and that is what I think we need extremely permissive (basically political-party-like) licensing for. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: gnome-logos package
On 12/17/05, Murray Cumming <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Sat, 2005-12-17 at 18:30 +, Alan Cox wrote: > [snip] > > Having a logo for a program which is a > > "gnome program" and for "gnome developer" ought to be doable given the > > right definition, and "foundation member" is definitely one that can be > > done today as the foundation has a defined membership. > > We already have a GNOME member logo, or that start of one. > > There's also discussion in the wiki about (probably self-policing) > certification requirements, though I think it's unnecessarily > fine-grained. The requirements for each and the process for each would have to be formalized if we wanted to go this route, at least under US law. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Minutes of the Board meeting 2006/Feb/15
On 2/24/06, Vincent Untz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Le mercredi 22 février 2006 à 12:12 +0100, Rodrigo Moya a écrit : > > On Tue, 2006-02-21 at 14:24 -0600, Federico Mena Quintero wrote: > > > Axis Informática > > > > > > > > > * We are fine with giving them permission to sell products with the > > > GNOME Logo. > > > > > does this mean we can give them the 'go ahead' for adding the products > > to their site? > > > > > * Need to find the contract that we got Killermundi to sign, so that > > > we can use the same contract for Axis Informática. > > > > > we didn't sign anything, should we? > > It's a bit surprising since we have this in the trademark usage > guidelines: "Do not use GNOME logos unless you have explicit written > permission to do so." > > http://foundation.gnome.org/licensing/guidelines/ > > We should probably fix this :-) This is one of the things I want to kill, FWIW. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
trademark [was Re: Minutes of the Board meeting 2006/Feb/15]
On 2/27/06, Bill Haneman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Mon, 2006-02-27 at 13:48, Dave Neary wrote: > ... > > I think it'd be a good idea to get a proper legal opinion on defending our > > marks, and setting up our trademark policy to be as liberal as possible > > without > > losing them. > > I agree. I thought this had already happened, and the lawyers had > replied "we don't know", approximately. Perhaps I am remembering > incorrectly - who was it who has spoken to legal counsel about this so > far? Tim handled all our prior correspondence with counsel on this issue. As far as I can tell, he did not push the counsel[1] to be in any way creative with the policy, so (again, as far as we could tell) the answer wasn't 'we don't know'- the question was never asked. I've been researching the problem on and off since the summer, and I have contacted the clinical program at my employer[2] about the problem. Their involvement isn't set in stone yet, but the folks at the program are deeply intrigued the challenge of forming a non-traditional but still legally solid trademark policy for us. I hope that they'll be able to work with us to pursue something along the lines of what Dom suggested elsewhere in the thread- clearly delineating what does and doesn't need permission in such a way that we can still protect the mark but give maximum permissiveness to members of our community who wish to be creative in spreading the word about GNOME. Luis [1] from Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich. I'm trying to schedule a meeting with them to review exactly what has and hasn't happened, but our contact there is traveling so it has been difficult. [2] http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/clinical ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Minutes of the Board meeting, 2006/Mar/01
On 4/17/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Mon, 17 Apr 2006, Federico Mena Quintero wrote: > > * Luis to help marketing-list prepare a press release for the > > GNOME/W3C SVG anouncement (NOT DONE) > > Not sure if I should just wait for the press release, but what's this? Heh. I took that out of a later version, but I think that slipped through the cracks. 'We'- I use the term loosely, basically it is inkscape, though the librvg folks are also aware/involved- are now represented on the W3C SVG working group. It wasn't really press-release worthy, so we canned that. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Boilerplate copyright agreement for commercial exploitation
On 5/15/06, Dave Neary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Selon Alan Cox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > On Sul, 2006-05-14 at 19:52 +0200, Dave Neary wrote: > > Since lawyers talk .doc, and use revision control to track changes to the > > documents, that's what we ge too. > > Disappointing. I hope the foundation will reconsider that decision and > post its documents in open formats as well. I can certainly post a copy in ODT later in the week which gets converted into .doc every time we need to go to the lawyers... I won't always have the time to do it promptly, though. I will note that there are several high-quality free software programmes that can read and write the bits of the .doc format which are important for lawyers. That doesn't make them open formats. Luis (agreeing with Alan in general, sorry, Dave) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Notes from the Desktop Architects Meeting
On 5/16/06, Glynn Foster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> + Portland project
>- general feeling of nearly everyone was that it's sad that GNOME is
> not involved in this effort
>- would be nice to get someone to at least look at the project and
> provide feedback
>- Waldo and some KDE people wanted to make a joint GNOME/KDE
> statement about the project ("we love it"). Is this something we
> want to do?
