Re: Board of Directors Elections 2017 - Candidacy - Alexandre Franke
On Mon, 2017-05-15 at 10:34 +0200, Alexandre Franke wrote: > Name: Alexandre Franke > Affiliation: none > I believe I also bring political and ethical value to the board. > Software freedom, privacy and Internet decentralisation are values I > care a lot about and I put them forward whenever a situation demands > it. I reckon my European mindset adds an important point of view to > the board as well. Interesting, indeed. You plan to bring decentralisation to GNOME's political and ethical values of the board, too? If so, how would that look like? A confederation of areas of expertise with each a small hierarchy of decision making? Which areas would there be? Marketing, technical, organisational, conference and hackfests, documentation, i8an, financial, etc? Kind regards, Philip Van Hoof signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Board of Directors Elections 2015 - Candidacy - Ryan Lortie
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hi Ryan, If any, in what direction would you change gnome after being elected? Kind regards, Philip On 18/05/2015 22:43, Ryan Lortie wrote: > karaj, > > I am announcing my candidacy for the board of directors. > > If elected, this would be my second time on the board. > > I have been a GNOME developer during many years, mostly on > lower-level things. > > I am currently affiliated with Canonical where I am in the desktop > team, mostly in context of working on the GNOME technologies that > are also used in our products. > > I am happy to answer any questions that you may have about how I > would represent you on the board of directors. > > Cheers ___ > foundation-announce mailing list foundation-annou...@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-announce > -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2.0.20 (MingW32) iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJVWs9TAAoJEEP2NSGEz4aD+KEIAIAMRPmg1wQsUza/Y6lDsJab uXbUh9/9miVz5CH98kPX24A0dAcDJjgFZI/OBAjCR4Lb3avRUupT3eQECFLMEknk JULZpmQ9Co/KC3Y+ve7V3uACQsxLK65BggMti9omblNyAiQl8cH1tPHcf38BnE9F myhZEsxlaVjbdTdX5ClOf+gMIEywv7FL1nuSWkkF2BZ6vEM4KVOWfxI7CvBJLRPE YBLPOgqd1prDPwsnoGj+EMwdVQofQCciXzUbWd5DNpgatUaSgIQRM1DIYMsm6sCq +z+0z2Xu4Uafy2yDLa45cIOrjXDudumWN4ttPF3saieT72Ue7pKW3xTdnJdrhug= =huJX -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Announcing GNOME's official GitHub mirror
Richard Stallman wrote on 17/08/2013 1:10: I don't think it'll make much of a difference as neither technical nor philosophical arguments are often part of, not what gets discussed at GNOME but, what gets decided. To make sure that it's noted I do agree with Richard on this: But I don't think that applies to most of what GitHub or Savannah does. Those are communication activities. You couldn't do them by calling a library in your own computer. So it is ok to use services for that (but pay attention to the privacy issues). However, it would be nice if we could do it in a peer-to-peer fashion. I also wonder what Github offers that can't be done peer to peer. Note that I lack experience in the magic of quantum-marketing iCloud stuff. Kind regards, Philip ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
[no subject]
-- Philip Van Hoof freelance software developer Codeminded BVBA - http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Proposal: DNS change irc.gnome.org becomes A record and irc.gimpnet.org starts getting phased out.
On Fri, 2013-05-10 at 08:55 -0500, meg ford wrote: Hi Meg, > In general when people use the term "PC" in the US, they are talking > about being adopting extra careful/ newly coined language. That's not > what I'm saying. You wouldn't use the term gimp when talking to > someone unless you wanted to indicate that you hate them or had were > trying to start a fight. There isn't anything pc about not using such > a term. You would only use it if you were specifically trying to > offend someone. Just to clarify, are you saying that it's pc to say we > shouldn't use derogatory epithets, or are you disagreeing with my > assessment of the word? Note that I didn't say irc.gnome.org is a bad idea. Removing Gimpnet is a bad idea (I don't think that real gimps join Gimpnet to be a jerk on the IRC server, if that's truly the case then a solution for that would be to either ban those people or to lock their discussions in a IRC channel on that server). > > I'm saying that it's an I18n issue. I recently read that the GNOME > foot is insulting in Thailand so we are trying not to use it there. We > aren't getting rid of it entirely because it's specifically offensive > there, but not everywhere. I would guess that gimp isn't offensive in > languages other than English since we are only hearing about this from > English speakers. In the case of the GIMP I can see why they a name > change would be really problematic and potentially harm the project. > In the case of GNOME irc I think don't see that there is an issue > wrt making the change. However, maybe that's because I speak English. > But since English is the official language of the project, so maybe > it's important to consider making a change. What do you think? I think GNOME should introduce irc.gnome.org and alter the IRC server's MOTD but shouldn't remove the irc.gimpnet.org domain. I'm not certain that this should be done because of derogative terms like the word gimp, but rather because GNOME is GNOME, not GIMP, and it's misleading to have to connect to irc.gimpnet.org to talk to GNOME developers. Kind regards, Philip > > > > > The proposal is to make irc.gnome.org be an DNS A > record and > > we will > > > continue to honor irc.gimpnet.org as a CNAME for > one year in > > which > > > case we will then remove it altogether. > > > > > > Gimpnet is cultural inheritance of GNOME, I think > it's a bad > > idea to do > > this for that reason. > > > > Kind regards, > > > > Philip > > > > > > -- > > Philip Van Hoof > > Software developer > > Codeminded BVBA - http://codeminded.be > > > > ___ > > 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: Proposal: DNS change irc.gnome.org becomes A record and irc.gimpnet.org starts getting phased out.
On Thu, 2013-05-09 at 17:06 -0500, meg ford wrote: Hey Meg, > > On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 2:53 PM, Philip Van Hoof > wrote: > On Wed, 2013-05-08 at 10:02 -0700, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: > > > We are looking into changing our irc server name from > irc.gimpnet.org > > to irc.gnome.org and looking for feedback. > > Why? > > > Essentially, it's become problematic to have 'gimp' in the > name of our > > server. To many, 'gimp' is an offensive term an given our > dedication > > to a11y it seems counter-intuitive to have this name in our > > infrastructure. > > Yet another PCPOS in GNOME. When will this stop? Is there an > end? Any? > > > Yeah idk how "PC" it is to not use the term gimp. The US, where I > live, has pretty strong free speech laws, but people don't use this > term because it's too offensive. So I think this is kind of an I18n > issue. > However, GNOME's origin is partly Gtk+ (which even predates and from where GLib came). Gtk+'s origin is Gimp's toolkit. Gimp was ~ GNOME's first and or one of its first projects and actually sort of predates GNOME as a sort of ancestor of the project and this community. What we're discussing here is that for PC reasons, GNOME wants to tell its father that it is no longer its father. I think that's crazy. I'd be completely ok with adding a irc.gnome.org and perhaps even changing the MOTD of the IRC server to mention less GIMP and more GNOME. That's natural as indeed GNOME today stands on its own feet. But why remove the GimpNET domain? You don't have to use it if you don't like the word Gimp. GNOME is a heavy user of Gtk+ which stands for Gimp Toolkit. With this latest line of PC thinking, shouldn't GNOME also stop using Gtk+? You know, because Gtk+ has an 'offensive' name in its acronym. I think you're all taking this way way too far and I think its becoming POS, whatever people like Karen think about Code of Conducts (that I actually have helped write - go look up in the mailing list from what discussion 'Assume people mean well' came from and who the actors in the formation of that part were). Kind regards, Philip > > The proposal is to make irc.gnome.org be an DNS A record and > we will > > continue to honor irc.gimpnet.org as a CNAME for one year in > which > > case we will then remove it altogether. > > > Gimpnet is cultural inheritance of GNOME, I think it's a bad > idea to do > this for that reason. > > Kind regards, > > Philip > > > -- > Philip Van Hoof > Software developer > Codeminded BVBA - http://codeminded.be > > ___ > 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: Proposal: DNS change irc.gnome.org becomes A record and irc.gimpnet.org starts getting phased out.
On Wed, 2013-05-08 at 10:02 -0700, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: > We are looking into changing our irc server name from irc.gimpnet.org > to irc.gnome.org and looking for feedback. Why? > Essentially, it's become problematic to have 'gimp' in the name of our > server. To many, 'gimp' is an offensive term an given our dedication > to a11y it seems counter-intuitive to have this name in our > infrastructure. Yet another PCPOS in GNOME. When will this stop? Is there an end? Any? > The proposal is to make irc.gnome.org be an DNS A record and we will > continue to honor irc.gimpnet.org as a CNAME for one year in which > case we will then remove it altogether. Gimpnet is cultural inheritance of GNOME, I think it's a bad idea to do this for that reason. Kind regards, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof Software developer Codeminded BVBA - http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: A question to the candidates
On Sun, 2012-05-27 at 11:21 +0200, Gil Forcada wrote: > Hi all, > > First of all thanks for running for this critical role on GNOME! > > My question is about hardware and contacts: > > The average user is not going to ever install its own operating system > by itself, for them hardware and software come together and they die > together, so a new version of Windows means a new laptop and so on, a > new iPhone OS means a new iPhone hardware... > So the crucial part here are ISV, contacting them, engaging with them > and finally making them ship our great software to the end user. Note that in my view is lack of such a well supported context for businesses in the GNOME community what led to the switch from Gtk+ to Qt during the Fremantle to Harmattan platforms at Nokia. Now its history of course, but reflecting on it wouldn't be a bad exercise. In mobile and embedded is Qt in high demand. Here you can find a Qt job quite easily. I can effectively name 3 or 4 companies that are looking for a C++/Qt developer nearby Brussels and Antwerp. None for Gtk+. Of course with Nokia more or less stopping with Qt is demand for Qt also lower as before. But Gtk+ isn't filling up the gap. I rather notice that commercial activity in mobile and embedded is going back to the Windows platform, to Android and to iOS. Even Flash is more often used on embedded than Gtk+. How bad can it get? You can have all the ideologies about freedom and free software you want, and it seems to be the only though question being asked to the candidates this year, but without enough commercial activity around the GNOME platform like we had during the 770, N800, N810 and N900 will the amount of people working on it, will students lose interest and will future innovation in it be low. I think this is GNOME's bigger-picture problem: its hostility towards ISVs and commercial activity. > Is that something that you both find important and also will try to > pursue if you are elected? > > Cheers, -- Philip Van Hoof Software developer Codeminded BVBA - http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Candidacy: Ryan Lortie
On Mon, 2011-05-23 at 13:51 -0400, Ryan Lortie wrote: > hi Philip, > > (keeping in mind that creating a technical board is very much an open > question) > > On Mon, 2011-05-23 at 19:48 +0200, Philip Van Hoof wrote: > > - Will all foundation members get a single vote? > > That was indeed my intention. > > I think your other proposals are too difficult to implement and possibly > even undesirable. Do you have some others ideas about how it might be > possible? Yes I think that a project should get a vote and that its maintainer could be assigned to decide how the project will vote. I also think that a company having five or more developers assigned to working on GNOME modules is in my opinion a formidable stakeholder who should get votes per group of (let's say) five such developers. A substantial amount of work should be done yearly by each developer, of course. How to measure this is something I have no immediate idea for (amount of bugs fixed, amount of commits, features, involvement at other places, consensus, etc). I'm sure other people will have ideas (and measuring can always be improved at a later time). I think that event sponsors and other sponsors should not get a vote (for the technical board), but they could or should be involved in Foundation matters. Although I believe that this is De Facto already the case. I'm afraid that letting only foundation members get votes that populism or time-of-the-year "voting" can cause a too big changes to the project. It's good to have other stakeholders involved too (in my opinion). Projects and companies putting human resources at work on GNOME modules are in my opinion important stakeholders, and I think we should respect their right to be involved in forming technical boards. ps. A vote does not mean being part of the technical board, but it makes it possible for you to vote for your representative (of course). Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof freelance software developer Codeminded BVBA - http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Candidacy: Ryan Lortie
On Mon, 2011-05-23 at 11:00 -0400, Ryan Lortie wrote: > On Mon, 2011-05-23 at 14:59 +0100, Allan Day wrote: > > * Do you have any concrete ideas of what 'strong and coordinated > > technical leadership' would involve? It sounds very nice and all, but > > I'd like to hear some specifics before I cast my vote. ;) > > I think it's premature to say "this is the solution" which is why I've > limited myself to identifying a (perceived) problem. I am simply > stating that we should move in a direction of more coordinated technical > decision-making. > > That said, it's true that I've had some ideas of how this *might* look. > > The most obvious solution to me is the creation of a technical board, > directly elected with membership restrictions by affiliation (basically, > just like the foundation board). Let me first point out that I think that such a technical board is a very great idea and that I do believe that we should put it in place as soon as possible. Now my question. How would this technical board be elected? Who will get voting rights? - Will all foundation members get a single vote? - Will projects get a vote too? And if so, at which point will a project get a vote? As soon as it's part of GNOME's modules? Its external dependencies too? Who gets to cast a project's vote (its maintainer?)? - Will GNOME's (event) sponsors get a vote? - Will companies involved in GNOME's development get a vote? Basically the question is: how do we identify the stakeholders and how do we make sure that all stakeholders are appropriately represented at this technical board? I fear that if we don't allow representation of such stakeholders, that the legitimacy of the technical board wont be strong enough to technically steer GNOME in such a way that it'll make a real difference. [cut] > I did intend to start a discussion. Good! Thanks a lot Ryan! Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof freelance software developer Codeminded BVBA - http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GTK+/MeeGo Handset integration work, call for bids
he subject line > > "MeeGo Handset Bid". > > > > Regards > > > > ___ > > foundation-announce mailing list > > foundation-annou...@gnome.org > > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-announce > > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list -- Philip Van Hoof freelance software developer Codeminded BVBA - http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: How about creating addons.gnome.org
On Tue, 2010-08-17 at 10:41 +0200, Johannes Schmid wrote: Hi Johannes! > > Sure, however, why not open-source software? > As far as I see it, there is a clear definition for free software while > "Open Source" can refer to many things and while all free software is open > source not all open source software is free software. > The minimal definition of open source is that you can look at the source > code, that is not enough if you may not share/change/distribute/etc. it. > All other definitions of open source are rather weak. There is the OSI[1] > definition but there are also others. > > Point 4 of the OSI definition would be rather annoying for GNOME in > pratical terms. GNOME could allow all open source software[1] that is compatible with LGPL, for example. I guess that's reasonable given that most lib* projects of GNOME are LGPL. Now that copyright reassignment must be preapproved on a case-by-case, GNOME could add "no copyright assignment requirement" to the list of "when in doubt" too. Etcetera. > IMHO this is leading to nothing and it is far easier to stick to open > source. In the terms above there is a clear text saying that you should > contact the release-team when in doubt. If you have a non-free but open > source license then I am pretty sure there is some doubt. I agree with sticking to open source with a text saying that you should contact the release-team when in doubt, and that this is far easier. Cheers, Philip [1] http://www.opensource.org/osd.html -- Philip Van Hoof freelance software developer Codeminded BVBA - http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: How about creating addons.gnome.org
On Tue, 2010-08-17 at 04:24 +0300, Osama Khalid wrote: > On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 03:00:06AM +0200, Philip Van Hoof wrote: > > I do agree with this. Being condemned to freedom means that only we > > ourselves are responsible for justification. Giving freedom means > > allowing justifying the use of proprietary software. > > 1. Everyone is, more or less, free to do whatever they wish. > 2. GNOME will only host and endorse free software. Right now, #2 isn't accurate. GNOME will also host open-source software: http://live.gnome.org/ReleasePlanning/ModuleProposing Free-ness: Apps must be under a Free or Open license and support open standards and protocols. In case of doubt about the module license, send an email to the Release Team and the desktop-devel mailing list. Support of proprietary protocols and closed standards is part of the world we live in, but all applications that support closed protocols should also support open equivalents where those exist, and should default to those if at all possible while still serving their intended purpose. So, clearly, you guys want to change this, that means that i ask(ed) this question: > > Why not open-source software? > I don't think we need to get into the free software vs. open source > debate here. That debate isn't the question here. The question was "why not open-source software?" > The main point where they differ is not whether any given Their main difference isn't the question. > code *on the Internet* is free/open (and that's the important part > here), but whether certain conditions, such as Tivoization, may turn > the code into non-free/closed. Sure, however, why not open-source software? Cheers -- Philip Van Hoof freelance software developer Codeminded BVBA - http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: How about creating addons.gnome.org
On Fri, 2010-08-13 at 19:21 +0200, Johannes Schmid wrote: > Hi! > > > Forgive my ignorance, but isn't that perfectly allowed as long as the > > user doesn't then distribute the combination? > > Yeah, that's perfectly OK as Tomboy as LGPL. And for me, Freedom also > includes the freedom to use proprietary software if someone wants to. I do agree with this. Being condemned to freedom means that only we ourselves are responsible for justification. Giving freedom means allowing justifying the use of proprietary software. Defining an individual's freedom it is up to the individual, not to dogma's nor organizations. Not even the FSF. Let people have either anguish, their choice of adviser or their own responsibility of choice. It's the core of freedom. Software in itself, isn't. Choosing for yourself and for all of mankind what is best ... that could be freedom. > Anyway, a.g.o will obviously only host free software! Why not open-source software? So far, I'm all but convinced that "free software" is "good enough" to be "the only" possible option. Making this "the only" possible option is quite a heavy philosophic requirement. Based on what philosophy is "open source" not good enough? And please take your time and be elaborate. I think that this decision is, by far, heavy enough for philosophy to be put into action. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof freelance software developer Codeminded BVBA - http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: How about creating addons.gnome.org
On Fri, 2010-08-13 at 19:33 -0400, Richard Stallman wrote: > It's not really a question of morality, how would we prevent a user > from installing both a GPL and a non-OSI plugin for Tomboy at the same > time? > > As someone already pointed out, we don't aim to _stop_ users from > installing whatever they wish. The question at hand is what we > _suggest_ to users. We should not steer users towards nonfree > programs. > > What counts is whether the addon is free or nonfree. (See the > definition in http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html.) The OSI > has a different criterion, called "open source". It really is different; > not all open source programs are free. In the GNU Project, we don't > follow the OSI; we insist on free programs. But then again, that's the GNU project. GNOME, however, has different guidelines: http://live.gnome.org/ReleasePlanning/ModuleProposing Free-ness: Apps must be under a Free or Open license and support open standards and protocols. In case of doubt about the module license, send an email to the Release Team and the desktop-devel mailing list. Support of proprietary protocols and closed standards is part of the world we live in, but all applications that support closed protocols should also support open equivalents where those exist, and should default to those if at all possible while still serving their intended purpose. You can see that these guidelines clarify that the license must either be free OR open (BOTH are permitted). I bet this guideline had a good reason to come into existence. So let's stick to it. Whatever GNU's guideline is. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof freelance software developer Codeminded BVBA - http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: How about creating addons.gnome.org
On Fri, 2010-08-13 at 04:33 -0400, Richard Stallman wrote: > Which applications are involved? There are some desktop apps that are > LGPL'd or even [X11'd], for which non-free addons could legally be > developed. > > In those cases, nonfree addons would be lawful, but they are still > wrong. So we should make sure not to include them in any list. We should nothing except what GNOME as an organization agreed earlier. These are the current rules for module proposing. I don't see why a addons.gnome.org would need to be different: http://live.gnome.org/ReleasePlanning/ModuleProposing : Free-ness: Apps must be under a Free or Open license and support open standards and protocols. In case of doubt about the module license, send an email to the Release Team and the desktop-devel mailing list. Support of proprietary protocols and closed standards is part of the world we live in, but all applications that support closed protocols should also support open equivalents where those exist, and should default to those if at all possible while still serving their intended purpose. That states "free OR open". Given the context I guess "open" means open source as defined here: http://www.opensource.org/ (fair enough?) Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof freelance software developer Codeminded BVBA - http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Fwd: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy
