Re: Some questions for the candidates

[Brian Cameron]

Tobias:

On 06/ 7/13 04:51 AM, Tobias Mueller wrote:

On 06.06.2013 23:04, Brian Cameron wrote:

Advisory board members are encouraged to join when there is clear
value in doing so.  What work has been done over the past year to
increase this value or effectively communicate such values?

Off the top of my hat, I don't know any actions that were done
pro-actively to "increase value for the advisory board". But I may well
be corrected. We are primarily a Free Software community, after all. So
the bigger part of our focus shall be our community and our software.


I would say that the Annual Report is a primary vehicle for
communicating value, which is why it has always been important to make
sure that existing and potential advisory board members get copies to
help them justify their contributions with their management.

I have noticed the GNOME Foundation continues to do a good job in making
the report, but it has always a struggle to put together.  The GNOME
Foundation has always done very work-intensive and professional-looking
glossy reports thanks to volunteer effort.  Using it to effectively
helping advisory board members understand the value and values of the
community is a hard thing to properly attract advisory board
membership, and this only one aspect of what such reports need to do.


If you have any suggestions as to how to increase the value, I am
confident that all current and running members of the board are
interested to hear them. Or better: Seeing them implemented ;-)


I do not have any particular suggestions beyond keep up the good work
with marketing efforts like the Annual Report and FoG programs.  I was
more just curious to hear more about the relations between the board
and advisory board these days and to generally discuss.

---

Brian


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Re: Some questions for the candidates

[Brian Cameron]

Tobias:

On 06/ 5/13 05:39 PM, Tobias Mueller wrote:

Can you be an advocate for more corporate support?

Yes. We should try to find out what it is that keeps companies from
joining the advisory board, despite recent years being economically
tough. Another area is better service to sponsors for our conferences.
We had some discussions in the advisory board that will hopefully
continue to identify areas of improvement.


Advisory board members are encouraged to join when there is clear
value in doing so.  What work has been done over the past year to
increase this value or effectively communicate such values?

For example, how many times have advisory board members had issues
where membership helped to resolve their problem?  What efforts have
been made to include advisory board members in Foundation event
planning (e.g. Hackfests) and making sure that such events have clear
benefits to advisory board member needs?

Brian

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Question to GNOME Foundation Board candidates

[Brian Cameron]

My question to the candidates:

For returning board members, what are 3 conrete accomplishments on the
board that you are most proud of?  How many action items did you accept
over your last term and what percentage were completed?  If things did
not get done or tended to get done very late, please explain why.  If
you were to give your own performance a grade, what would it be?

For all candidates, how do you see being on the board will enhance or
facilitate the volunteer work you already do in the commutity?  How
many hours per week do you expect you will be able to dedicate to
working on the board on a regular basis?

Brian







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Re: Fwd: Reminder: FOSDEM CrossDesktop DevRoom 2013 - Call for Talks

[Brian Cameron]

Christophe:

On 12/10/12 04:30 AM, Christophe Fergeau wrote:

Hey Brian,
The FOSDEM devroom has always been organized like that, ie with me
taking care of the organization for GNOME, and doing it on GNOME mailing
list. Over the years we evolved from a GNOME-only devroom to a joint
devroom with KDE, to a devroom where we try to gather as many DEs as
possible.


Thanks!  The work you and others are doing is great.  When I first
complained, I incorrectly thought that no effort was made to contact
freedesktop.org.  I apologize for the confusion.  I should have asked
you guys about it off-line before raising issue.

Having been involved with organizing two Desktop Summit events, I have
seen a lot of the benefits of cross-desktop planning.  But, also, that
there are many ways this needs to be improved.

One problem with cross-desktop events is that they, historically, seem
to represent only a handful of Desktop communities very well.
Inclusiveness is something to strive for, and not something to attain or 
achieve.  So we can't always rely on what has worked in the past.



I'm not sure doing part of the devroom organization on a freedesktop
mailing list would help a lot as we need to make sure the call for talks
goes to the right communities rather than expecting people to watch
freedesktop mailing lists.