I personally have issues with it because I can't get over the fact that
Portland is building on 'unstable or draft' specifications. Build the
bricks, *then* build the wall. I guess others have difficulties that
we're not encouraging our own toolkit APIs.
I have issues with the wheel reconstruction I see in Portland. I'd
much rather put the effort into making one mediocre platform really
good, instead of spending a lot of time and developer cycles making
two mediocre platforms work more like each other and still be
mediocre, but now mediocre and integrated at a shallow level.*
Luis
* Re: portland and also ffox/ooo, I'm disappointed that overall we're
settling for shitty levels of integration when everyone keeps voting
with their feet for an OS whose primary benefit is superior
integration.
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Re: Code Of Conduct
I would hate to see us resort to written, legalistic rules (which encourage gaming and letter-of-law over spirit-of-law) when a strong culture should suffice, particularly at our size. What it feels like such a thing advertises is 'we're so weak we need rules where common sense and politeness should suffice', not 'we care.' Additionally, this feels like a solution looking for a problem- have we ever had significant problems stopping aggressive or rude behavior? We haven't had any of it on any of the primary mailing lists since crazy orb-boy that I can remember, and that was dealt with fairly promptly. Luis On 5/30/06, Murray Cumming <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: I would like GNOME to have a code of conduct to: 1. Make it easier to stop aggressive or rude behaviour. This discourages new contributors, though I think we are pretty good compared to some less user-centric F/OSS communities. 2. Advertise to the world that we are already a pleasant welcoming community. I think this is a big part of Ubuntu's success at getting new contributors. But I'd like our code of conduct to be a little shorter and I don't think we need a whole organisation to police it. At the least, it should just be how we expect people to behave on mailing lists and IRC and it could be up to the administrator of that list or channel to decide whether somone's conduct is unacceptable. But maybe some people would be reassured by the existence of some group that they could go to in extreme circumstances. Here's a simple start: http://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct What do you think? What else would you like to see there? Murray Cumming [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.murrayc.com www.openismus.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Women in GNOME (Was: Code Of Conduct)
On 6/1/06, Murray Cumming <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Anne wrote: [snip] > I do not say this to start a new long debat in this tread. But it has > become obvious that the 1% participation of women in FLOSS is > embarrassing and we need to have a look at why this is the case and make > some cultural changes. > > I know that the Computer Science Department at the University of > Gothenburg in Sweden has a gender action plan: > http://www.informatik.gu.se/dokument/dokument.xsp?group=jamstalldhet&menu=org > > I think that many other universities and even GNOME and Ubuntu could get > a lot of inspiration here. (Provided it gets translated from Swedish > into a language you understand.) [snip] Realistically, this plans needs to be written by you. Others will help you with it, but you need to create it and drive it. Such a plan should be written by someone who has actually been involved in IRC, our mailing lists, bugzilla, etc., *as a developer*- which, sorry, isn't Anne. It will not work if it is not driven by someone with such experience. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Women in GNOME (Was: Code Of Conduct)
On 6/1/06, Dave Neary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Hi, Luis Villa wrote: > Such a plan should be written by someone who has actually been > involved in IRC, our mailing lists, bugzilla, etc., *as a developer*- > which, sorry, isn't Anne. It will not work if it is not driven by > someone with such experience. That's not so. There's nothing preventing someone who isn't a developer from comping up with a credible strategy for getting more women involved in GNOME (although that's totally off-topic to the code of conduct discussion). Any such plan would have to appeal to geek women - so who's better placed to come up with a plan? A male geek or a female non-geek? A female geek? Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Women in GNOME (Was: Code Of Conduct)