On Wed, 2010-06-02 at 11:52 +0100, Iain wrote: > On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 4:39 PM, Lefty (石鏡 ) wrote: > > On 6/1/10 7:38 AM, "Iain" wrote: > >> > >> It seems to me that your underlying belief is that there is too much > >> (large) corporate influence in GNOME. Would you say that you might > >> have some conflict of interest here given that your project > >> (Zeitgeist) was ignored/shunned by the GNOME Shell developers? > > > > Iain, this seems unreasonable to me. Is anyone who decides to run for the > > board who's ever had a disagreement with some group of GNOME developers or > > other going to be subject to the suggestion that they have a "conflict of > > interest"? > > > > If that's the case, I doubt we can really find a single qualified candidate. > > > > Everyone's got their interests and views, and (hopefully) the candidates are > > candid about what their views are. I think these suggestions of "conflicts > > of interest" are, honestly, a little out of line. > > I disagree, I don't remember any candidate who has quite glaringly > obvious conflicts of interest running though their candidacy statement > as Seif's. Its a struggle to find anything in his statement that > doesn't come from his annoyance that Zeitgeist is not being picked up > for GNOME 3. The way I read Seif's candidacy is that he wants more coordination to take place between different GNOME stakeholders (community, Canonical, RH, Novell, etc) when it comes to the development and design of a technology like GNOME's Shell. This is _perfectly_ reasonable and several people have responded already that they understand and agree with this. Include me in that group. > In future, I would prefer it if you would reply in public, In my opinion is your Seif - Zeitgeist conspiracy theory, crazy. It's also my opinion that it doesn't belong on the foundation-list. Can you stick to asking the candidates relevant questions? > [Context] Lefty fwd'd his reply to the list, but not mine to him. > In future, I would prefer it if you would reply in public, Lefty did reply in public. Getting your reply on the foundation-list is your responsibility, not Lefty's. It would even be impolite if he'd have forwarded a private reply from you to him unto a public mailing list. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof freelance software developer Codeminded BVBA - http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Speaker Guidelines
On Fri, 2010-03-26 at 11:31 +0100, Murray Cumming wrote: > Brian Cameron wrote: > > > Oops, missing link here: > > > http://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct/SpeakerGuidelines > > I cleaned up some of the text on this page, though I didn't think deeply > about the content. > > However, I think it is currently an invitation to the same old > philosophical discussion every time there's a problem. I think we should > state our position clearly, so it doesn't have to be said each time, at > the end of a long thread. So I would add this text to the "Dealing With > Problems" section: I very much agree with stating the position clearly. > "We are not interested in a debate about whether someone should feel > offended. You should avoid offending people even if you do not share > their views." A clear position will avoid a lot of discussions, I agree. But then somebody of the board (or a appointed person) should also as soon as possible halt such offending statements with a reply like: "Please follow our guidelines as stated in the Code Of Conduct which, since it is a requirement for all members, you agreed with. End of discussion." > "We do not consider this to be excessive censorship. It does not stop > you from offending outside of the community." Exactly. Outside of GNOME's infrastructure people are free to do what they want. When using its infrastructure, foundation members are a guest and should stick to the principles and guidelines of the house. If they disagree they can try to vote the guideline away or don't be a member. A clear position makes happy people. Happy people contribute more. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof freelance software developer Codeminded BVBA - http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Meeting Minutes Published - March 18, 2010
On Thu, 2010-03-25 at 21:31 +0100, Vincent Untz wrote: > Le jeudi 25 mars 2010, à 15:56 -0500, Brian Cameron a écrit : > > * Code of Conduct and the Speaker Guidelines > > o The board decided to vote to approve the proposed Code of > > Conduct and Speaker Guidelines at the next board meeting, > > and to require new Foundation members to sign them. > > Foundation members are encouraged to provide any feedback, > > ideas, or concerns before the next board meeting. > > Oops, missing link here: > http://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct/SpeakerGuidelines Just like with the original CodeOfConduct I'd like to sign the SpeakerGuidelines as soon as it's out of draft status (in case I then still agree with the text, like I do now). Will this be made possible? Without a significant amount of signatures these guidelines don't really have much authority yet :-\ > Matthew Garrett came with the first draft for those guidelines, and > Murray Cumming improved the wording, so thanks to both of them! Also > thanks to the advisory board for some initial feedback on the proposal. Thanks! > (I also need to check, but for the Code of Conduct, I think we said > we'll vote on making it a requirement for new Foundation members, and > not on approving the Code of Conduct itself) So you'll vote on asking new foundation members to approve the code of conduct, but the board itself wont vote for approval of the document itself? Or? I didn't really get that :-) What about existing members? In my opinion if we make it a requirement to approve (and sign) the document for new members, we ought to also make it a requirement to do the same thing .. for existing members. Else we create a difference between existing and new members. We're all equal in my opinion: either it's all required, or no requirement, or the requirement is completely meaningless and just appeasement making. I atm think a full requirement for all is a good idea, by the way. Then at least we can with a straight face point to people and say: "Look, you signed this. Everybody in GNOME is the same in this regard, so please also follow it". Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof freelance software developer Codeminded BVBA - http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reboot: Strategic goals for GNOME
On Sat, 2010-03-06 at 08:15 -0500, Jim Gettys wrote: > Philip Van Hoof wrote: Doing some more [CUT]ing. > > In other words: > > > > UI and client developers should learn to build state machines instead of > > threads that work like (where [...] is ~ an IP frame): > > > > "[ask], wait, [receive], process, [ask], wait, [receive], process" > > > > Instead of that, do this: > > > > "[ask ask ask] [receive receive], process, process, [receive], process" > > Thank you very much for explaining HTTP/1.1 pipelining to the former > editor of the HTTP/1.1 standard... ;-) Okay, 'oeps' ;-) I was of course referring more to pipelining in general. Not just pipelining for HTTP/1.1 [CUT - I hope you don't mind -] > No, this is not the incentive driving toward obfuscation of code: the > apps get cached just like other web content; what you say about latency > is true in the general case, but not the case I'm pointing out. > > I'm making the point that HTML 5 enables longer term and off line use of > cached apps, in a standardized way (a great improvement over google > gears or adobe air). > > The issue encouraging obfuscation is *first time* use of applications, > or updates to applications. Web applications can and often are updated > much more often than conventional apps have been; it is a fundamental > advantage they have due to the improved distribution channel. So... what you are suggesting (when it comes to local desktop apps) is that GNOME should improve, fundamentally, its distribution channel? For example by implementing far more functions of the software as Javascript plugins? (a possible example script language) I think conventional apps can be updated as often as web apps are, but it will require a fundamental different mindset about how to distribute software. I'm pro this. But it requires a fundamental change in how programmers think about distributing their software. It wont be the only fundamental change they need to make to stay relevant. So yes. > My point, fundamentally, is that we must ensure that free software > alternatives never work *worse* than proprietary. This should be be a > minimum standard we strive always to achieve. Obviously, yes. Thanks for your reply, Jim. Always nice to chat a bit with the pros. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reboot: Strategic goals for GNOME
On Fri, 2010-03-05 at 13:42 +, Alan Cox wrote: > > In my opinion you solve latency more by making services capable of > > pipelining, than by compressing data. And by making clients that make > > use of the remote service's pipelining capabilities. > Thats a bit naïve. They two solve totally different problems and it is > dependant upon the behaviour of the pipe which matters. Compression > reduces latency by lowering time from initiation of transmit to > completion of receive. Pipelining removes some of the other overheads but > only if causality permits it, which can often be a big problem. Right > Now if you do look at serious mobile and web applications its not > pipelining thats a key part of the design at all. It's understanding > the transaction seequences, making bandwidth/latency tradeoffs and being > able to figure them out on the fly. > As bandwidth rises over latency you start to answer questions that are > not asked - just in case. So for a typical "3G" phone user you get some > benefit from dumping chunks of info to the client to avoid round trips. > Serious developers of these tools can actually show you the graphs of > each transaction, and the decision trees for different transaction > patterns that have been carefully plotted out to minimise the number of > events. Of course, Doing this in combination with compression of said data is a very good way to reduce latency too. "Reducing events in general" is perhaps what I should have written? :) It's indeed better to ask once and receive 3 larger chunks compressed, than 50 individual small questions, and each time wait for a small answers. Although serious web applications are good at this, I don't think it's already at the point of being very easy for average developers. This is where I think we might gain or already have an advantage. (But, the web is catching up - of course) > I've seen some of that with low level X toolkits, and nothing > much with the GNOME desktop. Its taking people like Arjan and the Moblin > startup work to turn up all the real uglies and dubmness in the desktop. Yes On a less related note, it's always nice when Arjan passes by and reduces the startup time of your thumbnail service by two seconds ;-) http://git.xfce.org/apps/tumbler/commit/?id=cfb3dd90f4e23d911c2d55853dcb5dc05ceb9516 Thanks Arjan! > > UI and client developers should learn to build state machines instead of > > threads that work like (where [...] is ~ an IP frame): > > Doesn't need to be a state machine, you just need enough parallelism to > fill the pipe. Exceeding that can actually reduce performance for other > reasons. > > But yes I think this is what the low level graphics people have been > trying to tell the desktop people for years and where some work on the > UI toolkits happened. It's what the kernel people have been trying to tell > the Gnome people for years about disk I/O patterns, its what the component > people tried to tell everyone years ago about Bonobo - Ok, I was referring more to client-service situations like HTTP or IMAP on remote services with latencies that are much worse than local events. Nonetheless, you're right about this (I'm not involved in this kind of work, so I'm going to refrain from commenting much on this). > which was ignored with horrible consequences that knocked GNOME > performance way back, DBus's latency is also a bit of a problem for us, sometimes :-\ > and again about gconf (go admire the stats on a nautilus startup) which > still makes more round trips that a corporate sales executive. Ryan Lortie is working on GSettings and DConf, which uses an mmap for read access and DBus for writes. Writes will still suffer of course. I think this is finally arriving in GLib now. I hope. > > This, however, isn't always simple with the newest "HTML5 + Javascript" > > technologies. Meaning that GNOME's desktop technologies has an advantage > > here. > > I don't see that as being the case. GNOME has a lot of horribly latency > inducing code in it much of which needs a serious effort to get back out. > It was designed for a different world. Yes :-\ > I think the advantage is actually with the opposition. They have designed > from day one for latency, they have avoided inheriting dumb latency heavy > models and they don't have the compatibility legacy that GNOME has to > worry about in solving them. OK Thanks for your very informative reply, Alan. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reboot: Strategic goals for GNOME
On Fri, 2010-03-05 at 13:32 +0100, Murray Cumming wrote: > On Fri, 2010-03-05 at 11:08 +0100, Philip Van Hoof wrote: > > We debaters should decrease our traffic on this mailing list > > No. Stubborn people who insist on having the last word should stop > pointless arguments. It's bad enough when people think they can have a > conversation with one of you. It's worse when you start trying to talk > to each other. Murray, can you discuss this with me off list? I think everybody is tired of both what you call pointless arguments AND the personal attacks. Both are in a symbiosis, and restarting it once more ain't helpful. Let's not do Jud a disservice. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reboot: Strategic goals for GNOME
On Fri, 2010-03-05 at 07:51 -0500, Jim Gettys wrote: I'm doing a huge [CUT] here, I hope you don't mind? > People like Google work *hard* on latency and understand > every byte counts (among many other things: go look at the google talks > by their engineers on the topic). In my opinion you solve latency more by making services capable of pipelining, than by compressing data. And by making clients that make use of the remote service's pipelining capabilities. The perceived latency will include the time to decompress the compressed chunks (when using a compression algorithm instead of code obfuscating, like they do with javascript as you point out), but I'll agree that this is negligible compared to average network latency. Especially on 3G, UMTS and (all) other mobile network protocols. In other words: UI and client developers should learn to build state machines instead of threads that work like (where [...] is ~ an IP frame): "[ask], wait, [receive], process, [ask], wait, [receive], process" Instead of that, do this: "[ask ask ask] [receive receive], process, process, [receive], process" An example of this is Dave Cridland's Polymer and Telomer. This, however, isn't always simple with the newest "HTML5 + Javascript" technologies. Meaning that GNOME's desktop technologies has an advantage here. Especially for mobile is this interesting (where from quite some time to come, network latency will be the problem numero uno). I'm guessing Google has components and development tools for this in their Weave stuff? They are catching up! ;) > Right now, these are two disincentives for the source code to be > available at all. > > As a solution to 2), Gnome (and/or the FSF) could work in the web > community to standardize mechanisms and code for making such source > available. So long as solutions to 2) do not exist, we're in a much > poorer position; free and open source code should not work *worse* than > proprietary, IMHO. I agree. > I'm concerned to have not seen this sort of strategic issue discussed > widely. Me neither, although GIO's newest GNIO and the bug about TLS encryption support is *very* promising and going in the right direction, I think. https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=588189 Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reboot: Strategic goals for GNOME
On Thu, 2010-03-04 at 21:24 -0500, Jud Craft wrote: Hey Jud, > Sorry for intruding again, but it was recommended to me that I could > post this message. It was a sidenote on Philip Van Hoof's message, > regarding the promotion of GtkBuilder. Although the atmosphere just recovered from being tense, I don't think that should make people like you, who have legitimate questions concerns and / or ideas, hold back from posting them. We debaters should decrease our traffic on this mailing list and improve our methods of discussing things, and meanwhile does this list need more questions like yours. Not less. Especially now that the strategic-goals debate is ongoing. Your question for example sheds a light on the problem that it's not always clear what these tools, that everybody is talking about, are. Where you can find them. How to use them. etc. This certainly is a problem about GNOME's development experience. Thanks. Now on to the answer of your question: > On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 5:07 AM, Philip Van Hoof wrote: > > > >> I hope you guys really don't write the XML by hand now.) > > > > No, Glade-3, GtkBuilder or the integration in Anjuta > > > I would make one small point: I still have no idea what you mean by > "I can use Glade-3 or GtkBuilder". I've never actually *seen* a tool > called GtkBuilder. :) After the googling and reading, I'm assuming > GtkBuilder is actually just a file format, and has nothing to do with > IDE tools. As for what GtkBuilder exactly is, GtkBuilder is a class in Gtk+ that more or less does what the old libglade did. Which is: "A GtkBuilder is an auxiliary object that reads textual descriptions of a user interface and instantiates the described objects." Glade-3 is among the softwares that you can use to create GtkBuilder compatible .ui XML files (which often used to be called .glade files). Some examples, for Vala: http://code.valaide.org/content/gtkbuilder-example Glade-3 manual: http://library.gnome.org/devel/glade/stable/ Glade integration in Anjuta: http://library.gnome.org/devel/anjuta-manual/stable/glade.html.en The documentation of the GtkBuilder C class: http://library.gnome.org/devel/gtk/unstable/GtkBuilder.html -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reboot: Strategic goals for GNOME
On Wed, 2010-03-03 at 04:35 -0600, Andrew Savory wrote: Hey Andrew, > Focussing in on one area that I can talk about: Qt is perceived by > some to be stronger from a business perspective due to the 'more > complete' offering: extensive documentation and an SDK. > > Perhaps more focus on and promotion of GNOME's developer tools/sdk > offerings would be a useful meta-goal for the coming year? Somehow > enunciating the proposition that you don't need to be an alpha-dog > developer to get engaged with GTK etc. > > For example, I only recently found out about Anjuta: it's presumably a > fairly important tool for people developing using GNOME technologies, > but look at the results at > http://www.google.com/search?q=anjuta&as_sitesearch=www.gnome.org > (Yes, I know there's a ton of stuff at library.gnome.org, I'm being > devil's advocate here ...) How about if we'd promote the GNOME devtools distribution more? Its website is hardly inviting, it's not themed like the rest of gnome.org at this moment: http://projects.gnome.org/devtools/ I think it deserves a tab on the homepage gnome.org and more attention. Perhaps have a blog aggregator that is maintained by somebody who cherry picks blog items from planet-gnome (and other sources), so that only the technical and development related articles appear? -- I noticed several people asking for a technical-only blog aggregator. The maintainer of that website could also be responsible for taking interviews of GNOME developers. For asking developers of popular libraries to write an article about how to use their library. And then to style that article and put it on the developer's website. All GNOME programmers should be involved and take up responsibility. I remember the "GNOME Scaffolding" project and the increased interest in things like this. I think gnome-build was created back then, and GtkSourceView's origin can probably also be traced back to that period? Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reboot: Strategic goals for GNOME
On Wed, 2010-03-03 at 18:46 -0500, Jud Craft wrote: > On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 5:35 AM, Andrew Savory wrote: > > Focusing in on one area that I can talk about: Qt is perceived by > > some to be stronger from a business perspective due to the 'more > > complete' offering: extensive documentation and an SDK. Correct. I have seen some people saying that Qt was picked over GTK+ by most recent developments of the new Maemo platform because "Nokia couldn't buy GTK+, but they could buy Qt". I think that's quite incorrect. AFAICT they had a big problem finding competent developers, and big problems getting GTK+ to become more innovative for mobile use cases. Mobile is changing way faster than GTK+ is, and that's a problem. As I mentioned before in the earlier thread, I think it's a self inflicted problem. Putting the blame on Qt being buyable is being in la la land. > > Perhaps more focus on and promotion of GNOME's developer tools/sdk > > offerings would be a useful meta-goal for the coming year? Yes /me whispers Anjuta > > Somehow enunciating the proposition that you don't need to be an > > alpha-dog developer to get engaged with GTK etc. I agree /me whispers Vala > > For example, I only recently found out about Anjuta: it's presumably > > a fairly important tool for people developing using GNOME > > technologies, but look at the results at > > http://www.google.com/search?q=anjuta&as_sitesearch=www.gnome.org > > (Yes, I know there's a ton of stuff at library.gnome.org, I'm being > > devil's advocate here ...) > Looking at Anjuta, I have no idea if it's a great resource to start > GTK programming with or not. You say yourself "presumably", and > that's the greatest nail in the coffin - you're obviously involved in > GNOME development and you have *no* idea, you're barely familiar with > it either. Otherwise I'm pretty sure you'd use words a little less weasely > about it. GNOME developers (not to use "we") don't dogfood Anjuta enough. I know that some developers, like myself, use it on a daily basis. I have also been filing a lot of mini bugs about small problems about it. I must say that the Anjuta team are very responsive compared to other GNOME components when it comes to addressing and fixing those. So I think it's ready for some serious dogfooding. > You don't have to be an alpha dog to realize that GNOME has no blessed > development workflow. For a project like Tracker it comes down to: git pull git branch newfeature git checkout newfeature Change src/Makefile.am Possibly change configure.ac touch src/newsourcefile.c Create src/newsourcefile.c git add src/newsourcefile.c git commit -a git push origin newfeature /msg #project Hi! I just implemented newfeature in branch newfeature /msg #project Sure, thanks for review, I'll push to master git rebase master -i git push origin newfeature:master git push origin :newfeature > Currently I don't program in GNOME/GTK. I have no idea how people > actually *are*, since GNOME has (almost by intention) no approved > development environment (a liveCD full of every Linux development tool > known does not count). I assume most of them are probably just > writing their code by hand in Vi and passing esoteric arguments to > GCC. Serious, I have no idea how real GNOME developers program in > GNOME - and my guesses aren't flattering. [If it's anywhere near my > guess, then no, I won't be programming in GNOME anytime soon. And I > can use Vi just fine, and GCC with some effort.] With Anjuta's gnome-build integration you can do most of the build environment changes using the popup menus: it'll adapt your Makefile.am without completely rewriting it (being afraid of that is why, I think, most people change Makefile.am manually). > In other words, I think I have to be an alpha-dog developer, and > nothing I've seen convinced me otherwise. There's just too much crud > to wade through, pulling together API references, documents on GUI > design, etc. (I still have no idea what GtkBuilder is, and if I should > even still try making a GUI in Glade or not. I hope you guys really > don't write the XML by hand now.) No, Glade-3, GtkBuilder or the integration in Anjuta > And any tutorial that starts with describing how to manage and link > my object files on the command line isn't going to convince me > otherwise. I think there are some tutorials on subjects like this already, but you're right that it all isn't very coherent. I recall that there was at some point a book written and published about GTK+ development. I think it's quite outdated now. Perhaps a team should step in to bring the s