I'm not sure why anyone might think having discussion on a freedesktop
mailing list would prevent making sure a call for talks was forwarded
to the right places.  I have often heard people complain that there is
no point to doing planning on the right forum because that forum seems
too dead.  The gnome marketing mailing list suffered from that problem
a few years ago, and seems more useful after encouragement.


What kind of planning would you have expected to see on freedesktop MLs?


It will be interesting to see some blog write-up after the event to
learn how effective the currently used approach works to draw people
from different communities.  Survey data from attendees provided some
real valuable input about how The Desktop Summit was working.  Perhaps
something more simple is appropriate for this event, but I do hope some
useful metrics will be tracked to measure how effective we are.
Perhaps any such discussion might be the sort of appropriate one to
consider having on a freedesktop.org forum.


Would you have liked to be involved in the organization and feel you
cannot do it the way it has been done?


No.  I feel like I am involved with the organization just by having a
discussion with you about it.  Instead I am hoping to encourage
consideration of ways to improve.  The two Desktop Summit events that I
helped to organize were both dominated by GNOME and KDE people, so I am
not sure that the approaches used in the past work the best.

Brian

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Re: Fwd: Reminder: FOSDEM CrossDesktop DevRoom 2013 - Call for Talks

[Brian Cameron]

Christophe:

I am glad to hear that there is some cross-desktop coordination going
on.

That said, how do we really expect to make much progress when efforts
to meet in person are not matched with efforts to organize planning on
appropriate cross-desktop forums, like mailing lists on FreeDesktop.org?
In other words, I just expect more planning and discussion about events
like this at FreeDesktop directly.  It would be more likely that other
appropriate forums would not be overlooked if there were more central
discussion and planning.

In my opinion, our efforts to rejuvinate collaborate activitiy also
should focus on helping to revive and energize discussion on forums
like these.

Brian


On 12/ 5/12 11:37 AM, Christophe Fergeau wrote:

Hi Brian,


2012/12/4 Brian Cameron mailto:brian.came...@oracle.com>>


Christophe:

If CrossDesktop DevRoom is THE place for cross-desktop entente, then
why have I seen no discussion about this event on any FreeDesktop mail
forum?  I only notice GNOME mailing lists in the current cc:list, or am
I missing something?


I only cc'ed GNOME lists because I'm acting as the GNOME representative.
Pau has sent emails to xdg-list
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xdg/2012-November/012581.html ,
and is also taking care of the KDE community. Unity, XFCE, e17, ...
mailing lists should have received a similar Call for talks from other
people helping with the devroom.

Christophe


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Re: Fwd: Reminder: FOSDEM CrossDesktop DevRoom 2013 - Call for Talks

[Brian Cameron]

Christophe:

If CrossDesktop DevRoom is THE place for cross-desktop entente, then
why have I seen no discussion about this event on any FreeDesktop mail
forum?  I only notice GNOME mailing lists in the current cc:list, or am
I missing something?

What FreeDesktop forum is even supposed to be used for announcing events
and activities?  Would this be freedesk...@freedesktop.org, 
platf...@freedesktop.org (which hasn't seen but 3 emails since 2005) or

maybe distributi...@freedesktop.org?

---

Brian


On 12/ 4/12 09:05 AM, Christophe Fergeau wrote:



-- Forwarded message --
From: *Pau Garcia i Quiles* mailto:pgqui...@elpauer.org>>
Date: 2012/11/29
Subject: Reminder: FOSDEM CrossDesktop DevRoom 2013 - Call for Talks
To: x...@lists.freedesktop.org 


Hello,

The Call for Talks for the CrossDesktop DevRoom at FOSDEM 2013 is
officially open and will close in two weeks (Dec 14th). FreeDesktop.org
is THE place for cross-desktop entente, sure there is a lot of things to
talk about. Please submit your talk proposals ASAP!

--8<---

*

FOSDEM is one of the largest gatherings of Free Software contributors in
the world and happens each February in Brussels (Belgium). One of the
tracks will be the CrossDesktop DevRoom, which will host Desktop-related
talks.


