Re: Call for OPW project ideas
Hi Benjamin, You raise an interesting point. Back when I was freelancing as an audio engineer I used to pay for this kind of cover myself and it costed around £130 a year for an individual. The work I do for my charity (Scottish based) is covered by the charity as are our disclosures (for working with vulnerable people in the UK a disclosure of any criminal convictions is required by law here). I think it's fair to assume volunteers can't really afford to pay individual liability cover for volunteer work and perhaps that they should not be asked to pay for it either since they are making valuable regular contributions. Perhaps projects (including GNOME) involved in OPW (or generally, for that matter) should be asked consider covering all their card carrying members with liability cover to protect their members as they carry out volunteer work? Magdalen On Mon, Nov 3, 2014 at 9:46 PM, Benjamin Berg benja...@sipsolutions.net wrote: Hi, On Sa, 2014-09-27 at 11:45 -0400, Marina Zhurakhinskaya wrote: Yes. The legal liability is only for gross negligence, recklessness or intentional wrongdoing. This is covered on https://wiki.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen#Contracts OK, I am very late to the thread, but I did read trough the contracts and I do have some concerns. As I understand it, the whole point is to protect all parties involved from lawsuits. However, the contract seems to be biased a lot toward GNOME, and I am not sure it protects the mentors properly. It also seems that there may be liabilities attached to being a mentor, and I do think that the foundation should protect everyone involved (i.e. trough insurance policy and if necessary using the contracts). Some notes about what I would expect and how I read the current contracts: * If someone starts a civil lawsuit against me, I do want my local jurisdiction to apply. I have no way of properly defending myself if a US court is responsible. I do understand that the foundation does not want to be sued outside the country it is based, but the same is true for everyone involved. * Many mentors may not have their own insurance which protects them in the case of negligence. I would hope that the foundation ensures that everyone is protected (personally I do have an insurance that should cover it). * Does one even need a written contract for gross negligence? I have little clue about laws (even less so about US laws), but I would have thought it pretty much impossible to sue the foundation directly. (I guess Bradley answered this by saying that it is required as otherwise *both* GNOME and the mentor might be liable.) * Reading the contract I have the feeling that I would be fully liable as a mentor. And I even explicitly state in the contract that I have to answer in a timely manner. So right now the contract does look to me like it is primarily designed to protect the foundation (which is good), but to me it seems like it may not properly protect the other parties involved. (i.e. for mentors “Mentoring Activities” says I have to get work done; then “Relationship of Parties” says that I am not an agent of the foundation and in “Limitation of Liability” “GNOME, its officers, directors, employees, or suppliers” are deemed not to be liable. It does sound to me like this does not restrict the liability of the mentor in any way. As an example corner case. A student does not finish the internship successfully and claims it is the mentors fault (because they did not answer in a timely manner, or similar). Can the student sue the mentor or the foundation for damages (i.e. the stipend, or even a much larger amount)? I am aware that the whole point of the contract is to ensure that the risk of a civil lawsuit is minimized for everyone involved. However, right now I would be very reluctant to sign this contract without some further explanations. Benjamin ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-l...@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Call for OPW project ideas
I do not think Jan is thinking coherently on this (and likewise I absolutely empathise with your concerns Benjamin) Civil law is not black and white and it is totally by landmark cases of which there are none to refer to in this case that we know of. Ultimately, none of us know if the wording on that contract would mean anything unless a mentor or an intern takes GNOME to court over some row or another, then we'd find out. Obviously, I cannot speak for the OPW organisers but as I understand it they are literally just seeking to cover GNOME in the unlikely scenario that a student sues them because of a mentor's poor conduct. If I am right in that then it is entirely reasonable for the OPW organisers to seek to do that. Vetting mentors on a project of OPW's scale and size is simply not something GNOME has the resources for. They are being asked to put a lot of faith into projects to put forward mentors who the projects believe know how to behave themselves, but projects (and people) can and do get things wrong. Especially when it comes to projects with lots of men who and very few women. The chance of a project picking the wrong person to be an OPW mentor actually seems to be pretty high in FLOSS. Not only do we have a huge imbalance in the male/female ratio, we [FLOSS] have developed itself around a meritocratic culture which has a tendency to ignore the consequences of what happens when one exceptional coder/contributor is a completely toxic human being in all other respects. The challenges the OPW organisers face is in figuring out how to encourage projects and mentors to sign up and yet also protect GNOME from a potential lawsuit in the event that things go horribly wrong as a result of something that may not be GNOME's fault. This contract seems to be sort of like a disclaimer yet there is a concerning subtext in the documents because the role of the mentor organisations involved do not seem to be being addressed. As we are aware, OPW's goal is to support communities from projects who are keen on actively taking concious steps to actively invite women to participate and then encourage those women to continue on and progress as contributors. That goal seems to have been motivated by the reality which is supported by concrete figures ( ~1-2% of the community are made up of women) i.e. that there is glaring gender inequality in FLOSS. With that core mission in mind, it is my view, the mentor/intern missing project contract loses sight of OPW's aims on a fairly fundamental level because it fails to concede that the mentor organisation has a role to play in helping women starting out overcome the barriers they are statistically likely face. In my view emphasising a project's responsibility for the conduct of its mentors rather than placing individual responsibility on mentors like this would serve to avoid the following potential barriers to progress: - As already been suggested by Benjamin: The mentor contract might potentially put mentors off of participating. I would go further and say it could put off the sensible ones, actually. From the mentors perspective that contract essentially seems to infer that if things go wrong that it is not just GNOME who takes no responsibility for that. Unlike Jan, I can absolutely concede that if a mentor did sign this document that this mentor would not have a leg to stand on in a civil court whether or not they were defending themselves against their project or the intern or whether they were suing GNOME. To my mind, it follows that anyone signing that mentor contract is not likely to be risk-averse, at best. - Perhaps a less obvious consideration but possibly even more important is that the absence of a project contract means projects are not given an opportunity to pause for thought when they are selecting their members to put forward for mentor roles. As things are, what's to stop a project going for the money and just putting any old numpty in for the role, to the probable detriment of the intern and the aim of their project to go ahead score diversity points, for themselves on paper?. Neither the mentor nor intern documents send out any kind of message to the projects themselves about their responsibility in OPW, as far as I can tell. Maybe there is another document we have not seen between projects and GNOME, in that case it would be good for mentors and interns to know about that. We all live in a world where the vast majority of people just don't tend to go around filing lawsuits unless they have exhausted all other options especially not people who have yet to establish themselves in their chosen field. So the thing to recognise is that the law serves not simply to deal with problems once they have arisen, but to prevent issues from arising in the first place. I have to wonder what issues are these documents practically likely to prevent from happening? Forgetting GNOME for a minute to look
Re: Call for OPW project ideas
I highly doubt being an OPW mentor will increase the likelihood of my ending up in court. I think that is not in question here. The point is that if a big organisation who can afford to get sued is not willing to take a risk, why should an individual volunteer be *explicitly* asked to do that when there is seemingly no similar such demand made of the mentor organisation for which they are volunteering their free time? Magdalen p.s. the terms and conditions of your ISP will be on their website. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Call for OPW project ideas
On Mon, Nov 10, 2014 at 2:42 PM, Karen Sandler ka...@punkrocklawyer.com wrote: On 2014-11-10 05:45, Magdalen Berns wrote: On Mon, Nov 10, 2014 at 4:09 AM, Karen Sandler ka...@punkrocklawyer.com wrote: On 2014-11-09 20:23, Michael Catanzaro wrote: On Sun, 2014-11-09 at 18:48 +, Magdalen Berns wrote: The challenges the OPW organisers face is in figuring out how to encourage projects and mentors to sign up and yet also protect GNOME from a potential lawsuit in the event that things go horribly wrong as a result of something that may not be GNOME's fault. I don't see much of a challenge. The wording under question is: For only situations arising out of your gross negligence, recklessness or intentional wrongdoing, you shall indemnify, defend, and hold harmless GNOME, its officers, directors, and employees from any and all claims, demands, damages, costs and liabilities, including reasonable attorneys’ fees, made by any third party due to or arising out of your participation in the Program; your Mentoring Activities (including correspondence with the Participant or Participants, and modification of any Participant’s source code or written materials); or your violation of this Agreement. This is really mundane: I agreed to a more restrictive indemnification than this by simply reading CNN.com today. So has anybody who's ever used Skype, or Flash, or Facebook. (Seriously, check the ToS of Facebook or CNN, the two I bothered to check; they're very similar and include the provision about attorneys' fees.) Or the Internet, really; I'm surprised I didn't have to agree to indemnify my ISP, though maybe that was part of my contract and I just forgot. Anybody can sue anybody for anything, and I highly doubt being an OPW mentor will increase the likelihood of my ending up in court. Thanks Michael. We very much tried to limit the contracts as much as possible, to figure out how to set up the infrastructure to host the program without unduly burdening the intern and mentor contracts only have indemnities triggered for gross negligence, recklessness or intentional wrongdoing, as discussed in the previous thread (this is actually a pretty high bar). Not only do I think that this legal infrastructure is necessary in order for the Foundation to host the program, but some funders also require that it be in place. Obviously. The thing about funders is that a lot of them are businesses who will used to imposing terms on individuals and figuring out how to remove any accountability from themselves. As a charitable organisation, of course GNOME is sensible to take steps to listen to the advice and recommendations of its funders about how OPW is run but that should not mean that we have to blindly use their design in a case where it is going to be detrimental to OPW's core mission. It's important to recognise what motivates people in something like this because ultimately, no amount of money that these funders have to offer is worth the trade off if OPW finds it is not able to find decent mentors and the interns do not end up staying on as contributors FLOSS because they have had a poor experience under this model. These women are not pieces of pasta you can throw at a wall to see which ones are sticky enough to stay on it. They are human beings who have already been identified as being likely to face discrimination in FLOSS. It is a mistake to apply a generic legal structure which let's face it, have absolutely no track record of solving the problems that OPW is trying to address (if anything the converse). I absolutely agree and love the pasta analogy :D Thanks. I' have been waiting for an excuse to air that one. Our legal structure was designed by us with deep consultation from a law firm that helped us pro bono (Justin Colannino who worked with me at SFLC was our primary contact and he brought in varied experience, like employment law, from partners in the firm). Our starting point was GSoC because it's the closest program to what we're doing but we veered from it considerably, both to impose less liability to our mentor and intern participants and also to reflect that our program is very different (and that we're a nonprofit). What we settled on is the lightest weight agreement I could come to with those lawyers that was functional for the Foundation. I get that. I do, but I wonder is where the mentor organisation fits in to all of this: What will compel a mentor organisation to get involved with OPW for the right reason and take their own role in OPW seriously while they are seemingly not deemed responsible for the mentors who they are signing up for OPW? Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME starts campaign to protect its trademarks
At last count, the number was up to USD 87693.47. It seems Shakespeare was quite wrong about the insignificance of a name, after all... It would be great to see that money not have to go on Lawyers fees, I must say. One has to wonder why they didn't just use a trademark search first and why people are actually allowed to file for names which are already taken. The whole process seems a bit stinky. Groupon have indeed contacted us in the last few hours and have agreed to abandon their 28 relevant trademark applications as well as to change the name of their product. For a little bit more information, see http://www.gnome.org/news/2014/11/groupon-has-agreed-to-change-its-product-name/ Anyway, for those on the edge of their seats: Here is Groupon's statement: https://www.groupon.com/blog/cities/gnome-update. Their GNOME website is still going though: http://gnome.groupon.com/ I am cautiously optimistic given how much they seem to have invested in this already. It'll be interesting to see how things pan out. Thanks for keeping us posted! Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Builder crowdsourcing banner on PGO
Oh dear. On Fri, Jan 2, 2015 at 1:39 AM, Fabiano Fidêncio fabi...@fidencio.org wrote: On Fri, Jan 2, 2015 at 2:24 AM, Alexandre Franke alexandre.fra...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jan 2, 2015 at 1:59 AM, Fabiano Fidêncio fabi...@fidencio.org wrote: Can you be more explicit about what you mean with tools used to do your/the bank transactions run nonfree software AFAIU, when you do a bank transfer, the job responsible for your transaction will be executed in the next scheduled period. There are people monitoring and scheduling it (most likely not using free software for this), there is a system on where it is being running (same here ...). According to the GNU/FSF advocacy, in the case of a service it is ok not to have access to the source code since you're not the one running the software. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/network-services-arent-free-or-nonfree.fr.html Thanks for the link. You also run the non-free software when you use online banking, ebay, paypal, amazon, google and pretty much everything that most of us regularly use... Are we considering not linking to this fundraiser because it is hosted on a website that uses non-free software? I hate to break it to you all, but it's entirely likely that GNOME servers have already linked to a website that uses non-free software before, probably like a lot of times... A quick site search seems to agree with my hypothesis. In my view, there are more effective ways to demonstrate that we care about free software than this and in any case, it seems a bit hypocritical of us to get all shirty about a single link to promote the fundraiser of the development project of GNOME builder, with all things considered. And I'm really wondering how much these random comments about not good, not free software coming from and with no real suggestions can help instead of just generate noise and silly discussions like this one. You're mislead about the intentions of people caring about software freedom. Your stance is that they should not be so focused on their cause, but maybe you should be a bit more open as well and consider their points and reasoning rather than just outright claiming it is noise. Many of us were already aware his fundraiser would be hosted on indiGoGo before it was published including you (Alexandre). Nobody from GNOME seemed to object to indiGoGo as a fundraiser platform when the idea was being thrashed out and nobody objecting here has suggested any alternative or offered to help support Christian in setting something up either. Fabiano makes a very valid point about that. If there are people among us who really want to make it a policy not to do this sort of thing then that seems like a valid discussion to have for the future but I really don't see why this issue should affect the community's willingness to promote builder fundraiser on the GNOME server when is already well in motion and there's no alternative solution to the problem we seek to solve for builder. On that basis I have to agree with Fabiano, that the objections against this are not being argued in a constructive way. Here we are discussing the project lead by Christian who has already invested so much of his time, energy and effort into putting it all together, hacking away. He has placed a lot of trust and good faith into the community who have given him positive feedback to nurture the investment. The project is for a GNOME specific development tool which we are all likely to benefit from. If we don't choose to support it, who else is going to do that? Personally I feel that for us to collectively refuse to help with the builder fundraiser this late in the day would be an utterly disrespectful way to undervalue the time, energy and hard work contributed by the Builder team's contributors who are working on something that is specifically designed with the GNOME community in mind. Ultimately, the take home point I want to make is that we don't have a policy on linking to non-free software. Maybe we should but right now: we don't. On that basis, we should get behind members of our community at the times when it most matters to them, which is for builder is right now. Yeah, I've checked a proper dictionary before, that's the reason I've asked you what did you mean, because it was still not clear to me. I can't be sure but I believe he meant the point was moot because he felt he'd proved himself right on the issue already, in an earlier paragraph. Happy 2015, Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Builder crowdsourcing banner on PGO
On Fri, Jan 2, 2015 at 1:40 PM, Richard Stallman r...@gnu.org wrote: Are we considering not linking to this fundraiser because it is hosted on a website that uses non-free software? That depends what you mean by considering. Several people are arguing vigorously against that idea, but nobody proposed it and nobody advocates it. The issue I've raised is not about what software _Indiegogo uses_ in its server. We have no reason to be concerned about that. Indeed, we can't tell what software Indiegogo uses internally, because it does not affect us -- so we may as well ignore it. (Please forgive me for repeating what I've said before.) Rather, this issue about what software _donors_ have to run when they donate via Indiegogo. It includes nonfree Javascript code that Indiegogo installs in the donor's browser. That affects the freedom of the donors: if we ask people to donate via Indiegogo, we are asking _them_ to run nonfree software. See http://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html. I get the javascript thing, ta. ;-) Right. So, to recap: those who are objecting have never used a credit/debit card to buy stuff or get cash out the wall? Those scenarios are not similar. When I get cash from an ATM, the ATM owner is running software but I am not. I don't know what software is inside the ATM, but in any case it doesn't affect me. Since using an ATM does not require running nonfree software, there is no harm in suggesting other people use an ATM. Hmm I am not so sure: The chip in your own card will be programmed with non-free software technically the transaction can't work unless the ATM is reading that. For the ATM to read your chip you are required you to physically connect your card's chip to the ATM's reader thus making an electronic circuit between your nonfree chip software and their non-free ATM software I do occasionally pay with a credit card (very rarely, for privacy reasons), but only in ways that avoid my running any proprietary software. I don't know what software the merchant and the bank use for this, but in any case it doesn't affect me, etc. Respect that. Many of us were already aware his fundraiser would be hosted on indiGoGo before it was published including you (Alexandre). Nobody from GNOME seemed to object to indiGoGo as a fundraiser platform when the idea was being thrashed out and nobody objecting here has suggested any alternative or offered to help support Christian in setting something up either. I raised this issue as soon as I became aware of the campaign, which was when I saw it mentioned here. I would have raised the issue earlier if I had known earlier. That is unfortunate. I guess we (those who knew about it before) could have thought of it but in our defence a lot of FLOSS projects seem to happen on there so I guess it's understandable why nobody considered there would be any problem. Since it is too late to do the campaign differently, I think we should suggest to people that they bypass the campaign and send money directly to a person or organization associated with Builder. This does not seem like proportionate response taking into account that the Builder campaign has time considerations and the developer needs to, like eat and stuff to keep on living (lest we forget that). How about we all agree to let Builder off the hook and have a policy discussion about linking to sites that use non-free software, for in future? With all that said, perhaps as a sort of compromise Christian could also think about publishing a bitcoin address on the indigogo page, so that those who are used to making transactions and are offended by the idea of indigogo are able to donate with this way instead. That would partially solve the problem, but it would be better for us to post the bitcoin address directly and skip Indiegogo. Intermediate: we could mention Indiegogo and ask people to please use the bitcoin address rather than donating thru Indiegogo. I would certainly agree it's worth publishing a bitcoin address as well as the indiGoGo but realistically, Builder is not likely to any corporate donations that way and it's likely that a non-trivial portion of potential individual donors might be put off by the practicalities of that too. Bitcoin is still fairly niche. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Linking to non-free websites from gnome.org