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Tue, 2010-03-02 at 18:19 -0700, Stormy Peters wrote: > Because you are being disruptive on the Foundation List. Again. That's your believe. Good for you. > People are not interested in having this argument and you are causing > people to unsubscribe to the Foundation List and to quit > participating. That's their action. And you can't control that. (what's your point?) > If you do support GNOME, then please stop turning every thread into an > argument. Respond to things you perceive as argumentative off list. I do support GNOME. I want its Foundation to be strong. > If people don't respond, assume they are not interested in that topic. Sure. > I will not be replying to this thread publicly any more. Although your reply is fair, I did ask these three questions: 1) > Why didn't the GNOME Foundation take a stance on that? 2) > Wasn't that formulation starting an argument with me? 3) > And how wasn't it? If it wasn't. Why aren't you answering those questions? Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Tue, 2010-03-02 at 17:39 -0700, Stormy Peters wrote: > 2010/3/2 Philip Van Hoof > > > Stop dragging the GNOME Foundation list down these off topic > > roads and stop this pissing contest. > I think you, and many other people, are misinterpreting this > as a pissing contest. It's not. It's a quite serious debate. > > And I think it's insulting of you to call it a pissing > contest. > > If you don't like the debate, then why aren't you simply > ignoring us? > Philip, I think a lot of people are saying they'd rather not see these > arguments on the Foundation list. And they are probably right. I wonder why *nobody* so far is going into the things that I said in my last reply, but why everybody so far is instead going into this. Anyway (really, it's fine for me. You hate it more than I do) Thing is, that I really want the GNOME Foundation to take a stance on these matters. Rather than continuing to ignore it. I want it to stop hiding. To stop being afraid. It might be surprising, but I'm pro a strong GNOME Foundation. > We've had several threads in the past month that go on and on without > being productive at all and you are one of the most frequent posters > to each of them. Each of the threads had a different nuance. That I'm one of the most frequent posters just means that I "voice" my opinion. Luis's text is vague about this, but it does allow the Foundation's members to give their opinion: http://www.co-ment.net/text/141/ (I'm using the last version here) "The intent of the Membership is to provide the opportunity for all contributors to have a place and a voice in the GNOME foundation." > I believe the way you respond often takes the thread off topic and > turns it argumentative. Everybody has believes. Good for you. > When I've asked in the past, you've been good about stopping the > personal insults. I tried. Thanks for acknowledging this. > Now I'm asking you to seriously consider each post you make to the > Foundation list and ask yourself whether each part contributes > productively to the conversation. When a person is saying that programmers "often" forget about ethical values like freedom, he's saying things about the morality of said programmers. I'm such a programmer. Imagine that he would have said: "Women often forget about ethical values like freedom" Do I really have to illustrate how certain feminists within GNOME would likely respond to that? I'm willing to let go of this part of the debate. I'm not willing to accept the insult. Not ever. Why didn't the GNOME Foundation take a stance on that? It's your responsibility, Stormy. My opinion might not be popular, but this is what we expect. > For example, the three sentences I quoted above do not contribute in > any way to the conversation. They start an argument with J5. If you > want to argue with people, take it off list. You might be right about the last three sentences. But why didn't you said the same thing to John who accused me of turning this into a "pissing contest"? I didn't formulate this term. I'm responding to it. Wasn't that formulation starting an argument with me? And how wasn't it? If it wasn't. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Tue, 2010-03-02 at 18:58 -0500, john palmieri wrote: Hey John, I'm keeping most of the original E-mails. I have been misquoted and my quotes have been taken out of context too often for [CUT] to be useful. It's sad, but truth. > On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 6:18 PM, Philip Van Hoof > wrote: > > On Sun, 2010-02-28 at 22:59 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote: > > IMHO talking about Facebook and who should demand them to > free info is a > > bit out of place here. Please let's not diverge the > thread into that or > > into a battle about how much we should promote Free > Software or non Free > > alternatives. > > > > In my fantasies, the free software movement might be so > influential > > that we could make demands and Facebook would have to heed > them. In > > reality, we are not in a position to correct the social > problems > > caused by Facebook, and I do not suggest making that our > goal. > > > > Why not? > > You changed the social aspect of software development in the > past by > inspiring software engineers to follow a certain pro social > model. > > Why not do it again for the current generation, and change the > game for > the many social community websites being created in this era? > > If the only problem is that the web and its many innovations > aren't part > of your generation, then I don't see what the real problem is; > > The social aspects are the same. > > Why isn't the FSF talking with these companies and > organizations about > standardizing data about social networks? Why not talk with > the European > Commission about getting rules on personal privacy? Why not > talk with > Neelie Kroes about competition laws for near-monopolies like > Facebook? > > If the FSF would be really be pro 'freedom' of people, they'd > do all > that. In fact, you guys are many people's only hope for > improvement > here: There are no other organizations even trying at this > moment. > > But for that, we need you and the FSF to become more > pragmatic. > > Instead, we have to listen to nonsense about Mono. Nonsense > about ethics > that people know more about themselves, for themselves, than > the FSF > does. And all the nonsense is turning many FSF fans into > zealots. > > > Um, don't confuse Boycott Novell with RMS or the FSF. The FSF has > moved to a more pragmatic stance though I haven't noticed it yet. But maybe I have not been paying attention enough? I'm willing to be convinced. > talking about pragmatism is like talking about right and left - > everyone's center is different. Of course. I think the quote "everyone's center is different" should be central for the GNOME Foundation. > As for RMS's stance on Mono, he has come to espouse his own views on > something that in the domain of GNOME where as now Facebook is pretty > off topic. This sentence does not compute for me. Maybe I'm just really bad at understanding English? > Stop dragging the GNOME Foundation list down these off topic roads and > stop this pissing contest. I think you, and many other people, are misinterpreting this as a pissing contest. It's not. It's a quite serious debate. And I think it's insulting of you to call it a pissing contest. If you don't like the debate, then why aren't you simply ignoring us? > Everything that can be said has been said and the thread should be > taken off list. Feel free to start a Boycott FSF or Boycott RMS site > to continue this bike-shedding. There is no bikeshedding here at all. You're just trying to make people believe that there's bikeshedding happening. Let people judge for themselves. Why don't you trust them? > > Of course people like me, and Lefty, start saying 'no more'. > > > What did you, or anybody, expect? > > Please, change course with the FSF. I'm asking it seriously > now. > > > Please don't drag the Foundation into this. The foundation supports > and is supported by the FSF. The foundation don't always
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Sun, 2010-02-28 at 22:59 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote: > IMHO talking about Facebook and who should demand them to free info is a > bit out of place here. Please let's not diverge the thread into that or > into a battle about how much we should promote Free Software or non Free > alternatives. > > In my fantasies, the free software movement might be so influential > that we could make demands and Facebook would have to heed them. In > reality, we are not in a position to correct the social problems > caused by Facebook, and I do not suggest making that our goal. Why not? You changed the social aspect of software development in the past by inspiring software engineers to follow a certain pro social model. Why not do it again for the current generation, and change the game for the many social community websites being created in this era? If the only problem is that the web and its many innovations aren't part of your generation, then I don't see what the real problem is; The social aspects are the same. Why isn't the FSF talking with these companies and organizations about standardizing data about social networks? Why not talk with the European Commission about getting rules on personal privacy? Why not talk with Neelie Kroes about competition laws for near-monopolies like Facebook? If the FSF would be really be pro 'freedom' of people, they'd do all that. In fact, you guys are many people's only hope for improvement here: There are no other organizations even trying at this moment. But for that, we need you and the FSF to become more pragmatic. Instead, we have to listen to nonsense about Mono. Nonsense about ethics that people know more about themselves, for themselves, than the FSF does. And all the nonsense is turning many FSF fans into zealots. Of course people like me, and Lefty, start saying 'no more'. What did you, or anybody, expect? Please, change course with the FSF. I'm asking it seriously now. > But we do have a duty to make sure, if we develop software > specifically to work with Facebook, that we are not promoting Facebook > as a consequence. This isn't the case at this moment. So there is no problem here. > There are many social problems in life, and nobody would expect us to > eliminate them all. Most of them are not our priority to work on. I can't agree with the "most of them are not our priority". Ain't it FSF's goal to promote freedom for people in general? By neglecting the "freedom problems" as introduced by social networking websites, you are together with the FSF neglecting a important aspect of this generation's freedoms: Privacy. Choice. Access to the data about themselves. You're basically saying: "yeah yeah, but that ain't the FSF's priority". Who's priority is it then? Because that'll be the same FSF of the 2010ties that the FSF was in the 90ties. The one we need. > But even when eliminating a problem is not our priority, we should > make an effort to avoid making it worse. By programming annoying warning message boxes? So now we are into developing the very same EULA dialog windows that we hated in the 90ties. And that everybody simply ignores by always clicking "yes", "ok" or the "whatever" answer? Great. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: pvanhoof issue (was: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap)
On Sun, 2010-02-28 at 19:20 +0200, Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) wrote: [cut] > Thing is that Philip had been using the word 'we' quite a lot in the > recent endless discussions ... [cut] > I didn't complain so far because it wasn't always 100% clear if he > means 'all GNOME developers' by 'we' until now where he made it > perfectly clear. > Now that that is sorted out, I would like the foundation to forbid > him from doing so in future. [cut] > ... and despite all efforts from Philip & Lefty "we" have yet to > see any compelling reason to change that definition. You must mean "I" here when you ask the foundation in the same E-mail to forbid this specific usage of the word "we". On top of that are you now talking on behalf of me without my consent: You claim that I want to draw a line between GNOME and FSF. Not true. I'd also like ask Jonathon Jongsma, Zeeshan Ali and Dodji Seketeli to stop their personal attack. If you want to ignore me, then just do so. I believe your behavior already is forbidden by GNOME's code of conduct. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: pvanhoof issue (was: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap)
On Sun, 2010-02-28 at 04:02 +0200, Zeeshan Ali wrote: > Hi everyone, > > > I don't think we need ethics-teachings about this. We GNOME > programmers know. We do. > > I can't say for others but I for one find it extremely insulting when > Mr. Van Hoof represent me without my concent. I really want to know > who in the the hell made him the GNOME developers' representative and > be able to tell others what I know and need? Saying that we don't need lessons morality is "extremely insulting" to you? (that's all I said) Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Sat, 2010-02-27 at 19:48 -0500, Diego Escalante Urrelo wrote: Hey Diego, > El dom, 28-02-2010 a las 00:49 +0100, Philip Van Hoof escribió: > > On Fri, 2010-02-26 at 21:32 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote: [cut] > > I wish you and the FSF would focus more on user rights and licensing of > > (meta)data coming from websites like Facebook, and that you'd focus less > > on demeaning insinuations to GNOME programmers that they know not about > > ethics. > I don't think Richard meant any of this. Being the one he replied to, I > think he's reply was perfectly well behaved and his intentions the best > of all to remind us that we should always try to promote Free Software. Being the one who replied to Richard, I don't think that I tried to insinuate that Richard's behavior while replying to your E-mail was bad. I don't understand why you try to rephrase it like that. However: Richard *has* insinuated that GNOME programmers "forget about ethics like freedom", in this discussion thread. Let me illustrate: On Thu, 25 Feb 2010 09:27:21 -0500 Richard Stallman wrote: "The values that programmers often forget are the ethical values such as freedom." http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2010-February/msg00129.html When you talk about programmers within a context like a GNOME mailing list, you're actually targeting GNOME programmers. Aren't you? Why not? In case that wasn't the intent, I asked not to be ambiguous. Is that somehow unfair? How then? If not, then why was that remark made when we're already the most "free" desktop in existence? With "free" being FSF's definition of free. > And I think we all agree that our precise personal beliefs might be > different but that as a whole we all enjoy Free Software and its > consequences in society and technology. I enjoy wikipedia; wikipedia is about freed knowledge. I enjoy opensource software; I can improve my skills by being involved in its development. I also enjoy the freed knowledge of it. I don't know about "free software". Even after more than a decade it's still an alien term for me. I know it is "opensource" for as far as I'm concerned. And that's all I care about. (yes, I read most of FSF's webpages, it's still alien) I don't need the demeaning ethics-teachings that I should somehow be religiously in love with this "free software" stuff. Why? Either it helps me improve my skills, or it doesn't. Either it frees knowledge, or it doesn't. Free software does both, good. Free software does because it does what any "opensource" does. But there it stops. Please stop idealizing it as something better. It's not. > So it doesn't sound out of place to remind us about it. It's out of place to insinuate that GNOME developers forget about ethical values. Or that anybody does. I actually do spend a significant amount of my life's time thinking about philosophy; I don't accept that I'm unethical. That claim is, for me, a direct insult; I don't accept it. > IMHO talking about Facebook and who should demand them to free info is a > bit out of place here. Please let's not diverge the thread into that or > into a battle about how much we should promote Free Software or non Free > alternatives. The freedoms about data collected by websites like Facebook is likely the most important discussion of our generation. > I think the topic is clear for all of us: Free Software rocks I can see you have an ideology. That's fine for you. I respectfully disassociate myself from simplistic slogans, though. > and we are trying to lure people who don't use it yet into using it > so they can enjoy the same freedoms we do. Let's keep changing the > world :-). Ideology makes people blind for reality. > Friendly and lovingly calling for the end of this branch of the thread, Up to them. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Sun, 2010-02-28 at 00:30 +, Alberto Ruiz wrote: > I'm going to call for an end of thread, I think you're wrong, this thread should not be closed yet. > If people want to sort out what their personal points of view on what > GNOME should be, I would suggest them to follow up that discussion in > private and not in this list anymore. > > If people want to contribute to a strategic roadmap for GNOME, I think > we all would welcome anyone coming up with a compelling set of goals > and start working on action items to execute that vision and do so in > the respective channels (marketing list to name an example). > > Talking forever about what GNOME should be and expecting for someone > to follow that direction is not going to effectively change anything. Sure it does. > Thank you. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Fri, 2010-02-26 at 21:32 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote: > If people are going to use Facebook, they should access it with free software. > And it is useful for GNOME to do a good job of that. Richard, I wish you and the FSF would focus more on user rights and licensing of (meta)data coming from websites like Facebook, and that you'd focus less on demeaning insinuations to GNOME programmers that they know not about ethics. Such websites and services are becoming increasingly important in the real market. If you'd care about the freedom of the population of this world, you'd see that this is an area of focus and importance. Just my two cents. > At the same time, using Facebook is a harmful practice. It gives a > misleading impression of privacy, it has close ties with the CIA and > probably lets the CIA look at everything people upload. (See > http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook.) It uses > Flash format for video, which is harmful to free software. Some of > its services are SaaS, which takes away control of your computing > just as proprietary software does. > So if GNOME is to provide a special feature for using Facebook, it > should also warn people that they shouldn't trust Facebook with > anything sensitive. It should make sure Gnash is installed for > playing Flash, rather than lead people to install non-free Adobe > software. And it should not do anything to facilitate or encourage > use of the SaaS features of Facebook. Sure, I think such a warning should indeed be included in the UI work that I'll let Adrian Bustany work on next few weeks. I don't think we need ethics-teachings about this. We GNOME programmers know. We do. > (Can anyone tell me what what an "empathy account" does and what an > f-spot export configuration does?) You had a discussion with Ruben Vermeersh earlier, Ruben is a F-Spot developer. I'm sure he can give you an answer (he's added in CC). > It is also important to give equally good support to other systems > people can use for telling each other about events; for instance, > social networking sites of the free software community, and > peer-to-peer methods. This way, GNOME won't favor Facebook over those > other methods. Yes, as I posted in my earlier E-mail there are metadata miners for flickr, twitter, etc. The service where the metadata ends up being stored locally (Tracker's store) uses RDF with Nepomuk as ontology and allows access to the metadata through SPARQL. RDF, Nepomuk and SPARQL are all free standards and have multiple free implementations (the "free" definition that FSF uses). The problem with for example Facebook is that it's uncertain that this metadata can be stored separately from Facebook for unlimited time. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Thu, 2010-02-25 at 16:40 -0500, Diego Escalante Urrelo wrote: Hi there, > I agree with Frade, for example among my university friends facebook is > quite important, it's how you interact with a lot of people you don't > see daily and some times the way to find out about meetings, parties, > etc. Why can't we provide an easy way for people to integrate all this > info to the local apps? > A small example that I believe is doable right now: > - you login to GNOME for the first time > - you are asked for personal info > - you are asked also for your facebook id (example) > - the fb id gets processed into an empathy account and a f-spot export > configuration (or whatever wants to consume it) > - the panel/clock show fb events you are attending, evolution reminds > you of them also Starting the first of March lasting until August will Adrien Bustany (abustany on IRC) be working for me on a schoolwork internship. Because his GSoc was about developing miners for web sources, I asked him whether he'd be interested in finalizing this work. He made me this plan. Each task is roughly a two week sprint: * Adapting miner-web to get it merged it in Tracker's master * Writeback for web miners: Twitter/Identi.ca, Flickr, PicasaWeb, Facebook (Facebook last because of licensing issues). * UI integration for both the desktop and the mobile versions (using Harmattan's Qt). * Automatic metadata improvement using web sources. * UI integration to control the automatic metadata fetcher(s), both desktop and mobile, or only mobile to save some time. Discussion about privacy issues. Bandwidth control (when is it ok to pull data, when isn't it, etc). * Integration with Harmattan core services: address book, GPS, pictures, videos. This will require more SDK information. * A bugzilla miner and a issues ontology (to be planned in a sprint) You can find an example of such a web miner here: http://git.gnome.org/browse/tracker/tree/src/tracker-miner-facebook/facebook.vala?h=miner-web Here you can find some of the code Adrien developed during his GSoc (needs refactoring to Tracker's miner libraries): git://git.mymadcat.com/bridge-twitter git://git.mymadcat.com/vapi git://git.mymadcat.com/ontologies git://git.mymadcat.com/libtrackerbridge git://git.mymadcat.com/bridge-manager git://git.mymadcat.com/bridge-facebook git://git.mymadcat.com/bridge-twitter git://git.mymadcat.com/bridge-gdata git://git.mymadcat.com/bridge-flickr I must add that, although many of the GNOME people are probably Facebook fanboys, Facebook's license doesn't allow you to just start using and copying the data. Even if the data is about yourself, it's owned by Facebook. I think the licenses allow you to maximally cache things for several hours. Not forever. I think those "cloud" licenses will be quite a challenge in the years to come, by the way. > I'm sure my univ mates would appreciate a desktop that eases their FB > experience. Notice how we would improve that without buzz-y words and > without smoking crack. How about inviting your university mates to join Adrien on this effort? Given that I will be asking Adrien to focus mostly on what is publicly released about Maemo's Harmattan, your university mates and yourself can focus on providing similar UI integration with the GNOME desktop! Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Thu, 2010-02-25 at 09:27 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote: I tried to keep myself out of the philosophical debate this time, but it's reaching new levels of purism with zero regard for pragmatism. [CUT] > I don't think anyone suggested that we should not bother trying to > make GNOME convenient to use. To remember freedom as a value > does not imply forgetting about practical convenience. > But we don't need to make an effort to remind ourselves to value the > practical qualities of our software, because there is no chance we > would forget that. > The general tendency in the world around us is to judge software on > practical qualities alone. We as users appreciate convenience as > well as freedom. We could hardly forget to think about the practical > qualities.The values that programmers often forget are the ethical > values such as freedom. Your insinuation that GNOME programmers forget about the necessity of ethical values, is misplaced. The GNOME community getting used to that insinuation doesn't mean that it isn't an insult. Please try to be less ambiguous if that insinuation isn't your intent. > These are the ones that go against the usual current. So these are > the ones we need to make efforts to remind ourselves about. A general point of view on philosophic ethics: I mentioned in an earlier discussion thread that "as our community's values have a strong ethical ground, I question the necessity of the FSF's philosophical help. That I believe the insinuation that we do is misplaced." http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2010-January/msg00081.html Furthermore. This "freedom" and "ethics" debate finished a month ago. I don't see what it has to do with GNOME's strategic roadmap. GNOME already is the most "free" desktop environment that exists. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Wed, 2010-02-24 at 12:41 +, Alberto Ruiz wrote: > Hi all, > I think that this sort of discussion belongs to the gtk-devel mailing list, > besides, all of this "nice to have" have been discussed in the past > but none has actually stepped up to write actual code (as Martyn says, > everytime you start writting something, you hit the legacy wall). Ignore the legacy wall and allow major API and ABI breaks. It's time. > The point that I'm trying to make is that, unless somebody steps up to > implement some of those advancements and seriously push them for > inclusion, this discussion is not really going anywhere. Sorry but, you are absolutely wrong about nobody stepping up to implement those advancements: o. Dova-core and Vala's dova patches are written and exists. o. The collection objects are written and exists. Both as a GLib branch and in the form of libgee (but in GLib nobody uses it because libgee can't be a dependency on GLib, as it would be circular. And the mindset also isn't that collections should be used over C-only list types - which is why you see with GVariant the introduction of yet another iterable thing in GLib -) o. A webkit GTK+ component is written and exists o. The .vapi files for GTK+ already exist, they just need to be added to the tree of GTK+, and an approval should be given by GTK+'s maintainers to allow .vala to be used as language for future GTK+ development. Every single thing I mentioned in my previous E-mail exists. The code isn't the problem. The availability of experts isn't the problem. The problem is that GTK+'s development style is "it must be stable, you can't ever break the API nor ABI". This scares the young experts away. And since this discussion matters for nothing less than the very relevance of GTK+ and GNOME in future, I think it should be held at the level of GNOME. It also concerns far more than just GTK+ itself. But people might have different opinions on that. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Wed, 2010-02-24 at 13:04 +0100, Dave Neary wrote: > Hi, > > Murray Cumming wrote: > > On Wed, 2010-02-24 at 11:07 +, Martyn Russell wrote: > >> I think it is important to do releases when you have progress in the > >> project not just because you have some new shiny feature to give to > >> people. > > > > Yes, releases are good, but we don't have to call them stable. > > While the abstract "stay stable" vs "innovate" discussion is > interesting, I'm interested in hearing what kinds of features people > would add if, tomorrow, someone said "OK - out with the crack-pipes, > let's turn the funky feature dial up to 100". > > What features/removal of bugs are desired for GTK+? How about this stuff? (it's a far more simple object system) http://gitorious.org/dova How about a pluggable reference collecting garbage collector? We all want to solve this cyclic references stuff in Vala, having to mark things as weak. And since it would be pluggable, it wouldn't be harmful for people who don't like garbage collectors. How about having .vapi files for all of Gtk+ interfaces and classes? How about finally moving GtkTreeModel out of Gtk+ and into GLib using a proper collection framework? Something like this: http://git.codethink.co.uk/?p=glib;a=shortlog;h=collections I'm sure many people have been experimenting similarly. > I've been hearing: > * more flexibility for the developer > * easier theming (CSS theming, nice effects, make it easy to ship & get > themes) Right, with the new JavaScript and G-I stuff this is going to be great. > * easier creation of new widgets > * a great canvas widget > * enable rendering of widgets in a scene graph > * integration of Webkit Yes, let's make a GtkWebkit as part of standard Gtk+ 4.0 > * enable easy animations (whatever this means) > * a rocking IDE that makes it as easy to create visually attractive apps > as it is on Mac Great proposals, yes. [CUT] Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Wed, 2010-02-24 at 11:07 +, Martyn Russell wrote: > > On Wed, 2010-02-24 at 09:03 +, Martyn Russell wrote: [CUT] > I think it is important to do releases when you have progress in the > project not just because you have some new shiny feature to give to > people. I'm more in favor of releasing based on a set of features, to be honest. Otherwise you inflate the value of a release for your audience. > For 3.0 I can see why you want to have *something* more than a > cleaner code base of course but I quite like the idea of a GTK+ which > feels much more solid. For 3.0, sure. But I think we shouldn't let 4.0's developments be blocked by it. Innovating is too important for that, in my opinion. Also, 4.0 should be a whole lot more exciting to join than 3.0 is in my opinion. > I suppose this comes down to if you think 3.0 should have the sort of > changes 1.x->2.x had or not? I'm not sure about 3.0, but as mentioned earlier I do think GTK+ could use another such transition period of innovation and experimenting, yes. > > Now you've done the GSEAL() work then we could do bigger work in a > > branch before releasing an ABI breaking release (as stable) that gives > > people nothing but the expectation of another future ABI break, meaning > > that it won't be used much anyway. > > Of course. But an ABI break is always better than an API break and if > recompiling is all that's really needed, the effort by the developer > linking with GTK+ is really quite minimal (compared to the 1.x->2.x work > that was required when I ported all my apps back then). This sudden effort that application developers had to do didn't only have downsides: It made many people improve their oold code, they drastically improved their UIs. It made GNOME a much better desktop. And it created new kinds of innovation in many areas. The same thing happens with the decay of CORBA and the introduction of D-Bus. The emerging D-Bus inspired for example Telepathy (and a nice symbiosis came to be). Sometimes destruction is a good thing. It makes it possible for new weeds to grow, and it cleans up the mess. That doesn't mean I always advocate starting over. But I think GNOME needs a new perspective for next few years: Technology is changing. Perspectives are changing. And we'd be missing the train in a big way if we let mobile slip (as we are, atm). Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Wed, 2010-02-24 at 09:03 +, Martyn Russell wrote: > On 23/02/10 22:52, Philip Van Hoof wrote: > > On Tue, 2010-02-23 at 16:53 +, Martyn Russell wrote: Hi Martyn, > > Don't be confused: most of this reply isn't directed at you personally. > > Sure, but I will indulge all the same ;) That's ok ;) I'll be cutting the text a bit. [CUT] (see?) > We aren't waiting for anything :) But you can't refactor exposed public > struct pointers which are in common use since you break the API and any > application using that structure. I think it's time for a few major API breaks in Gtk+, and why don't we start doing more development of core components (like Gtk+) in Vala? I bet it would make things a lot more easy for contributors. I remember that at a hackfest in Berlin that it was proposed to have IDL files that describe the API. Vala's VAPI files' syntax was proposed for this. With GIR (introspection XMLs) much of this problem is also solved, of course. Anyway, all this stuff is for the maintainers to decide. Of course. > The GSEAL work is an initial step to make this refactoring process > easier. GSEAL is great, yes. (thank you Lanedo) [CUT] > > I don't believe that GTK+ needs more cleaning up. Its architecture isn't > > that flawed at all. > > But that's your opinion as someone who is not and has not been a > maintainer. Talking to the maintainers is actually how I formulated my > opinion. Yes (Gtk+ isn't a very exciting project to join, which is I think part of the problem here). [CUT] > I think NASA had a lot more people working for them than the GTK+ > project and the GSEAL work is quite comprehensive. Now what if we'd make Gtk+ a more exciting project to join? :-) psst. Vala (I'm not saying it's the holy grail, but it is exciting) > At one point Imendio labs time (1/2 a day per week) was used by the > whole company for some months to JUST do sealing and we are still > not quite done. Thank you Lanedo! (the new Imendio) > > I think it's untrue to say that GTK+ needs more years of cleanups before > > it can start receiving innovation. > > Innovation can always be done, but if each time you want to do it you > really want to refactor the code base before you start, that dampens > your efforts and costs time to work around. > > Tracker is no different here. It has had a lot of clean ups before it > started getting any innovation. That's true, fair enough. We did, however, innovate Tracker in parallel with the massive cleanups that we did. And we're still in that process. I call Tracker 0.7 and upcoming 0.8 an entirely new product than 0.6 [CUT] > At some point you have to clean up your code base, that's been the case > in every project I have worked on. I don't think it is a bad thing that > GTK+ is released just "more cleaned up", but others disagree and want > 3.0 to have x, y and z major new features. Yeah, I guess I'm one of those guys ;) Or, if 3.0 is going to be GSEAL and cleanups: to start with 4.0 and drastically innovate, change and develop it (and don't fear API changes anymore at all) and throw 3.0 in maintenance. Same for GLib & Gdk. Kinda like how the 1.x -> 2.0 transition was. I think 2.0 was great for Gtk+, and I think Gtk+ needs another one of those innovative periods. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Tue, 2010-02-23 at 16:53 +, Martyn Russell wrote: Hi Martyn, Don't be confused: most of this reply isn't directed at you personally. > On 23/02/10 16:09, Dodji Seketeli wrote: > > Le mar. 23 févr. 2010 à 14:12:47 (+), Martyn Russell a écrit: > >> Actually, I think that the Red Hat maintainers of the toolkit had an > >> interest in stability (for ISVs) and that stifled development. As > >> such developing anything in GTK+ takes a lot longer than it should > >> and that's why it is always hard to get into development there or to > >> fix something. This has long been the internal politic of GTK+. > > > > Wasn't it possible to develop the new things in branches to showcase > > your ideas and tell the world about those new features? > > Yes and it still is, see the MPX branch, the GSEAL work was also started > in a branch and many things are done that way. > > > Just to make things clear, this is a real question, not an attempt to > > point finger or anything like that. > > > > I am asking because, even in layers like X.org where compatibility is > > key, trying things in branches and showing the world proved to have > > worked quite well. > > When talking to some of the core maintainers, they often say they want > to refactor things internally in GTK+ to make maintaining it easier and > getting new people into the toolkit easier. What are we waiting for? The Gods? Ideology? Let's be serious.. > Just today on #gnome-hackers, I saw someone interested in getting > into GTK+ development and he said it was really hard. I agree. I agree with this person too. It is extraordinary hard: that's not good. Not at all. > Johannes makes a really good point too. At some point you could probably > say that GTK+ was _THE_ exciting project to work on and a lot of code > got in that should have had more reviews and perhaps that's why it needs > cleaning up in places now. Comon! How many years of cleaning up does a team need unless it admits that its entire architecture was one big design flaw? I don't believe that GTK+ needs more cleaning up. Its architecture isn't that flawed at all. Let's not be childish and let's be honest about our technology; its future. Not even a mission to the moon ever needed as much years of cleaning up as GTK+ seems to need if you do follow the logic that the GSEAL work is the only big thing a group can do within a year. I think it's untrue to say that GTK+ needs more years of cleanups before it can start receiving innovation. Let's stop being children. No matter how impolite my statements are. > GTK+ has also been too exposed to change some of these issues (hence > the GSEAL work). I applaud the GSEAL work. It just hasn't been enough for a year or more of work on GTK+: no matter how you look at it, GTK+'s innovation is stalled. To the point that it gets ridiculous. If that statement takes all of my karma, whatever karma means, then it does. So be it. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Tue, 2010-02-23 at 18:38 +0200, Claudio Saavedra wrote: > El mar, 23-02-2010 a las 17:02 +0100, Philip Van Hoof escribió: Hey Claudio, > > > On 23/02/10 12:36, Alberto Ruiz wrote: > > > > I often hear complaints about how the RedHat guys turn down patches > > > > from other contributors (mostly from members of companies competing > > > > with them), > Hold your horses right there. I don't know where are you reading any > claim like that. No one has claimed that someone is under pressure by > his company to reject patches from competitors, as you seem to interpret > -- please be careful with your words. That contradicts with what you quote from Alberto: "I often hear complaints about how the RedHat guys turn down patches from other contributors (mostly from members of companies competing with them)" Those people complaining are apparently claiming (to Alberto) that they perceive this to be the case. I wrote, however: > I don't know nor do I claim this to be the case. I have not seen this > being the case, not for Gtk+ (I'm not involved in its development). That means that I said that I don't perceive it like that. I don't know how much more careful in wording one can be. It is true, however, that it's hard to get a review for certain core components (I'm thinking about the gobject.c performance improvements, which took almost a full year to get any reaction). This is an area for improvement (it would help if more people would be invited to help with said maintenance, I think). Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Tue, 2010-02-23 at 13:20 +0100, Alberto Garcia wrote: > On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 09:37:46PM +, Martyn Russell wrote: > > > > seems gtk+'s object model overhead (for example, object method > > > invocation) is too high, especially visible on mobile platforms... > > > it should be possible to optimize to reduce this overhead... > > > > I agree with Emmanuele. > > Please provide evidence when making wild accusations. > > Admittedly the run-time type checking in GObject adds some overhead, > and it's not hard to see g_type_check_instance_is_a() among the most > called functions. This check isn't strictly necessary for object method invocation (which is what Andy was talking about). Especially if your high-performance class isn't using the macro G_TYPE_INSTANCE_GET_PRIVATE but instead has a pointer to the private in its `GObject *parent' struct. The "I'm feeling lucky Google" for that is: http://sigquit.wordpress.com/2009/02/13/avoid-g_type_instance_get_private-in-gobjects/ > However during my work in Maemo I have *never* seen that being > an actual problem. When there is a performance problem directly > noticeable by the end user the root cause is elsewhere (which may > include, of course, other parts of GTK). Right > Now, this probably doesn't have much value anymore, but as a funny > side note I even remember back in 2000 or so that a friend of mine > compared the performance of a C-based object system (inspired by GLib) > with that of C++, and -to my surprise back then- found out that the > former was noticeably faster. To my surprise can in some cases virtual machines be faster than native code at certain tasks, including their object system. Well, not to my surprise as for many of them it's explained how this works. It's fun to use as a counter argument when yet again one of those ranting anti virtual machine people comes along. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
ntel plans on Clutter long term wise) > > I don't either. There are a lot of companies using it internally that > never tell public communities about its use of GTK+. British Telecom is > one of them. I remember when Owen was setting up the projects page for > gtk.org and I wanted to submit our use cases back then, but internally > they didn't want to make it public in case customers were worried about > the fact that we were using "open source". > > There are thousands of applications using GTK+ too, let's not forget > that, what are they going to move to instead if they don't use GTK+? > > I also thought that Andrew Savory's point was incredibly pertinent. > > As a company we do receive requests for GTK+ support, so I don't think > it is fair to say that GTK+ is dead. No, it's not dead. But I wouldn't say that it's the leading toolkit in the spectrum of the mobile at this moment. This arguably used to be the case a few years ago. I think it helped a lot to get all the middleware being considered by the mobile companies. For example GStreamer, Telepathy, Pulseaudio and recently Tracker. Even GConf, can you believe that?? We'll probably see less young guys who are doing awesome new middleware at this moment having their projects picked up by the mobile companies in future, unless we deliver a compelling "pushing them" product soon. So I'm still worried. But I also know many people are working hard on different concepts and ideas. Clutter, for example, was and is a very good try. Vala and gobject-introspection (the javascript stuff, for example) too. We'll need more. Much more. And better. It's fun. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Mon, 2010-02-22 at 20:27 +0100, Dave Neary wrote: > Juanjo Marin wrote: > > * GTK is losing popularity. It is perceived by a lot of people as old > > and difficult. I think we need any kind of action on this area because > > is a cornerstone issue. Less programmers means less applications and > > contributions. We need to care of our platform users in the same way we > > care of our desktop users. Some people has pointed this in the past, eg > > [1] > > Perhaps the fact that GTK+ is seen as a cornerstone issue is a > cornerstone issue... there's no specific reason why GTK+, FLTK or EFL > would do the job just as well of providing a toolkit. I agree. > What's important to GNOME is the vision and the philosophy of open > access, but that vision has somehow lost the hustle that comes from > homesteading. I'm going to decline from commenting much on philosophy this time. Mine is probably known, and people must be (really) tired of listening to it. After talking with some of the doers at our conferences, at FOSDEM too, I believe our doers have a pragmatic, not a puristic philosophy. That's why I made my earlier comment that our community itself isn't negative or hostile towards commercial mobile ecosystems. > > * It seems we have lost the mobile battle. Can we do something about it > > or simply retreat?. I like the idea of creating more components and some > > of this components can be added to the GNOME mobile platform. > > Have we lost the mobile battle? It certainly appears that GTK+ has lost > the mobile battle, but all of the hard work that GNOME hackers have put > into the middleware platform and components like Gstreamer, Dbus, > Telepathy and Pulseaudio are now cornerstone parts of both the free > desktop and the mobile platform. In mobile we're doing pretty well at the middleware segment. But indeed ... > I would agree that the GNOME GUI platform is not exciting application > developers right now, and that's something we need to fix. And it's not > an easy problem. I think that's a self inflected problem. Because for years wasn't Gtk+ (the toolkit) being innovated on. Instead is the focus 'stability'. Regretfully we see the same thing in most of the original core components: the focus isn't innovation. We're not leading. We are seeing a lot of innovation in middleware, though. I am very, very pleased that the GUADEC organizers have put a focus on metadata in their call for papers. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Mon, 2010-02-22 at 13:39 -0800, Lefty (石鏡 ) wrote: Hi Lefty, > I hesitate to reopen this discussion, frankly. Look at the archives for > December and January. We need to consider that that wasn't our community. In that Alberto has a point that our community itself isn't negative or hostile towards commercial mobile ecosystems. Cheers, Philip > On 2/22/10 1:12 PM, "Alberto Ruiz" wrote: > > > 2010/2/22 Lefty (石鏡 ) : > >> Well, we've certainly managed to place GNOME at an enormous disadvantage > >> with respect to an alternative, quasi-open-source platform, like Android, > >> largely through a couple of years' worth of inattention and, more > >> importantly, an ongoing failure to engage with the commercial mobile > >> ecosystem in any positive and meaningful way. Hopefully, some efforts might > >> be made to correct that in the coming year; whether or not that actually > >> happens, or will be effective if it does, is very much up in the air in my > >> mind. > > > > Do you have any examples of the GNOME community being negative or > > hostile towards the commercial mobile ecosystem? > > > >> The viewpoint held in some quarters which is directly hostile to such > >> engagement has been a negative factor for us in the past and continues to > >> be > >> one. Google, for all that its Android efforts have been competitive to > >> GNOME's interests in the mobile space, has done a much better job here. > >> > >> > >> ___ > >> foundation-list mailing list > >> foundation-list@gnome.org > >> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list > >> > > > > > > > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list > -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: New GNOME Foundation Members
On Fri, 2010-02-12 at 17:14 -0500, Tristan Van Berkom wrote: [CUT] > Personally I think that years ago when I joined it would have made me > feel like GNOME was a warmer place if the introduction was politely required, > otherwise to some it might come across like nobody cares that somebody > took such an interest in GNOME. I think this is a very good point that you make, Tristan. Politely requiring such an introduction isn't intimidating for everybody. It might even be welcoming. > Not to mention it would be very interesting to me at least; to know > why new members have taken an interest in GNOME. Yes, to me too. Again, as I said before, clarity isn't a bad thing. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: New GNOME Foundation Members
On Fri, 2010-02-12 at 15:02 +0100, Dave Neary wrote: > Philip Van Hoof wrote: > > Okay, that's easy to solve. > > > > We just make it a requirement for becoming a foundation member. And we > > document this requirement on the live pages and in a welcome mail. > > > > If they don't introduce themselves, we just unmember them a few days > > later. > > > > I'm guessing the foundation board can make a decision about this? It > > doesn't sound to me like something we need to do a vote on ;) > > Just to point out that the process for becoming a foundation member is > already quite intimidating - OTOH we've had complaints about that we should clean up the membership list (remove old inactive members, I recall that came from you). So apparently the existing base wants some sort of quality? Fair enough. I also don't think that introducing yourself is asking too much. It feels natural to me to expect that from a new member, to be honest. Membership does come with services, having to briefly present yourself is a small price to pay for that. If becoming a foundation member is intimidating, then we should try to find out why. We shouldn't avoid adding reasonable new requirements. In my opinion can clear requirements (that count for everybody) make things less intimidating. Whereas vagueness is counterproductive here. Clarity works. > one has to ask, suggest people who can give > "references", give reasons why one is worthy to join the club, and often > wait weeks or months for any reaction. Often the reaction is "your > references haven't gotten back to us". We also don't hear about the > people who hear back "sorry, you haven't proven yourself yet, try again > later". > > People joining the foundation have already included a lot of information > in their application - Ruben's suggestion that that be included in the > welcome mail is a reasonable one. Yeah, that sounds fine to me too. But then I would propose to require filling in this field. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: New GNOME Foundation Members
On Fri, 2010-02-12 at 13:37 +0100, Pascal Terjan wrote: > On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 13:34, Philip Van Hoof wrote: > > > > We just make it a requirement for becoming a foundation member. And we > > document this requirement on the live pages and in a welcome mail. > > > > If they don't introduce themselves, we just unmember them a few days > > later. > > What about people who are 2 weeks on vacation right when the email > arrive, should they request again ? Oh, sure, we can give them some amount of time. Even months, if that's really necessary. > I'm for suggesting it in the welcome email, not for enforcing it The problem is that without any such enforcement, the rule is pointless and will lead to the current situation where some new guys do and a lot of others don't introduce themselves. Clarity isn't a bad thing when making rules, in my opinion. Unclear or vague rules make more people unhappy than clear ones do. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: New GNOME Foundation Members