We are now inviting proposals for talks about Free/Libre/Open-source
Software on the topics of Desktop development, Desktop applications and
interoperativity amongst Desktop Environments. This is a unique
opportunity to show novel ideas and developments to a wide technical
audience.


Topics accepted include, but are not limited to: Enlightenment, Gnome,
KDE, Unity, XFCE, Windows, Mac OS X, general desktop matters,
applications that enhance desktops and web (when related to desktop).


Talks can be very specific, such as developing mobile applications with
Qt Quick; or as general as predictions for the fusion of Desktop and web
in 5 years time. Topics that are of interest to the users and developers
of all desktop environments are especially welcome. The FOSDEM 2012
schedule might give you some inspiration:

https://archive.fosdem.org/2012/schedule/track/crossdesktop_devroom.html



Please include the following information when submitting a proposal:


  *

Your name

  *

The title of your talk (please be descriptive, as titles will be
listed with around 250 from other projects)

  *

Short abstract of one or two paragraphs

  *

Short bio

  *

Requested time: from 15 to 45 minutes. Normal duration is 30
minutes. Longer duration requests must be properly justified.


The deadline for submissions is December 14th 2012. FOSDEM will be held
on the weekend of 2-3 February 2013. Please submit your proposals to
crossdesktop-devr...@lists.fosdem.org
(subscribtion page for the
mailing list: https://lists.fosdem.org/listinfo/crossdesktop-devroom)


-- The CrossDesktop DevRoom 2013 Organization Team*

--8<---


--
Pau Garcia i Quiles
http://www.elpauer.org
(Due to my workload, I may need 10 days to answer)

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Re: GNOME now

[Brian Cameron]

RMS:

On 11/19/12 03:32 PM, Richard Stallman wrote:

 I respect that those artists who create digital art should have
 mechanisms to "own" their artwork or to control how it should be
 consumed or presented.

This is why we started the DefectiveByDesign.org.  I suggest making
GNOME inform users about DefectiveByDesign.org so as to boost the
campaign.  (People reading this might want to sign up.)


How do you propose GNOME should inform users?  Any promotion in the
GNOME source code would be complicated, if not impossible, to require.


Two noteworthy erroneous assumptions in that text.

* That DRM is set up by "artists" for their own personal goals.
Typically it is implemented by companies.


I did not intend for this to be an assumption.  I did not say that
what we call DRM is the specific solution that should be used for
artists to "own" their artwork.  Instead I was trying to only suggest
that digital artists should be able to profit from their digital
artwork.  Maybe it is possible to profit from artwork that you do not
own, but that probably requires more social reorganization than I can
comprehend today.


* That we "consume" digital works.  One of the advantages of digital
formats is that using them does not consume them, or even wear them
out.


"Consume" is not the best word to use as you point out.  Some works of
art are expensive and require financing.  Most movies or digital games
cost a small fortune to make, for example.  DRM may not be the best way
for such works to be financed, but it is a popular way used by many
average people today.  This is why, I think, the DefectiveByDesign
campaign exists as a voice of contrast.

Brian
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Re: GNOME now

[Brian Cameron]

RMS:

On 11/17/12 07:53 PM, Richard Stallman wrote:

 > Tools that use non-free technologies like Skype or
 >   Vonage are not just popular, but a requirement for many people who 
pay
 >   for such services.  How many average people would purchase a device
 >   that did not support such tools?
 >
 >  Is this a real issue?  On a free operating system, developers can
 >  implement whatever they wish.  And users can install it if they wish.

 Most commercial products that work with video require non-free codecs.
 While users may do what they wish, installing free software that
 implements non-free codecs may be considered a crime in some places.

This seems to be a disconnect of subject.  Before, you were talking
about support for Skype.  The only company that might plausibly
implement a program for Skype on GNU/Linux is Skype.

So my response is about that.  If Skype wants to implement its
snooping-enabled nofree software on GNU/Linux, it can do so, and users
can install it if they wish.

Like any nonfree software, this would be unethical, but I see no reason
why it would be a crime.

My point is that we must not do _anything_ that could be construed as
recommending that nonfree software, and that includes "integrating"
it.  Our duty, rather than integrating nonfree software, is to
differentiate it -- not do anything that would grant it ethical
legitimacy.