The issue at hand is what to say to the public. Which is a policy issue... GNOME are responsible for establishing its policies and GNOME has not seen fit to establish any concrete policy on this (for whatever reason). Not establishing concrete policy and guidance to cover these sorts of relevant themes creates avoidable conflicts like this one, it only ever seems to serve to waste time and resources by forcing people to reinvent the wheel and it also provides a breeding ground for discriminatory practices and unethical conduct (I could go on...) But anyway moving swiftly on, let's break the problems down since we all seem to be talking at cross purposes: *Problem 1.* Not promoting the indiGoGo at this stage will essentially make it more likely that Christian may not be able to meet his target and would have to forfeit 9% of the funding he raises instead of 4% in 24 days time. https://go.indiegogo.com/pricing-fees *Problem 2.* There is no clear agreed policy or guidance on promoting and fundraising GNOME project work and concerns have been raised about whether or not to be seen to be endorsing sites which use dodgy javascript as a general rule (like indiGoGo) from GNOME's servers. It is clear you (Richard) are really passionate about solving problem 2 and to be fair, you do absolutely raise some very important points, but here's the thing: a lot of people here seem to be more concerned about problem 1 at this immediate moment in time and that's not necessarily because they would disagree with the principle of what you are saying but just that under these circumstances whatever way we look at it, this wasn't flagged early on enough and the damage of this cannot be undone (for at least 24 days, it can't anyway), we would not want to harm the builder indigogo campaign at this stage over something that essentially, we are collectively responsible for. With all things considered, an ideal situation is one were where we [the community] are all willing and able to solve problems 1 and 2 respectively on a policy level not only to ensure our actions to date are not detrimental to builder but also to allow objective discussion to flourish regarding the concerns you have raised. Ultimately, it serves everyone if we can figure out how to ensure that this sort of conflict does not have to go on to become a recurring one for the future and so that the agreed principles can easily be applied in a consistent way in all potential use cases so that things are fair. Magdalen ___ 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
Karen, Marina: Can you elaborate on your plans for OP? It seems unclear whether you intend to continue to lean on the infrastructure of larger organisations like GNOME or SFC or whether you intend to create a concrete autonomous model for OP in the long run and these things are just necessary steps towards that goal. Organizationally, Outreachy will be hosted by Conservancy for the time being. Conservancy is set up to encourage self-governance of the projects it hosts to a great degree. What I am wondering is whether the long term goal for this project is autonomy, or if this is the set-up which is most likely to meet all the demands of the project. Magdalen As you are likely aware, there is an awful lot more to consider in organising project which is focused on engaging and minority groups than logistics, but this is especially so now that OP is has begun expanding its reach to include potentially vulnerable people, too. Personally I would support a move towards the establishment of OP as an organisation, with a European base. Magdalen p.s. Consider what Outreachy rhymes with, before finalising this as a name. On Tue, Feb 3, 2015 at 8:20 PM, Sriram Ramkrishna s...@ramkrishna.me wrote: On Tue, Feb 3, 2015 at 9:01 AM, Stormy Peters sto...@gnome.org wrote: Did anything happen with the adboard at FOSDEM? It's very important to keep up relationships with adboard members if we want to continue to depend on them for financial contributions. And you should never pass up a chance to meet with them in person! I agree completely. It's a lot harder without a executive director who primarily does this. That said, I did send a note out about having an adboard meeting possibly during the Conservency dinner. We generally have enough members do one at FOSDEM. This time we did not have a quorom unfortunately. sri Stormy On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 2:51 PM, Andrea Veri a...@gnome.org wrote: = Minutes for Friday, January 23th, 2015, 17:00 UTC = Next meeting due on February 6th, 2015 at 17:00 UTC == Attending == * Ekaterina Gerasimova * Rosanna Yuen * Marina Zhurakhinskaya * Jeff Fortin * Andrea Veri * Karen Sandler * Tobias Mueller * Sriram Ramkrishna == Regrets == == Missing == == Board meeting == * Adboard meeting at FOSDEM 2015 * Unfortunately was not organized yet, so possibility of piggybacking on the SFC dinner event with a GNOME table? ($40 in advance/euro 40 at the door per attendee) * People can go on an individual basis, but the general feeling among board members seems to be we're probably not setting this up as an official event; maybe just sending an informal invitation email to the adboard list to let them know they can join us there * ACTION: Sri to send an informal invitation mail to the adboard for the event * Next steps for the Outreach Program * Marina sent an e-mail to board-list with all the planned next steps for the OP * This is a follow-up to a discussion we started during the GUADEC 2014 board meeting about the growth requirements for the Outreach Program * GNOME has been a good home to launch and grow the project so far, but the program has somewhat outgrown the capabilities of GNOME. Preparations are being made to create an environment where the OP can grow over time without creating too much burden to the GNOME Foundation (in terms of workload on the Board, Rosanna's time handling the payments and invoices) * OP is being renamed to Outreachy * OP would be joining the SFC; GNOME would still be providing its infrastructure, for the time of the transition * When this round will end (around March) funds (general OP and travel funds) will have to be transferred from the GNOME Foundation to the SFC * Obligations (reimbursements etc.) will be then moved to the SFC itself * Rosanna will still be required to help out OP with invoicing / reimbursement till the end of March * Travel allowances will still have to be approved by the Board for this (round that ends in March) and previous rounds * VOTE: The board agrees to move of OP to the SF Conservancy to further the growth of the program. GNOME will continue to be the infrastructure partner for the time being. Details on the transfering of funds and any other information and the exact timetable will be established in due course, upon consulation with counsel. * The GNOME Foundation would not be bound by the contract of the SFC. The primary reason for this vote is that SFC wants to make sure that GNOME is okay with this move * +1 from Jeff, Tobi, Sri, Kat, Andrea - Karen Marina abstain * ACTION: Karen Marina should provide a more detailed plan as things are being figured out (timeframe, next steps) * 500$ materials sponsorship
Re: Minutes of the Board Meeting of January, 23th, 2015
Karen, Marina: Can you elaborate on your plans for OP? It seems unclear whether you intend to continue to lean on the infrastructure of larger organisations like GNOME or SFC or whether you intend to create a concrete autonomous model for OP in the long run and these things are just necessary steps towards that goal. As you are likely aware, there is an awful lot more to consider in organising project which is focused on engaging and minority groups than logistics, but this is especially so now that OP is has begun expanding its reach to include potentially vulnerable people, too. Personally I would support a move towards the establishment of OP as an organisation, with a European base. Magdalen p.s. Consider what Outreachy rhymes with, before finalising this as a name. On Tue, Feb 3, 2015 at 8:20 PM, Sriram Ramkrishna s...@ramkrishna.me wrote: On Tue, Feb 3, 2015 at 9:01 AM, Stormy Peters sto...@gnome.org wrote: Did anything happen with the adboard at FOSDEM? It's very important to keep up relationships with adboard members if we want to continue to depend on them for financial contributions. And you should never pass up a chance to meet with them in person! I agree completely. It's a lot harder without a executive director who primarily does this. That said, I did send a note out about having an adboard meeting possibly during the Conservency dinner. We generally have enough members do one at FOSDEM. This time we did not have a quorom unfortunately. sri Stormy On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 2:51 PM, Andrea Veri a...@gnome.org wrote: = Minutes for Friday, January 23th, 2015, 17:00 UTC = Next meeting due on February 6th, 2015 at 17:00 UTC == Attending == * Ekaterina Gerasimova * Rosanna Yuen * Marina Zhurakhinskaya * Jeff Fortin * Andrea Veri * Karen Sandler * Tobias Mueller * Sriram Ramkrishna == Regrets == == Missing == == Board meeting == * Adboard meeting at FOSDEM 2015 * Unfortunately was not organized yet, so possibility of piggybacking on the SFC dinner event with a GNOME table? ($40 in advance/euro 40 at the door per attendee) * People can go on an individual basis, but the general feeling among board members seems to be we're probably not setting this up as an official event; maybe just sending an informal invitation email to the adboard list to let them know they can join us there * ACTION: Sri to send an informal invitation mail to the adboard for the event * Next steps for the Outreach Program * Marina sent an e-mail to board-list with all the planned next steps for the OP * This is a follow-up to a discussion we started during the GUADEC 2014 board meeting about the growth requirements for the Outreach Program * GNOME has been a good home to launch and grow the project so far, but the program has somewhat outgrown the capabilities of GNOME. Preparations are being made to create an environment where the OP can grow over time without creating too much burden to the GNOME Foundation (in terms of workload on the Board, Rosanna's time handling the payments and invoices) * OP is being renamed to Outreachy * OP would be joining the SFC; GNOME would still be providing its infrastructure, for the time of the transition * When this round will end (around March) funds (general OP and travel funds) will have to be transferred from the GNOME Foundation to the SFC * Obligations (reimbursements etc.) will be then moved to the SFC itself * Rosanna will still be required to help out OP with invoicing / reimbursement till the end of March * Travel allowances will still have to be approved by the Board for this (round that ends in March) and previous rounds * VOTE: The board agrees to move of OP to the SF Conservancy to further the growth of the program. GNOME will continue to be the infrastructure partner for the time being. Details on the transfering of funds and any other information and the exact timetable will be established in due course, upon consulation with counsel. * The GNOME Foundation would not be bound by the contract of the SFC. The primary reason for this vote is that SFC wants to make sure that GNOME is okay with this move * +1 from Jeff, Tobi, Sri, Kat, Andrea - Karen Marina abstain * ACTION: Karen Marina should provide a more detailed plan as things are being figured out (timeframe, next steps) * 500$ materials sponsorship request for GNOME Peru Fest 2015 * VOTE: approve the 500$ materials sponsorship: +1 unanimous * Next board meeting: our backlog is huge. We could have an extra meeting right after FOSDEM, intsead of waiting 2 weeks. * ACTION: Tobi/Sri to evaluate the situation while at FOSDEM and request an extra meeting if needed Deferred: * Responding to a phone press inquiry asking to reach Stormy Peters * Comment from Stormy:
Re: GNOME support for fixmydocument.eu
+1 On Wed, Feb 4, 2015 at 1:32 PM, Oliver Propst oliver.pro...@gmail.com wrote: I hope a board member step-up and sign the agreement for GNOME. On Wed, Feb 4, 2015 at 2:22 PM, Tobias Mueller mue...@cryptobitch.de wrote: Hi. On Wed, Feb 04, 2015 at 11:51:41AM +0100, Olav Vitters wrote: There's a website to encourage support for open standards, so ODF usage within European Union. On http://fixmydocuments.eu/?page_id=27 I see Good idea. Does anybody feel like writing a short statement? Cheers, Tobi ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list -- -mvh Oliver Propst ___ 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: foundation application..
I suggest we just make the rules much clearer to people on the outreach pages by clarifying what non-trivial actually means. GSoC/OPW interns are told to make more contributions after their 3 month internship before applying. That suggests that the contributions they make over their 3 month internship of 40 hours per week are trivial. It's no wonder contributors find the process of making a membership application intimidating considering that, isn't it? How could a volunteer compete with an someone who is being paid to work on GNOME full time (even if it is just for 3 months)? I can't find a single reference of anyone ever saying contributions made by interns during their internship are considered as trivial by the Membership Committee. If the contribution is non-trivial then the contributor is eligible for membership under the rules. I can find you a reference to demonstrate that interns are told project of an internship is not enough to allow successful interns apply for foundation membership, but you seem to be aware that this is a practice already so I will try to address some concerns you may have. One of the main requirements of gaining Foundation Membership is being active within the community for a little while *after* the internship has ended to demonstrate the fact there's a real interest staying around and contributing to the Project. This is a practice which completely contradicts the bylaws definition a contributor who is eligible for membership. * All contributors have made a significant contribution (BYLAW) * All contributors are eligible for membership (BYLAW) * Some interns have made a significant contribution over their internship * No interns are eligible for membership This does not make sense. The rationale behind this decision is mainly related to the fact a good number of interns stopped contributing right after their internship ended and it was clear to us their intent wasn't sticking around the community nor they probably were passionate about our project to justify staying around some more. We found extending the contributions period (usually one or two months) for interns the best solution to build a membership base made of people who really love and care deeply about the project and the values it promotes. The bylaws do not say anything about a contribution period (and I had not heard of it before myself either, to be honest). However, they do explicitly state that individuals who should get credit for their contributions (not the corporations who pay them), the same as ordinary volunteers might. Either sponsored contributions are as valuable as ones that aren't sponsored, or they aren't: The bylaws say that they are... If there is an exception being made in the case of some interns then that seems quite significant. The bylaws do not say anything about what might motivate contributors to contribute, nor their level of commitment to GNOME, when it defines a contributor in terms of foundation membership but it does fairly clearly describe about what a contributor is. The main thing that is unclear in the bylaws is what defines a non-trivial contribution really and this becomes even more confusing because the practice is to state that all interns who make contribution from 40 hour weeks over a period of 3 months are not eligible until they contribute more stuff. What you are suggesting would be accepting every single intern regardless of this person being really interested and passionate about joining the Foundation. That will probably lead to a wider membership base for sure but how long these people are going to really stay around if their interest of contributing to the project was only tracked by the stipend they received? I am assuming that many - if not, all of the interns who passed their internship make a non-trivial contribution to achieve that but with that said, I am not suggesting that doing an internship should grant automatic membership (and that idea is not in the bylaws either, so it's potentially just as problematic in the same sort of way). Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: foundation application..
On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 6:32 AM, Germán Poo-Caamaño g...@gnome.org wrote: On Thu, 2015-02-12 at 20:54 -0800, Christian Hergert wrote: On 02/12/2015 07:33 PM, Cosimo Cecchi wrote: I think you bring up an interesting point, but I also like the idea that foundation membership is not a badge you earn if you contribute enough, but hints to a deeper involvement with the community inner workings. I argue that a 3-months contribution from someone fresh to the project might or might not be enough to grant membership regardless of how they have been involved with the project, and I'm curious whether the case you are bringing up is theoretical or if there have been cases of interns interested in foundation membership dismissed solely on the supposed intern clause. Of course I do support any initiative that aims to make the foundation a more welcoming place! I think the point here is that if our current bylaws claim one thing, we should adhere to that for the time being. If we don't agree with the bylaws, then they should be altered, which is a different process. The foundation bylaws predates any outreach program (including bounties, that predates outreach programs) by many years. Therefore, hardly can address this special case. Back then there was no program where we were proactively seeking contributors by offering them money. Back then, if anybody applied after contributing for a period of time, then it was kind-of-clear(TM) they were to continue in the project. I am talking about both GSoC and Outreach Program interns and this is factually incorrect either way: GSoC has been going for 10 years and Outreach Program seems to have been going since 2010. The bylaws were last updated in 2012. Moreover though, it's worth pointing out again that sponsored contributors are not a new thing for GNOME the question of the value of their contributions is covered in the bylaws which state, Contributions made in the course of employment will be considered and will be ascribed to the individuals involved, rather than accruing to all employees of a “contributing” corporation. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: foundation application..
On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 10:19 AM, Germán Poo-Caamaño g...@gnome.org wrote: On Fri, 2015-02-13 at 09:46 +, Magdalen Berns wrote: On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 6:32 AM, Germán Poo-Caamaño g...@gnome.org wrote: On Thu, 2015-02-12 at 20:54 -0800, Christian Hergert wrote: On 02/12/2015 07:33 PM, Cosimo Cecchi wrote: I think you bring up an interesting point, but I also like the idea that foundation membership is not a badge you earn if you contribute enough, but hints to a deeper involvement with the community inner workings. I argue that a 3-months contribution from someone fresh to the project might or might not be enough to grant membership regardless of how they have been involved with the project, and I'm curious whether the case you are bringing up is theoretical or if there have been cases of interns interested in foundation membership dismissed solely on the supposed intern clause. Of course I do support any initiative that aims to make the foundation a more welcoming place! I think the point here is that if our current bylaws claim one thing, we should adhere to that for the time being. If we don't agree with the bylaws, then they should be altered, which is a different process. The foundation bylaws predates any outreach program (including bounties, that predates outreach programs) by many years. Therefore, hardly can address this special case. Back then there was no program where we were proactively seeking contributors by offering them money. Back then, if anybody applied after contributing for a period of time, then it was kind-of-clear(TM) they were to continue in the project. I am talking about both GSoC and Outreach Program interns and this is factually incorrect either way: GSoC has been going for 10 years and Outreach Program seems to have been going since 2010. The bylaws were last updated in 2012. Moreover though, it's worth pointing out again that sponsored contributors are not a new thing for GNOME the question of the value of their contributions is covered in the bylaws which state, Contributions made in the course of employment will be considered and will be ascribed to the individuals involved, rather than accruing to all employees of a “contributing” corporation. As you say, the bylaws were updated, not rewritten. The updates, though important were minor. It doesn't make a difference. The bylaws are the rules which regulate the GNOME Foundation. GNOME's bylaws state the rules on membership eligibility by defining what a contributor is and who is illegible for membership (i.e. someone who has made a non-trivial contribution to GNOME). The practice of telling all successful interns not to apply, misleads the community about what the rules on membership eligibility are and (assuming we are all agreed that at least some interns do make a nontrivial contribution over their 3 month sponsored period of internship) it misleads them about what the definition of a non-trivial contribution is, too. If any member wishes to make amendments to the bylaws then there is a process for that which is laid out in the amendments section of bylaws. Any member can propose the adoption, amendment or repealing of the Bylaws. In the event of such a proposal, the following procedures shall be implemented: 1. The members shall be provided with the reasonable means to comment upon and/or object to any such proposal for twenty one (21) days 2. The proposal shall be sent to the membership and shall be posted on // foundation.gnome.org http: by the Board 3. In the event that five percent or more of the members object to the proposal, a special meeting of the members shall be convened in accordance with the provisions of Article VII, and the proposal shall be voted upon 4. In the event that five percent or more of the members do not object to the proposal, then the proposal shall be adopted by the Board to the extent permitted by CNPBCL Section 5150(a). Where CNPBCL is the California Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation Law. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: foundation application..
What you are suggesting would be accepting every single intern regardless of this person being really interested and passionate about joining the Foundation. That will probably lead to a wider membership base for sure but how long these people are going to really stay around if their interest of contributing to the project was only tracked by the stipend they received? I don't think that this is necessarily different from other paid contributors, except that other paid contributors are more likely to have long-term employment working on GNOME. So I don't know why this distinction is made. Can you explain the rationale a bit more? The question I originally made to Magdalen was there for me to find out whether an intern really had an interest in joining the Foundation besides from receiving a travel subsidy or participation to Planet GNOME. The rationale behind introducing a two months extended period for interns before applying for Foundation membership has been the unfortunately high number of interns dramatically reducing the number of their contributions after the final date of their internship. I can tell you that statistically this hasn't been the case for past employees of our corporate sponsors as many of them have decided to stick around (by reducing their involvement to IRC or mailing lists participation) or apply for the emeritus membership when they weren't able to contribute to the project anymore. The module I have been maintaining since last year (the ATK java wrapper), was funded by sun and got completely abandoned as soon as the funding got withdrawn in 2011 and this does not seem to be a totally unique occurrence, but either way this is just anecdotal evidence as much as that is. Personally, I would like to see statistics to see if they support either hypothesis, because at the moment I believe neither actually substantiated by concrete numbers. Without those, we really have no reason to suppose that an intern or a paid contributor have a different probabilities of cutting and running the instant that the money is gone to each other. As things are, all we know is that sponsored contributors are offered the same incentive to contribute to GNOME with their time (i.e. money and perhaps some possibilities of progression, in some cases). We really don't know whether being paid for 3 months means something different to being paid for a longer period of time. The only fair assumption we can make about this issue is that volunteers are not being motivated by money really and the rules in the bylaws prevent us from discriminating against those who are not volunteers on that basis already so that's out, at this point in time. Why don't we actually analyse the data since this is the only way to really determine with some degree of certainty whether the assumptions which have informed the decision to discriminate against interns are justified? I would be willing to could work with whoever else is interested in solving this problem publish a report of the findings, as long as we could access to the necessary information which would be needed to do that. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Privacy campaign funds
A while back we ran a $20K privacy campaign. A while later there was a discussion about what to do with the funds. Did we ever decide what to do with these? Nope. I proposed to fund interns to work on security and privacy related projects but the idea was rejected. This seems like a nice idea. Why was it rejected? Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: foundation application..