On 6/1/06, Anne Østergaard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: tor, 01 06 2006 kl. 09:05 -0400, skrev Luis Villa: > On 6/1/06, Dave Neary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > Hi, > > > > Luis Villa wrote: > > > Such a plan should be written by someone who has actually been > > > involved in IRC, our mailing lists, bugzilla, etc., *as a developer*- > > > which, sorry, isn't Anne. It will not work if it is not driven by > > > someone with such experience. > > > > That's not so. There's nothing preventing someone who isn't a developer > > from comping up with a credible strategy for getting more women involved > > in GNOME (although that's totally off-topic to the code of conduct > > discussion). Any such plan would have to appeal to geek women - so who's > > better placed to come up with a plan? A male geek or a female non-geek? > > A female geek? I would like to hear your definition of a geek, please. For the purposes of this discussion, 'someone actively involved in the development of our software through the traditional means used by our community'. This need not be direct software development (as everyone knows I do very little of that) but it does mean involvement in creating the product that we ship, and it does mean at least some participation in the mainstream of the community- desktop-devel-list, #gnome-hackers, etc. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Women in GNOME (Was: Code Of Conduct)
On 6/1/06, Luis Villa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On 6/1/06, Anne Østergaard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > tor, 01 06 2006 kl. 09:05 -0400, skrev Luis Villa: > > On 6/1/06, Dave Neary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > Hi, > > > > > > Luis Villa wrote: > > > > Such a plan should be written by someone who has actually been > > > > involved in IRC, our mailing lists, bugzilla, etc., *as a developer*- > > > > which, sorry, isn't Anne. It will not work if it is not driven by > > > > someone with such experience. > > > > > > That's not so. There's nothing preventing someone who isn't a developer > > > from comping up with a credible strategy for getting more women involved > > > in GNOME (although that's totally off-topic to the code of conduct > > > discussion). Any such plan would have to appeal to geek women - so who's > > > better placed to come up with a plan? A male geek or a female non-geek? > > > > A female geek? > > I would like to hear your definition of a geek, please. For the purposes of this discussion, 'someone actively involved in the development of our software through the traditional means used by our community'. This need not be direct software development (as everyone knows I do very little of that) but it does mean involvement in creating the product that we ship, and it does mean at least some participation in the mainstream of the community- desktop-devel-list, #gnome-hackers, etc. And I might add that the reason this is important is that it seems to me insane that someone could devise policy to get people involved in something they have not themselves participated in. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code Of Conduct
On 6/1/06, Telsa Gwynne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Ar Tue, May 30, 2006 at 01:04:43PM +0200, ysgrifennodd Murray Cumming: > I don't think we need a whole organisation to police it. At the least, it > should just be how we expect people to behave on mailing lists and IRC and > it could be up to the administrator of that list or channel to decide > whether somone's conduct is unacceptable. But maybe some people would be > reassured by the existence of some group that they could go to in extreme > circumstances. > > Here's a simple start: > http://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct > > What do you think? What else would you like to see there? I think this is a long-overdue thing to do. I also think that there is no fun being part of a "community" which is actually arguing the toss on whether "we think people should be courteous to each other within this community" is a good thing or not. I don't think anyone is arguing against being courteous; I'm certainly not. I just think we'd be better off focusing on actually making people more courteous, instead of writing rules about it. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Co-option of Quim Gil to the board
On 6/2/06, Dave Neary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: We're all sorry to see Luis leave the board, but I have a feeling that this means we'll be hearing even more from him in the future. I'd like to wish him all the best in his budding legal career. Should have announced that here first, of course :) My mistake. To paraphrase what I said on the blog post, when I ran for board this year, I mentioned that I'd be AWOL towards the end of the term, but I miscalculated for how long. Given that it would have been roughly 1/2 of the term, I decided to resign as quickly as the correct replacement could be found. Given Quim's excellent leadership of GUADEC so far, I have every confidence that he'll do an excellent job of it. It has been an honor and a pleasure to be elected to the board as many times as I have- I owe a big debt of thanks to everyone who has supported me over the years. I hope I've served well and fulfilled your expectations. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct final draft?