On Fri, 2010-02-12 at 13:31 +0100, Ruben Vermeersch wrote: > On Fri, 2010-02-12 at 13:24 +0100, Philip Van Hoof wrote: > > On Fri, 2010-02-12 at 11:45 +0100, Ruben Vermeersch wrote: > > > On Thu, 2010-02-11 at 10:31 -0300, Bruno Boaventura wrote: > > > > > Dear membership committee, > > > > > > Could you at least include a small description of these people when > > > sending out these announcements (it's part of the application, > > > copy-paste!)? I'd love to welcome them and collaborate with those that > > > work in related areas, but unfortunately I don't know all of them. > > > > > > I've been bringing this point up since GUADEC 2008 in Istanbul and I > > > still haven't seen any response to it. It's a two minute effort, but it > > > would make the integration of new members so much nicer. > > > > > > Is this possible please, or will I have to complain about this again in > > > six months? > > > > Why don't we ask the new members to give a short introduction > > themselves? > > That has been suggested before and it never happens. Only rarely does a > new member introduce himself/herself (kudos to them). Okay, that's easy to solve. We just make it a requirement for becoming a foundation member. And we document this requirement on the live pages and in a welcome mail. If they don't introduce themselves, we just unmember them a few days later. I'm guessing the foundation board can make a decision about this? It doesn't sound to me like something we need to do a vote on ;) Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: New GNOME Foundation Members
On Fri, 2010-02-12 at 11:45 +0100, Ruben Vermeersch wrote: > On Thu, 2010-02-11 at 10:31 -0300, Bruno Boaventura wrote: > Dear membership committee, > > Could you at least include a small description of these people when > sending out these announcements (it's part of the application, > copy-paste!)? I'd love to welcome them and collaborate with those that > work in related areas, but unfortunately I don't know all of them. > > I've been bringing this point up since GUADEC 2008 in Istanbul and I > still haven't seen any response to it. It's a two minute effort, but it > would make the integration of new members so much nicer. > > Is this possible please, or will I have to complain about this again in > six months? Why don't we ask the new members to give a short introduction themselves? -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Survey: GUADEC and Akadamy co-location in 2011
& I actively encouraged the Dutch guys to put together > a bid. Vincent, Reinout et al came through with a good bid, but were > concerned (as we all would be) with the workload involved - and given > the timescale, I think some compromises are going to be made this year > between a budget for salaries of organising staff and the surplus that > the foundation gets back. > > Until now, we have always opened the call for hosts and waited to see > who comes in with a bid. Perhaps the new model is to decide where we > want to go, and then find a group to organise? Cheers, Thanks for the overview of events, Dave -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Survey: GUADEC and Akadamy co-location in 2011
On Tue, 2010-02-02 at 12:33 -0500, john palmieri wrote: > I would like to point out that the survey was pretty narrow. For > instance I said "do it" but I have the same reservations I had when I > voted to not do it for this years GUADEC. I want to see this happen > right, which is to have us collaborate but at the same time keep our > identities. I think we should stop being afraid and "just do it". It's more than clear that this is what our community wants. These numbers are unambiguous (just like last year's survey): > Do it vs Don't do it > - contributors: 54 vs 25 (64.23% vs 29.76%) > - foundation members: 49 vs 22 (65.33% vs 29.33%) > - attended GCDS: 46 vs 19 (67.65% vs 27.94%) > - attended guadec once: 9 vs 4 (69.23% vs 30.77%) > - attended guadec more than once: 35 vs 19 (60.34% vs 32.76%) > - never attended guadec: 22 vs 5 (70.97% vs 16.13%) That's an overwhelming majority who want to co-locate. > Productive improvements for GNOME: > - yes, directly: 15 (14.56%) > - yes, indirectly: 61 (59.22%) > - no: 17 (16.50%) This is an even greater overwhelming majority. Cheers, Philip > 2010/2/1 Vincent Untz > Le lundi 01 février 2010, à 17:11 +0100, Vincent Untz a > écrit : > > Le lundi 01 février 2010, à 10:39 -0500, Joe 'Zonker' > Brockmeier a écrit : > > > On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 10:18 AM, Vincent Untz > wrote: > > > > > > > > Is there anyone who would like to help create a useful > summary of the > > > > results? I have some stats already, but if you let me do > this alone, > > > > I'll likely only present some less-effort stats ;-) > > > > > > Depends on how time-sensitive it is. I should have some > time towards > > > the end of the week, but right now am pretty swamped. > > > > Well, I would be hoping to be able to send some analysis in > the next few > > days. I guess if nobody steps up soon enough, I'll just > publish what I > > have and the raw results, so people could take a look and > produce more > > interesting stats. > > > Here are the stats I did (hopefully, I didn't get anything > wrong ;-)). > I'm attaching the results in case anybody wants to play with > them. Note > that I removed the answers to the free form entry since it > made it > possible to guess who replied what in a few cases (it > shouldn't be a big > loss, though). > > + 103 people replied > - 84 are contributors (81.55%) and 18 aren't (17.48%) > - 75 are foundation members (72.82%) and 27 aren't (26.21%) > - 68 attended GCDS (66.02%) and 33 didn't (32.04%) > - 13 (12.62%) attended a GUADEC (before GCDS), 58 (56.31%) > attended 2 >or more, and 31 (30.10%) never went to GUADEC > > + Do it vs Don't do it > - contributors: 54 vs 25 (64.23% vs 29.76%) > - foundation members: 49 vs 22 (65.33% vs 29.33%) > - attended GCDS: 46 vs 19 (67.65% vs 27.94%) > - attended guadec once: 9 vs 4 (69.23% vs 30.77%) > - attended guadec more than once: 35 vs 19 (60.34% vs 32.76%) > - never attended guadec: 22 vs 5 (70.97% vs 16.13%) > > + only/more likely to attend vs will not/less likely to attend > if > co-located > - contributors: 9 vs 10 (10.71% vs 11.90%) > - non-contributors: 10 vs 0 (55.56% vs 0%) > > + productive improvements for GNOME: > - yes, directly: 15 (14.56%) > - yes, indirectly: 61 (59.22%) > - no: 17 (16.50%) > > + misc: > - nobody said "do it" and "it won't lead to any improvement > for GNOME" > - 10 people said "don't do it" and "it will lead to > direct/indirect >improvements for GNOME" > - 9 people replied while they don't plan to go to GUADEC in > 2011 >(4 of them said "do it", 2 said "don't do it") > > > Vincent > > -- > Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés. > > > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gno
Re: GNOME Foundation and CEO Goals
On Tue, 2010-01-26 at 14:19 -0500, Og Maciel wrote: > On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 2:07 PM, Stormy Peters > wrote: > > So far we've gotten very little feedback on what people think the GNOME > > Foundation should accomplish in 2010. > > > > I've put together a short survey if you'd like to weigh in that way. Awesome! > Guess my previous emails were my wish list for the Board to look into > for 2010 (though my initial email was more like a list for the CEO)... > I like this survey and have already submitted my choices. I look > forward to seeing the results and the discussions that will issue from > it. Yes, this survey is very useful. Thanks a lot for this, Stormy. I hope the survey results will be made available soon. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Thanks, and a Brief Survey
On Tue, 2010-01-19 at 08:20 -0700, Stormy Peters wrote: > I think we gain more by being excited and asking them to join our > community, meet us, learn more about free software, etc than if we > temper it down. When you praise someone that's learning something, you > don't say "that's ok but it'd be better if ...", you say "that's > great! nice job!" And then the next time you say "how about if you try > xyz this time?" Thank you Stormy, this is a great point of view. You really understood what people like me and Lefty want to point out. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Thanks, and a Brief Survey
On Tue, 2010-01-19 at 01:49 +, Emmanuele Bassi wrote: > On Mon, 2010-01-18 at 13:08 +0100, Emilio Pozuelo Monfort wrote: > > On 15/01/10 17:31, Philip Van Hoof wrote: > > > On Fri, 2010-01-15 at 10:47 -0500, john palmieri wrote: > > >> You always seem to devolve into ad-hominem, personal attacks. > > > > > > When a person falsely accuses Lefty of putting bias in his surveys THEN > > > you apparently don't need to respond with the ad-hominem bomb??!! > > > > Huh? If I say "Lefty, you're an idiot", that's ad-hominem, but if I say > > "Lefty, > > your survey is biased" it's not. > > technically, no; if you were to say "Lefty's survey is biased because > he's an idiot" then *that* would be ad hominem attack; but saying > "Lefty's survey is biased because of " is *not* an ad > hominem attack. Correct. This is why I asked for an intellectual argument for . Furthermore is the context of this discussion intentional bias, not just bias. ^^^ My quotes, to ensure that we don't loose context. Reducing the context seems to be a sport around here: a. Pointing to Lefty for being guilty of intentionally creating ambiguity is nothing more than ...^ b. I disrespect people who claim that this last survey has intentional bias. For me they are being intellectually dishonest. ^^^ No such intellectual argumentation has so far been given by anyone. Instead has everybody devolved into discussing what the meaning of ad-hominem is. My point is that it is an ad-hominem attack when a person accuses somebody of something without giving an intellectual argument that proves it. And then I question why this is being ignored. Honestly, I don't know why it is so important to continue this branch of the thread. Unless somebody has an answer to that real question. The answer can be given in private too, by the way. > and, though I feel moderately stupid[0] to even have to point this out: > in no case an ad hominem attack on a person allows a third one to reply > with an ad hominem attack. > > ciao, > Emmanuele. > > [0] obviously, I would feel entirely stupid doing so in a normal conses > of people, but the medium does require some special hand-holding. The > medium and some of the subscribers. This is getting hilarious... Your ethic is that in no case an ad hominem attack on a person allows a third one to reply with an ad hominem attack. And then you suggest that you need to lower to stupidity and do special hand-holding for some of the subscribers. Meaning that you violate the very ethic that you are describing with it. But then again, isn't it so that this discussion about what Philip said ain't going anywhere? Can this branch of the discussion thread now be closed? Or is it really meaningful somehow? Because I don't see it. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Thanks, and a Brief Survey
On Sun, 2010-01-17 at 22:52 +, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote: [CUT] > The last few mails in this thread suggest that people are happy with this > aspect of GNOME's philosophy. So it's something worth maintaining. How do > we ensure that newcomers see the philosophy and the reasons for avoiding or > rewriting non-free/non-open-source software? > Using the term "free software" helps because it leads people to make a > connection with a philosophy that answers exactly that question. Other > helpful measures can include more prominently displaying the fact that GNOME > insists on freedom, and explanations of why software freedom is valuable. As the GNOME community's values have a strong ethical ground, I question the necessity of the FSF's philosophical help. I believe the insinuation that we do is misplaced. [CUT] -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Thanks, and a Brief Survey
On Fri, 2010-01-15 at 22:58 +0100, Dave Neary wrote: Dave, [CUT] > > If you're suggesting that _this_ survey is somehow biased, as your example > > question would appear to, I'd appreciate more specific information. > > Not at all. I even voted in it. I'm merely pointing out the absurdity of > Phillip's suggestion that the only way to "respect" a survey is to > implement whatever results from it. Two times in this thread I clarified what for me "respecting" the results of a survey means and how the board should deal with it. This quote goes straight to the soul of what I suggest: I would accept that the foundation's board has a decisive role in this. Why else do we elect you guys and don't replace you with surveys? This quote, a reply to Vincent, is more vague but it also illustrates: I don't (didn't) mean any immediate action is needed. I do believe that these results should be kept in mind for future decisions. What is absurd is that you insist on misrepresenting me. It's not the first time in this thread that you, even after I corrected you repeatedly, misinform people about what I said. It's impolite and disrespectful. > Absolutely - the results are a useful data point. If nothing gets done > with the results, because our leaders adopt a stance on behalf of the > project, I hope that the people who voted don't feel disrespected. When the board doesn't use the results then you hope that the members who gave their opinion ignore their feelings about that? I'm not sure what you meant, but if that's it then I disagree. I agree that a board can have a different point of view and that it is elected to do a job on behalf of not just members but the project too. If the board can't justify such a decision or if in future the decision turns out to have been the wrong one, then the members should as soon as possible get the opportunity to vote away or to vote to keep that board. If you can't deal with responsibility, you shouldn't be a board. I think it's fair that in return for being voted as a board, the members get the respect from the board that it takes up its responsibility for their decisions. Especially for the ones when they ignore the opinion of most of its members: they better be right when they do that. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Thanks, and a Brief Survey
On Fri, 2010-01-15 at 18:57 +0100, Dave Neary wrote: > Philip Van Hoof wrote: > > I fully agree with this statement if you replace free software with open > > source. > > Please stop trolling. This is not going to lead to anything productive > (again). As Lefty is clarifying here, this isn't trolling at all: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2010-January/msg00041.html I think the discussion about replacing free software with open source has actually produced a very fruitful discussion and is creating a productive outcome. > > This is an excerpt of a private E-mail that Lefty sent me. The survey's > > results are open for everybody so this ain't a secret anyway: > > > > "There's about twice the uptake for the term "open source software" as > > there is for "free software"." > > > > If the board respects the results of the survey, which I think it should > > do, it takes this into account. > How about I do a poll whether people think PCs should run Windows or > another desktop environment? If we respect the results we should stop > developing GNOME. Surveys should be conducted among foundation members. Not all PC users. And when you represent my views, it's helpful to acknowledge what I wrote in front of your reply in the same discussion thread. > On Fri, 2010-01-15 at 18:05 +0100, Philip Van Hoof wrote: > > Although I would accept that the foundation board has a decisive > > role in this. Why else do we elect you guys and don't replace you > > with surveys? > Isn't leading by survey one of the issues you had with the Bush & Blair > administrations? This is completely besides the point. (When did I say this, anyway? - reply privately -) Cheers, -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Thanks, and a Brief Survey
On Fri, 2010-01-15 at 10:37 -0700, Stormy Peters wrote: [CUT] > We could also amend the statement to say "free and open source > software" but it gets awkward. I think it's a great idea to (at least) use both. Free software isn't a synonym for open source, and by only using 'free software' you aren't including all the OSI definitions which GNOME also endorses. What about the companies and people, like me, who don't feel attached to free software ideology and yet develop for and with GNOME technologies? If anything I think this debate and the survey's data legitimizes the claim that GNOME is far from only a free software community. This the GNOME foundation should be unambiguously clear about in its statements and texts. In my opinion. Cheers, -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Thanks, and a Brief Survey
On Fri, 2010-01-15 at 18:05 +0100, Philip Van Hoof wrote: > On Fri, 2010-01-15 at 08:58 -0800, Lefty (石鏡 ) wrote: > > On 1/15/10 8:49 AM, "Philip Van Hoof" wrote: > > Hi Stormy! Mistake, I was replying to Lefty. Sorry Lefty. You know I like your féminin side ;) > > > I fully agree with this statement if you replace free software with open > > > source. > > > > I have some sympathy with this view. "Open source" is my preference as well > > and (based on the survey data) seems to have broader "uptake" among the > > respondents. > > > > That said, I can personally live with "free" (in spite of it not being the > > terminology I personally use) if that's the consensus among the members > > here. > > Like you say, the survey's data seems to suggest a broader "uptake" > among the respondents for open source. I don't know but I'm inclined to > believe that the consensus among the members is open source, not free > software then. > > Because we can't be sure it might be wise to do a survey at some point > in future to find out what the actual consensus on this is. > > Although I would accept that the foundation board has a decisive role in > this. Why else do we elect you guys and don't replace you with surveys? > > Free software vs. open source isn't a matter of just picking words, in > my opinion. I think we should get this right. > > > -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Thanks, and a Brief Survey
On Fri, 2010-01-15 at 09:50 -0700, Stormy Peters wrote: Hi Stormy, > Please refrain from calling people crazy or disruptive. Please keep > the discussion on the actions not people's characters. > > By labelling people with negative terms, these debates turn into > arguments instead of productive discussions. I agree, apologizes for the labelling. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Thanks, and a Brief Survey
On Fri, 2010-01-15 at 08:58 -0800, Lefty (石鏡 ) wrote: > On 1/15/10 8:49 AM, "Philip Van Hoof" wrote: Hi Stormy! > > I fully agree with this statement if you replace free software with open > > source. > > I have some sympathy with this view. "Open source" is my preference as well > and (based on the survey data) seems to have broader "uptake" among the > respondents. > > That said, I can personally live with "free" (in spite of it not being the > terminology I personally use) if that's the consensus among the members > here. Like you say, the survey's data seems to suggest a broader "uptake" among the respondents for open source. I don't know but I'm inclined to believe that the consensus among the members is open source, not free software then. Because we can't be sure it might be wise to do a survey at some point in future to find out what the actual consensus on this is. Although I would accept that the foundation board has a decisive role in this. Why else do we elect you guys and don't replace you with surveys? Free software vs. open source isn't a matter of just picking words, in my opinion. I think we should get this right. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Thanks, and a Brief Survey
On Fri, 2010-01-15 at 09:34 -0700, Stormy Peters wrote: Hi Stormy! > I believe we can state it this way ... > > The GNOME Foundation believes in free software and promotes free > software but that does not mean that GNOME is anti-proprietary > software. We believe, promote, use and write free software. I fully agree with this statement if you replace free software with open source. > We are excited when companies and individuals use GNOME technologies > because we believe it brings us closer to our mission and vision of a > free desktop (or mobile interface) accessible to everyone. Awesome (the use of the word free is fine if above you use open source). > Sometimes those companies are proprietary software companies and while > we hope that they move closer to free software in the future (and that s/free software/open source/g > we are helping them do so with the use of GNOME), we are delighted > that they have chosen to use GNOME and will help them and their > customers. Fantastic. In my opinion we can only reconsider to use of the word free software in a text like this when the free-software foundation comes to its senses. This is an excerpt of a private E-mail that Lefty sent me. The survey's results are open for everybody so this ain't a secret anyway: "There's about twice the uptake for the term "open source software" as there is for "free software"." If the board respects the results of the survey, which I think it should do, it takes this into account. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Thanks, and a Brief Survey
On Fri, 2010-01-15 at 11:05 -0500, john palmieri wrote: > > > On Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 10:41 AM, Philip Van Hoof > wrote: > On Fri, 2010-01-15 at 10:37 -0500, john palmieri wrote: > You are still implying that those who are in opposition are the > disruptive people. It is a blanket, emotional statement. You could > have simply left it with open source developers are far more pragmatic > than some give credit for. No because the survey's importance for me is to illustrate to the disruptive people that they are crazy. The opposition contains intelligent people too. I'm not referring to them. You are trying to skew my words because it would suit you if I would have said that. But I didn't. I think it's clear for everybody who I mean with "disruptive people". > Because you are pretty disrespectful in how you deal with debate, this > is the last time I am replying to you on this thread. Yes that's easy. " I disagree with him so I'm going to reply disrespectfully by trying to skew his words and cut away the most important part of his E-mail ... And then I will claim that HE was disrespectful and that I don't want to talk with him anymore, that way framing the debate with misinformation. " Sorry John, but it's not because you use a cleaner writing style than I do, that you aren't being disrespectful. You did cut context-relevant sentences and you are misrepresenting what I said. You didn't even had the respect to write a [CUT], which is netiquette. Cheers, -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Thanks, and a Brief Survey
On Fri, 2010-01-15 at 10:47 -0500, john palmieri wrote: > On Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 10:05 AM, Philip Van Hoof > wrote: > > The only person who here might have intentionally created the > > ambiguity > > is the person who first used the word to describe proprietary: > > Richard. > > I use "might" wisely, I'm not saying this was the intention. > > Have you ever read his manifesto? While you might not agree with his > conclusions, his logic would pass most any scrutiny. I have, yes. I don't always follow his logic and certainly not his conclusions. I don't know what this has to do with me saying that I agree that ambiguity was likely not Richard's intention when he questioned the legitimacy of proprietary software. Can we stick to the point please? > > Pointing to Lefty for being guilty of intentionally creating > > ambiguity is nothing more than either being a moron, or being so > > disinterested that you don't know who said what first. > > Moron: > > 1. a person who is (notably stupid or) lacking in good judgment. > You always seem to devolve into ad-hominem, personal attacks. When a person falsely accuses Lefty of putting bias in his surveys THEN you apparently don't need to respond with the ad-hominem bomb??!! Strange? I don't think so. Xavier said something pro free software so he can't make ad-hominem attacks. Right? A false accusation like that is an attack on Lefty's integrity too. Stop ignoring it. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Thanks, and a Brief Survey
On Fri, 2010-01-15 at 10:37 -0500, john palmieri wrote: > On Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 7:02 AM, Philip Van Hoof > wrote: > > The results are more than enlightening to me. The surveys definitely > > are useful and insightful. > > > They sharply illustrate that open source developers are far more > > pragmatic than certain people in the audience would like us to be. > Thanks for relegating the opposing view to "certain people". It is > certainly intelectually honest of you to put them in all in the same > bucket and then crap in it. These people aren't who I refer to as "certain people". In the next section I clarify that "certain people" means the people who are very disruptive. Cutting it away doesn't change that I wrote exactly that. Let me be helpful and put it back for you: > > Given that some of those people have been very disruptive, it for me > > absolutely was needed to confront them with numerical reality. I'll [cut] the rest of your E-mail away now, because this renders it all not relevant to what I wrote. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Thanks, and a Brief Survey