If you have a concrete reason why it does help to continue to ignore bylaws that are inconvenient for whatever is more convenient, then you are free to make a case for that. California law probably would probably override that idea, though. I tried to nicest way to let you see a different point of view, taking into account the previous failure to have any discussion with you. It seems you're not open in understanding what I mean. This is not a complicated process, it is fairly clear and transparent (especially when compared with the alternative). What is the problem with using It? Yeah, just focus on whatever the bylaws might or not might take. Did you read my email? Did you make any effort to grasp what I'm trying to say? Your questions indicate you did not. The effort I made was to I ask what you were on about and that is still not very clear. I'll try in a different way: - there's apparently a different criteria being applied - you seem to focus on what the bylaws state This IMO skips an important part of trying to figure out why a different criteria is being applied. For instance, you mention that according to the bylaws it is not allowed to make a distinction. Yes. Most of the arguments for why this is not a big deal, are based around the assumption that the argument for applying a different criteria is strong - a no brainer, even. I imagine it would be hard to understand where I am coming from unless you are able to concede that the evidence to support the need to applying a different criteria is being applied, is actually very questionable. Further, it is not allowed by some court. I don't think you're right in asserting that. All organisations have to obey the law and bylaws are the laws which govern the organisation and I am right in asserting that. Would it ever actually go to court? Unlikely. Would we be able to defend our conduct in court? Unlikely and that's the point. So I am guessing you mean right in the ethical sense? I have actually never come across a non-profit organisation as loosely regulated as GNOME with so few rules and published policy, so personally I have to admit I find it a bit of a culture shock to see that following the relatively very few rules we have established is seen as such a great challenge to a few members. The handful of bylaws which have been established to ensure contributors are treated fairly and members have a democratic influence, have relevance to the how GNOME is run and its membership though. So, I think it's the right thing to do by the people who are adversely affected by this policy to ensure we treat them fairly by observing the membership and amendment bylaws and it's the right thing thing for the community as a whole to ensure GNOME is representative of it's contributing members by not making decisions like this, lightly. I believe it is ethical for us to observe our duty to honour the rules which regulate this organisation and part of that duty is proposing amendments to the rules to seek consent to modify those which which we collectively do not agree with. This process gives us an opportunity to ensure there is compelling evidence to support our proposals so we are not just basing our actions, which affect other people, on our own preconceived ideas about what motivates those people. I might totally agree with you that having the distinction is wrong, but regarding this point I don't see it the same way. Especially regarding assumptions on what a judge would rule and so on. There's more to it than just bylaws. IMO you have too much of a programmers view on this. You could be right there, however I think it comes back to the point about whether I/you/we are able to concede that the assumptions informing applying a different criteria are weak, or not. I am able to concede that they are weak which is why I have been keen we take this problem back to first principles. Could even be that standard practice trumps bylaws. I'm not sure what you mean here, could you clarify? IMO it is better to first focus on *why* a different criteria is applied and then figure out what to do, rather than ignoring the why and going for *if* they can do that. This is something I believe could happen if an amendment were to be proposed with compelling evidence to support it so we are able to take an informed vote on it. At the moment the issue is that a decision which overrides the bylaws has already been made in the establishment of this policy, which means members are put in a position where we have to defend the bylaws but that the policy decision somehow doesn't seem to have to be defended with compelling evidence - which is the wrong way round. IMO if there's a valid concern then it really doesn't matter to spend so much time on if they're allowed or not. Therein lies the core difference in how we perceive this: I believe the concern may be valid
Re: foundation application..
One of the main requirements of gaining Foundation Membership is being active within the community for a little while *after* the internship has ended to demonstrate the fact there's a real interest staying around and contributing to the Project. This is a practice which completely contradicts the bylaws definition a contributor who is eligible for membership. * All contributors have made a significant contribution (BYLAW) * All contributors are eligible for membership (BYLAW) * Some interns have made a significant contribution over their internship * No interns are eligible for membership This does not make sense. As Germán correctly pointed out the Bylaws were written before any internship program ever started within the GNOME Project. And as I correctly pointed out ;-), this does not make any difference. The bylaws were last amended in 2012. Requesting an amendment to the bylaws takes 21 days to process once the BoD (or the person requesting it) have published the request on the foundation list so that the responses can be tallied. While the Bylaws define what the main requirements for gaining Foundation Membership are they also mention Membership will be determined on a case-by-case basis, at the sole discretion of the Board and Membership Committee (Article VI, section 6.1). So what we have here is a set of requirements the Bylaws strictly require the applicant to possess for the membership to be actually granted while leaving the Membership Committee the required discretion to process a certain application. This leaves me out with one main question: how far can the Committee go when reviewing a certain application? can the Committee introduce additional requirements (during one of its meetings and with a regular vote) for a membership to be accepted in absence of particular references on the Bylaws themselves (like in the case of interns or GSoC students for example)? It's clear the Bylaws probably need an update on this side and ideally part of the what to do in case the Bylaws do not mention how peculiar cases (such as interns) should be handled should be delegated to the Committee that should come up with a set of policy and guidelines widely accepted by the membership. I'll make sure the following item will be discussed on the next or future Board meetings. The rationale behind this decision is mainly related to the fact a good number of interns stopped contributing right after their internship ended and it was clear to us their intent wasn't sticking around the community nor they probably were passionate about our project to justify staying around some more. We found extending the contributions period (usually one or two months) for interns the best solution to build a membership base made of people who really love and care deeply about the project and the values it promotes. The bylaws do not say anything about a contribution period (and I had not heard of it before myself either, to be honest). However, they do explicitly state that individuals who should get credit for their contributions (not the corporations who pay them), the same as ordinary volunteers might. Either sponsored contributions are as valuable as ones that aren't sponsored, or they aren't: The bylaws say that they are... If there is an exception being made in the case of some interns then that seems quite significant. The bylaws do not say anything about what might motivate contributors to contribute, nor their level of commitment to GNOME, when it defines a contributor in terms of foundation membership but it does fairly clearly describe about what a contributor is. The main thing that is unclear in the bylaws is what defines a non-trivial contribution really and this becomes even more confusing because the practice is to state that all interns who make contribution from 40 hour weeks over a period of 3 months are not eligible until they contribute more stuff. Stating the fact interns contributions aren't enough for them to join the GNOME Foundation is out of discussion here. It's clear their contributions are non-trivial enough for the Membership Committee to grant the membership right after checking all the references listed on the application. When an internship comes to an end I can think of two possible natural consequences: one being the person applying for membership and the other being the intern leaving the project and moving to something else. The rationale behind choosing any of the above consequences is strictly subjective to the individual. There might be interns who never heard of what a FOSS project aimed to and what it was about before joining OPW and at the end of the journey the values of freedom we pursue were shared by the intern itself. Or there might be interns who weren't attracted by the FOSS movement, by GNOME or its eco-system and decided to step back and
Re: Privacy campaign funds
A while back we ran a $20K privacy campaign. A while later there was a discussion about what to do with the funds. Did we ever decide what to do with these? Nope. I proposed to fund interns to work on security and privacy related projects but the idea was rejected. This seems like a nice idea. Why was it rejected? It was not rejected, it was accepted. The vote to use some of the money for an OPW intern passed on the 11th November 2014. At the end, it didn't matter because Marina was able to find an external sponsor for that intern. I don't want to speak for Tobias but I think it is fair to assume in this case that he was suggesting that accepting his idea would have involved agreeing to spend at least some the money on interns - which seems like a nice idea! What are the other ideas on how to spend this money? Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: foundation application..
[...] It seems proportionate to try to seek compelling evidence to support the hypothesis that this is a problem but also that the suggested solution will address that problem in a representative way. Please, go ahead, collect the evidence and present it here. I am going to need cooperation with getting access to all the relevant data, but I am happy to proceed on the basis that I get that. This can be taken forward, as far as I am concerned. Saying the same over and over without anything actionable, and rejecting everything that everybody else says, does not conduct to anything. There are plenty of comments on here which I have agreed with so who is everyone, to you? Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: foundation application..
This is something I believe could happen if an amendment were to be proposed with compelling evidence to support it so we are able to take an informed vote on it. At the moment the issue is that a decision which overrides the bylaws has already been made in the establishment of this policy, which means members are put in a position where we have to defend the bylaws but that the policy decision somehow doesn't seem to have to be defended with compelling evidence - which is the wrong way round. I believe the bylaws are followed. As such, I don't think any amendment is needed. Further, it seems though there should be improvement, it is quite clear. Andrea showed the bit where bylaws state that actual discretion is for membership committee. This only holds true if the membership committee are viewing applications on a case by case basis, it does not mean they can decide to apply a new blanket exception to a group of illegible contributors which excludes those people from applying in the first place. For various things the foundation delegates responsibility to the various teams. These teams have then additional rules in place. That these are in the bylaws or not is not IMO unimportant. I think the rules per team (delegated area) should be clear. Absolutely, but committee policies still should take steps to avoid overriding the bylaws otherwise the rules they make are unclear as well as being invalid. IMO if there's a valid concern then it really doesn't matter to spend so much time on if they're allowed or not. Therein lies the core difference in how we perceive this: I believe the concern may be valid enough to investigate, but I do not believe the problem has been quantified and therefore I do not believe the argument for this policy is substantiated and hence I do not believe it is a waste of time to spend so much time on if they're allowed to act on the assumptions that have been made about it. Moreover, we have no idea whether this approach is actually causing more harm than good. It could actually be making more interns unwelcome and unappreciated and deterring them from continuing to contribute to the project. We are generally acting on an awful lot of assumptions by taking action to address a perceived problem which we really haven't analysed concrete data for. The problem was highlighted many years ago on various occasions: Mentors spend a lot of time, to only have the person vanish after the period. This partly due to wrong perception. You're not going to have 100% of the people stay. IMO 1 in 5 is more realistic. I guess we should track these people. I forgot when GNOME started participating in GSoC. Wikipedia shows this started in 2005. The discussions around this are nothing new. In another message regarding this I noticed people are mostly talking about the outreach program. I know little about that. I'm mostly talking about GSoC. Yes, as mentioned this has raised some questions for me, too. Thanks for clarifying your own position. I have noticed way more people whose names I don't recognize at all, but doing cool things. Unfortunately no clue where they're from. This is another problem which arises from not assessing this quantitatively. We just don't get the full picture when we solely rely on anecdotes and our own myriad personal experiences which are different to one another's. Those following, might have noticed that this was done in the opening part of the discussion and it seemed to be generally agreed that some interns do make non-trivial contributions. At least, nobody seems to have disagreed with that idea, anyway. Most interns seem to vanish quite quickly after their internship is over. Maybe not true at all anymore, there are a few exceptions, but that has been a topic of discussion for various years. The question is not just about whether they most of them vanish, although I agree that's clearly part of it. We need to be able to compare their behaviour to other kinds of contributors statistically, accounting for all our sources of error, before we can begin to make any assumptions or predictions about this model. Let's see the raw data and analyse it first. For the various programs out there (I mostly followed GSoC) people not staying with GNOME is IMO something was clearly a problem. If it still is, no clue. As you indicate, this perceived problem has been discussed a lot over the years. It seems like that's another compelling reason to explore it scientifically and determine the merits of any proposed solutions using a strategic, evidenced-based and impartial approach. Doing investigations, cool. But IMO there was enough concern regarding this. As far as I can tell, the concern comes from the membership committee wanting to reduce applications from interns who may not end up using their membership and in any case, none of the concerns raised
Re: foundation application..
[...] It seems proportionate to try to seek compelling evidence to support the hypothesis that this is a problem but also that the suggested solution will address that problem in a representative way. Please, go ahead, collect the evidence and present it here. I am going to need cooperation with getting access to all the relevant data, but I am happy to proceed on the basis that I get that. This can be taken forward, as far as I am concerned. What is the relevant data that is not already public? The list of interns is interns is public, the same as the period of internships, commit logs, bug reports, mailing list discussions. People who stayed involved should have activity after their internship finished it. Looking at that alone would bias the result. Off the top of my head, these data would need to be compared to the data of sponsored/paid employees contributing to GNOME since 2005 and that data assessed against how foundation applications have been handled each year and member engagement post acceptance/rejection of foundation memberships too. Taking all the associated errors into account and doing this should help give a fairly comprehensive overview of the situation and help us determine whether our assumptions on perceived differences between the motivations of those who are paid for shorter period of time than those who are paid for longer periods of time, are justified. At the moment we have no reason to assume that all volunteers and sponsored contributors alike will have a 100% commitment rate and there is certainly no reason to assume that any paid contributor is any more likely than any other paid contributor to stay committed to GNOME contributing once there is no financial incentive to do that, without evidence to support that theory. In other words, an early objective would be to determine whether interns are more likely to lose interest than other kinds of contributors when they are no longer being offered a financial incentive by comparing contribution behaviours between interns and other kinds of contributors. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Linking to non-free websites from gnome.org
Hi all, Whist this is a bit entertaining, I think we can all see where it is headed... On balance, there really is only one practical reason to bring up the past and that is for the sake of being able to reliably anticipate the future. So, I have to urge people again to try to move the discussion away from the particular rights and wrongs of publishing the Builder or other IndiGoGo(hst)s past, for that matter. It really does seem most appropriate to take steps to try to discuss the issue of non-free links/endorsements on neutral territory. That way, nobody has to be made to feel like points of argument about this are being directed at them personally, as individuals. Surely everyone here must be able to recognise that when people feel like they are under attack, that they tend to get into a reactionary mindset and that this does not lead anywhere progressive. Let's move on. Now, to the subject of whether GNOME should or should not link to non-free websites (as is in line with the subject line of this thread :-)) I think that most people would agree that in principle it is probably right that we should take steps to avoid this in future. I have a few suggestions about that: - In personal member blog posts on the blog subdomains, I think it should be discouraged somewhere but generally up to whoever is writing the post to decide given that something like that is practically impossible to regulate, anyway and there is a probably a fine line there between refusing to endorse something and censorship when we get into the realm of what individuals should or should not be saying or doing. - On the wiki: Again, quite difficult to regulate but it when I think when we write on the wiki we do represent GNOME (rather than ourselves as individuals) a bit more than with blogs as far as how the public interpret the content might be concerned,. With that said I can imagine that it could be necessary to post links to nonfree sites sometimes (e.g. some information on a site regarding issue x, y or z. In that case maybe we could think about having some sort of a trigger warning ):D. Perhaps that seems silly but it might be a nice/amusing way to show we don't approve without restricting what we can link to in cases where this is too impractical - For fundraisers (and probably endorsements, in general) it probably should be policy not to do it after Builder but again, where this proves too impractical perhaps the trigger warning idea might be a neat compromise. To elaborate on the point about fundraisers a little further: Also though I have to wonder whether future fundraisers could maybe be handled in the same way as the groupon fundraiser was managed. http://www.gnome.org/groupon/ since that did not seem to be too controversial at the time. If that sort of thing would mean more work but ultimately lower fees, then perhaps GNOME could also take an administrative cut off the top for managing the donations on behalf of the relevant project developers? It might also be worthwhile for us to set up a dedicated wiki page guide explaining what alternative fundraising platforms GNOME want projects to use and compile a list of links on there and have some recommendations for standard practices. It might also be handy for those wishing to fund their projects if we compiled and outline the logical steps a project manager and/or project developer might take to get set up and seek permission and support with launch etc. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Linking to non-free websites from gnome.org
If crowdfunding was a service that the GNOME foundation offered it's members, I would be in favor of that. However, as it stands today, I believe this would cause undue burden on the board. It's hard to say without thrashing it out but I definitely think it's worth thrashing it out, otherwise it definitely wouldn't be possible. :D With that said, I would have thought the treasurer and webmaster or two would be better placed to handle the administration of something like this rather than the board of directors themselves. There is no reason I can think of why managing something like that could not be delegated appropriately as lots of other initiatives seem to get done at GNOME. With that said, I don't personally know the details of the method GNOME used for groupon to comment on how that sort of thing might work as a repeated effort for more modest wee module fundraisers. But, let's say the repeated the code from that fundraiser to allow them accept donations for a hypothetical new project then all it really comes down to is the extra workload on the treasurer and figuring out what the law says about raising money to pay volunteers, which I am guessing has been done with once or twice already, since GNOME is a fairly large charity and although GNOME is a charity, I do not see a compelling reason why they could not reasonably take an appropriate $ dollar percentage % off the total raised. Like a sort of admin fee that could be set aside to cover the reasonable cost for the time of those members involved who did the work to do stuff like set up a fundraising page and the treasurer having to take on some additional work in managing GNOME's annual accounts. Many of GNOME's contributors members are already volunteers, perhaps they would welcome some extra cash, for the effort. In the longer run it could be one way to get around the evil javascript issue but also the community would probably benefit from personally engaging with fundraising as a consistent thing. I imagine something like this would yield infrastructure and help GNOME develop it's fundraising strategies and generate income from a more diverse range of sources, in the long run. Additionally, I'm against a policy on external links based on their JavaScript, full stop. (However, I'm willing to entertain a policy based on other guidelines). Why are you against the notion of a javascript policy? What kind of other guidelines would you entertain? Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Links that recommend running nonfree JS code.
Define Many ? I personally support FSF's ethics in principle, please don't speak for all of us. I think it's somewhat split, but sort of having everyone in the foundation state their stance on it, I don't know how 'many' could be defined. There are people who are in a position to state the stance of the whole community and they are the elected members of the Board of Directors. I don't think anyone can presume to know what portion of the community might agree with your estimations (or not), at this stage. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Links that recommend running nonfree JS code.