On 8/2/06, Elijah Newren <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 8/2/06, Andreas J. Guelzow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Wed, 2006-02-08 at 20:11 +0200, Anne Østergaard wrote: > > > I think that we have most people with us now > > > > How do you know? > > She said 'think'. (Personally, I do agree with the assessment, though.) I also still think it is a pretty bad idea, with little-to-no proof of the existence of the problems *in our community* that it purports to solve, and less existence of proof that it will actually solve the problems. Furthermore, I think the proposal ignores the costs of raising barriers to entry to our existing community (both real and perceived). But it seems clear that the people pushing this forward are determined to ignore such objections, so I've shut up. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Endorsement for Joachim Norieko
On 11/28/06, Jeff Waugh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > I also want to throw in a strong endorsement for Joachim. > > I'm a little concerned -- based on Joachim's answers and commments on this > list -- that there would be some difficult philosophical gaps for the Board > to bridge (or worse, teach) should he be elected. > > I don't doubt Joachim's involvement in GNOME for a moment, particularly with > your strong endorsement, but I'm concerned that critical differences in our > shared values and vision would impair the Board's ability to execute in the > next year [1]. > > Perhaps Joachim could explain some of his comments. :-) Perhaps you could explain which ones you mean, Jeff? Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: an open-audit voting system for GNOME elections
While I can't speak directly to the code involved, I want to say that I'm excited by Ben's involvement- I worked with him when I was at Harvard and he is a great guy, doing very interesting thinking. We're lucky to have him involved, and with luck, I look forward to voting with Helios in the next election. Luis On 3/12/07, Ben Adida <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi all, > > My name is Ben Adida, I'm a postdoc fellow at Harvard working on crypto > and public policy. I spend a bunch of my time on voting systems, in > particular those that let you or anyone audit the process from end to > end. If you haven't encountered these systems before, they're > significantly more powerful than your average voting system, with or > without a "paper trail." > > I'm currently implementing Helios, a voting system with this open-audit > property. Last week, I was on the GNOME MC irc, where I collected > requirements for the GNOME election and explained Helios in a bit more > detail. If the system is eventually good enough, the goal is to have > GNOME and potentially other free software groups use it in elections and > referenda. > > I've started a publicly accessible and CC-licensed wiki: > > http://helios.stikipad.com/ > > I will keep this wiki updated with the full design and, more > importantly, pointers to partial demos as they become stable enough. Of > course the whole codebase will be free/open-source: I will move it to a > public source repository as soon as it's in decent v0.1 shape (2-3 months). > > Your thoughts/comments/questions/criticisms are welcome, either on the > wiki as public comment, or to me personally. > > > -Ben Adida > [EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://ben.adida.net > http://benlog.com > ___ > 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: Call for invitations to be the host of GUADEC 2008
On 3/23/07, Murray Cumming <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Fri, 2007-03-23 at 15:14 +0200, Baris Cicek wrote: > > I'll talk w/ our local GUG about if we can organize to host GUADEC next > > year in Istanbul. > > Please, yes. Please, no. Not until I can come. Istanbul 2010! ;) Luis (seriously, Istanbul would rock.) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Call for invitations to be the host of GUADEC 2008
On 3/24/07, Baris Cicek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Fri, 2007-03-23 at 07:04 -0700, Elliot Lee wrote: > > Baris Cicek wrote: > > > > > I'll talk w/ our local GUG about if we can organize to host GUADEC next > > > year in Istanbul. > > > > Not Constantinople? > It was called Constantinople ages ago, afaik, but however you call it, > as long as we point same land place, some languages still uses > Constantinople name I guess. Though officially this city is called > Istanbul as one of most beautiful cities in the World. (even though lots > of corruption due to migration). I believe Elliot was making a reference to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istanbul_Not_Constantinople Moral of the story: always footnote your non-cross-cultural jokes ;) Luis ___ 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
On 6/10/07, Glynn Foster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > 1) ECMA > >We have the opportunity of joining ECMA as a non-profit >member. Jody has expressed an interest in being a representative >for GNOME, and suggested it would also be good to get someone >there from Abiword. > >ACTION: Behdad to contact Jody about the ECMA membership application >and find a good candidate from Abiword to attend. Behdad to >work on getting a press release for our membership. What would our purpose be there? Luis ___ 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