Good point.  I was really not trying to recommend any non-free software.
My examples were just meant to be currently popular examples.

Instead I was just trying to highlight that there seems to be a
disconnect between the GNOME project team's stated goals of reaching
the "average" computer user when so many average users believe they
need non-free products, such as tools that interact with and create
media.


The same applies to DRM software, which I supposed would be
implemented by the same companies that use the DRM, if at all.  This
too would be proprietary software, and malicious too, so we must not
do anything that would grant it ethical legitimacy.


I respect that those artists who create digital art should have
mechanisms to "own" their artwork or to control how it should be
consumed or presented.  However, DRM systems should minimally not
disallow the financially disadvantaged from participating in
digital culture.  Otherwise would be inhumane.


Since some states which treat their citizens as enemies persecute
such software, GNOME would not be directly involved with it.


Aside, perhaps, from helping to envision what a usable & accessible
desktop for the world's average financially disadvantaged user might
look like.  Considering that OLPC is a significant distributor of GNOME
already and that free software has obvious benefits in regions affected
by poverty.  I would encourage the GNOME product to focus more strongly
on this and other important humanitarian use cases.

Currently free software systems are unable to support popular
ubiquitous devices, like certain touch-screen features or a DVD movie
player.  It seems clear humanitarian concerns have not been considered
deeply here.  As multimedia and human interaction devices become more
sophisticated, this will likely become a more serious problem for the
desktop.  Perhaps it might be possible to help craft more sophisticated
law that better protects the ability of companies and artists to profit
from their creative work in a more humane manner.

To me, this seems like a topic worthy of discussion and action amongst
free software desktop developers.  Though, you may be talking about
something else when you say GNOME should not be directly involved.

Brian
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Re: GNOME now

[Brian Cameron]

Richard:

On 11/16/12 07:12 PM, Richard Stallman wrote:

   Tools that use non-free technologies like Skype or
 Vonage are not just popular, but a requirement for many people who pay
 for such services.  How many average people would purchase a device
 that did not support such tools?

Is this a real issue?  On a free operating system, developers can
implement whatever they wish.  And users can install it if they wish.


Most commercial products that work with video require non-free codecs.
While users may do what they wish, installing free software that
implements non-free codecs may be considered a crime in some places.


Support for Skype has already been implemented on GNU/Linux.  You
should never use it, because you would be encouraging someone else to
use nonfree software.  But as for whether it will be supported, the
answer is already yes.


I use Solaris, so the fact that it works on GNU/Linux is interesting,
but not helpful.  This illustrates an example of why this is a problem,
I think.


 But, if the "average user" is the target, how does GNOME plan to
 provide access to non-free multimedia that the average user tends to
 access and create?

Companies can implement DRM applications on GNU/Linux if they wish,
and users can install them -- on a free system, we could not stop them
if we wanted to.


Not if they were coordinated to act in mass, perhaps.  Licenses to
support technologies like video can be expensive.  While free software
users might pool together resources to develop a solution, there isn't
a good solution today or any organizations or companies paying such
license fees on behalf of free software use.  Aside from Fluendo who I
believe paid a license for MP3 and is freely giving away decoder codecs
for it.  Unfortunatly they don't provide an encoder.


But we must not do anything that would make us "provide" this nonfree
software.  That would contradict the principle that we stand for:
software should be free.


Sure.  I think a real complication is that it is perhaps less clear if
a commercial creative work or art, such as audio or video should be
free in the same sense.  If consumers should expect to be able to
access media with DRM, then the software to support DRM needs to be
licensed for free software use or users cannot legally use it in many
countries.

Some companies may provide GNU/Linux or Solaris non-free driver or
codec solutions, but support is often pretty bad and some programs
only have license to support media in a particular context (such as
a phone call via their client as a paid service).