Generally I think that the people who are not on board understand what is being discussed and simply disagree with certain aspects of it. I know that is the case with me. I contribute to FOSS, etc, but I do not always share the same ethics as the FSF. My impression is that that is common. We could have a discussion about it, but I don't know that having such a discussion via an email list would be constructive. Perhaps some might be seeing Richard as the FSF too quickly and not giving due regard what he is actually saying about this in the reactions to what he's putting forward. How he's defined dodgy links really does not seem all that unreasonable or idealistic, because it takes into account the important point that some members of the community might be excluded unless they sacrifice their principles. I don't think it's necessary to agree with *all* the ethics of the FSF to concede that this is a fair concern for Richard to be putting forward for discussion. It seems strange (at best) that anyone would see it as nonconstructive for us to actively seek to ensure we have a strong cooperative relationship with the FSF community, where this is possible. Given that we are branded as a free desktop software community, this seems like something we ought to be taking more seriously. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Links that recommend running nonfree JS code.
It’s frankly pretty difficult for me at least to distinguish between Richard-speaking-as-Richard-alone and Richard-speaking-as-the-FSF, and he never makes the distinction himself. Does he hold some viewpoint that the FSF does not, or vice versa? That would actually be news to me. Personally, I am not all that interested in how he views himself or him in general, but I am interested in what he has been saying in this case. Am I now in a situation where I feel it necessary to urge members not to objectify Richard Stallman? I hope not. Being objectified is not something I would not wish on my worst enemy. :D Maybe he could clarify whether his nominating me as an “enemy of the free software movement” at Software Freedom Day in 2009 was his personal position or the FSF’s; I’d been assuming the latter, and as I say, he never makes a clear distinction himself. That really is beyond the scope of this discussion. As far as “taking things seriously”, it becomes a little difficult when we’re being asked to also take things like the necessity of recognizing the original designers” — some of them, anyway — of the GNU/Linux” system, or the notion that the best piece of software to do a given job is the “free-est” one as opposed to the “most usable” one “seriously” as well. This what I was driving at when I said that people are seeing everything they might disagree with about the FSF (or perhaps even Richard too, for that matter) when Richard presented his case about this. You have kind of demonstrated my point. :-). When we are not willing make a distinction between what a person says and does in one case and what they say and do in another it's easy to put people on pedestals or likewise demonetize them such that you get into a situation where you determine a person or a group of people as completely good or completely bad. That is the kind of thinking that leads to avoidable conflicts. In the extreme cases it can even lead to wars. I cannot speak for everyone but I like to think that most of us here have one thing in common: that most of we love free software. Only love is able to overcome all the myriad differences between human beings. Likewise, hate breeds hate. Does anyone here actually hate free software? I seriously hope not and I seriously doubt it is true, too. If neither the FSF is willing to show willing to make compromises so we can get along then of course a conflict is inevitable, but I don't see that happening here. I see Richard as the one doing all the work and so far we seem like the ones who are showing an unwillingness to cooperate with him. Some have suggested maybe GNOME and the FSF do not share common aims, but I cannot see how this would be possible when it is clear that we do from the licences we use on our software and the fact we brand ourselves as a free software project. Am I really the only person who can see that it is a tragedy for us to let preconceptions divide GNOME and the FSF, over something as stupidly simple to resolve, as this? Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Links that recommend running nonfree JS code.
Define Many ? I personally support FSF's ethics in principle, please don't speak for all of us. I think it's somewhat split, but sort of having everyone in the foundation state their stance on it, I don't know how 'many' could be defined. The elected members of the Board of Directors would arguably position to state GNOME's official stance one way or the other (since we have obviously chosen them to represent us). I don't think any of us ordinary members are in a position to do that though. Not without having done any research anyway. Anecdotal evidence can often be fairly misleading. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Agenda for board meeting on January 9th
the officers do not strictly need to be directors, i.e. the Board may appoint anybody to hold those offices after a vote, but it's the Board that votes, not the general membership of the Foundation; the members of the Foundation elect the Board, though. I can't see any reason why that could cause a problem in the foreseeable future. How about if you [the BoD] were to determine which (if any) common areas you find you need specific support in and then advertise those roles on the foundation list so you could vote on them between yourselves, then? If you did decide you wanted to delegate in some area or other, I would not mind helping you draft a description of it, if that would be useful. As far as I am aware, nobody does any statistical research at GNOME. What informs strategic decisions? we don't do statistical research to decide what to work on. we're a volunteer-driver project, and volunteer work is not fungible — i.e. even if we did do statistical research and determined strategic decisions, we'd still need somebody to volunteer to implement them, and we could not rely on those decisions in a timely manner, thus defeating the whole point. Determining whether seeking out answers about a given problem is going to be practical depends on the situation, but personally I think there are certainly instances where it could be beneficial not to rule out this approach too hastily. what we usually do is rely, for technical direction, on the maintainers that comprise the larger GNOME ecosystem; what they want to work on, what kind of directions they want to impel to the project. we have special interest groups that drive various aspects of the project — accessibility, documentation, internationalization, etc. — as well as other entities that work on the infrastructure and outreach. finally, we have the board, which is concerned with the overall ability of the project to sustain itself financially, as well as protect itself legally. I know about that and technically, I am in one of the teams you mention. :D. I produce a reasonable amount of code (and stuff) for GNOME, anyway... What is less clear is whether there is the aforementioned stuff. :-) Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Links that recommend running nonfree JS code.
Hi, At this stage, I regretfully have urge anyone who would preference lashing out on twitter with their frustrations about the existence of this thread, to consider engaging in a reasoned way on this dedicated thread about their concerns. Whist throwing bigotry at me may seem like the easiest way to end this discussion without fuss, it is not so. I tried to view a page on Facebook, which is a posting about a political issue. I used wget as usual, and all I got was something telling me to log in first. Meanwhile, you reported It seems can actually technically view the page without being logged in which is a good thing, but it seems that this is only possible when the offending javascript is not being blocked. which is consistent with what I observed. Thanks for confirming. I think the proper rule is that a link to a page on Facebook is ok provided it can be viewed without running nonfree JS code and without logging in. Indeed, I would suggest that as the basic condition for acceptable links to any site. If the purpose of the link is to suggest people look at the contents of the page, then the link is ok provided people can see the contents without identifying themselves and without running nonfree software. This makes perfect sense to me. At the moment I am not totally convinced that the rest of the community are on board with what you have said though. It is not clear whether or not people understand the nuances of how you are defining things or whether there may even be so fundamental political/ethical differences of agreement (or some mix of both). It would be useful to have some more clarity on that so we all know whether any of this is actionable at this stage, I think. In the special cases where the purpose of the link is something else (such as to donate), then it needs to be judged according to that purpose. One reason I suggested we change the subject onto links in general is because I had not expected you to be so willing to concede it would be possible to find a compromise about builder. I am delighted you have been able to prove me wrong about that. I have found a simple way to publish an indiGoGo for builder on the GNOME website as an iframe. I am not sure if that is what they want but I sent some code so that it could be added to the wordpress. indiGoGo don't seem to have an API on offer so the total can be queried and updated on a banner easily another method so I am hoping this way would be just as well.[1] What do you think? Magdalen [1] https://support.indiegogo.com/hc/en-us/articles/527366-How-to-Add-a-Widget-to-your-Blog ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Linking to non-free websites from gnome.org
I wasn't confused, and I wasn't speaking about the recent Groupon fundraiser. There's been a few calls here for free software alternatives to Indiegogo as well as GNOME becoming involved with those alternatives. Many of the proposed alternatives were not crowdfunding and shouldn't be treated as drop-in replacements. I don't feel I'm being pedantic making that point. This is not new information so the same response as before is appropriate. As a side note, I really don't think the Groupon experience should be held up as a shiny example. I never said it was a shining example. I said that the recent campaign seems to have demonstrated that in principle GNOME already has the infrastructure which could allow them to accept money for any given crowdfunding campaign on behalf of community driven projects (and any general fundraising too, of course). That's exactly what I said. Being hosted by GNOME did not prevent it from being successful either, by the way. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Linking to non-free websites from gnome.org
I understand that you can't move the campaign now. But can you post a bitcoin address, and invite people to send money that way if they don't want to run nonfree JS code? I've added a section to the campaign borrowed from crowdsupply. It's great this is resolved. As for bitcoin, I'm not comfortable 1) publishing publicly if i have a bitcoin wallet. The stigma related to bitcoin is just the media doing their thing to try and discredit it, in my humble view. A lot of people do not buy into that stuff. With that said, it is reasonable for anyone to be uncomfortable with something and not be made to feel pressured so yeah, I think people should be willing to accept that this is how you feel. 2) what that wallet's address would be. It's usually possible to generate any number of addresses so it is plausible to generate a new one dedicated for a single specific purpose, if that helps. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Agenda for board meeting on January 9th
Hi Emmanuele, these roles already exist, and are generally assigned to the elected directors during the first board meeting. Seems a bit unorthodox, but as long as they're willing and able to manage the additional workload I can't see anything wrong with that. :-) currently, Andrea Veri is the secretary (hence why he sends the minutes of the board meetings), and the treasurer is Ekaterina Gerasimova. you can see the various roles and who holds them on the wiki: https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/ Thanks for the information. I notice that there is no contact information for any of the teams or links to indicate who they are and what their currently working on. It seems unlikely that someone would easily be able to figure out how to help them out. I'm not sure what Research Development means. if it's a technological role, then everything we do is, broadly speaking, research and development. As far as I am aware, nobody does any statistical research at GNOME. What informs strategic decisions? I'd very much like to see a team devoted to event planning and sponsoring, working with local teams where necessary, but mostly driving the organization of conferences like GUADEC, GNOME.Asia, and the GNOME Summit. Would the events team not be in charge of that stuff? I'm not entirely sure why these should be democratically elected. I personally prefer very much a culture of do-ocracy, where those who show up and do the work get to decide what and how to do it, as opposed to various instances of backseat driving that we've all experienced on various mailing lists. I can't really comment on the examples you're thinking of, since it is not clear what you're referring to . However, I would have thought that in general people would be inclined to vote for those who they felt were most qualified to fill a role or they wouldn't vote at all. Like a democracy, a do-acracy only really works for the benefit of everyone if there is equal access to the same information and opportunities from the outset. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Agenda for board meeting on January 9th
Hi Alexandre, No, that's not quite the same thing. Most of the core teams mentioned on https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/ do not appear on that list. Magdalen On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 4:59 PM, Alexandre Franke alexandre.fra...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 5:55 PM, Magdalen Berns m.be...@thismagpie.com wrote: Thanks for the information. I notice that there is no contact information for any of the teams or links to indicate who they are and what their currently working on. It seems unlikely that someone would easily be able to figure out how to help them out. You mean something like https://wiki.gnome.org/Teams that is linked prominently from the front page of the wiki? -- Alexandre Franke ___ 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: foundation application..
This is not a complicated process, it is fairly clear and transparent (especially when compared with the alternative). What is the problem with using It? There is none. At the moment we are talking about whether it is justifiable to tell all successful interns that they are not eligible for membership We're not. Problem solved. Next. Really? GNOME have no role in this statement which went out to the OP and GSoC intern lists in August of 2014?[1] Before denying this is a practice again, draw your attention to the last line which says If you only started contributing to GNOME after February 2014, we ask that you continue contributing for another half a year before applying http://www.gnome.org/foundation/membership/apply/;. The problem cannot be solved if this continues to be the message going out about GNOME membership eligibility. That message is not a true reflection of GNOME's actually rules on membership eligibility. [1] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-soc-list/2014-August/msg0.html ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: foundation application..
On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 12:16 PM, Olav Vitters o...@vitters.nl wrote: On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 11:20:21AM +, Magdalen Berns wrote: It doesn't make a difference. The bylaws are the rules which regulate the GNOME Foundation. GNOME's bylaws state the rules on membership eligibility by defining what a contributor is and who is illegible for membership (i.e. IMO: It almost feels like GNOME is paying someone to become a member of the foundation. This is not a coherent statement. Can you clarify what you are talking about? Arguing a lot about what the current rules state will not help with the concerns people have raised. If you have a concrete reason why it does help to continue to ignore bylaws that are inconvenient for whatever is more convenient, then you are free to make a case for that. California law probably would probably override that idea, though. Let's focus on why there's any difference, see if can reach a conclusion on that. Because the rules state so leads IMO to too much nitpicking on the rules, instead of focussing on the concerns. If people want to focus on that then the procedure to follow is to suggest an amendment to the bylaws and make a case for that, it is not introduce practices by the back door which contradict the rules laid out by the most current bylaws . Again, if any member wishes to make amendments to the bylaws then there is a process for that which is laid out in the amendments section of bylaws. Any member can propose the adoption, amendment or repealing of the Bylaws. In the event of such a proposal, the following procedures shall be implemented: 1. The members shall be provided with the reasonable means to comment upon and/or object to any such proposal for twenty one (21) days 2. The proposal shall be sent to the membership and shall be posted on // foundation.gnome.org http: by the Board 3. In the event that five percent or more of the members object to the proposal, a special meeting of the members shall be convened in accordance with the provisions of Article VII, and the proposal shall be voted upon 4. In the event that five percent or more of the members do not object to the proposal, then the proposal shall be adopted by the Board to the extent permitted by CNPBCL Section 5150(a). This is not a complicated process, it is fairly clear and transparent (especially when compared with the alternative). What is the problem with using It? Various people have stayed after GSoC (+ anything similar). On other hand: some you don't hear about at all once they leave. For some internship, the person has a mentor assigned to them. That eases the stickyness vs someone who sends patches on his own. I'd wonder about why someone applies, is it real interest in GNOME and free software, or just good for resume and finding work? As Meg seems to have pointed out already in her question, the same could be said for any sponsored contributor. The bylaws are explicit in not discriminating against sponsored/paid contributors compared with any other kind of contributor. There is a concrete process for anyone who disagrees with bylaws to suggest an amendment to them. For foundation membership (IIRC) to have to specify a few people to vouch for you. I have never been a mentor. I'm wonder if the mentor could guess if the person would stay or not. I think detailing the expectations would help a lot. At the moment we are talking about whether it is justifiable to tell all successful interns that they are not eligible for membership not how the membership committee make their decisions. The bylaws give the membership committee the overriding decision but says all applications are to be considered on a case-by-case basis. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: foundation application..
One thing I thought of would be to change the direction of the process to be an invitation rather than an application. If you see someone helping, instead of pushing him to apply you could fill in the form describing his contributions (and possibly the name of someone else who can support it) and if accepted he would get an invitation to join the foundation. That seems highly masonic. The bylaws state the following[1] Any contributor to GNOME shall be eligible for member-ship. A “contributor” shall be defined as any individual who has contributed to a non-trivial improvement of the GNOME Project, such as code, documentation, trans- lations, maintenance of project-wide resources, or other non-trivial activities which benefit the GNOME Project. Large amounts of advocacy or bug reporting may qual- ify one as a contributor, provided that such contributions are significantly above the level expected of an ordinary user. Contributions made in the course of employment will be considered and will be ascribed to the individuals involved, rather than accruing to all employees of a “contributing” corporation. I suggest we just make the rules much clearer to people on the outreach pages by clarifying what non-trivial actually means. GSoC/OPW interns are told to make more contributions after their 3 month internship before applying. That suggests that the contributions they make over their 3 month internship of 40 hours per week are trivial. It's no wonder contributors find the process of making a membership application intimidating considering that, isn't it? How could a volunteer compete with an someone who is being paid to work on GNOME full time (even if it is just for 3 months)? [1] http://www.gnome.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/bylaws.pdf ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: foundation application..
On 12 February 2015 at 13:42, Magdalen Berns m.be...@thismagpie.com wrote: One thing I thought of would be to change the direction of the process to be an invitation rather than an application. If you see someone helping, instead of pushing him to apply you could fill in the form describing his contributions (and possibly the name of someone else who can support it) and if accepted he would get an invitation to join the foundation. That seems highly masonic. I think it would be good in addition to the current process, not replacing it, for the many people who will never feel they do great things, even if they do (see Imposter Syndrome). I don't have any problems with people suggesting to contributors that they should apply because this would may give a deserving contributor the confidence to go for it, but that does not seem to be what you are suggesting. What you seem to be suggesting is masonic. Perhaps you could clarify what you mean by this nomination system idea, in case I misunderstood what you mean in terms of its practical application. The bylaws state the following[1] Any contributor to GNOME shall be eligible for member-ship. A contributor shall be defined as any individual who has contributed to a non-trivial improvement of the GNOME Project, such as code, documentation, trans- lations, maintenance of project-wide resources, or other non-trivial activities which benefit the GNOME Project. Large amounts of advocacy or bug reporting may qual- ify one as a contributor, provided that such contributions are significantly above the level expected of an ordinary user. Contributions made in the course of employment will be considered and will be ascribed to the individuals involved, rather than accruing to all employees of a contributing corporation. I suggest we just make the rules much clearer to people on the outreach pages by clarifying what non-trivial actually means. GSoC/OPW interns are told to make more contributions after their 3 month internship before applying. That suggests that the contributions they make over their 3 month internship of 40 hours per week are trivial. It's no wonder contributors find the process of making a membership application intimidating considering that, isn't it? How could a volunteer compete with an someone who is being paid to work on GNOME full time (even if it is just for 3 months)? [1] http://www.gnome.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/bylaws.pdf Giving more examples would clearly help. I believe the GSoC/OPW is special as they have incentive to contribute which then finish and it's probably a matter to see if they continue contributing. It doesn't mean that what they did was non-trivial. In practical terms it does and it certainly is not likely to help anyone's imposter syndrome to be told their work is trivial if it isn't, either. Let's review the facts: Bylaws state that all contributors (i.e. those who shall be defined as any individual who has contributed to a non-trivial improvement of the GNOME Project) are illegible for membership. Bylaws state Contributions made in the course of employment will be considered and will be ascribed to the individuals involved, rather than accruing to all employees of a “contributing” corporation. Those are the rules. Therefore, if GNOME does not actually believe that all interns make trivial contributions, then GNOME effectively contradicts its own bylaws in stating that all interns should not apply for foundation membership on the strength of their contributions over 3 month period of 40 hours of work a week (i.e. internship) alone. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: foundation application..