On 6/10/07, Jody Goldberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Sun, Jun 10, 2007 at 08:18:54PM -0400, Luis Villa wrote: > > On 6/10/07, Glynn Foster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > 1) ECMA > > > > > >We have the opportunity of joining ECMA as a non-profit > > >member. Jody has expressed an interest in being a representative > > >for GNOME, and suggested it would also be good to get someone > > >there from Abiword. > > > > > >ACTION: Behdad to contact Jody about the ECMA membership application > > >and find a good candidate from Abiword to attend. Behdad to > > >work on getting a press release for our membership. > > > > What would our purpose be there? > > As a non-profit we (GNOME) would not have voting privileges. > The membership will serve as a mechanism to allow interested > foundation members to join ECMA committees. I'm advocating this in > relation to ECMA376/TC45 aka MS OfficeOpen XML. Committee members > have the ability to request clarifications and suggest improvements > in the text of the specification. For anyone implementing parts of > this format this is a golden chance to get enough documentation to > facilitate interoperability. Seems reasonable. Of course, I'd be more comfortable with it if we put out a press release saying something to the effect of 'we see no way to avoid implementing OOXML without screwing our users, so we're joining ECMA to make sure it sucks as little as possible. All other things being equal, we'd much prefer to implement a spec that has a much better patent grant, was developed through a more public process, uses open standards like mathml, etc., but since MS has a dominant market position, we don't have much of a choice in the matter.' Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Foundation and Source Code Copyright
On 8/3/07, Dave Neary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi Thomas, > > Thomas Wood wrote: > > During discussions about copyright at GUADEC several people mentioned > > that developers were not encouraged to assign copyright to the GNOME > > Foundation. > > >From my point of view, "not encouraged" isn't the way I see things. > Certainly no-one has done so so far, and since the mission of the > foundation is more organisational than technical, the usefulness cound > be questioned, but I think it's reasonable for the foundation to defend > the copyrights of its members, and if certain members wis to assign > their copyright, I wouldn't see any problem with that. I don't see any conflict with the foundation's mission, but typically copyright assignment requires execution of a contract, and on the foundation side, obviously someone needs to keep tract of those contracts and what code is owned by the foundation. To the best of my knowledge the Foundation isn't prepared to do this ATM- we have no assignment contract and no recordkeeping. (In practice, the Foundation is also probably not prepared to go to court over its copyright, but I suppose that could be remedied.) I know that SFLC would be willing to help us formalize a contract and a system if the board thinks it should be done. > > A couple of developers, including myself, have been working on a new > > capplet for the control center. Since we had been working on it as a > > group we decided it would be fairest to assign copyright to the > > foundation rather than any particular individual. You can always jointly own copyright; if you look around CC I'm sure you'll see lots of files that are (c) both jrb and chema, for example. > While we have been discussing this issue, we also discovered that many > of the source files in control center did not have copyright > statements and those that did were probably out of date and did not > include the names of all the contributors. Could the foundation advise > us on what needs to be done and how we could rectify the situation as > quickly as possible. You probably don't *need* to do anything- the files are copyrighted by the authors whether there is a copyright statement or not. But it certainly wouldn't hurt to do a CVS history on the files in question and add names and appropriate (L)GPL headers to the files. HTH- Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Foundation and Source Code Copyright
On 8/3/07, Behdad Esfahbod <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Fri, 2007-08-03 at 21:48 +0200, Juan José Sánchez Penas wrote: > > On Fri, Aug 03, 2007 at 01:40:39PM -0400, Behdad Esfahbod wrote: > > > ownership. When multiple companies (Red Hat, Novell, Sun, ...) own > > > copyright on a package, it's harder to do something wrong (for example, > > > to relicense the package under a new license). > > > > Is this always something wrong? I guess sometimes making easier to change a > > license can be good (in terms of freedom, for example). All depends on how > > much you (want to) trust the copyright holder. > > Yeah, could be good if it was easier to say change Evo from GPLv2 to > GPLv3+, but you either end up having many copyright holders anyway (all > the people submitting non-trivial patches on bugzilla) or risk blocking > development by bureaucracy of having to submit disclaimer or assignment > forms first, like what Sun is doing with Java right now, or FSF with > Emacs and some other projects. But of course you have to weigh that risk (which is very real) with the risk of someone finding a gigantic loophole in the existing license and driving a truck through it. Not that any of *our* contributors would do such a thing. Ahem. ;) Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Foundation and Source Code Copyright
On 8/6/07, Havoc Pennington <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Kjartan Maraas wrote: > > Is there a rule of thumb as to how much code is contributed before this > > applies? I've always assumed that writing new code gives you the right > > to add yourself, but fixing bugs in existing code is a different matter? > > > > IANAL and don't really know. If you made me guess, if your fix involves > writing a few lines then that is copyrightable. (IANALYet, TANSTAAFL(egalconsultation), YMMV, etc.) Under US law, the contribution probably has to demonstrate some "modicum of creativity" in order to have copyright. If the few lines represent a creative solution to a problem, or a creative new feature (unlikely in just a few lines), then it is copyrightable; if the few lines are just an obvious 'oh, this has an off-by-one error'-type patch, where no creativity is involved since the solution was obvious once the problem was understood, then probably no copyright. But YMMV by court, jurisdiction, country, etc. :) Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Can we improve things?