A perfect solution would be if they just fixed patent law to exclude
free software from needing license to access specific hardware devices,
which is anti-competitive, I think.  Or to at least only make it 
possible to have exclusive control over a device, codec, or technology

for a much shorter period of time.  I'm not sure what the best solution
may be, but I think laws that make it hard, if not impossible, to
deliver things like a free DVD player in OLPC laptops using free
software for children in the developing world is an example of broken
law, IMHO.

Brian


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Re: GNOME now

[Brian Cameron]

Peteris:

On 11/15/12 06:36 AM, Peteris Krisjanis wrote:

T , 2012.11.14. 22:37 -0600, Brian Cameron rakstīja:

On 11/15/12 03:31 AM, Seif Lotfy wrote:

But is there any strong reasons why Oracle won't chime in and support
further development of GNOME Panel (let's call it GNOME Classic - that
all Fallback mode don't make any justice to it)? Is it financial
problem? Strategic? I think it just lacks core maintainer, that's all.


I have been encouraging the Oracle Desktop team to step up and help,
but resources are more limited than they were in the past.  I have
found it difficult to get folks at Oracle motivated to help, though.  I
think partially because it is not clear that fixing this problem is
as easy to fix as you seem to suggest.

Note that Oracle released Solaris 11 with GNOME 2.30/2.32 not long
ago.  It is probably to be expected that Solaris is more focused on
maintaining such supported products than on new development at this
point in the release cycle.

In past years, Sun and Oracle dedicated significant resources towards
GNOME helping in areas like QA, usability, stability, a11y, multi-user
desktop features, community building (e.g. GNOME.Asia) and more.  It is
hard to know if more resources now will really be such a game changer
at a time when highly visible GNOME senior engineers keep pressing that
non-Linux GNOME is so much on their own.

That said, I am sure that Oracle will continue helping in ways.  The
Oracle Desktop team is, for example, currently working to integrate
GTK3 into Solaris 12.  While OpenGL may not work well on Sun Ray today,
some GTK3 programs likely will be needed by Solaris users.  Especially
if the GNOME community starts only providing security fixes for GTK3
versions of programs.  It is not clear to me if the GNOME community
has any plan or recommendations for dealing with GNOME 2 support, such
as a plan to provide security fixes.

Brian
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Re: GNOME now

[Brian Cameron]

Allan:

On 11/15/12 06:46 AM, Allan Day wrote:

Brian Cameron  wrote:

But I think the GNOME community has been
conscious that platforms like Solaris were being left behind as
decisions were being made.


That really depends on how you define the needs of the "advanced
UNIX-hacker category". GNOME 3 may have differences from traditional
desktop environments of the past (it also has a lot of similarities
too), but it is definitely intended to be an effective environment for
developers or system administrators.

(I'm speaking from a UX design point of view here, obviously.)


I do agree that the GNOME 3 designers have kept the advanced UNIX
hacker in mind.  I did not mean to imply otherwise.  I would instead
say that this type of user is of a lesser priority than they were in
the past.  Is this not a fair statement?

IMHO, the archetypal UNIX hacker is the person in a Matrix-like
multiscreen virtual-reality pod using touch-screen hand gestures to
access all sorts of remote programs around the globe.  But, isn't the
plan for GNOME to lose many multi-screen and remote-X features for the
time being in favor of better support for the average user's needs?

As you say, GNOME should be an effective environment for hackers that
do not need features GNOME will not support.  I would say most hackers
find the ability to access remote machines in a multi-screen
environment more important than the ability to use a touch-screen,
though.  Is there a plan for features that hackers need to be
addressed?  Perhaps by the time GNOME 3 is scheduled to be included
with Enterprise Linux distros in addition to FOSS hobbyist distros?

If GNOME wanted to seriously keep its hacker user-base, I would think it
would be smarter to maintain the Fallback mode until such features have
suitable replacements.  Also, I'd think that if the GNOME community
were able to provide a better support story for GNOME fallback mode, a
lot of FUD about the need for GNOME to continue forking would evaporate.
But hasn't the release team already decided that the need to make GNOME
more slim and maintainable trumps backwards compatibility and such
typical hacker needs?