One thing I thought of would be to change the direction of the process to be an invitation rather than an application. If you see someone helping, instead of pushing him to apply you could fill in the form describing his contributions (and possibly the name of someone else who can support it) and if accepted he would get an invitation to join the foundation. That seems highly masonic. I think it would be good in addition to the current process, not replacing it, for the many people who will never feel they do great things, even if they do (see Imposter Syndrome). I don't have any problems with people suggesting to contributors that they should apply because this would may give a deserving contributor the confidence to go for it, but that does not seem to be what you are suggesting. What you seem to be suggesting is masonic. Perhaps you could clarify what you mean by this nomination system idea, in case I misunderstood what you mean in terms of its practical application. My idea was to have someone else describe your accomplishments and apply for you. If the application is accepted we can inform the person that their application done by other person was successful and they just have to say if they are accepting to be a member of the foundation. If it is rejected, I don't think we want to inform them. Ok, that sounds a bit better. :-) I still don't get how it could be fair in practical terms though: People are only likely to pay attention to contributions which interest them unless they are dedicated to the task sorting through the myriad contributions databases available strategically for the purpose of determining eligible contributors. It could potentially become very difficult to ensure the process didn't become biased towards nominated members unless the system were to be specifically designed it to discourage that. The bylaws state the following[1] Any contributor to GNOME shall be eligible for member-ship. A contributor shall be defined as any individual who has contributed to a non-trivial improvement of the GNOME Project, such as code, documentation, trans- lations, maintenance of project-wide resources, or other non-trivial activities which benefit the GNOME Project. Large amounts of advocacy or bug reporting may qual- ify one as a contributor, provided that such contributions are significantly above the level expected of an ordinary user. Contributions made in the course of employment will be considered and will be ascribed to the individuals involved, rather than accruing to all employees of a contributing corporation. I suggest we just make the rules much clearer to people on the outreach pages by clarifying what non-trivial actually means. GSoC/OPW interns are told to make more contributions after their 3 month internship before applying. That suggests that the contributions they make over their 3 month internship of 40 hours per week are trivial. It's no wonder contributors find the process of making a membership application intimidating considering that, isn't it? How could a volunteer compete with an someone who is being paid to work on GNOME full time (even if it is just for 3 months)? [1] http://www.gnome.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/bylaws.pdf Giving more examples would clearly help. I believe the GSoC/OPW is special as they have incentive to contribute which then finish and it's probably a matter to see if they continue contributing. It doesn't mean that what they did was non-trivial. In practical terms it does and it certainly is not likely to help anyone's imposter syndrome to be told their work is trivial if it isn't, either. Let's review the facts: Bylaws state that all contributors (i.e. those who shall be defined as any individual who has contributed to a non-trivial improvement of the GNOME Project) are illegible for membership. Bylaws state Contributions made in the course of employment will be considered and will be ascribed to the individuals involved, rather than accruing to all employees of a contributing corporation. Those are the rules. Therefore, if GNOME does not actually believe that all interns make trivial contributions, then GNOME effectively contradicts its own bylaws in stating that all interns should not apply for foundation membership on the strength of their contributions over 3 month period of 40 hours of work a week (i.e. internship) alone. Yes I definitely agree this is a problem, If we make an exception of excluding non-trivial contributions done during an internship, it should be part of the rules. Absolutely. This seems like a massive oversight that ought to be corrected. But I think this is a different problem unless some people have interpreted it as needing to do something more important than what they had
Re: foundation application..
This policy came about after I encouraged interns who were 2/3rd of the way through their internship in 2012 to apply for the Foundation membership. The membership committee preferred that interns have a chance to figure out their level of participation in GNOME after the internship before applying and, as a rule, wanted to see non-trivial contributions for a period longer than 6 months. The intention of having this statement in the internship wrap-up e-mail is to tell interns about the foundation membership and encourage them to apply at an appropriate point. Thanks for clarifying how the decision was arrived at. The issue in that defining an appropriate point essentially redefines membership illegibility, as the bylaws define it already. That is, unless it is generally agreed that all interns do make trivial contributions, (which I don't believe is the case here). I think some guidelines there are preferable to not mentioning the foundation membership to interns at all. Guidelines are helpful, but not those which could mislead contributors into believing they are not eligible for membership. In that case, it does seem preferable to not mention anything, at all. With that said, I don't think this has to be a case of having to choose between two evils. I believe most interns make non-trivial contributions during their internship, but because the membership committee has further discretion about the expectations for the membership applications, we need to figure out how to communicate these in future e-mails in a way that is encouraging and relates the case-by-case provision of the bylaws. Ideally everyone could be provided with easy access to clear guidance on the rules laid out by the bylaws on foundation membership illegibility, as well as information on how the process of applying works, which I believe is already covered on the foundation membership pages.[1] The information on those pages should be enough to help contributors decide whether to apply, if eligible contributors are still not applying enough (for whatever reason), then we'd probably need to either figure out how to improve the information by figuring out what is missing (e.g. could we be providing examples of what a typical accepted application might look like, or further information on when an eligible contributor stops being a eligible contributor?) or it may just be a case of improving how that information is delivered (i.e. whether it is accessible enough). A link to membership guidance could be provided to contributors to encourage them to explore the idea of applying for membership, for example. Thanks, Magdalen [1] http://www.gnome.org/foundation/membership/apply/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Links that recommend running nonfree JS code.
Hi Richard, I believe it is possible to view many Facebook pages without running JS. (I am about to verify that.) According to the libreJS plugin you pointed us to earlier on in the discussion, all javascript that facebook tries to run, is offending. When LibreJS blocks the scripts it reports as being non-free, the page doesn't seem to work (not on my browser anyway). I would prefer to defer to your knowledge on this when it comes to the testing this thing out though, so please let us know what you find out. So if it is just a matter of referring to the contents of some page there, that is not a problem, as long as viewing the page does not require login. We shouldn't encourage people to log in on Facebook. It seems can actually technically view the page without being logged in which is a good thing, but it seems that this is only possible when the offending javascript is not being blocked. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Agenda for board meeting on January 9th
Hi Jeff, I am genuinely not sure whether GNOME has this already but given that the board has stated it is quite overstretched by the current workload on them. I get the impression some tasks tend to be delegated more on a need to know/do basis and that this may be contributing to a heavy workload on the board but it is hard to be certain whether that is a fair assumption with the information available about that. With that in mind though, if this does seem like a constructive long term adjustment, I would like to ask the board to consider discussing establishing democratically elected formal roles so that those with specific interests can support the BoD carry out their work more effectively and strengthen the infrastructure of GNOME: (I suspect these roles may already exist but I am not sure whether they are elected roles or not or who currently manages them) Secretary Treasurer (Although I am aware that there are teams who focus on some of these areas already, I am not sure if the following formal roles exist to manage those teams, at this time:) Publicity and Campaigns Events and Socials Research and Development Diversity and Equality Outreach and Engagement There may be some important areas which I have not suggested a role for and maybe some that are suggested are not quite right for GNOME's needs, so please take the specific suggested roles with a pinch of salt: they are just suggestions and ideas. The main point of consideration that I think might be worth discussion in this instance, is whether some sort of sort of appropriate structured, democratic, delegation might be in order (regardless of whether GNOME seeks a new CEO soon, or not). I can appreciate that in the short term, something like that may be an added burden to organise (but for what it is worth, I would be willing to help out with that). I suspect that formally establishing dedicated roles in a democratic way, could attract community interest in filling them and also that the inferred delegation in that, could significantly free up more of the Board of Directors time and allow you all (and the future cohorts of directors) to focus on the important work, which you find that you are unable to delegate: Those who were to be elected into roles, could also be in charge of managing teams who are willing to support the work they are focused on. If that were to work out, then they could have regular IRC meetings to discuss relevant items in detail and come up with actionable solution which they could then present to the board of directors, as appropriate. It may also provide members of the community who are interested in contributing to a particular area of GNOME's infrastructure to quickly access relevant published communications about that area of interest, so they can more easily figure out what is going on, what needs to be done, who is involved and how they can get involved, etc. It may also serve to assist successors of the future to figure out where to start more easily, in general. Magdalen On Thu, Jan 8, 2015 at 4:36 AM, Jeff Fortin Tam nekoh...@gmail.com wrote: Hello Foundation members! The board will be having its regular meeting this Friday at 17h UTC. Here is an overview of the agenda/topics for this meeting so far: * Funding - quick status check on: Ecosystem (re)mapping Adboard outreach Sysadmin sponsorship * Sitrep on deal with WHS for funds in Europe * Review action items for completeness and status * ED search (Other topics may be brewing in the backlog but not included in the meeting agenda until they have reached the required threshold of information or discussion on the board list) If you would like the board to discuss any particular issues at the meeting, you are welcome to request additions to the agenda here. ___ 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: Links that recommend running nonfree JS code.
I think you have defined it well. I would expect that these potential problem cases occur rarely. Can you recall any others besides this one? Some others have mentioned social networking site links e.g. facebook et al. Though I am not sure this would apply to all of the ones listed because some of these services might work just as well if any offending software were blocked in the browser (if you look at the bottom left of http://www.gnome.org/ you'll see the icons for these social links, to find out what they are). I think that Facebook at least, pretty much does not work for much of anything unless you allow dodgy scripts on the browser. Maybe there are ways around that but I am not sure, to be honest. I am quite interested to find out what you make of these ones in relation to this question in general, actually. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Linking to non-free websites from gnome.org
Because the issue is so specific, it is ethically simple -- it's wrong to recommend the operation if the operation requires running nonfree software (including JS code). That makes sense. It is a lot easier than dealing with sites that run non-free software but who don't require it so I imagine a more folks would be likely to tend to agree that this is something reasonable, too. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Linking to non-free websites from gnome.org
On Wed, Jan 7, 2015 at 4:26 AM, Richard Stallman r...@gnu.org wrote: Now, to the subject of whether GNOME should or should not link to non-free websites The expression nonfree website is one we do not use, because it is not clear what that would mean. Web sites raise various kinds of ethical issues. The issue here is very specific: a web site requires visitors to run nonfree software in order to use the site to do the job in question (in this case, to donate). If a web site runs nonfree software internally, that doesn't affect the site's visitors, so we have no reason to concern ourselves with that. Whist I don't disagree with what you are saying. There are only so many hours in the day. I can't reasonably drop in replace non-free websites with all that text or I would never get to the points I am trying to make about it. As I suggested earlier on this point, unless someone contradicts your definition (which I don't believe anyone has done, yet), I am acting on the assumption that people reading this thread have already seen what we are talking about and that we have defined what we mean already: For us to collectively be able to answer the question of whether GNOME should be endorsing links to non-free sites, we first need to be able to answer a couple of relevant questions. 1. In what situations can any published link on GNOME's servers be representative of the GNOME Foundation (i.e. how are we defining GNOME as a trademark/brand) such that that link could be perceived as being an endorsement/advertisement. 2. What is a link to a non-free site (I believe Richard might have gone some way to covering that already, though there might yet be some debate to be had, yet) Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Linking to non-free websites from gnome.org
The issue at hand is not a matter of endorsement. At least, not in the usual sense of the word. I am not sure I agree. It seems like what we are talking about here is whether or not we should be using certain services and advertising that we use those services on GNOME websites. If a link suggests hey, we at GNOME, use this and in some cases (e.g. indieGoGo) goes further, Hey, we at GNOME prefer to use this over everything else available (where this is an offending service/site/whatever), then how would that not be an endorsement? Atheletes endorse certain products just by using them all the time. Sometimes these can be products they don't actually personally like using, either. I think that a banner ad for Builder endorses Builder. (That's fine.) It does not really endorse Indiegogo, but it does urge people to go to the Indiegogo site and donate. I would still have to say that the banner *advertises* Builder (and of course, endorses it too) but that it also inadvertently *endorses* the use of indiGoGo, in the process. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Linking to non-free websites from gnome.org
I understood you to be talking about labelling links as non-free even on wiki pages and Planet GNOME. Were you only talking about links to fundraising pages? In physics, problem solving is seen as a case of starting with the most simple model of a given system, stating assumptions to account for any uncertainty in the predictions made. There is a fair amount of evidence to suggest that it is possible to anticipate pretty much everything you can think of in the physical world if we are able to access enough relevant information, that is. Perhaps it was a little premature to make suggestions with that in mind so I will try to clarify to you what I was actually talking about. For us to collectively be able to answer the question of whether GNOME should be endorsing links to non-free sites, we first need to be able to answer a couple of relevant questions. 1. In what situations can any published link on GNOME's servers be representative of the GNOME Foundation (i.e. how are we defining GNOME as a trademark/brand) such that that link could be perceived as being an endorsement/advertisement. 2. What is a link to a non-free site (I believe Richard might have gone some way to covering that already, though there might yet be some debate to be had, yet) I saw it necessary for us to establish how we are defining links as well as to determine GNOME is (and isn't). That way, we would be able to figure out the difference between any kind of link from GNOME's server and GNOME publishing any kind of link. I did this by using examples so we could narrow things down and it seems like it is generally agreed that publishing as GNOME and publishing on GNOME's servers as an individual members of GNOME are two different things and I agree that this is a reasonable distinction to make. So no, I was not talking about labelling of blog posts on planet gnome. The short answer to your question though is also no: I was not just talking about links to fundraising pages either. To me, it seems like GNOME endorsement would be a banner of some description on their servers. The example that has triggered the discussion is concerns fundraising pages. So let's explore another example to further the point about where a banner might be interpreted as an endorsement: If you read the minutes of the board meetings you will see that the possibility of GNOME using adwords/adsense banner advertisements to generate revenue is currently under discussion.[1] GNOME who only recently successfully raised over $100,000 (in less than a week) to save its trademark because the brand means something to the free and/or open source community?[2] Are you kidding me? GNOME is in the unique position of actually being able to lead others by example. GNOME is influential in the wider community. Should we be comfortable endorsing non-free sites when given when you consider what the mission of the charity is?[3] Of course not. That is what I am talking about. Hope that clarifies, Magdalen [1] www.gnome.org/groupon/ [2] https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes [3] http://www.gnome.org/foundation/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Linking to non-free websites from gnome.org
First, there's a lot of talk (here and the earlier thread) that loosely equivocates fundraising with crowdfunding. They're not the same. To tell a project that it should simply accept donations rather than use a crowdfunding platform is a false equivocation. Crowdfunding's mixture of elements -- the presentation, the pitch of the vision, the element of a deadline, staggered donation levels and gifts -- is not replicated by publishing a Donate! banner. #NotAllFundraising huh? :D I apologise in advance but if pedantry needs to be done, it needs to be done right and I feel compelled to correct this: Whilst not all fundraising is crowdfunding, it is true that all crowdfunding is fundraising #YesAllCrowdfunding. So, whilst they are not the same, it seems totally reasonable that people might loosely refer to crowdfunding as fundraising in this sort of context. If you were confused, then you only needed to ask for specifics. :D With that said, I can't really speak for anyone else so the reason I personally chose to liken GNOME's recent fundraiser campaign to a crowdfunding campaign (on indigogo et al) was because overall, it was organised in a similar way to how a crowdfunding campaign would be done and it is fair to consider that particular effort turned out to be great success. It should be easy to concede that the donation levels were not staggered in that case. Granted gnome's groupon campaign was a lot more primitive in various ways than if they had chosen to use a proper crowdfunding platform but there is no question what they came up with was fit for purpose, because it managed to do very well in raising plenty of money over a very short space of time to assist GNOME in dealing with a very specific issue under severe time constraints. The point about that really is that the recent campaign seems to have demonstrated that in principle, GNOME already has the infrastructure which could allow them to accept money for any given crowdfunding campaign on behalf of community driven projects (and any general fundraising too, of course). Assuming that this infrastructure is based on free software and that it comes without the same kinds of fees as all the crowdfunding sites do. Second, linking to a web site is not an automatic endorsement of its script licensing or the practices of its operator. Lacking semantic operators for hyperlinks, context is everything. Personally, I trust my readers to understand this. I think I would have to agree with you when it comes to arbitrary links. If for no other reason than that it would be practically impossible to regulate. See my most recent for discussion on that though. In particular the comment on banners. I do think it is fair to concede that a banner is an endorsement. If it wasn't, then banner advertisement would not have become the billion dollar market that it undeniably is. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Linking to non-free websites from gnome.org
The same set up as what? Something similar to IndieGoGo. It does not need to be similar to indieGoGo. Let's review: GNOME is a charity. IndiGoGo is a business. They do not have the same tax set up, no. As far as I am aware, they do not need to have the same tax set up either. GNOME does not need to make a profit. AFAIK there's a difference between accepting money yourself and an organization on your behalf. It might not be as easy as it appears. Tax wise it is a different form of expense. Whoever the treasurer is would have to clarify. With that said it seems that the treasurer for a charity of this size would have to be used to managing large sums of money from donations as well as paying salaries, freelancers and expenses as they already have to fill in tax forms every year. I don't want to be harsh, but there's a known working solution vs something that probably will work. I am 99.99% sure it would work but as I am not based in the US, I do not know how the tax system works for Californian charitable organisations, off hand. I will give you another example so you can see why what you suggest, doesn't make any real financial sense: GNOME volunteer contributors are sometimes put in a position which asks them to do consultancy work. I know this is so because I have been consulting Oracle who approached me with an awful lot of questions relating to the atk wrapper (and linux) recently. When they first approached me, I would have liked to have been in a position to say, sure I can help you, but you need to speak to GNOME first so they can bill you for consultancy because that would have been a reasonable way to ensure a company which may profit from this work would be urged to something back into the community, value our time and resources but for some unfathomable reason, GNOME has not taken a stance. If we are not able to value our own time and resources, how can we expect anybody else to do that, for us? When would it ever be beneficial to the free software community for a charitable community resource (i.e. GNOME), to not know how to take money and allocate it to paying volunteers for their time every once in a while? If we are not gain clarity from this list to confirm that this is not rocket since, soon then no problem. I will find out for myself, once I have found time to look into it (as long as some people here are able to show some amount of willing to get behind the idea in principle, that is) at the moment I am still trying to figure out whether enough people are on board with the idea itself at this stage, because that is not yet, clear. Instead of talking about what should not be done, I'd prefer if we encourage something to be done. I will assume you are not talking to me here, since that is exactly what I am doing already. I mean that instead of having a list of: - don't link to Facebook - don't link to Google+ - don't use IndieGoGo - don't link to Twitter I rather see how people can improve on spreading the idea and usage of free software. Are we making a choice between supporting free software and not using these things, now? Also. for the record, I am not 100% sure, but I do not believe that twitter is an offending case. I only got a twitter account because the GNOME community encouraged me to do that. I trust that the community would not do that if twitter was in the practice of running non-free scripts on my browser. Please correct me if I am wrong about twitter though. It seems FSF is too much about first restricting ourselves to a group who pretty much only uses free software. Seems too much preaching to the choir. Here you seem to be working on the assumption that everyone who uses GNOME's website is the choir. A lot of people only get to find out about free or open source software because they arrive on websites like GNOME's and read about it which brings me back to the point I made earlier about GNOME being in the unique (and privileged), position of being able to set an example. Have you considered the possibility that by networking on something like Facebook we might actually exclude those members of the community from participating in conversations that happen, on there? Should we shrug our shoulders to that, rather than seek ways to include everyone to all our sources of communication? Could we be inadvertently sacrificing some of our transparency there, too? In this case there wasn't anything available, a decision was taken that is not ideal, but best at that time. I think we have all agreed that in that case about Builder. However this does not mean we need to throw our hands up and give up, altogether. If you look at e.g. GNOME applications, loads of new applications have been written over the years. The number of commits and authors have stayed relatively the same. Looking at that per application the maintenance is decreasing. You wonder why the number of maintainers has decreased? I don't. It seems
Re: foundation application..