On Fri, 2010-01-15 at 14:38 +0100, Xavier Bestel wrote: Hi Xavier, > On Fri, 2010-01-15 at 13:02 +0100, Philip Van Hoof wrote: > > I disrespect people who claim that this last survey has intentional > > bias. For me they are being intellectually dishonest. > > Giving one definition of a word, Lefty gave accurate definitions for the words he used. For example the word "illegitimate": Richard clearly questioned the legitimacy of proprietary software and asked us to mirror this statement. This is archived if you don't believe me. Firstly: The only person who here might have intentionally created the ambiguity is the person who first used the word to describe proprietary: Richard. I use "might" wisely, I'm not saying this was the intention. Pointing to Lefty for being guilty of intentionally creating ambiguity is nothing more than either being a moron, or being so disinterested that you don't know who said what first. Moron: 1. a person who is (notably stupid or) lacking in good judgment. Secondly: Lefty's last survey's exact words: "Legitimate" means both "not contrary to existing law" and "in accordance with recognized or accepted standards or principles". Do you believe that proprietary software is "illegitimate"? Possible meanings according to an English dictionary: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/illegitimate 1. born of parents who are not married to each other; born out of wedlock: an illegitimate child. -> Not relevant here 2. not legitimate; not sanctioned by law or custom. 3. unlawful; illegal: an illegitimate action. -> Relevant, Richard used "illegitimate" within the context of laws and legality. When talking about the proprietary nature of a work, you are discussing legal aspects of its license. 4. irregular; not in good usage. -> Somewhat relevant, it's clear that "proprietary" sets the context firmly to law systems and legality. Richard could have used less ambiguity if he meant this. He didn't. 5. Logic. not in accordance with the principles of valid inference. -> Logic is not relevant here. 6. Obsolete a. of or pertaining to stage plays in which musical numbers were inserted because of laws that gave only a few theaters the exclusive right to produce straight dramas. b. acting in or producing such productions. -> Not relevant, it's not about music, dramas or theaters. Also like point #4 is it clear that "proprietary" sets the context firmly to law systems and legality in case you insist on skewing #6 until it suits you. I know people claimed that with illegitimate Richard meant unethical. To be honest doesn't "illegitimate" mean "unethical". Not according to the English dictionaries that I own, nor the online ones that I know about. Nonetheless has Lefty, being unbiased, added morality to his surveys' questions. The results for those questions aren't ambiguous either. > then asking if someone else's sentence > containing that word is true is at best partial. > Feel free to disrespect me. You didn't illustrate Lefty's intent to put a bias in the survey, nor are you intellectually proving that there is any in it. If that's your claim then I indeed feel myself free to disrespect you for it. I don't see why I need to respect people who falsely accuse others. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Thanks, and a Brief Survey
On Fri, 2010-01-15 at 13:11 +0100, Vincent Untz wrote: Hi Vincent, > Le vendredi 15 janvier 2010, à 13:02 +0100, Philip Van Hoof a écrit : > > I also hope the foundation board will respect the results of these > > surveys. > > What do you mean? I don't (didn't) mean any immediate action is needed. I do believe that these results should be kept in mind for future decisions. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Thanks, and a Brief Survey
On Fri, 2010-01-15 at 02:01 -0800, Lefty (石鏡 ) wrote: Hi Lefty, > Thanks to Bruno and the rest of the Membership team. It pleases me for > some reason to be on the same list of new members as my friend, Jim > Vasile. > On a different matter, I am currently conducting a brief (< 5 minute) > survey on attitudes and viewpoints on FLOSS and proprietary software > and I invite all to participate in it. We have on the order to 400 > respondents so far, but I’d like to get as broad a level of coverage > as possible. Thanks a lot for taking the time to conduct these surveys! The results are more than enlightening to me. The surveys definitely are useful and insightful. They sharply illustrate that open source developers are far more pragmatic than certain people in the audience would like us to be. Given that some of those people have been very disruptive, it for me absolutely was needed to confront them with numerical reality. I hope that the foundation board will learn from your surveys and will conduct them for most of the future foundation-board decisions too. I also hope the foundation board will respect the results of these surveys. The results are invaluable. I disrespect people who claim that this last survey has intentional bias. For me they are being intellectually dishonest. > The survey can be found at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/F8DG25Q > A summary of the responses received so far can be found at > http://bit.ly/74WQBI > > Thanks in advance for your participation. I’ll be making a formal > report of the results in a few weeks. It would be nice to know the results of the people who claim that they are working on or contributing to a GNOME project. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: "Private Foundation-List" Petition for referendum
Hi there, Right now I think we should do the vote Behdad is calling for. I'm waiting until the discussion about it goes to sleep to make up my mind about it (and then either add or don't add my name to the wiki page). I think the implementation should be broader than only foundation members. I think foundation members should always be allowed to join, and then other people can ask the foundation members to be voted in. I think the vote should present us with a few such implementation ideas. Cheers, Philip ps. The rest is off topic. It's a bit silly that yet another off topic thread is starting. Richard, the topic is Behdad's call for a vote. Not your ethical believe system. No matter how important you think that is. Brendan also wasn't talking about your movement, but about open source. People who want to reply to this part: consider taking it private. On Wed, 2009-12-16 at 01:01 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote: > Doesn't this undermines the values of the open source community? > > To cite the "values of open source" as an ethical standard is ironic, > because the motive for open source was to avoid presenting an ethical > standard. To deny a group or a person the legitimacy to keep intellectual property proprietary goes against criteria five of the Open Source Definition: http://opensource.org/docs/osd 5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons. And against criteria number six: 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research. And "very much" against criteria number nine: 9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open-source software. And when broadly interpreted against criteria number ten: 10. License Must Be Technology-Neutral No provision of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface. I conclude that would the Free Software Foundation's (= your) ethics have been written down in the form of a license, that it wouldn't be compatible with the Open Source Definition at all. In fact, would the minimal support for GNU be that the FSF's ethics would have to be compatible with the soul of the GPL (which you summarized in "The Foundations of the GPL"), then neither would FSF's ethics be compatible: o. The freedom to use the software for any purpose. You, however, as as head of the FSF, claim that proprietary software is illegitimate. Meaning that you say that it's 'unlawful' under FSF's ethical code. This suggests (strongly) that the FSF's ethics denies a person the right to choose a proprietary license for his own work (you called it illegitimate. In multiple posts and under that context). > The founders of open source split off from the free software movement > in 1998 with the aim of rejecting our ethical principles and values -- > for instance, the idea that we must respect the freedom of the users > when we develop software. They decided to present the matter as > purely a practical recommendation, and not as principle at all. > (See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html > for more explanation of how open source differs from free software.) > So it is ironic that some see it as a principle in itself. > > Openness as a principle is no substitute for freedom, which is why > GNOME needs to remember the free software ideals and not identify > primarily with "open source". But openness does have value, so I'd > prefer not to limit access to this list. > _______ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list > -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Mon, 2009-12-14 at 22:34 +0100, Vincent Untz wrote: > Le vendredi 11 décembre 2009, à 17:20 +0100, Philip Van Hoof a écrit : > > I propose to have a vote on GNOME's membership to the GNU project. > > So, as far as I can tell, nobody is collecting a list of members who > support such a vote proposal. I still wanted to reply there. I'm not planning to collect these members because I fear that doing so at this time might hurt GNOME as a community. I wont stop other people from doing so, and I'll support the vote too. My personal point of view towards the illegitimacy of proprietary software (I think mine is clear, by now) has no higher priority than the community of GNOME as a whole. I do still ask: what to do with this? > For many of the reasons Dave wrote, I would believe splitting up from > the GNU project is a bad idea. Let me add a few things... My opinion isn't that splitting would be bad for GNOME. We can protect our user's freedoms far better than GNU can. Let's not lie to ourselves about that. > The GNOME Foundation itself is a free software supporter, and advocates > for free software, and I believe this reflects the opinion of the vast > majority of the GNOME community. But what if advocating free software means that the minimal support GNOME should do for GNU, is to claim that proprietary is illegitimate? This *is* an issue, Vincent. Richard Stallman *is* the leader of the group that is *urging* us to make up our minds. We can not ignore it. No matter how emotional it all is. Well actually, we can ignore it. It does us more harm than good. > So I would think it's safe to say that this is the position of the > GNOME project. As such, I think the GNOME project definitely has its > place in the GNU project, whose goal is to create a free software > operating system. GNOME's place in the GNU project is to help create a free software operating system. And that's it. We're not part of FSF "because" of the "it" of "that's it". GNOME has no place in Richard's ideology of 'proprietary software is illegitimate'. Because ... A majority of its contributors and users disagree with that ideology: http://www.surveymonkey.com/sr.aspx?sm=_2bTZVPBIOJr2Rh1hPfmoFvNXT0hZZQgd_2fCvvmvOgTgRM_3d Alienating these people is not right. No matter the hype of today. > That doesn't mean the GNOME Foundation fights against non-free software > by saying that non-free software is bad and should not be used nor > exist. We have a policy of having the GNOME platform LGPL, and so it can > be used by non-free applications. We're happy this way. Our way to fight > against non-free software is by writing better code, that is free. Thank you. This sums it up pretty well. "Our way" is by writing better code. Exactly. > Also, the GNU project is not the FSF. When reading the thread, I have > the feeling that some people want the GNOME project to not be part of > the FSF, or to disagree with the FSF. The GNOME Foundation is [not] part of > the FSF, and we sometimes disagree with the FSF, and we're all fine this > way. Good, the FSF can use some criticism. (You meant "not part of the FSF" instead of "part of FSF". You corrected this in another reply E-mail. I added it between square brackets. Feel free to torch me if that's impolite). > (Note that the FSF is an advisory board member of the GNOME > Foundation, though, and it's valuable one that we're happy to have). I > think Andy wrote more on this [1], but I didn't take the time to read > his post so I won't put words in his mouth :-) Cheers & concerns, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: foundation-list Digest, Vol 68, Issue 13
On Sun, 2009-12-13 at 13:34 +, Rui Miguel Silva Seabra wrote: > Em 13-12-2009 12:44, Philip Van Hoof escreveu: > > Richard's claim that proprietary is illegitimate is enforcement. He's > > making a philosophic mistake that contradicts his own ideology of free > > choice. > > Choice of the master is not free choice for a slave. It only looks like > "free choice" to other masters uninvolved in the choice. Ridiculous hyperbole. > > Free choice isn't enforceable. You can only convince people of it. > > > >> I think Richard has correctly highlighted the fact that the GNOME > >> Planet could better promote free software. > > > > That's not his only request, though. He's requesting GNOME to claim > > that proprietary software is illegitimate. Let's focus on that. > > The coin of software freedom has two sides to conving people to buy it: > 0) promotion of Free Software > 1) critic of proprietary software > > Just like you can't educate a child just by teaching him the good > examples, you have to critic the bad examples in front of the child: > there's no law against being unpolite, it's perfectly legal, but > shouldn't one repress unpolite behaviours when a child exhibits them? You're assuming developers are children who have to be punished into making choices. > GNOME, both as a community and as a foundation, should teach the good > examples and critic the bad ones. GNOME should stick to teaching the good examples. Criticizing the bad ones is only counter productive. You teach people by cooperating with them. What Miguel has been doing is a good example how to convince people of (some) new ideas. > As such, I don't think this is enough: > > > We already do this: > > > > http://www.gnome.org/about/ > > Stopping here is quite insufficient. To me, proprietary software is > illegitimate. Not in the legal sense, as the law allows that, but in the > human sense. It teaches that sharing is evil. It tries to hold you as a > slave to it's proprietary formats, and lock you in as a defenseless > customer. > > But to me it's no wonder you should think it is, specially since you > seem pretty adamant against critic of proprietary software. > > It seems to me you're one of those people who think the freedom of > speech of others is a shotgun pointed at your head forcing you to do > stuff in a certain way they prefer. It's stunning that first you are talking about repressing childish behavior, talking about how bad being impolite is ... And here you are doing argumentum ad hominem. It undermines your credibility. > Ever heard of filters? If Richard Stallman get's so much into your > nerves, just make a filter to delete his emails automatically. Did I say Richard gets into my nerves? Why would I want to delete his E-mails? Why wouldn't I want to know how he thinks, what he writes? Why are you talking on behalf of me, anyway? > Don't create more pointless flame wars or appeal to loose-loose schisms > as that's what you're doing. Nonsense and more ad hominem. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: foundation-list Digest, Vol 68, Issue 13
On Sat, 2009-12-12 at 15:49 -0600, Brian Cameron wrote: Note that I've been cutting a bit in the "> reply" text. > Richard is free to suggest what he thinks should be done, as are we > all. The GNOME Foundation is free to resolve this problem in the way > that we think makes the most sense, after discussion. You forget to mention, however, that Richard is a key figure of the FSF & GNU movements. He's saying that the minimal support of GNOME, to be part of GNU, is claiming that proprietary software is illegitimate. Today he's softening his tone, but he's still requesting this. > I think that, in general, most people in the GNOME community think > highly of free software and are interested in promoting it. That's relevant for emotions, but irrelevant to the request of Richard. A rational thing to do, then, is to have a vote about it. Besides If promoting Free Software is claiming that proprietary is illegitimate then perhaps a lot of people will no longer want to promote this version of "Free Software" anymore? I have doubts that there are mostly GNOME contributors who have as philosophy that you can't be owner of your own work. That's the inconvenience of claiming that proprietary software is illegitimate: It makes it illegitimate to have a decision about your own work. If I say that my work X is open, then I say that. Because I'm its owner. Therefor must I be intellectually honest and admit that proprietary software too, is legitimate. My rights are his rights. We share them. Look at how much discussion the required copyright ownership transfer for some of the GNOME projects creates. It illustrates that philosophy: Those people want to say that their work Y must remain free. They can say that, because they are owner, until they transfer copyright. JUST like how I can say that my work Z must remain closed. I can be convinced that it's better for humanity, myself, world piece, kittens to make Z open instead. I have been convinced of that many times. Yes. But force me, and I'll revolt against you. Richard's claim that proprietary is illegitimate is enforcement. He's making a philosophic mistake that contradicts his own ideology of free choice. I'm one of the people who rejects Richard's position as leader of the Free Software movement. For me, and many other coders & doers, he has lost that position a long time ago. Because of this philosophy of him. He's dragging the Free Software Foundation and GNU down with him. I really hope that some day he'll understand this, because he's harming the whole movement in a most fundamental way. Free choice isn't enforceable. You can only convince people of it. > I think Richard has correctly highlighted the fact that the GNOME > Planet could better promote free software. That's not his only request, though. He's requesting GNOME to claim that proprietary software is illegitimate. Let's focus on that. I already quoted his words, and they are in the archives. > Figuring out how to make GNOME Planet better promote GNOME and free > software is probably a better way to focus on this problem. See lower > > I'm against the proposal because the planet is doing just fine. Why is > > that so hard for some people to accept? > > I agree with you that trying to use tags to solve this problem is not > the best way to solve the problem, for the reasons you highlight. > > However, since this problem seems to really happen only on rare > occasion, and since it does not seem that any non-free organizations > are really trying to use GNOME Planet to do any real advertising, > then perhaps a disclaimer link to highlight the GNOME community's stance > on the issue, and to provide educational links to people who want to > learn more about the importance of free software, would be a reasonable > improvement. We already do this: http://www.gnome.org/about/ GNOME is... o. Free GNOME is Free Software and part of the GNU project, dedicated to giving users and developers the ultimate level of control over their desktops, their software, and their data. Find out more about the GNU project and Free Software at gnu.org. I don't know why every single project and sub-webpage must repeat this. What I do miss is a direct link to GNOME's About page at the top of the page. Adding that link isn't worth this thread. Just add it already. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: foundation-list Digest, Vol 68, Issue 13
(I'm replying the two of you at the same time in an attempt at reducing the thread's size) On Fri, 11 Dec 2009 12:20:50 -0600 Brian Cameron wrote: > Richard's suggestion that a "mild approach" may be appropriate does > not seem over-the-top to me. Perhaps a "mild approach" could be > something simple like a disclaimer on planet... I don't think Richard is suggesting that as "mild approach" we should "just" put such a disclaimer on the planet while still allowing planet contributors to talk about proprietary software. Let's take a look at one of Richard's quotes: On Wed, 09 Dec 2009 22:38:07 -0500 Richard Stallman wrote: > They should not do this, unless VmWare becomes free software. GNOME > should not provide proprietary software developers with a platform to > present non-free software as a good or legitimate thing. This goes a lot further than the "mild approach" disclaimer that "some information on planet may advertise non-free software, and we want to make clear that GNOME does not endorse non-free software and instead encourages people to consider free alternatives." What Richard is asking for, is a "rule": > Perhaps the statement of Planet GNOME's philosophy should be > interpreted differently. It should not invite people to talk about > their proprietary software projects just because they are also GNOME > contributors. And here he writes about that "rule": > The most minimal support for the free software movement is > to refrain from going directly against it; that is, to avoid > presenting proprietary software as legitimate. > > I think Planet GNOME should have a rule to this effect. ^^ On Sat, 2009-12-12 at 09:51 +, Rui Miguel Silva Seabra wrote: > I have a personal blog and when I asked planet.openmoko.org to add my > posts, I gave them the RSS feed corresponding to posts under the tag > OpenMoko. > > Perhaps it would be a simpler suggestion to pass on the aggregated > bloggers that after date X only posts with the tag GNOME will be aggregated? This is what Stormy replied in the thread: > From: > Stormy Peters > > Date: > 12/10/2009 03:46:37 PM (Thu, 10 Dec > 2009 07:46:37 -0700) > Planet GNOME is about people and we display everyone's full blog feed > as it represents them. ^^ ^ > There are people that work on proprietary software as well as GNOME > and that's who they are. I don't think we should reject people because > they don't agree with us 100% of the time. [CUT about hunting] > Now, if they aren't doing any GNOME work and all they talk about it > non-free, non-GNOME software, that's different. > > Stormy I agree with Stormy here: People can choose to have a tag on "english", which is what I did because some people complained about my Dutch posts and this was proposed by the planet maintainers as resolution. But for example Lionel Dricot, a French speaking Belgian, told us in this thread that he enjoys reading Reinhout's Dutch posts (Reinhout is from the Netherlands) to practice his Dutch knowledge. This is just to illustrate what going "full monty" on "gnome" tags will have as impact. It would change the entire philosophy of the planet. The same philosophy that made it a success would be changed into a cold one. I'm against the proposal because the planet is doing just fine. Why is that so hard for some people to accept? Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Fri, 2009-12-11 at 12:32 -0500, Behdad Esfahbod wrote: > On 12/11/2009 11:32 AM, Lefty (石鏡 ) wrote: > > Philip van Hoof writes > >> > >> I propose to have a vote on GNOME's membership to the GNU project. > > > > I'd second this. > > Quick procedural note: If you really want to pursue this, according to the > bylaws you need support of 5% of the membership IIRC to put something to > vote. > I'm not sure the vote would be binding though. Okay, thanks for the information. > I thought I point that out since that's your rights as members of the > foundation. That said, I agree with Dave. I'll support whoever proposes this as a vote. Being a member I'd like to propose this vote (but apparently I need '5% - 1 person' of the other members, I don't know how they can officially support the proposal). As a reply to the legitimate concerns you and Dave have: o. I don't think being afraid of that is sufficient reason to sidestep the issue. We're an intelligent group of people. We can deal with this. o. I think we should be intellectually honest. We owe it to ourselves. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Fri, 2009-12-11 at 17:40 +0100, Dave Neary wrote: Hi Dave! (Are you coming to FOSDEM? We need another of those IRL chats, no?) > Philip Van Hoof wrote: > > I propose to have a vote on GNOME's membership to the GNU project. > > Such a vote, whatever the outcome, would have little effect on the GNOME > project. I'd agree. > The debate during the vote could cause a lot of harm & discord for the > GNOME community. I actually do agree, yes. I don't think being afraid of that is sufficient reason to sidestep this issue We're an intelligent group of people. We can deal with this. > An outcome whereby GNOME is no longer a GNU project could cause a lot of > harm to the free software and open source movements in general - there > would be massive negative publicity. I agree but we cannot be blind when the leader of the Free Software Foundation is requesting that the "minimal" thing GNOME should do, is to support it by, and I quote, "avoiding presenting proprietary software as legitimate". I fully understand that ignoring Richard's request is the easy way. But his request cannot be ignored any longer. He really wants this as a "minimal" commitment from GNOME. No matter what feels good for us. We've been ignoring this for too long. Such a commitment is, as far as I understand our community, not entirely compatible with the current mindset of a lot of its members, so ... I think we should be intellectually honest; by doing this vote. > Since there is very little up-side and substantial down-side, both real > and in terms of image (which is an important consideration, I think), I > do not think that we should vote on this issue. > > Don't we have more concrete issues to address? I ask the same about the apparent necessity to address certain moral issues like policing the behaviour of our members and introducing a set of punishments for bad behaviour. That doesn't mean it can't be discussed. It can. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