On 9/12/07, Tristan Van Berkom <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > That way you get democracy at both ends - posting and viewing. > > > > GNOME is not democratic. :-) > > Well, gnome is people that have a choice to contribute or not - making > those people (i.e. you me and everyone else) feel accepted and important > is central to having a healthy project where everyone wants to be > involved. +1. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Suggestion for coming elections
On 10/16/07, Dave Neary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I'm certainly not against moving to STV, but that would need software, > and considerable retraining for members not familiar with the system. http://selectricity.org/ open + easy. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
OOXML [was Re: GNOME Foundation Board Meeting Minutes :: 7/6/07]
On 6/10/07, Luis Villa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 6/10/07, Jody Goldberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Sun, Jun 10, 2007 at 08:18:54PM -0400, Luis Villa wrote: > > > On 6/10/07, Glynn Foster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > 1) ECMA > > > > > > > >We have the opportunity of joining ECMA as a non-profit > > > >member. Jody has expressed an interest in being a representative > > > >for GNOME, and suggested it would also be good to get someone > > > >there from Abiword. > > > > > > > >ACTION: Behdad to contact Jody about the ECMA membership application > > > >and find a good candidate from Abiword to attend. Behdad to > > > >work on getting a press release for our membership. > > > > > > What would our purpose be there? > > > > As a non-profit we (GNOME) would not have voting privileges. > > The membership will serve as a mechanism to allow interested > > foundation members to join ECMA committees. I'm advocating this in > > relation to ECMA376/TC45 aka MS OfficeOpen XML. Committee members > > have the ability to request clarifications and suggest improvements > > in the text of the specification. For anyone implementing parts of > > this format this is a golden chance to get enough documentation to > > facilitate interoperability. > > Seems reasonable. > > Of course, I'd be more comfortable with it if we put out a press > release saying something to the effect of 'we see no way to avoid > implementing OOXML without screwing our users, so we're joining ECMA > to make sure it sucks as little as possible. All other things being > equal, we'd much prefer to implement a spec that has a much better > patent grant, was developed through a more public process, uses open > standards like mathml, etc., but since MS has a dominant market > position, we don't have much of a choice in the matter.' So, uh... this apparently didn't happen, and now we're getting flamed (rightfully) for appearing to give a stamp of approval to a deeply flawed standard. So... when is the board making this happen? Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: OOXML [was Re: GNOME Foundation Board Meeting Minutes :: 7/6/07]
On 10/29/07, Behdad Esfahbod <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > So, uh... this apparently didn't happen, and now we're getting flamed > > (rightfully) for appearing to give a stamp of approval to a deeply > > flawed standard. So... when is the board making this happen? > > Right. I should be blamed for not getting the press release out. Not > that the flame is correct (it's not) or even would have been prevented > by a press release. It's not like anybody cared to contact Jody or the > board or foundation before flaming... I was called on the phone, twice now. I'm surprised no one tried (apparently) to contact Jody or the board. This flaming was completely and utterly predictable. I'm disappointed that the board took the time to approve an action that obviously exposed GNOME to PR problems without taking the (very obvious) PR steps to reduce that impact. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: OOXML [was Re: GNOME Foundation Board Meeting Minutes :: 7/6/07]
On 10/30/07, Jody Goldberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > This flaming was completely and utterly predictable. I'm disappointed > > that the board took the time to approve an action that obviously > > exposed GNOME to PR problems without taking the (very obvious) PR > > steps to reduce that impact. > > You are correct, and I take responsibility for opening the > issue, and not writing a press release to protect the foundation > from the obvious attack. The effort is hampered by my disagreeing > with the opinion you, and much of the community appear to hold. > I think OOX should be blessed as a standard, > 'the MS Office XML File Format' > and that we should do everything we can to improve the specification > of that and any other format we interact with. If that level of > disagreement is unacceptable in the community then I can leave ECMA > and request that they discontinue the GNOME Foundation's membership. > In my opinion that would be a step backwards. As I said in my original note in June, I don't see that we have a choice- GNOME-based projects will have to implement OOXML, so we might as well be involved and make it suck less to the extent their (sham?) process allows us to do so. But I think we should make it absolutely clear that we're involved because MS is a dominant market power and abusive, convicted monopolist who will not be afraid to use OOXML to damage competitors, not because we think the spec process is a real, valid spec process, or because we like their spec. To the extent we can do both (improve the spec *and* remind the world that MS is an abusive, convicted monopolist) this is a win-win, and should have been in June. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: OOXML [was Re: GNOME Foundation Board Meeting Minutes :: 7/6/07]