Keep it simple. The point is to check whether asking for 2 extra months of involvement to internship is based on solid ground, no only perception or anecdotes, as you claimed it is done. The archives with the decisions are public as well. Sorry for prolonging this thread, but if we are trying to answer questions I would like to know if people have considerations about this: Firstly, neither you nor anyone else her should be made to feel like you need to apologise for exercising the privileges which are granted to all member on this list, equally. - What is the impact of having people joining the Foundation and vanishing later? - Do people that don't intend to continue contributing to GNOME actually apply to GNOME Foundation? If yes, why would they do that? This is a really good question. I've started looking at the membership list data now and although the information is not very forthcoming so it may take some time to compile, early results are beginning to indicate that a higher proportion of active contributors were previously interns at some time or another. One of the most notable differences which seems to become apparent early on between members who are past interns and other kinds of members is that the former group don't seem to show a tendency of becoming affiliated with any large sponsoring corporations very soon after their internships have ended i.e. a higher proportion of past interns seem to be unaffiliated volunteers. This could indicate there may be some conflict of interest in granting these people membership privileges including voting rights, but we'll have to wait and see until more of the data has been collected. I think those are important questions because if people vanish after the end of the internship but they don't apply at all, this probably doesn't require special handling from the membership committee. And if that happens sometimes, if it doesn't cause any issue, again, why bother with special ruling this and risking potential problems? Again, a brilliant question. On the face of it this seems to be purely about reducing paper work for the membership committee (i.e. fewer applications means less work for them). However there are clearly some implications which affect our democratic processes. The question of whether we have a justifiable reason to take steps like this to deny this group of people a vote or not on the basis we worry they might not use it, is an important one because that does not objectively make sense. Clearly, the extra paper work shouldn't be a factor in decisions like this. Thanks for your input. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: foundation application..
On the face of it this seems to be purely about reducing paper work for the membership committee (i.e. fewer applications means less work for them). On the face of it, this statement is fairly offensive for the membership committee. You've read the email that Andrea sent about the reasons of the membership committee, and I'm sure there's no part of that email that says that the buffer period is there to reduce the committee's workload. I'm sure that's not your intention, but you should probably find a better way to word it. It is not my intention to cause offence and objectively that statement that seems a lot less controversial than any of the alternative theories for what else could motivates the committees decision which is one reason I figured it was worth pointing out. This could be as innocent as that. Personally do not believe that it is, but it could be... Had you considered how offensive the statement that committees decision makes itself, may be to the contributions that interns make before you decided that statement was offensive to the people imposing it? Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: foundation application..
On Sun, Feb 22, 2015 at 10:33 AM, Alexandre Franke alexandre.fra...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Feb 22, 2015 at 12:19 AM, Luciana Fujii luci...@fujii.eti.br wrote: - What is the impact of having people joining the Foundation and vanishing later? They gain voting ability when they shouldn't. The board should be elected by people who are involved with the community. Members of the foundation should be members of the community. - Do people that don't intend to continue contributing to GNOME actually apply to GNOME Foundation? If yes, why would they do that? Interns are told at the end of the internship that becoming a member should be their aim. It should indeed be their aim, but this implies that they should do what's necessary to deserve this, i.e. becoming and staying involved. why bother with special ruling this and risking potential problems? The membership can correct me if I'm wrong, but one thing that's not been said so far is that the N months before accepting a member is not really special to interns. Sure it seems it's only written for them, but if someone were to apply after one month of involvement (with or without paid incentive) I'm pretty sure the membership committee (MC) would think it's too soon too. Who said anything about one month? An internship takes 3 months. An internship plus this waiting period is 5 months. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: foundation application..
Keep it simple. The point is to check whether asking for 2 extra months of involvement to internship is based on solid ground, no only perception or anecdotes, as you claimed it is done. The archives with the decisions are public as well. Sorry for prolonging this thread, but if we are trying to answer questions I would like to know if people have considerations about this: Firstly, neither you nor anyone else her should be made to feel like you need to apologise for exercising the privileges which are granted to all member on this list, equally. - What is the impact of having people joining the Foundation and vanishing later? - Do people that don't intend to continue contributing to GNOME actually apply to GNOME Foundation? If yes, why would they do that? This is a really good question. I've started looking at the membership list data now and although the information is not very forthcoming so it may take some time to compile, early results are beginning to indicate that a higher proportion of active contributors were previously interns at some time or another. One of the most notable differences which seems to become apparent early on between members who are past interns and other kinds of members is that the former group don't seem to show a tendency of becoming affiliated with any large sponsoring corporations very soon after their internships have ended i.e. a higher proportion of past interns seem to be unaffiliated volunteers. Further to that point another notable difference between former interns which I should have mentioned (although this concern has already been raised earlier on in the thread) and other kinds of members seems to be gender which may be here relevant too. In the UK (and most of Europe, I believe) it is unlawful to apply blanket practices which could specifically cause greater detriment to those who have protected characteristics than anyone else (gender is of course, a protected characteristic in the eyes of UK law). I cannot say whether or not this is the case in the USA or not though. This could indicate there may be some conflict of interest in granting these people membership privileges including voting rights, but we'll have to wait and see until more of the data has been collected. I think those are important questions because if people vanish after the end of the internship but they don't apply at all, this probably doesn't require special handling from the membership committee. And if that happens sometimes, if it doesn't cause any issue, again, why bother with special ruling this and risking potential problems? Again, a brilliant question. On the face of it this seems to be purely about reducing paper work for the membership committee (i.e. fewer applications means less work for them). However there are clearly some implications which affect our democratic processes. The question of whether we have a justifiable reason to take steps like this to deny this group of people a vote or not on the basis we worry they might not use it, is an important one because that does not objectively make sense. Clearly, the extra paper work shouldn't be a factor in decisions like this. Thanks for your input. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: foundation application..
Again, a brilliant question. On the face of it this seems to be purely about reducing paper work for the membership committee (i.e. fewer applications means less work for them). However there are clearly some implications which affect our democratic processes. The question of whether we have a justifiable reason to take steps like this to deny this group of people a vote or not on the basis we worry they might not use it, is an important one because that does not objectively make sense. Clearly, the extra paper work shouldn't be a factor in decisions like this. The Membership Committee actions are unequivocally oriented to the benefit of the GNOME Foundation. I've been chairing the Committee since five years now and this is honestly the first time ever someone arises a controversial point on the policy and procedures we follow when processing new or renewal applications. The following thread started by Sriram with the pure scope of enhancing the membership application experience it diverged into a crescendum of accusations to the Membership Committee which clearly state the fact you are missing the point of being a GNOME Foundation Member. If you scroll back you'll see that several people who either supported the decision or seemed to remain neutral about it, stated it was the membership committee's decision. Those critical of the decision were not actually the ones who accused the membership committee of taking it. The reality is some of us had no idea where the decision had come from until it came out on this thread, because it does not seem to have been publicly stated anywhere before it was made or leading up to now either. Once the news had come out on this thread, that the decision was the membership committee's idea then this naturally meant that those critical of the decision, in turn had to be critical of the membership committee for taking it. Ultimately, it's the decision that's the problem (but more the way it's been communicated and carried out, from my perspective to be honest). Besides all that though, let's get this into perspective a bit: Nobody's actually talking about overthrowing the membership committee or anything like it, here. It's possible to value the work of others and still fundamentally disagree on something like this. Members are not obliged to grant absolute, unconditional, unquestioning support and agreement to all decisions, (including the ones we don't know out about until after they are made) and it does not seem reasonable that should be seen as controversial, or anything else other than what it actually is: a bunch of perfectly valid questions and concerns. From your point of view being a Foundation member strictly relates to having made a non-trivial amount of contributions (which is totally correct as per Bylaws) but there's one more action the applicant should perform in order for the application to be processed. This action juridically speaking is an act of will. The person by browsing [1] and filling in all the fields acknowledge its intent to apply for Foundation Membership. Applying for membership is not an obligation of any kind and you aren't required to submit an application if you don't have a real interest in doing so. The following announcement [2] (which seems to have caused so much confusion between interns) is misleading in many ways and seems to suggest interns they should apply - not because they believe in the GNOME Foundation and the values it pursues - but for the mere reason to keep a blog aggregated to Planet GNOME. If I was an intern myself reading such an announcement and without having a knowledge of what Foundation membership is about I could definitely started seeing the membership itself as a way for my blog to stay aggregated on Planet GNOME. This seems like an unlikely scenario. As far as I am aware, nobody actually sifts through planet feeds removing the feeds of interns. Besides, isn't our whole vibe meant to be about assuming good intentions? ;-). There's no single reference of what Foundation membership is about, what the duties are and what we are trying to accomplish in terms of building a membership base made of people who really believe in our mission, participate to the community discussions, vote on the yearly elections. Well, there are the foundation webpages. In this case though, the application process could be sufficient in weeding this sort of thing out, couldn't it? It's not totally clear why making a blanket rule would make this any easier, anyway but that's been said. One thing which has not really been mentioned in all of this (possibly because it doesn't apply to all the interns, just the summer ones) is the point that, many of the interns get invited to GUADEC and find out what foundation membership is about through their experience there. Do you not think it might send out a confused message to interns for us to go round inviting them along to GUADEC,
Re: foundation application..
The membership can correct me if I'm wrong, but one thing that's not been said so far is that the N months before accepting a member is not really special to interns. Also correct. In that case, what is the period of time is considered acceptable for non-interns to have contributed for before they make an application, then? ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: foundation application..
On Sun, Feb 22, 2015 at 7:22 PM, Alexandre Franke alexandre.fra...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Feb 22, 2015 at 12:06 PM, Magdalen Berns m.be...@thismagpie.com wrote: On Sun, Feb 22, 2015 at 10:33 AM, Alexandre Franke alexandre.fra...@gmail.com wrote: The membership can correct me if I'm wrong, but one thing that's not been said so far is that the N months before accepting a member is not really special to interns. Sure it seems it's only written for them, but if someone were to apply after one month of involvement (with or without paid incentive) I'm pretty sure the membership committee (MC) would think it's too soon too. Who said anything about one month? An internship takes 3 months. An internship plus this waiting period is 5 months. I did. I said one month, just as I could have said two, three, four, or even five months. My point was precisely that contribution on a short period don't constitute sufficient evidence of a person's involvement within the community. The membership can correct me if I'm wrong, but one thing that's not been said so far is that the N months before accepting a member is not really special to interns. Also correct. In that case, what is the period of time is considered acceptable for non-interns to have contributed for before they make an application, then? That's why I said that it should be at the MC's discretion. Setting a hard rule for this is silly. Saying that someone contributing for six months is not ok, but something contributing for six months and a day is ok is silly. The MC should use their good judgment for the period of time, just as they do with everything else. Well I can't disagree with the principle behind what you say, (that a hard rule for how long a person should wait to apply shouldn't be set) but the reality is that a hard rule is being set for interns and for nobody else (and now tobias suggests there's a general hard rule for determining appropriate length of time anyone should be contributing too, though he hasn't indicated what that might be - which is curious). Ultimately, the membership committee not going to be able to use their judgement if a whole group of people all get told not to apply until a specific period of time has elapsed, are they? On the basis you seem to agree with that idea and yet disagree with the principle of it, at the same time, I'm not really sure what your point is. Can you clarify? Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: foundation application..
Further to that, on looking at some of the recent membership data gathered so far with specific regard to the interns, I have to say, it does seem like a few interns have been significantly undervaluing their own contributions by waiting much longer to apply than seems appropriate for active contributors to be doing with some seeming to have waited as long as two years actually, which is of course, absolutely ridiculous. Why would you think this is ridiculous, or has anything to do with undervaluing ones contributions ? What else do you think would prevent someone who is actively contributing for two years, from applying to formally become part of the community? To be perfectly frank, granting commit access to GNOME revision control repositories is already a huge token of trust, it normally takes at least some months (reasonable number anywhere between 3 to 6 months after the initial encounter ?) before a project maintainer can vouch for someone to be a committer in full confidence. I had commit access and my own shell account before considering becoming a foundation member - not being a foundation member was not a 'bad thing', it's not like I had no right to discuss the direction of the project on d-d-l with many other contributors and maintainers, before becoming a foundation member. You are not a 'less valuable' contributor for not being a foundation member. Becoming a foundation member was just where I drew the line between being a project contributer and maintainer, and decided that I wanted to have some kind of a say in how the foundation itself was run (and even this is IMO still of much lesser importance than having a voice in the direction and development of the projects housed in the GNOME umbrella, for which, again, a foundation membership is not required). In any case, you may think that 2 years is a long time, I certainly think that 2 months is an extremely short time - my personal view on the thing is that the foundation should be comprised of those who actually really give a damn, I find it hard to conceive how the MC could possibly judge the commitment of such a short term contributor. Behold! The Charter (Principles of the GNOME Foundation): https://wiki.gnome.org/action/show/FoundationBoard/Resources/Charter?action=showredirect=Foundation%2FCharter ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Change in my affiliation
Congrats on the new job, Tobi. On Sun, Apr 5, 2015 at 5:46 PM, Tobias Mueller mue...@cryptobitch.de wrote: Hey folks. My affiliation has changed. I'm now with Huawei. Cheers, Tobi ___ foundation-announce mailing list foundation-annou...@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-announce ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [OT] Re: You logo
Let's be real: this is pure drama and it is more than slightly ironic that the original topic of this thread has been completely derailed by those seeking to censor off-topic discussion... For the record, I agree 100% with the moderators - that censorship of any card carrying member would be totally unacceptable (especially on this list). Magdalen On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 10:22 PM, Jim Campbell jcampb...@gnome.org wrote: On Fri, Apr 3, 2015, at 11:46 AM, Richard Hughes wrote: On 3 April 2015 at 15:57, Bastien Nocera had...@hadess.net wrote: So I'm leaving this list. Me too. If I was to troll people about the same uninteresting thing again and again and again I would either get moderated or banned. If anyone wants to reply, please reply to my personal email address. Richard If RMS were to say, for example, Here's where you can find information about using the GNOME trademark . . . oh, and by the way, please refer to operating systems that use the Linux kernel as GNU/Linux systems . . . I don't think there's anyone on this list who would take issue with it. And if RMS can't contribute meaningfully to the thread, but still wants to emphasize that people call it GNU/Linux, I think it's fine for him to reply off-list to the person who sent the message, and say, Kindly call it GNU/Linux. I think we're all okay with that, too. Even if we're not okay with it, it's RMS' perogative to do so. Otherwise, this is a forum for discussing matters of the GNOME Foundation. We join this list to talk about the Foundation, and probably not to talk about other things. If people repeatedly want to talk about other things, and not talk about the GNOME Foundation, I think it's appropriate for list admins to moderate those messages. Jim ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: You logo
On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 6:12 PM, Yosef Or Boczko yosef...@gnome.org wrote: Hey Richard, בתאריך ש', אפר 4, 2015 בשעה 5:47 PM, Richard Stallman r...@gnu.org כתב: There are people on the list who do not know this. Mentioning this point twice a year, in a short polite message, is useful and is no reason for anyone to take offense. Those who already know this point can easily disregard two short polite messages a year. You have a mistake here: short polite message twice a year it already not polite when it cause some people to leave the list. On what planet is it Richard's fault people reacted to a brief aside, by throwing all the toys out the pram, calling him a troll, demanding his emails get deleted from the list and then leaving in a display of shameless, drama? Anyone who is not biased by some historic grievance against Richard ought to be able to see that he did not abuse anyone in this thread and that people have actually just been abusive towards him. When someone is bullied, it's always the perpetrators fault: Never the victim. Magdalen Regards, Yosef Or Boczko I think I understand what you find unpleasant. It could be the hostile responses. Some make a mountain out of my molehill and demand that you gag me. Other responses argue explicitly against citing the GNU system when talking about it. That hostility does not come from me. I am the one it is aimed at. If you think the attacks are objectionable, you should place the responsibility on those that send them. Or you could decide not to let them bother you. If I can remain calm while reading that hostility, surely it is easier for you who are not its target. I have another suggestion. How about if you notice these occasions, twice a year, and post a message saying The GNOME Foundation, as a part of the GNU Project, asks you to please refer to this operating system as GNU/Linux. See http://gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html. Please respond to me off the list if you would like more explanation. I think that will deal with the sub-issue quickly and without disputes, and nothing will be derailed either. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ 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 ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to GNOME Foundation Board candidates
Hi Max, Thanks for your questions. Responses inline: On Tue, May 19, 2015 at 1:41 AM, Max sakana...@gmail.com wrote: Hello all, First, thanks to all candidates for volunteering to the Foundation Board. Max come from GNOME.Asia team and thanks GNOME and board support Asia. I have 2 questions to all candidates The excitement mounts! 1) How many hours per week do you expect you will be able to dedicate to working on the board on a regular basis? My weeks look set to be fairly flexible throughout the year and my aim would be to make best use of my free time to dedicate to board matters so that I have some slack during periods where I may have less time to spare. I anticipate spending an average of around 8-15 hours of my time on board matters per week and I would, of course, communicate with the board about my outside commitments on an ongoing basis. I am under no illusion that this is not going be a particularly tough year for whoever gets elected onto the board. It is no secret that being without an ED has put a tremendous strain on and we have all been very grateful for the commitment the current board have shown in dealing with the challenges that have arisen. I think that it is important for anyone who is elected this year to be aware of the difficulties ahead and to come prepared with strategy for making best use of time, from the outset. From my end, I firmly believe that leaders are most effective when they stick within the remit of their role and communicate well; tasks (e.g. treasurer) can and should be delegated out to those with the right skills, so that the board can best focus on those vital tasks which are not possible to delegate, in a timely way. The added advantage of adopting that open and cooperative approach to management, is that this can provide a necessary contingency for dealing with unexpected surprises. I want to want to do my bit to ensure that everyone who contributes to this organisation has the support they need in carrying out their roles. 2) What's your plan and view with GNOME in Asia? How do you think about grow GNOME in Asia?( ecosystem / contribute / sponsor / volunteer ... ) Firstly, my plan would be to do my best to make sure I am able to attend the next GNOME Asia Summit, since I have not yet had the opportunity ;-); so it probably won't come as a surprise that I would have to defer to members of the community for feedback about this matter, in the first instance. Whilst I do not want to insult your intelligence by pretending that I know an awful lot about a continent I have not yet even been to, I will say that I have been very keen to see GNOME grow as a global organisation and I think a very important aspect of that lies in having a concrete shared vision for the future. Ideally, I would like to one day see GNOME in a situation where we have an HQ in each continent and although this certainly would not be possible for us to achieve that in the foreseeable future, I absolutely believe that is what we should be aiming for long term and what we are capable of achieving if we do aim for it. In the short term, if Asian members (or any other group) felt that nobody on the board had the right knowledge and skills to best represent them, then I would have no issue with advocating we establish a dedicated role (or committee) to address this. More generally, I would have a look at where our members are located, with a view to identifying whether there is more we need to do to engage and support contributors who come from specific regions. * Maybe you already notice -- there start to have sponsors from Asia with GUADEC.( There are 2 in 2015 and 1 in 2014 ) * There are some open source events related and co-work with GNOME Users Group or Members in Asia. For example ** Hong Kong Open Source Conference ( http://opensource.hk/event ) After GNOME.Asia Summit 2012, there are more GNOME and open source related activities in Hong Kong. They start Hong Kong Open Source Conference at 2013. ** openSUSE.Asia Summit ( https://events.opensuse.org/conference/summitasia14 ) ** FUDCon ( https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon?rd=Fudcon ) We held GNOME.Asia Summit 2014 together with FUDCon. I know there will be more people ask questions about all domain with GNOME, so I ask question with Asia first. Thanks again for all candidates volunteering to the Foundation Board. (_ _) Thank you again for engaging with these elections! Please feel free to fire away with any further questions you may have. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Final Results - GNOME Foundation Board of Directors Elections 2015