(repost, I didn't use the right E-mail address) On Fri, 2009-12-11 at 10:12 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote: > But GNOME is part of the GNU Project, and it ought to support the free > software movement. The most minimal support for the free software movement > is to refrain from going directly against it; that is, to avoid presenting > proprietary software as legitimate. I understand your position. I think you might not understand the position of a lot of GNOME foundation members and contributors. Their position isn't necessarily compatible with your position that GNOME should "avoid presenting proprietary software as legitimate". The way I see it is that most members want GNOME to stay out of that philosophic discussion. Although GNOME usually advises to "work upstream" and to "do things opensource when possible, as much as possible". This is just a personal point of view, of course. You, as one of the key FSF people, appear to be keen[1] on enforcing a strict policy on how GNU's member-projects should behave. So ... I propose to have a vote on GNOME's membership to the GNU project. > I think Planet GNOME should have a rule to this effect. I think it's clear that I disagree. Philosophically. > There are many ways to implement such a rule, of which "block the > whole blog" is about the toughest one we might consider. I'd suggest > rather to try a mild approach; I'm sure that can do the job. Let's first get a consensus from our members on GNOME's status as being or not being a well-behaving GNU project, or having its own identity. Cheers, Philip [1] You write "minimal support". "Minimal" to me means: either you do this, or you're out. Feel free to correct me. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Fri, 2009-12-11 at 10:12 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote: > But GNOME is part of the GNU Project, and it ought to support the free > software movement. The most minimal support for the free software movement > is to refrain from going directly against it; that is, to avoid presenting > proprietary software as legitimate. I understand your position. I think you might not understand the position of a lot of GNOME foundation members and contributors. Their position isn't necessarily compatible with your position that GNOME should "avoid presenting proprietary software as legitimate". The way I see it is that most members want GNOME to stay out of that philosophic discussion. Although GNOME usually advises to "work upstream" and to "do things opensource when possible, as much as possible". This is just a personal point of view, of course. You, as one of the key FSF people, appear to be keen[1] on enforcing a strict policy on how GNU's member-projects should behave. So ... I propose to have a vote on GNOME's membership to the GNU project. > I think Planet GNOME should have a rule to this effect. I think it's clear that I disagree. Philosophically. > There are many ways to implement such a rule, of which "block the > whole blog" is about the toughest one we might consider. I'd suggest > rather to try a mild approach; I'm sure that can do the job. Let's first get a consensus from our members on GNOME's status as being or not being a well-behaving GNU project, or having its own identity. Cheers, Philip [1] You write "minimal support". "Minimal" to me means: either you do this, or you're out. Feel free to correct me. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, 2009-12-09 at 13:32 -0500, Behdad Esfahbod wrote: > On 12/09/2009 08:48 AM, Lionel Dricot wrote: > > I know some planets that choose to have a "code of conduct" about what > > should be posted or not (like planet Ubuntu-f or planet-libre.org). They > > all ended by not selecting the people on a quality basis but selecting > > posts that "respect the subject of the planet". It results in very-low > > quality planet, not interesting and, more importantly, without any soul, > > any spirit. > > > > Planet.gnome has a spirit. There's something (called it "soul" if you > > want). Don't break it. Remember planet.climate-change joke? That was huge > > and enjoyable. > > EXACTLY. EXACTLY. EXACTLY. EXACTLY +1, and a big "whatever" > > - Each year, a mail is sent to those member asking if they want to stay on > > pgo and if they consider themselves still on-topic. > > Lets limit it to a reminder that "you're on PGO. if you want to be removed, > email xxx" if we have to do something like that. I fully agree with this solution. Thanks, behdad. You hereby have my vote and support for next board elections. As usual. Because you're one of the few people who's pragmatic and realistic to earn my vote. Not one of those crazy people. Sorry for being direct. It's just my personality. Thank you. Let's now go back to solving some real problems in GNOME. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, 2009-12-09 at 14:07 +, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote: > > about their work and appear on Planet GNOME. There's nothing wrong with > > that. Same goes for Nokia and many other companies involved. > > I wonder if there's a misunderstanding here. No one said that companies > shouldn't be allowed to post. > > Richard said that Planet GNOME shouldn't be used to promote non-free > software (i.e. software that denies freedom by witholding source code or > witholding permission to use/modify/distribute). > > This means some software from Nokia shouldn't be promoted on Planet GNOME, > but Nokia (like many other companies) also develops and distributes lots of > free software. No one's objecting to promoting Nokia's work on free > software for GNOME. That's why I wrote "talk about their work". There's no misunderstanding. Mentioning that they are using some piece of LGPL software to build a closed source component is fine. Personally I most definitely want to know about such things. As for what Miguel works on (to go back to the origin of the proposal): The vast majority of what he's blogging and working on *is* free and/or opensource software or about free and/or opensource software being used in the field. Making it forbidden to use planet-gnome for that is like wanting to deny a reality. If GNOME wants to be relevant, it must not boycott reality. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, 2009-12-09 at 14:27 +0100, Frederic Crozat wrote: > So, let's start (this is list done quickly by me and I haven't contacted > anybody from it), as basis: > > - Robert Love > - Christopher Blizzard > - Miguel De Icaza > - Nat Friedman > - Daniel Veillard > - Edd Dumbill > - Glynn Foster > - James Henstridge > - Jeff Waugh > - Mark McLoughlin > - Scott James Remnant Many of these people are and have been top GNOME people. You'd be insane if you wanted to remove them from the planet. If you want to destroy GNOME as a community, you're on the right track. > > [1] How does one define that they have "left the GNOME community" ? > > this list is based on people either no longer blogging at all or not > blogging about GNOME and not being active in GNOME. I don't have any > problem about people who blogs about non-political oriented things in > their life, as long as GNOME is one of those things... > > I'm not even sure I should still be on Planet GNOME (even if I'm release > team member), since most of my posts aren't about GNOME but about the > distribution I work on. And I sometime feels those posts could be seen > as propaganda for my distribution. This is nonsense. The planet-gnome slogan is: Planet GNOME is __ a window into the world, work and lives __ of GNOME hackers and contributors. This is what made the planet a successful project, initiated by Jeff Waugh (who you propose for removal ^). If you want to fundamentally change the planet, why don't you start your own planet and convince the world that yours is better? > Regarding what bedhad said, nothing prevent people to read those people > blog outside Planet GNOME (like Planet Mono or anything else). Nothing prevents you from starting your own planet. I'm pretty sure that you can even get a neat subdomain under GNOME's from the admins. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, 2009-12-09 at 08:19 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote: > > I don't believe Frederic was pointing at Miguel. There are people who > > have left the Gnome community working on products that don't use any > > Gnome technology posting blog post/ads for said product on PGO. > > I wonder whether these products are free software. > If not, they certainly shouldn't promote them on Planet GNOME. Nonsense. The people who work at VmWare also very often posted (and still post) about their work and appear on Planet GNOME. There's nothing wrong with that. Same goes for Nokia and many other companies involved. Forbidding those contributors to talk about their work goes directly and philosophically against the "Planet GNOME is a window into the world, work and lives of GNOME hackers and contributors" slogan of the project. You see that word "work" there? Right. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, 2009-11-25 at 22:48 +, Alan Cox wrote: > >1. People speak on their own behalf, not on behalf of GNOME. Unless > > they > > ARE talking on behalf of GNOME (say, board, release team, etc), Indeed > On things like the planet that can be addressed by suitable tags and > styling (as could "inappropriate" content - if there is a 'rant filter' > option or similar) I agree with this > >4. In any kind of discussion and/or medium, one should learn who's words > > matter. "Is he the maintainer of the module? Is he a developer? Does he > > generally offer useful insight? Does he know what he's talking about? Do > > others take this person seriously?" When you learn to ignore the noise, > > life > > is beautiful again. > > With the kernel hat on this is why LWN and Jon Masters summaries are so > important. They distill the relevant material from the bloodbath that is > linux-kernel (and which btw does put off a lot of people and cause big > issues with some cultural groups). Please btw don't use Linux kernel as a > shining example of why rules are not needed. The kernel works despite not > because of the list attitude. Also there may be no code of conduct but > certain people have at times been taken aside at conferences and > "educated" on how they are coming across. This happens at our GNOME conferences too. Not as group meetings, but individual contact. This has most impact and no Code of Conduct or "enforcement" amendment can compete. > >- Learn to agree to disagree. > > > >- Criticize ideas, not people presenting them. I would likely support such amendments to our code of conduct. We worked hard to get the often ignored "Assume people mean well" bullet point in our Code Of Conduct: Although often ignored, it's also the most important one. Learning to agree to disagree goes alongside assuming people mean well. > And perhaps also - Remmeber that different cultures have different > attitudes, styles and touchy subjects. Yes, good point. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, 2009-11-25 at 12:13 -0600, Jason D. Clinton wrote: > On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 11:20 AM, Philip Van Hoof > wrote: > I (fully) agree with John here. > > The lawyer-talk proposal of Jason is a no for me personally. > > It's also not the document that I've put my name under when I > signed the > Code of Conduct any longer if that amendment is indeed added. > > We would put any such official CoC up for a vote; that seems like the > only reasonable course of action. Yes > So can you tell me what you don't like about it and propose some > changes that make it better? Let's move this conversation forward. I don't like the entire intention of enforcement. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, 2009-11-25 at 12:05 -0500, john palmieri wrote: > I'm against an enshrined code of conduct which suddenly kicks you out > of GNOME, or gets you shunned. A Terms of Service for hosted sites > which gets your account unsubscribed for that site might be better if > it is very narrowly defined, e.g. no spamming, no porn, etc. However > as we move into the realm of who offended who it gets dicey and > predicated on the sentiments of who is making the final call. We've > survived the oGalaxys and Bowie Poags of the past and I don't think I > have seen any worse conduct. I'm defering to the board if they really > feel they need an enshrined document but there should be a vote on the > final draft if we go in this direction. I (fully) agree with John here. The lawyer-talk proposal of Jason is a no for me personally. It's also not the document that I've put my name under when I signed the Code of Conduct any longer if that amendment is indeed added. > On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 11:51 AM, Lionel Dricot > wrote: > > I believe that this discussion is becoming far too bloated. > > How often do we have to deal with offended people? What energy > will we > spend to deal with each case on a case by case basis? Answer > is A. > > How much energy will we spend to try to design a law/rule that > might fit > every use case and will be discussed each time we have a case? > Answer is B. > > I expect A << B by at least one order of magnitude. > > What is exactly the problem here? Sometimes some people are > offended by > the content of planet GNOME? OK, it has always be the case but > it's a > problem. A rare one but still a problem. > What effect will have deciding of rules, CoC or punishment on > that > particular problem? I don't see how it could have an effect. > > There will still be offending stuff from time to time on pgo. > This was > never a problem in the past as it was handled on a case by > case basis. > Anyway, there are always people offended by everything. > > > When you have to type a command once a year, you don't start > developing a > framework that will handle every possible situation. (it has > already been > done, it's called J2EE) > > Cheers, > > Lionel > > > On Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:36:41 -0700, Stormy Peters > > wrote: > > On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 9:29 AM, Mukund Sivaraman > wrote: > > > >> > >> I think this is taking it too far. The "Code of Conduct" > being > >> presented as a set of guidelines is OK, but it is not wise > to make it > >> policy. The GNOME project is not a sect, to control what I > can and > >> cannot say/do in public. > >> > > > > We are talking about GNOME hosted platforms. Planet GNOME, > > > blogs.gnome.organd the GNOME mailing lists are all forums we > host and > > I think we can (and > > do) expect a certain standard of conduct on them. For > example, if > someone > > started spamming the Foundation list, we would block them. > > > > (Public does not mean you can do whatever you want. In most > public > places > > there are laws you have to follow.) > > > > Stormy > > > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list > > > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, 2009-11-25 at 12:48 +, Lucas Rocha wrote: Hi board, Lucas, > The Board has recently received some complaints from members of the > community about certain the inappropriate behaviors. In the context of > GNOME Foundation, it's really hard to argue about how we expect our > members to behave if there is no official guidelines that members are > supposed to comply with. I read that the complaint was about something that appeared on the planet. My opinion is that incidents like this can be better managed by asking the maintainers of the planet to do editorial control, and to not shun away from skipping blog posts. I think this could use some guidelines (for both the bloggers and the planet maintainers who for example could inform the blogger about their decision, allow the blogger to adapt his text, etc). > The GNOME Code of Conduct[1] has been serving > very well as an informal guideline for the community but we'd like to > make it an official document that new Foundation members are expected > to explicitly agree[2] with before being accepted. This way we'll have a > common ground for dealing with certain conflict situations and avoid > trying to base our discussions on guidelines that certain members > haven't explicitly agreed on. To reiterate my POV in this new official discussion thread: My opinion is that existing foundation members should first all be convinced to sign the document themselves. o. If not all of the current members have signed this document then we don't have credibility to ask new members to sign it. o. If not everybody (current members and new members) have signed it, then the document itself has no credibility. o. It's the responsibility of the current members to solve this chicken and egg problem. This isn't the responsibility of the new members. Short: Who are we to demand *any* signature if not all of us have signed it ourselves? > Before deciding on this, we thought it would be useful to get some > feedback from the community. > Thanks, Thank you for bringing this to the community members. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Meeting Minutes Published - October 29, 2009
On Tue, 2009-11-24 at 23:53 +0100, Andy Wingo wrote: Hi Andy, > On Fri 13 Nov 2009 22:27, Brian Cameron writes: > > > Minutes for Meeting of October 29th, 2009 > [...] > > More generally, we need to make sure that GNOME Foundation members > > sign the GNOME Code of Conduct, and perhaps make it a requirement > > for new members to sign. Also need to update the GNOME blog and > > planet so that it is more clear that people should follow the > > GNOME Code of Conduct. > > A couple of thoughts: > > First, the planet has always been under editorial control; it has a > maintainer, like any other module -- actually a few of them. > > Therefore, what is or is not on the planet may fairly be seen to be > under the purview of the maintainer(s), who are there due to their > respected position in the field of their module, in this case in the > "public discourse" of GNOME. So they can promote or censure certain > kinds of speech as they see fit. I'm glad that you write this, Andy. This is how I see it too. I often still get told that this is not the case and that each individual blogger is himself responsible. That way it's chaotic and very hard to manage, enforce. I agree that each individual blogger should consider that each article, that he puts in a category that he gave the planet maintainers, can appear on the planet. He's responsible for his own blog and reputation. but I too think that in the end the planet is a project like any other GNOME-one, with its own maintainers and, thus, editorial control. What is or is not on the planet may indeed be seen to be under the purview of those maintainers (in my opinion). Furthermore I don't think it's censorship or wrong to skip blog posts, if a planet maintainer doesn't want it on the planet. Maybe it should be possible to ask the project members why a blog article got skipped? Maybe some guidelines need to be set up? Sure (is a maintainer decision) > Secondly, binding or pseudo-binding resolutions on the Foundation > membership should probably be ratified by the Foundation membership > itself via some more formal process. As it is I don't think a majority > have "signed" the CoC. (FWIW, I have.) Before committing ourselves to require it, I think we'd first need to convince all current members to sign the CoC themselves. Else it'll be a quagmire of people who have and people don't have to, and people who had to sign it. (FWIW, I have.) I'm not against requiring this. I'm against public punishments for people who violate it. I'm not against telling somebody in private to chill: "Assume people mean well" is an important advice in the Coc. Greetings, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Free Desktop Communities come together at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit
On Wed, 2009-08-12 at 17:05 +0530, Srinivasa Ragavan wrote: > On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 1:14 PM, Philip Van Hoof wrote: > >> It was a hard decision because, there is real interest in making KDE > >> and GNOME work well together. While this is also an important goal, > >> but we don't need to co-locate every year for this. We might have > >> hackfests together with KDE/GNOME in the future. > > > > When? Because if this date still isn't decided yet, then it's quite > > likely that it just wont happen at all. > > Wait!. You haven't heard much about the hackfests, because, they > aren't decided on what & where yet. But it was discussed tbh. Keep me in touch. I'd certainly want to join that hackfest, if time permits. Especially if the semantic desktop people are joining that hackfest would it be very interesting for me and other Tracker team-members to sit together with them once more. We still have many things to discuss, cooperate and agree on. > >> Board voted for not co-locating it next year, but consider co-locating > >> in the future. Every body(board) had some opinions, thoughts behind > >> voting for that. I felt no one in the comments/poll said that they > >> wanted only 'KDE/GNOME Desktop summit' and not GUADEC alone. But the > >> people who voted against it, definitely wanted only GUADEC. > > > > This is a very confusing, non-coherent explanation for a decision that > > goes against something that is quite clear in the poll's results. > > Firstly, the last statement started with 'I felt'. Its my personal > opinion on the results of poll, like every one had their own and that > wasn't the explanation for the decision during the board meeting. Ok, but you combined "I felt " with a punctuation. Then you wrote "But the people who voted against it, 'definitely' wanted only GUADEC." (it's still quoted, go look ^). Wouldn't it be more accurate to write?: I felt that the people who voted against it might have wanted to only have a GUADEC next year, and I felt that there is a possibility that the people within that group of 56% are not all very decisive about their 'yes' vote. And then I would answer: "yeah, sure. I feel that there's a possibility that tomorrow all newborn pigs will have wings.". Let's just ask the community instead of having feelings about their opinions, shall we? > Philip, this is not a vote, where every body entered their opinion. In > my view, this represents a sample of the entire community. We can't > derive boolean results out of this survey. I wasn't saying that. I was saying that nonetheless 56% of the people who did know about the poll (and most people apparently didn't) selected the option on the poll to do a co-located conference again *next* year. Maybe if the foundation's board would more clearly articulate why exactly we can't do a co-located event *next* year, they'll convince the community about their decision? Why didn't they? Personal opinion on this: "GNOME 3.0" and "focus" are not convincing for me, to be honest. About not making profits the community has already, in the poll, voiced its opinion: "* 44% said we should do it even if we lose profit, 32% said no" By the way, nobody has yet explained why a co-located event is per definition not profitable. Taking this year as an example is not a good explanation. With the financial crisis in mind you can't "just" say that we didn't find a lot of sponsors "just" because we co-located. > i.e, I wont be able to > choose YES or NO from these. The 140 GNOME people part of a bigger > community who just had a chance to say their opinion. But there is an > another part of people who didnt have time/chance to see this to > enter a vote or what ever. Exactly. Why not? > But when a poll like this was ran, I would use this to see, what is > the view from a sample of the community. I felt that its divided. > Even a voting on a bigger group is done, its going to be divided. Like how the git vs bzr vote was going to be divided, you mean? > It surely wont be 90% vs 10% or lesser or whatever.. Let's see? For the small sample we have 56% yeses. > A part of the community is for it and a part of the > community is against it. Both the parts of the community aren't > negligible. Note that both parts have multiple opportunities. I for example think that "GNOME 3.0 - focus" should be done at smaller hackfests and at for example the Boston Summit. DesktopSummit/GUADEC is for meeting people. People rarely code at that event. GNOME 3.0 needs engineering at this moment. "Meeting people" is a reason why you do co-located conferences. [CUT - old reply content] -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Free Desktop Communities come together at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit
On Wed, 2009-08-12 at 10:36 +0530, Srinivasa Ragavan wrote: > On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 1:38 PM, Philip Van Hoof wrote: [CUT] > > You can see that in all configurations the majority want to co-locate > > next year. Even if it means not having a profit. > > > > Can you elaborate why the board didn't first discuss this decision with > > the community? > > The board members actually used the poll and discussed few other > points in deciding this. How did they use those numbers? Can you clarify this? What I'm seeing is that the board went against the numbers. Your explanation so far doesn't convince me that they didn't: > The main, and most important, reason for not wanting to co-locate > next year is because the GNOME community needs to focus on GNOME 3.0, > and next year's GUADEC will be the most sensible place to plan and do > whatever finishing work needs to be done. While we support doing > co-located conferences in the future, next year simply doesn't make > the most sense to do this again. We need to make sure our focus is on > making GNOME 3.0 a finished product and co-locating would likely be a > distraction to this goal. A very big part of GNOME 3.0 are desktop services. Especially for those pieces of technology is cooperation, negotiation and discussion with KDE ... much needed. In fact should GNOME's 3.0 and KDE's 4.x be the desktop environment releases that *finally* works well together. So some people want GNOME Shell stuff. I want KDE's software to integrate, be used-by and be rendered into that GNOME Shell UI thing. > There were few more points like preserving GUADEC and Academy as one > of main conferences for GNOME and KDE respectively. We co located this > year and if we do next year also, the message could be a bit > different. > > It was a hard decision because, there is real interest in making KDE > and GNOME work well together. While this is also an important goal, > but we don't need to co-locate every year for this. We might have > hackfests together with KDE/GNOME in the future. When? Because if this date still isn't decided yet, then it's quite likely that it just wont happen at all. > Board voted for not co-locating it next year, but consider co-locating > in the future. Every body(board) had some opinions, thoughts behind > voting for that. I felt no one in the comments/poll said that they > wanted only 'KDE/GNOME Desktop summit' and not GUADEC alone. But the > people who voted against it, definitely wanted only GUADEC. This is a very confusing, non-coherent explanation for a decision that goes against something that is quite clear in the poll's results. > Its surely not a yes/no voting for a decison, So what is a majority 'yes' in 'all configurations' then ? Besides, if it wasn't clear for all people then why didn't the board further discuss the issue on the foundation member mailing list? > but, we should take care of the entire community. Good point, and in all configurations did the entire community voted with a majority 'yes' over 'no'. > For the 56% of the people, who said they want the 'Desktop summit' > would still benefit out of GUADEC, You are *again* confusing and miss-representing the poll results. Those 56% of the people said that they want to co-locate *next* year. They didn't say "in some future", no, they said "next" year. Let me paste the line again for you: "* 56% said we should co-locate next year, 35% said no" Note that the 35% includes the people who don't ever want to co-locate again. So the question was asked unfairly for the yes-vote. And STILL did the yes vote win with a majority of 56%. Sorry, there's just no misinterpreting possible: the poll *clearly* indicates that people want to co-locate *next* year. > and to meet these people's need we would consider colocating > with KDE in future. "* 26% said we should co-locate in the future but not next year, 31% said no" This *again* means that people want to co-locate *next* year and that the board's solution is *not* what the poll suggests at all. > Its just not for the next one. But that is not what the people who voted in the poll suggest. And you are making it sound as if that is what they said, but they didn't. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Free Desktop Communities come together at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit
t; tracks. :-) > 126 > Should try to have more > cross-desktop talks and maybe some > lightning talks about KDE for GNOME > people and vice versa. > 127 > I'd try to have the specific > content and parties at first, > because I assume that the people > from one community haven't seen > theirselves for a year or so and > need time to catch up on each > other. Once that's finished, I > think cross-desktop content and > parties are ready. So have a > schedule focused on collaboration > at the end of the conference. > 130 > Don't invite Stallman to talk > again. :D > 133 > I would like to see more weight to > the mobile day (part of core). > 144 > content and schedule was alright, > but I would love to have a day or > two where there is no interfering > gnome and kde talks. What I mean > is: I would love to go to kde talks > but if that means missing gnome > talks I definitely won't do it. I > would have liked to go to the > akademy keynote as well, but that > interfered with guadec keynotes. > 147 > there was not enough cross desktop > talks > 150 > The cross desktop section of the > program was a joke, almost no real > cross desktop talks. If one are to > ever try this again one need to > actively solicit talks from > relevant people and groups, like > X.org and so on. > 152 > I think the content was balanced, > but it would be nice to get mroe > stuff that was of interest to both > sides. Combined parties are a good > idea, but there were just too many > of them, too close together. > 153 > Not really. > 157 > While I did not think that > co-location was an unmitigated > disaster, I am not sure that the > few benefits that occurred outweigh > the negatives associated with > co-location. > 182 > Cross desktop talks wasn't really > cross desktop I'm really worried > that KDE is pushing for Tampre too > much. While it may end up being the > best place they seem unwilling to > listen to other proposals. e.g. > they have made up their mind. > 184 > Due to the number of talks, I think > it was too difficult for GNOMErs to > attend KDE talks, and I imagine > that it was the same the other way > around > 186 > The schedules shouldn't have been > seperate. If we're going to > colocate then having an opportunity > to see what is going on with the > other guys easily would have > encouraged people to mingle. > Seperate parties wasn't a good idea > either, make people have a good > time together. :) > 190 > There should be one unified > schedule, to let everyone see what > talks they could attend on the > other side. > 192 > The talks should not be separated > in two different tracks. I believe > the tracks should be logical > grouping of topics (say, semantic, > and indexing), instead of the two > different 'conferences'. > 194 > not really. there was very little > overlap and it just meant that good > venues were harder to find. c'est > la vie. > 198 > Organize some GNOME > state-of-the-art talks in the KDE > conference and the other way > around. After the summit, i still > don't know what are the hottest > topics in the KDE community. > 202 > Don't change the venue half-way > through the conference. > 209 > The cross desktop track was packed > in only two days, we should have a > lot more of it. And there were too > many "Gnome/kde stuff for the other > desktop" and not enough joint > things. Maybe encourage gnome/kde > people who work on similar stuff to > make joint presentations (would > also force them to talk together > more). > 210 > It wasn't as useful as it could, > because of separate talks related > to one or another desktop. > 212 > I think the way the schedule was > laid out wasn't really conducive to > cross-desktop pollination. There > were separate tracks and I don't > think many people looked at the > track they weren't affiliated with. > It would have probably worked > better if the talks were > interleaved on the same schedule. > Still, I don't think there's a lot > of value to be had anyway. > 213 > Seemed OK, but I would have loved > to have seen more structure around > getting things done between > desktops. &g
Re: Free Desktop Communities come together at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit
On Thu, 2009-08-06 at 21:06 +0530, Srinivasa Ragavan wrote: > On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 8:57 PM, Philip Van Hoof wrote: > > Apologizes for asking. > > > > When was the community consulted about this decision? > > There was a survey request on the foundation list about the opinion > from the members. > http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2009-July/msg6.html Aha, thanks. Are the results of that survey available? -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Free Desktop Communities come together at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit
On Thu, 2009-08-06 at 17:10 +0200, Vincent Untz wrote: > The cooperation and conversations that began between > the KDE and GNOME communities will continue into the future and in > events like hackfests throughout the year, but next year the conferences > will be hosted separately. Apologizes for asking. When was the community consulted about this decision? Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Stormy's update: Week of July 13th
On Tue, 2009-07-21 at 21:43 -0400, Richard Stallman wrote: > Another problem with trying to find an issue here is that, depending on > the point of view, Amazon acted within their own Terms (point iii under > "Subscriptions"). > > Legally, that would make a difference; ethically, it is beside the > point. Some people are willing to sign away their freedom for some > sort of convenience. I don't see it as signing your freedom away. I see it as receiving a convenience in exchange for an agreement. Surely ain't every agreement 'ethical'. The implicit agreement of your opponent's knight that is going to take either a rook or your queen, and you having the option, means that you don't really have an option. You have to pick the least evil one (wrt your strategy). But you still had the option to play or not to play chess (with that opponent). Just like you had the option to buy, or not to buy, an Amazon Kindle. There are similar devices that have similar functionality that don't come with 'evil' knights (if you prefer a different opponent). Is it really bad when people get punished for making the wrong choices? Is it really true that we must shield all people from every imaginable danger? Ain't this part of learning? I think that choice is a freedom that people ought to have. Freedom of choice is in fact more important than having access to source code. For me, these two don't conflict. And yes, having access to source code hypothetically creates more choice. But that's just a goal. Goals aren't very interesting once reached, the path towards it was more interesting. Besides, I want opensource developers to feel competition. Competition is the best thing that has ever happened to us. > In societies where appreciation of freedom is > weak, many people may be willing to do this -- especially when unjust > laws such as the DMCA and the EU Copyright Directive forbid the > existence of an equally convenient alternsative, > > We cannot accept proprietary software as legitimate merely because > users at some point said yes to the license agreement. I guess this is where you and me differ on opinion. I think this is a black and white point of view. The reality of it is gray. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Stormy's update: Week of July 13th
On Tue, 2009-07-21 at 11:22 -0400, Luis Villa wrote: Hey Luis! > On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 11:13 AM, Philip Van Hoof wrote: > > An organizations like GNOME is free to decide for themselves which of > > the online services they will use. > > And as Richard is a member of GNOME (honorary if not in fact) he's > certainly welcome to politely share his opinion of the move with other > members, as he has done. You certainly have not shied away from > sharing your opinions without getting elected to the board; Richard > should be no different. No worries, I obviously agree. The two possibilities that I gave Richard clarify that position. > [Mind you, I think Richard has crossed many lines in the past, and I > don't condone that (I will have more to say about that in August), but > when he is behaving he's entitled to his opinion.] ok > > We're not the Internet police. > > No, but we're an organization with moral goals as well as practical > ones, and we should continually question our motivations and > strategies to make sure we're doing the best possible job of balancing > those ends. Richard and I have loudly disagreed about how to strike > that balance in the past, we disagree on this issue, and I assume we > will again in the future. But the day we don't at least take into > account moral considerations is the day I write a very large check at > the Apple store. Problem is that Amazon's Kindle story has little relevance to GNOME's Amazon plans. I wont say an issue with little relevance is never a reason to stay away from a company. But when it is, the 'problem' should in my opinion be a large one (like a human rights violation or something). Else we make it a black & white thing. This is something GNOME should never do: nothing in life is b & w (except some people's ideas). Another problem with trying to find an issue here is that, depending on the point of view, Amazon acted within their own Terms (point iii under "Subscriptions"). This makes the 'problem' even smaller and the article, that Richard referred to, less relevant. That's why in my opinion it's not GNOME's responsibility. I think this is a sufficient amount of morality checking. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Stormy's update: Week of July 13th
Dear Richard, An organizations like GNOME is free to decide for themselves which of the online services they will use. There are two things you can do here. o. First is to set up a business that operates the way you want and that allows an organization like GNOME to sell the kind of things it wants to sell. This means offering competition for Amazon and then convince groups like GNOME to use your service instead. I personally think this is the best option for you. Perhaps sit together with people like Stormy Peters to get an idea of the requirements that GNOME has? o. Second is to try and get yourself elected on the GNOME foundation board, and that way have a more direct influence in such decisions. When I read the article that you referred to it seems to be mostly about Amazon's Kindle device. I fail to see much relevance with what GNOME wants to do with Amazon. Besides (and a bit off topic here), the terms[1] referred to in the article state this under "Subscriptions": (iii) if we terminate a subscription in advance of the end of its term, we will give you a prorated refund; (iv) we reserve the right to change subscription terms and fees from time to time, effective as of the beginning of the next term; Interestingly failed the EFF.org author to mention this. If people don't agree with such terms, then why do they buy a Kindle device? Although I'm not sure whether this would hold in a European court. As it seems to go in conflict with a previous statement in the "Use of Digital Content" section. It's up to the people who bought a Kindle, and had content that is affected, to settle this with Amazon. This isn't GNOME's responsibility. We're not the Internet police. --- [1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200144530 On Tue, 2009-07-21 at 10:41 -0400, Richard Stallman wrote: > Created some Amazon affiliate accounts in US, UK, Canada and Germany so tha= > t > Jaap can set up stores and a Firefox widget that will enable people to > direct Amazon referral fees for their purchase to GNOME. > > It is not a good thing for the GNOME Foundation to support Amazon in > this way. Amazon is one of the main perpetrators of DRM > (see http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/07/orwell-2009-dystopia). -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME leadership [was Re: So what do people *except* me want from the foundation?]
On Mon, 2009-06-08 at 14:47 +0100, Lucas Rocha wrote: > Hi, > > 2009/6/8 Luis Villa : > > 2009/6/5 Luis Villa : > >> At any rate, I agree completely that we need some strong leaders to > >> develop in GNOME. But the Foundation is not the place for it. I think the > >> right question is 'why have leaders not come from other sources? what can > >> the Foundation do, if anything, to help other leaders emerge and get the > >> support they need to do their work?' I have no easy answers to either of > >> these, though. > > > > Or to put it more bluntly, now that I think of it: why don't we have a > > BDFL? Why have we chewed up and spit out all the potential candidates > > for the title? > > Another important question is: leader of what? BDFL of what? I > honestly don't see how only one leader could alone set the direction > for desktop, platform, mobile, web, marketing, release management, > etc. We're just too big today. I've commented before[1] that we should > definitely consider having more clear/official leadership on specific > domains of the project. I agree with this. I think it would be best if foundation members would elect a small board and then the different teams would produce a ambassador themselves. The board would then delegates tasks to this ambassador, who if he knows somebody more competent at the task, could again delegate it (although I think the ambassador should remain the responsible wrt the board). The question how the ambassador would be chosen per team is something that I would leave up to the teams to choose. The procedure to choose an ambassador per team might not always be the same as having a meeting together at GUADEC, noticing nobody wants to do it, in the evening making somebody drunk enough to accept this task, giving him more drinks to congratulate and thank him, etc.. Like how we'd probably end up doing it for mobile, platform and desktop. I would also give certain leadership capabilities to said ambassador. Like for example conflict resolution between members of the same team. Moderation. Architectural decision making. Talking with the release team about those architectural decisions, etc (we can adjust this list whenever we notice it needs adjustment). I'm not usually pro hierarchical systems like this. But as long as it's two or three levels deep, provided everyone understands the necessity of it, I think it's fine. Just don't create three overlapping governments with on top a federal one. I can tell you how bad that is. Bad. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
On Tue, 2009-06-02 at 12:52 +0100, Paul Cooper wrote: > However you seem to flat out deny that there is a problem so I'm not > sure what I, or anyone else, can do to convince you that this is a real > issue. Paul, I don't have to be convinced that some of the people are no experts in communication. Yes, me included. I am convinced a lot of the same people are very passionate people and that, although not for everybody, you can sometimes correlate passion with said occasional bad behavior, too. Being impulsive by character they want to change the world. This is no new info, either. We all know this. I'll formulate my own proposal. Because indeed, otherwise I'm only being against proposals. I already proposed the ombudsman ... If we as a community want to be successful we should allow the more social people in our community to help the less social ones. Replying in a friendly tone to a aggressor usually yields far more and better results than a punishment or public embarrassment. That's because humans, like primates, are very good at copying the successful behaviors of other people. We're in an endless prisoners dilemma where the vast majority of people play a Tit for Tat strategy. If they play defective by being aggressive, yet you circumvent your own strategy by nonetheless playing cooperative back, showing that this can be successful too, most people will reply cooperative. I say most people. Not everybody uses Tit for Tat. Most do. If you want to improve the culture of your community, you should allow people who are very good at this to learn aggressive people how things could be like if they'd just sometimes be a bit more friendly to other people. However. Instead there's this new idea in our community where apparently the idea is that we should punish a lot of our developers out of GNOME. This is counterproductive. We're just intelligent monkeys. We copy behaviors that appear to work. That's how I think you steer a group's culture. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
On Mon, 2009-06-01 at 13:06 +0200, Dave Neary wrote: > Here's the nut of the issue. > > I want the board to protect people from being shouted down by people who > disagree with them. > > You want the board to not make waves among the shouters. I think an ombudsman wouldn't be a bad idea. Which is why I'm not criticizing your steps 0, 1 and 2. > You point to the majority of people posting in this thread disagreeing > with me. A cynic would say that all these people so vehemently opposed > to this are (a) scaring away all the people who agree with me and who > have spoken to me about this, and (b) the first people who would likely > be censured, because they exhibit the type of behaviour which others > find offensive. > >> To my mind, the person is embarrassing themselves by behaving in a way > >> that is rude. > > > > This is irrelevant and not even always going to be the case. Not all > > fights happen publicly, for example. > > Indeed - the private mails are often worse, more insulting, and more > damaging to the project. It's not really appropriate for a board to publicize private mails. But I don't think you are proposing this. -- My reply to/about Emmanuele Bassi's personal criticism: First of all, I think it's offtopic in this thread. People who aren't interested in this that safely ignore this part completely. I don't remember that I ever had a discussion with you, Emmanuele. Not at a conference nor online. We just never talked with each other. Maybe we have crossed a few words. Won't be much, because I have no memory of it. If you have a personal issue with me, you should talk with me in person. Not this way. I also don't understand how you make a conclusion about IRC tirades and then explain that you're ignoring me on IRC. How can you know? Looking at my logs I have not had a lot very long conversations in channels that you also join, lately. Only the technical ones in #xesam and #tracker are longer, to name just the public ones. Looking at my blog items, the majority are purely technical about the project I'm involved in lately (which is Tracker). My others blog posts had subjects about (in date order) European finance & Euro bonds, about the fukin newz, about becoming an Astronomer, about my girlfriend being touched by his noodly appendage, about that I like Sally Shapiro's music, a dutch post about our state sponsored television channel's news reporting (shouldn't have appeared on the planet, as it wasn't in English), E-mail as a desktop service, about some dude talking about freedom of speech vs. religions trying to forbid criticizing their book (I only posted his youtube videos), ... Oh yes ... the post titled utilitarianism. But that one also received positive comments. For example Ian Hurst's. And that's it for this year. That's a half year of blog items. Maybe the utilitarianism one could be linked to your criticism. And if that one wasn't appropriate then planet.gnome's moderator should have skipped it. I have always said I wouldn't mind that. I kindly invite you, in case I'm incompatible with you, to indeed ignore me. Fully. I wont even feel bad about it, nor will I think you're wrong or something. Just ignore me. It's fine. Meanwhile you're also invited to contact me and discuss this. Would be the first time. Would also be more fair than how you are doing it now. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