On 10/30/07, Alan Cox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I look forward to further aggravated public shaming of past incompetencies, > > especially ones so obvious in hindsight, as it always improves motivation > > So you can do PR some of the time then Jeff > > "aggravated public shaming of past incompetencies" > > I have another word for that newspeak ... > > "Accountability" Heh. I'd love to draw attention to issues in other ways, but it does seem to get results. > > and encourages members to run for election. > > I hope it does. If they believe the board isn't doing the job as well as > they could... I am frustrated, and so I will be running for the board again. If elected, my almost-exclusive focus will be handling legal and secretarial issues for the board. So I can't guarantee that my being on the board would necessarily have prevented this particular problem, but I'd like to think I would have at least screamed very loud. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
board [was Re: OOXML [was Re: GNOME Foundation Board Meeting Minutes :: 7/6/07]]
On 10/31/07, Jeff Waugh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > I am frustrated, and so I will be running for the board again. > > > > If elected, my almost-exclusive focus will be handling legal and > > secretarial issues for the board. So I can't guarantee that my being on > > the board would necessarily have prevented this particular problem, but > > I'd like to think I would have at least screamed very loud. > > That's rocking good news. More warm bodies on the Board with time to spare > (or a very particular focus, plus the usual oversight and representation) is > a very welcome thing, and it would be great to have you on the Board again. > > A related issue: I think we've pretty much shown that the seven person Board > thing is a bit of a failure. Even if you're not elected or didn't run, we > could appoint you to the Board for this function. :-) We ought to consider > adding a couple of people to the Board. I'm hesitant to declare it a failure until I see more evidence that delegation has been tried and failed. For example, I could do this sort of thing without being on the board at all- no need to appoint me to the board. But frankly I have not felt like my attempts to help out have been invited, much less encouraged. Or to put it another way- I'm running because delegation appears to have failed, not because the 7-person board has failed. > So much for being away for five years. :-) I never said five, I said three. ;) Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: OOXML [was Re: GNOME Foundation Board Meeting Minutes :: 7/6/07]
On 10/31/07, Andy Tai <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Not quiet... you don't join ECMA TC45 to prevent OOXML from becoming a > standard. OOXML is going to be the defacto standard whether we like it or not. To pretend otherwise is to deny that the sun will rise in the East tomorrow. So our options can be: 1) pretend it doesn't exist and let Microsoft make it suck completely for anyone who has to reimplement it- which will include us at some point. 2) acknowledge it and at least attempt to make it suck less for reimplementers, and allow our presence at ECMA to be used as a pawn to weaken ODF. 3) acknowledge it and at least attempt to make it suck less for reimplementers, but use our presence there to highlight Microsoft's abusive, convicted monopolistic tendencies. I'm very disappointed that we're currently headed towards #2, which, IMHO, is probably worse than #1. But it shouldn't be that hard to push towards #3- which really is the least bad of all the options. Luis > On 10/31/07, Behdad Esfahbod < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Wed, 2007-10-31 at 10:19 +0100, BJörn Lindqvist wrote: > > > > > > I think that The GNOME participating in OOXML lends it a credibility > > > it does not deserve. Joining ECMA TC45 would be like joining of the > > > political party you dislike the most to improve their politics. > > > > To me, it's more like going to debates and challenging them. > > > > > > > -- > > > mvh Björn > > -- > > behdad > > http://behdad.org/ > > > > "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little > > Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." > > -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759 > > > > > > > > > > -- > Andy Tai, [EMAIL PROTECTED] > ___ > 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