Great line up! Congratulations to the new set of directors. Also, well done to everyone who kept the election interesting by getting involved. Cheers to you and the committee for organising things as well. :D Magdalen On Fri, Jun 19, 2015 at 9:24 PM, Fabiana Simões fabianapsim...@gmail.com wrote: Hello Foundation! The preliminary results for this year's elections were not challenged. This means, in the next term, our Board of Directors will be composed of the following Foundation members: Allan Day Andrea Veri Christian Hergert Cosimo Cecchi Ekaterina Gerasimova Jeff Fortin Shaun McCance Congratulations! And many, many thanks to all Foundation members who participated and voted. I hope the engagement and excitement we saw during the elections remain active for the year :) Cheers, Fabiana - on behalf of the GNOME Foundation Membership Elections Committee ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for candidates
Hi Richard, Thanks for your email. The FSF has the same status; anything that's lawful for the FSF is lawful for the GNOME Foundation too. Does this not limit the ability of the FSF to campaign against US laws which attack software freedom somewhat? It seems very much like legislative changes all over are presenting a great threat to software freedom, these days... Mainly it's a matter of following the foundation's charter; but the charter doesn't have to be interpreted in the strictest possible way. I do not get the impression the Charter is strictly followed. We are required to follow the bylaws also and in my view they should be followed because there is already a process for making amendments which is very straight-foward and reasonably fair. There are limits on expendatures for lobbying, but lobbying is a rather narrow activity and I think we have never done it. Grassroots activism and communication to the public are usually not lobbying. Also, we are not allowed to work for or against specific candidates for office. I think you are correct about this. Am I right in assuming that only applies to political parties in the USA, then? I would be pretty open to hearing any ideas on what we can do above and beyond being useful free software which does fall within GNOME’s remit, though. The GNOME Foundation's activities will naturally focus on promoting GNOME; in the course of those activities, it can promote the free software ideas too, in many ways. OK, I reckon I better understand you now... I feel that GNOME do tend to promote free software ideas indirectly when promoting GNOME and I think it is constructive for us to do our best to nurture relationships with organisations who seek to promote free software ideas too. But ultimately, we just need a lot more people to know that free software exists! Too many people still have never even heard of free software, let alone GNOME... There are a few subtle ways of getting the message out which we could explore: For example, getting GNOME listed onto some popular websites in the UK (e.g. BBC, NHS, RNIB etc) and elsewhere, by approaching them with up to date instruction manuals on how to use GNOME's accessibility tools so they can publish them or provide links. We could always do with creating some more general promotional videos covering various features and how-tos, tips and tricks. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for candidates
Hi Richard, Thanks for the detailed response. Comments and questions inline: Oh wait, I think I do actually see what you mean now You're concerned about the message we send out if we use non-free software to promote GNOME and things like this e.g. git servers and social networking? You've identified the issue, but you're focusing only on the possible negative side of it. Using nonfree software to promote GNOME would associate GNOME with the idea that nonfree software is ok. Promoting GNOME that way would help the cause in a narrowly focused way (more users, more development of GNOME _are_ good, all else being equal) at the cost of harming it in a broader and deeper way. The issue has positive side, too. In promoting GNOME, it is possible to talk about freedom explicitly, and talk about choices that GNOME has made for the sake of freedom. Thus, while helping the cause in a narrowly focused way, you help the cause in a broader and deeper way at the same time. One can spread a bad message by visibly using an unethical resource; however, choosing ethical resources does not _by itself_ spread a good message because it does not communicate anything. To spread the good message, you have to say it overtly. I guess my main question would be: Can we say it overtly as a c3 charity? Given that the FSF is one then I am imagining the answer to that is yes, but my initial gut impression was that this wouldn't be the case. Either way, I'm all for us using free tools and services and avoiding dodgier ones. I reckon it's good for us to be clear on that before deciding to be overt or political about anything, but if it is I don't see any reason why we should be afraid to that, personally. For instance, carrying an iThing around with you is enough to endorse Apple, but NOT carrying an iThing doesn't convey rejection of Apple. To show that you reject iThings on ethical grounds, you need to say so. Note that there's nothing wrong with git servers in general. Some are bad, some are ok. Doesn't GNOME maintain its own repository? It can and should make sure its repository is entirely good. Also, social networking in general is not a bad thing. I had not meant to suggest that social networking is a bad thing either, I just meant to indicate an example where non-free services are floating about (same deal with git servers). Social networking systems vary greatly, so they can be good or bad, depending on details. Facebook is atrocious and we shouldn't encourage people to be useds of Facebook. On the other hand, using GNU Social is fine. Twitter used to be ok until it started making users identify themselves, last year I think, but it is still POSSIBLE to use it without running nonfree software, last I heard. I get the impression most people only feel they need to use Facebook because it has been imposed on them. Nowadays it's easy to fall completely out of the loop without an account especially for students who literally cannot comprehend how anyone could not use a Facebook account and will organise everything they do on there acting on the assumption that nobody will be left out. People who move around a lot and those who wish to promote something can also get sucked into the Facebook trap. I have to admit I have a fairly lively Facebook account myself and I manage several pages too, but I agree that Facebook is atrocious in several significant ways and the world would certainly be a better place without it. So, at the risk of seeming like a hypocrite, I have to say that I would still advocate we move away from using it to publicise GNOME. Not only because it could seem like too much of a GNOME endorsement of what Facebook is about, but also because we run the risk of excluding members of the community who do not use Facebook by publishing updates on there which could fail to get published in other places too. I do not get the impression we actually gain much from using Facebook to promote what we do at the moment anyway, so on balance it just doesn't seem worth the trade off. With that said, I am not sure whether the general consensus would agree with me on that one and GNOME accounts integration for it would probably be another matter altogether! At the moment it's quite difficult to make any promises on what could be delivered concerning what you have put forward about these things, yet these sorts of existential questions seem likely to pop up recurrently at GNOME, if not collectively answered... I suspect it might be worth raising a debate about this once the board has been confirmed. That way, the community can all figure out what we agree on, decide what we think GNOME's stance should be and then perhaps even put something concrete into policy. Advertising is not inherently bad, but if you sell ads on a site via Google, you're likely to find it shows ads for nonfree software on your site. Unfortunately Google offers no way to filter ads based on
Re: GNOME Foundation 501(c)3 status
I've seen this mentioned previously on this list as well, and I'm curious how that happened. There is an interesting blog about these things which is worth a read (seems a little like some rule tightening has gone on and perhaps caught a few organisations unaware, but it's hard to say what's happened at this stage).[1] I would also suggest that this should be the top priority issue for the GNOME Foundation to fix. Likewise. Is the current Board already working to fix this? A quick search shows GNOME is still listed on the IRS website as being in good standing: http://apps.irs.gov/app/eos/pub78Search.do?ein1=names=GNOMEcity=state=All...country=USdeductibility=alldispatchMethod=searchCharitiessubmitName=Search (actually I think you'll need to redo your own search) Unfortunately, it is delinquent according to the California Department of Justice (you may need to redo your own search to get it to come up there too).[2,3] It might be worth getting in touch with them directly about this because according to the Department of Justice, they have not received copies of the IRS Form 990 for the fiscal years ending 9/30/2009, 9/30/2011, 9/30/2012 and 9/30/2013 and the Annual Registration Renewal Fee Report (RRF-1) and IRS Form 990 for the fiscal year ending 9/30/2014 were due on February 15, 2015, as well. Magdalen [1] https://blogs.gnome.org/jnelson/2014/06/30/the-new-501c3-and-the-future-of-free-software-in-the-united-states [2] http://rct.doj.ca.gov/Verification/Web/Details.aspx?agency_id=1license_id=1043846; [3] http://rct.doj.ca.gov/Verification/Web/Search.aspx?facility=Y ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Foundation 501(c)3 status
Hi Josh, And thanks for the confirmation about GNOME's status. I doubt the information from California Department of justice is inaccurate, but if that is the case it would be wise for us to address that with them. What I suspect is more likely to have happened is what Karen has suggested could have happened: that the accountant filed for an extension and the CDJ are honouring it. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for candidates
Hi Richard, How do you suggest the GNOME Foundation could contribute more to advance the cause of free software and users' freedom, over and above what GNOME contributes by being useful free software? I am not sure whether you feel I answered your question either. I think it could be useful if you could be more specific about what you mean, especially as there are a fair few restrictions on what we at GNOME can do to contribute to the advance of free software under the bylaws and CNPBC so we are obliged to stick to the mission if we are to continue to enjoy 501(c)(3) status as a public benefit corporation (i.e. a charity).[1,2,3] With that said, at the moment we are technically “delinquent so we have lost our tax exempt status for not submitting required 990 forms.[4,5] Assuming that has been a mistake and that we do actually want to benefit from 501(c)(3) status, then I think we would be obliged to sort all that out and just stick to the original mission of the GNOME Foundation which essentially allows us to continue to do things like produce useful free software and educate people all about it. I would be pretty open to hearing any ideas on what we can do above and beyond being useful free software which does fall within GNOME’s remit, though. I am just not sure I really understand what you’re asking about correctly! Do you have any related ideas which you would like us to think about, concerning this? Magdalen [1] https://www.gnome.org//wp-content/uploads/2011/11/bylaws.pdf [2] http://www.irs.gov/Charities--Non-Profits/Charitable-Organizations/Exemption-Requirements-Section-501(c)(3)-Organizations [3] http://www.irs.gov/Charities--Non-Profits/Charitable-Organizations/Exempt-Purposes-Internal-Revenue-Code-Section-501(c)(3) [4] http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/auto_rev_faqs.pdf [5] http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f990.pdf ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for candidates
Hi Richard, Thanks for your question. I'd like to ask the candidates, how do you think GNOME should contribute more to the advance of free software and users' freedom in general (in addition to being useful free software). Too many disabled people still don’t have the luxury of being able to choose useful free software, so I feel quite strongly that GNOME’s accessibility must always strive to provide the most comprehensive free alternative to propriety desktops with features that disabled and non-disabled users alike can all benefit from. I could go on about this but I am getting the vibe this is a snappy thread, so I’ll leave it there for now... ;-) Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for candidates
Hi Karen, Thanks for your input. Also, we are not allowed to work for or against specific candidates for office. I think you are correct about this. Am I right in assuming that only applies to political parties in the USA, then? I don't know -- for that you should check with a lawyer. As I recall the regs are silent as to whether the restriction on endorsing or opposing political candidates is limited to the US. I once found some IRS guidance that said that that it is applicable internationally too. I would definitely consult a lawyer before any United States c3 charity takes on any political activity. I think we signed up to the EU fix my documents initiative and I would really hope we could continue to support work like that without it being an issue. My guess would be that putting our name to that sort of campaign should be okay, since advocating a legislative amendment does not cost us anything, is not strictly endorsing a specific political party and is hopefully not likely to be considered a significant enough kind of lobbying activity, but do you think it would be a good idea for us to check with a Lawyer before doing that sort of thing, in future? I am now also wondering whether I should write to the California Department of Justice to double check that directors are allowed to be a member of a political party outside the USA just in case I manage get elected onto the board. Does this seem like a sensible idea? As disclosed in my candidacy statement, I am a member of the Scottish National Party who run the Scottish Government which can sometimes mean being personally involved with election campaigns, proposing amendments and voting on proposals as a delegate on behalf of my ward. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for candidates
Hi Karen, I think we signed up to the EU fix my documents initiative and I would really hope we could continue to support work like that without it being an issue. My guess would be that putting our name to that sort of campaign should be okay, since advocating a legislative amendment does not cost us anything, is not strictly endorsing a specific political party and is hopefully not likely to be considered a significant enough kind of lobbying activity, but do you think it would be a good idea for us to check with a Lawyer before doing that sort of thing, in future? I think it's a good idea to check any lobbying or political involvement of the charity by a lawyer. As Richard said, there is a difference between non-partisan education and lobbying or political activity (and there's some amount of lobbying that can be permitted). Here are two brief summaries from the IRS: http://www.irs.gov/Charities--Non-Profits/Lobbying http://www.irs.gov/Charities--Non-Profits/Charitable-Organizations/The-Restriction-of-Political-Campaign-Intervention-by-Section-501%28c%29%283%29-Tax-Exempt-Organizations OK thanks for that information. We should bookmark this and keep it in mind. I am now also wondering whether I should write to the California Department of Justice to double check that directors are allowed to be a member of a political party outside the USA just in case I manage get elected onto the board. Does this seem like a sensible idea? As disclosed in my candidacy statement, I am a member of the Scottish National Party who run the Scottish Government which can sometimes mean being personally involved with election campaigns, proposing amendments and voting on proposals as a delegate on behalf of my ward. These restrictions are US federal rules related to GNOME's 501c3 tax status, not the CA rules (there are different kinds of rules that CA imposes on us). Urgh... Your personal views and other affiliations should not be problematic so long as they are not connected to your role within the GNOME Foundation... but do you intend to make political statements or lobby in your capacity as a GNOME Foundation director if you are elected? That would be very relevant. See this FAQ on the IRS site for more information: http://www.irs.gov/Charities--Non-Profits/Charitable-Organizations/Frequently-Asked-Questions-About-the-Ban-on-Political-Campaign-Intervention-by-501%28c%29%283%29-Organizations:-Constitutional-Considerations . There may be a proposal or two which which may relate to software freedom down the line, but nothing I can think of that could directly relate to my role at GNOME either, as a member or (if elected) as a director, at all. So that seems like this should be okay actually. I think it seems like I would have to be a bit more careful about the wording I use on my planet GNOME blog and at events, but that's okay with me. Also, I should make it clear that this is not legal advice. You should consult with a lawyer about your personal obligations if you are uncertain. As you can probably see, there's a lot of information available on the IRS site too if you'd like to educate yourself (I don't think I'll have time for more back and forth on this issue). I agree the IRS site is quite informative, thanks. I reckon that should be enough. I'll bookmark it. While I am not running for another board term and have limited time, I still intend to be available as pro bono counsel to GNOME when the new board takes office. I also am happy to continue to help coordinate other pro bono counsel, as I have done for the last number of years. That's decent of you, thanks! We all appreciate how much work you have done to improve GNOME and support its community, so I am sure whoever ends up being elected onto the board will try not to make too many demands on your time around these sorts of things; still, it's always reassuring to know that skilled help like this is at hand, if needed! ;-) Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for candidates
Hi Richard There are a few subtle ways of getting the message out which we could explore: For example, getting GNOME listed onto some popular websites in the UK (e.g. BBC, NHS, RNIB etc) and elsewhere, by approaching them with up to date instruction manuals on how to use GNOME's accessibility tools so they can publish them or provide links. These are candidate ways for how to promote GNOME. They might be good ways. The board would want to compare them with other possible ways in order to choose. However, I'm raising a different point: about spreading the ideas of free software. That is different from use of GNOME. Thus, I ask, how would you piggy-back spreading the ideas of free software onto GNOME and the promotion of GNOME? I don't follow why you see these as such different things: GNOME is free software; by promoting GNOME, we are therefore promoting free software and the ideas which come with its use. Spreading much more general ideas of free software is something which other organisations (e.g. FSF) are already established to address. I really think that the directors of GNOME are supposed to spend their time on work which directly relates to GNOME's core mission; if elected, I would be keen to focus on that commitment. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for candidates
Hi Richard, On Fri, May 29, 2015 at 7:24 PM, Magdalen Berns m.be...@thismagpie.com wrote: Hi Richard There are a few subtle ways of getting the message out which we could explore: For example, getting GNOME listed onto some popular websites in the UK (e.g. BBC, NHS, RNIB etc) and elsewhere, by approaching them with up to date instruction manuals on how to use GNOME's accessibility tools so they can publish them or provide links. These are candidate ways for how to promote GNOME. They might be good ways. The board would want to compare them with other possible ways in order to choose. However, I'm raising a different point: about spreading the ideas of free software. That is different from use of GNOME. Thus, I ask, how would you piggy-back spreading the ideas of free software onto GNOME and the promotion of GNOME? I don't follow why you see these as such different things: GNOME is free software; by promoting GNOME, we are therefore promoting free software and the ideas which come with its use. Spreading much more general ideas of free software is something which other organisations (e.g. FSF) are already established to address. I really think that the directors of GNOME are supposed to spend their time on work which directly relates to GNOME's core mission; if elected, I would be keen to focus on that commitment. Oh wait, I think I do actually see what you mean now You're concerned about the message we send out if we use non-free software to promote GNOME and things like this e.g. git servers and social networking? In that regard, I'd have no problem advocating we always seek to use more free-software resources where alternatives exist and generally seek to improve our own infrastructure so we rely on 3rd party tools less in general so it's less of a concern. I would definitely advocate we scrap the investigation into google adwords. For one thing it won't actually make the money that the advertising space is worth so I think there are more constructive uses of that space which could promote select businesses who are more in line with what we are about. Bear in mind though, with these sorts of things I cannot make promises about what I would be able deliver. As suggested in other threads, as one of seven directors I could only really advocate what I think are appropriate and reasonable strategies and do my best to gain a consensus from the community about these sorts of things. GNOME is a democratic organisation so I can't and (I don't want to) impose anything on the community which they aren't down with. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: code of conduct question for Board candidates
Hi Marina, Thanks for your question! What do you think about adopting a detailed code of conduct, similar to the one used for GUADEC 2014 [3], for all GNOME events and creating a similarly detailed code of conduct for the GNOME community? I hold the view that the vast majority people will consciously do their best to avoid drawing negative attention to themselves unless they feel they have support. Ideally, we want to be able to do what we can to nurture an atmosphere where members still feel free to express themselves, but also recognise that this self expression will not be supported if it comes at the direct expense of anyone else’s rights. We also want to be able to provide a concrete means of reassuring contributors that their wellbeing matters to us. I would therefore advocate that the event CoC initiative employed last year at GUADEC continue and I would also advocate taking the idea of a community CoC forward in principle too. As regards the formal community CoC idea specifically: I reckon it would likely need to contain some very considered wording to ensure it’s not left too open to subjective misinterpretation and it would probably be advisable for us to ensure we publish it along with a clear and transparent complaints policy which outlines a) how complaints are going to be handled, b) how long they are going to take to be processed, c) who is specifically responsible for dealing with them and d) what our approach to confidentiality is. Anyway, I am really pleased you have raised a debate about this and I agree that it is important. I hope that the idea gets a heathy concensus from the rest of the community too, as I would be very willing to get behind it. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: code of conduct question for Board candidates
Hi Olav, I don't follow why I'd sign something can cause legal issues for me if I could do without that. I am not sure why you are concerned that a community code of conduct could cause legal issues for you, are you able to elaborate on that? I think in the question the GNOME community vs foundation members are mixed up. Those are not the same thing. I'm a bit surprised that people see a Code of Conduct as something new. See e.g. https://mail.gnome.org/; we already expect people to follow the Code of Conduct. Marina can correct me if I am inadvertently misrepresenting her intention here, but I think the reason she is suggestion a community code of conduct is essentially because the mailing list code of conduct is (as the name suggests) specific to the mailing list and there is also no official enforcement of those sorts of principles (nor should their be, in my view). And before someone misunderstands, I have enforced the Code of Conduct, I've signed the existing one and agree to the thoughts behind both. Which CoC are you referring to here? (there's so many in this thread now, I can't keep up! ;-)) This maybe my annoyance with volunteering and then getting too much do this or else.. that takes the fun out of it. I prefer assume people mean well. I am aware this concern exists for some members of the community about the principle of CoCs and I can sympathise with that worry too, but let's explore in context: Assuming people mean well on the mailing list is really just another way of saying don't jump to conclusions. Objectively that's a really sensible thing to suggest people to think about doing on mailing lists, since lots of people do often react without thinking on those things... However, this is about how we propose to address *serious* examples of detrimental misconduct, not trivial mailing list squabbles which members are able to resolve between themselves. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: code of conduct question for Board candidates
Hi Richard, I agree, it is probably appropriate for those of us who have answered to hold off on debating about CoCs for the time being. Apologies for the noise. I'm happy to back off so other candidates can answer Marina's question. Do carry on... :D Magdalen On Sun, May 24, 2015 at 10:15 PM, Richard Stallman r...@gnu.org wrote: [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] I suggest that we postpone discussion on codes of conduct until after the election. It is likely be a very big debate and likely to drown out discussion with the candidates. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: Best use of Trademark Fundraiser money?
Hi Liam, On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 12:09 AM, Liam R. E. Quin l...@holoweb.net wrote: On Sun, 2015-05-24 at 21:52 +0100, Magdalen Berns wrote: Hi Andreas, I think most of us haven't seen latest the accounts yet, but I think it's probably fair to assume that a war chest of ~$100,000 is probably a wee bit excessive. ;-) It doesn't sound like a lot of money to me. It's probably not enough to fight a single trademark case in court in the US - you'd need two or three times as much money [1, 2]. Just as well Groupon didn't catch on to that before they conceded then ;-) GNOME originally registered as a public benefit cooperation (i.e. a charity) so our income must be substantially related to GNOME's exempt purposes or it could be taxable and as you can see $100,000 would normally amount to a significant chunk of our average annual income.[1] So, I still agree with Tobias and I also agree with everything Cosimo has said, on this: There really ought to be some compelling reason for us to want to sit on that kind of money rather than invest it back into the project. I'll leave it there, so the rest of the candidates can answer. Magdalen [1] http://rct.doj.ca.gov/Verification/Web/Details.aspx?agency_id=1license_id=1043846; ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: Best use of Trademark Fundraiser money?
Hi Andreas, Thanks for your question! On Sun, May 24, 2015 at 6:44 PM, Tobias Mueller mue...@cryptobitch.de wrote: Hi! On So, 2015-05-24 at 19:23 +0200, Andreas Nilsson wrote: What, in your mind, is the best use of these funds now? Kept as a War Chest [2] or spent on something specific? I don't have a particular idea for those funds (as opposed to the funds earmarked for Security and Privacy), so I am open to ideas. But we must stick to what we promised to our donors: If we are able to defend the mark without spending this amount, we will use the remaining funds to bolster and improve GNOME. I think most of us haven't seen latest the accounts yet, but I think it's probably fair to assume that a war chest of ~$100,000 is probably a wee bit excessive. ;-) so in principle, I'd echo Tobias and also advocate we take ideas from members like yourself on what we ought to spend surplus funds on in order to bolster and improve GNOME. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: code of conduct question for Board candidates
On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 6:42 PM, Josh Triplett j...@joshtriplett.org wrote: On Sun, May 24, 2015 at 07:11:42PM +0200, Olav Vitters wrote: On Sat, May 23, 2015 at 10:06:49AM -0700, Josh Triplett wrote: I'm entirely in favor of an improved code of conduct, both for events and in general. And thank you for raising this issue. Some searching turned up https://wiki.gnome.org/Foundation/CodeOfConduct , but that's definitely insufficient. (It's a nice set of sentiments, but not a functional code of conduct.) By contrast, the GUADEC 2014 code of conduct you linked to sets the higher standard I would expect, and that I've come to expect from other conferences as well. I'm in favor of improving the general code of conduct to the same standard. Why and how is it definitely insufficient? Marina linked to several resources about codes of conduct and their effectiveness; specifically, see http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Code_of_conduct_evaluations . For instance, a more effective Code of Conduct should include information like For issues arising on mailing lists, IRC, or Bugzilla, contact exam...@gnome.org, who can help address issues, and if necessary, can limit or ban access to those resources. Which I would hope is simply a statement of what we'd *already* do; I'd be shocked, for instance, if the IRC channel operators or server admins have never had to ban anyone. For the record: I'm not personally looking to put forth a proposal to update the current community code of conduct; I'm simply stating that I would be quite receptive to a well-considered proposal to do so. I quite like the Code of Conduct and I've signed it. By contrast, the 2014 GUADEC one is a very long statement specifically about a conference, not about a community. I don't see how the board has _any_ influence on the GNOME community. This while the conference one assumes you're attending a conference and that someone can expel you, can possibility contact law enforcement, etc. And that's the upper limit of what a Code of Conduct for a mailing list, IRC channel, Bugzilla, or other community resource should do as well: expel someone from a list, channel, Bugzilla server, etc. Nobody's talking about a document that has legal effect. While I disagree with the portion of the current CoC that says There is no official enforcement of these principles (not least of which for almost certainly being inaccurate), I agree with the this should not be interpreted like a legal document. For instance, nobody should be saying well, they're acting terribly and being disruptive, we all know it, but they're not violating the exact letter of the CoC, so my hands are tied. OK in light of these responses, I feel I should maybe better clarify that whilst I agree this sort of stance may be a fair way to moderated communications with non-members, I do not agree with expelling card carrying members from lists, channels or servers under any circumstances. If someone has committed a *serious* breach of conduct, then the board do technically already have the power to revoke foundation membership which is the upper limit of what the board can enforce - (what’s currently lacking is a clear, transparent and fair process for that). In such *exceptional* circumstances, such privileges as access to the mailing list, IRC or git subscriptions could (in theory) justifiably be revoked under GNOME’s bylaws and California State law. However, partial exclusion of any card carrying member via an informal process could too easily become an affront to our democracy, lead to censorship, discriminatory treatment or victimisation, so therefore this is not a policy I could ever advocate, in principle. Ultimately, people have a right to be objectionable a-holes. as long as they are not infringing on anyone else’s rights in the process, in my view. I hope that better clarifies my stance on this issue. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates: transparency and accountability
Hi Fabiana, Great question, thanks! Response inline: I'd like to hear your thoughts on implementing transparency and accountability on the Board. How transparent the work of the Board should be to Foundation members? What should be communicated and when? I think it is appropriate the board seek a consensus from the community before adopting any new policy. I also believe it it is fair practice for the board to take steps to advertise posts, such as: secretary, treasurer and president before appointing new officers. I would seek to encourage healthy discussion between the board and the rest of the community about matters of importance arising, which would include, taking conscious steps to publish the agenda and minutes as early as possible. I would also advocate we publish advisory board minutes. More generally, I think it would be useful if we kept an up to date list of all committee names, committee members, committee meeting logs/minutes and policies, just as we already to keep our current members list up to date on the Foundation pages. Always useful to be able to see a more detailed breakdown of income and outgoings so we are clear on how much each “sponsor is actually contributing to the project in real, practical terms. The community could also benefit from being kept abreast of the specific yearly contributions of advisory board affiliates. Do you think we have been transparent enough in the last term? If not, how can we improve things and how high in your priorities would be to do so? Who knows that GNOME has been a “delinquent” charity in the eyes of so the California State Department of Justice since 2013? The board have done their best under exceptionally challenging circumstances, but of course must always strive to do better, year on year. If elected, I would be seeking feedback from members on an ongoing basis. Transparency and accessibility go hand in hand: This is a top priority for me. In terms of accountability, it's been unclear to me since joining the Foundation how much different Board members contribute to the Board's goals and tasks. Do you think the meeting notes provide enough visibility and context to the work being done? It would be useful to be able to provide access to meeting logs, but as I understand things, there are some confidentiality issues which may prevent that from being workable. I suppose I could advocate each director write a monthly or (dare I say it) maybe even a fortnightly report, that sort of thing could make it clear to members that everyone is pulling their weight” and ensure members are always clear on what tasks are actively being carried out by each member of the board. By the end of a term, how can the Foundation have a fair understanding of one's contributions to the Board? Jeff’s end of term update was a good call and I get the sense that the rest of the community really appreciated his efforts too. It would be great to see the same sort of thing from all board members and then compiled either into a pdf document or as a condensed so it can be added to the annual report and I would certainly be willing to support an initiative like this. Thanks again, for your questions! Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: code of conduct question for Board candidates
People can do as they like on their own systems and resources, but when participating in the GNOME community, they should do so with respect. Refusing to exclude anyone is itself an exclusionary policy; it selects for the kind of people who will put up with absolutely anything, and excludes people who do not feel comfortable in such an environment. That creates a kind of community that I would not want to see GNOME become; there are too many of those already, because there are too many projects unwilling to kick out awful people. I suspect we might actually agree if we debated this properly, but I think you're right and we should try not to digress too much. Just to say, I probably could have worded that a bit better: An objectionable a-hole or awful person might not mean the same thing to you as it does to me, so we probably ought to be a bit careful about defining behaviours in those terms. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: More questions for Board candidates
Hi Karen, Thanks for your questions. Responses inline: Have you ever done any fundraising? Yes, although not on such a scale as I would expect a GNOME director will have to take on. More like a few small fundraisers for various charities and perhaps more recently, some of you may remember that I managed to raise funds to attend the GSoC summit in San Jose from Edinburgh. I had initially accepted that invitation with absolutely no idea whatsoever how I would be able finance any of it, but I never doubted for a second that things would fall to place - which they did :D I am fairly confident that the demands of fundraising for GNOME are not likely to be a big a learning curve, as long there is a strong team of motivated people involved. Overall, I am very keen to work with others to develop fundraising strategies, so we can better support the work of the GNOME community and I would be keen to do my bit to ensure we make measurable progress on this front. Are you comfortable asking sponsors for money? Absolutely. We at GNOME all work hard, collectively investing the skills and ideas which build this project into something which sponsors are desperate to be associated with. If elected, then I feel it would be my duty to work on behalf of those contributing members who form GNOME and I would feel very comfortable negotiating favourable terms on behalf of the community. Have you ever been in a manager role? I won't list out my CV ;-) but the short answer is: in various ways, yes… Mostly through charity, campaigns and advocacy volunteer work, but I also freelanced professionally in events before I came to Edinburgh which had me supervising others at times, as well as going through all the fun of having to be responsible for my own accounts. I could probably go on about this but I am reluctant to overdo it without further prompting. Just to say, I have a fair understanding of where my skills, abilities and interests lie. Please free to ask me to elaborate or clarify anything if you are particularly interested in finding out about, though! Do you have any experience talking to reporters? A little bit: I was interviewed by the BBC for news at 6 when Nicola Sturgeon was elected leader of the SNP and also recently quoted in the student newspaper regarding wellbeing at the College of Science and Engineering. Overall, I probably still need to polish up for this sort of thing but I am quite lucky in that I am able to access some relevant training, where I am. Have you ever talked to a group of people about why software freedom is important? Yes, a quite few times now. The most recent one was a presentation at EdLUG about GNOME accessibility. Again, I still feel like I need to practice but that last talk went pretty well by all accounts and people seemed to be really engaged, asking lots more questions than I had expected they might, which was very encouraging. Thanks again for these questions! Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to the candidates.
Hi Erick First, thanks to all of you for running as directors. Thanks for your question! Currently, GNOME is a strong platform for development, but it's lacking integration and features to be a complete, fully integrated desktop environment like Mac OS X, for instance. My question is: What plans do you have to make GNOME a more complete, fully working solution as desktop environment. As others have suggested this may be beyond the remit for this board, but one thing I have been fairly keen on is the idea of raising a debate about the merits of establishing a technical board of directors who could lead the way on these sorts of matters... I suspect that having a democratic selection process for such a proposed set of technical directors, could help improve communication between teams and make the decision making process a bit more transparent and accountable, in the long run. Thanks again, Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question on community to the candidates.
Hi Sri, Thanks for your questions! It is my impression (and I state impression because I am providing no data) that GNOME has more reliance on people paid to work on GNOME than community. I do not question the passion and dedication to those who are paid on GNOME, I know that they would do it as a community even if they were not paid. Anyone who seriously expects volunteers to put just as much time and dedication into working on GNOME as full time paid employees might be able to do, probably needs to check their privilege... Most people are forced to pay for stuff (e.g. food and rent) by this cruel world, so we probably ought to try and avoid expecting volunteers to contribute to GNOME as though it were a full or (dare I say it) even a part time job, given that many people simply may really want to, but simply not be able to financially afford to do that. A contributor's socio-economic status ought not indirectly exclude them from being valued by the community, in my view. If you agree with my impression, what actions do you think would help increase participation in GNOME? I think making a concerted effort to explore a wider variety of income sources with a view to increasing our income significantly, is probably the way forward ;-) An ideal situation, would be one where we are able to offer some financial support towards the important work our volunteers, wherever possible. I also reckon that volunteers are much more likely to stay engaged where they feel meaningfully involved and that their contributions are valued: If we consciously strive to take more members to more events, be receptive to new ideas and feedback, encourage contributors to apply for membership and advertise whenever new opportunities pop up then I suspect this could help us increase, diversify and engage our pool of contributors too. Thanks again, Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Agenda for board meeting on July 7th
Hi, On Fri, Jul 10, 2015 at 3:17 AM, Josh Triplett j...@joshtriplett.org wrote: On Thu, Jul 09, 2015 at 09:04:52PM -0400, Richard Stallman wrote: * https://kickstarter.com/projects/technoruninc/stratos/ What is the relationship between this and GNOME? None whatsoever, other than that their mockups appear to depict GNOME, which is part of why it needs investigation. The bottom of the page saysStratOS is based and built upon a modified Linux Kernel and sports a modified version of the Gnome Desktop Environment. so that would explain why the screenshots look familiar. I guess that would not have to necessarily mean that licensing or trademarks were being violated but hopefully the licensing experts among us can clarify any concerns there might be on that front. I see two problems in the kickstarter page. The smaller, superficial problem is that it says Linux and means GNU. If they would like our support, we should insist they change that. I'm much less concerned about whether they want GNOME's *support* (as it seems rather unlikely either that they'd seek such support or that we'd offer it), and more concerned about whether they're actually acting in good faith or whether they might be doing something that will actively damage the reputations of Linux, GNU, GNOME, and other Free Software projects. I just can't see how anyone who really was already familiar with free software projects like GNOME, GNU et al would consider donating to this kickstarter so, I am not sure how in practical terms this kickstarter could damage our reputation. Even at face value, the project looks like a kid trying to flog a product he took from projects like ours and maybe modified a bit. Personally, the main thing that makes me most curious/suspicious about this is that the project has actually managed to raise a 5 figure sum towards its total already and it's not even been well marketed (imho), but that's just me. Ultimately, if we find that neither our licensing nor trademark is being violated is there really anything we can or should do to try control what people want to do with our software? Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Agenda for board meeting on July 7th
The license we've chosen clearly allows people to sell products with the code included, so I'm assuming this is strictly a trademark issues. Jeff initially raised some concern about whether source code was being included as they don't seem to indicate either way. As far as I can tell this is about figuring out if this is a scam (which could hurt the GNOME brand) or just a bunch of enthusiastic youngsters giving things a try. I still can't really see how that being a scam could specifically hurt our brand (other names seem to be dropped). As far as I can tell, neither the project nor its website appear to claim to have any special endorsement from us or any association with us though, which could be significant. From looking over the trademark regulations anyway, it seems like (as has been suggested) we could perhaps speak to them about GNOME instead of Gnome (and have a word about GNU/Linux)[1] I should emphasise that I am really no expert when it comes to licensing and trademark issues, so I hope someone who actually is one, can clarify where we are on that front! In the meantime, getting in touch with the project organiser directly to discuss any concerns seems like a constructive suggestion, though I it seems like it's probably worth our making sure that we have a clearer idea of what specifics we are legitimately concerned about, beforehand. Basically, they're taking advantage of people who don't know enough about Linux to realize they are just a clone of much more serious operating systems shipping GNOME that are already available for free. Probably, but if we [GNOME] were to decide to actively challenge these sorts of project crowdfunder/whatevers *purely* on the basis that we [GNOME] in principle feel that charging money for a product which uses a fork of GNOME is cheating people or otherwise taking advantage, then we would seriously need to consider what our promotion of that message could say to the world about how we value our own work (since we're worried most about potential harm to our brand and its associated products). Magdalen [1] https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Resources/LicensingGuidelines ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