Brian
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Re: GNOME now

[Brian Cameron]

Seif:

On 11/15/12 03:31 AM, Seif Lotfy wrote:

Good points Brian :)
I like the last part "this advanced UNIX-hacker type does not seem to
be the primary user GNOME is focusing on anymore."


For better or worse, I would say that most Solaris GNOME users probably
fall either in the advanced UNIX-hacker category, or the type of user
who uses a Solaris GNOME desktop in a very focused or controlled
environment such as a kiosk or call center environment.  So, the
desktop on Solaris seems to be increasingly diverging from the needs of
the GNOME community.  But I think the GNOME community has been
conscious that platforms like Solaris were being left behind as
decisions were being made.


May I ask you however to try to reply to each question with one
sentence if possible so I can create a small overview able chart


I have difficulty answering Stormy's 3 questions because I do my GNOME
work on Solaris, and Solaris desktop products are not well served by
the new OpenGL and Linux-focused directions that the GNOME product is
taking.  I had been struggling to keep GNOME 3 working on Solaris, but
that work fell to the wayside as it became clear that Fallback mode is
going away.  I imagine that you are probably looking for answers from
people more engaged with current development, and not people like me.
If I were try to answer the questions, I guess I would say:

1. Where's the product going?
   In directions that make it less and less useful on Solaris.
2. What problem are we trying to solve?
   The future of the Solaris desktop.
3. How are we going to do that?
   Not sure.  Hopefully this will become more clear over time.  For
   example, maybe Solaris desktop products will support OpenGL at some
   point in the future.  Collaboration could become easier at that time.

---

Brian
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Re: GNOME now

[Brian Cameron]

I think one of the most significant challenges for any free desktop
that is trying to reach the "average user" is how to deal with the fact
that most people like using computers, tablets, smartphones, etc. to
interact with non-free multimedia.  Not just viewing movies and
listening to music, but also creating content in increasingly
collaborative ways.  Tools that use non-free technologies like Skype or
Vonage are not just popular, but a requirement for many people who pay
for such services.  How many average people would purchase a device
that did not support such tools?

Proprietary companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft coordinate
sophisticated agreements with media companies and often go along with
nasty DRM agreements required by those who own the rights to popular
media.  Even some popular artists, like The Beatles, are very
controlling about who can access the media they control.  If you avoid
DRM, you probably have to avoid such popular artists - including pretty
much anything released on a DVD.

In certain markets, not being able to access non-free media may not
be a problem.  The device the FedEx employee uses to collect signatures
or a Point-of-Sale system might be good examples of devices that
do not need much media support.  Such markets might be an ideal focus
for a free desktop environment that, perhaps naturally, lacks
strong DRM support.

But, if the "average user" is the target, how does GNOME plan to
provide access to non-free multimedia that the average user tends to
access and create?  Is the community working to make GNOME attractive
to some big company that can negotiate the expensive licenses needed to
provide access?  Or is GNOME focusing on users who do not have an
interest in using, accessing or creating non-free media?  Is GNOME
just waiting until relevant patents expire and these issue hopefully
just go away?

I always thought that GNOME more appealed to hacker types because
hackers tend to be more agreeable to figuring out how to work in a
DRM-free environment.  For example, a hacker would likely be more
willing to rip their audio in OGG format.  But this advanced
UNIX-hacker type does not seem to be the primary user GNOME is focusing
on anymore.

Brian


On 11/14/12 11:08 PM, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote:

On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 8:10 AM, Seif Lotfy mailto:s...@lotfy.com>> wrote:

Quoting Stormy Peters comment on a recent blog post concerning GNOME:
" We haven’t shared our vision or our roadmap for the future. Where’s
the product going? What problem are we trying to solve? How are we
going to do that?"

Good question.
As a member of the board of directors I can't really answer this
question at the moment either, without having to organize my thoughts.
So many different point of views and ideas in the community that are
not well discussed. The first thing that pops up in my head is GNOME
OS. But then I am kinda lost. Maybe this is something we need to
discuss here on the mailing list.
Lets try to answer those 3 questions. What about one sentence per
question for a start?
I am avoiding a blog post since I am not sure its the best way to
reach most of our contributors.


For me, it's our byline right?  A distraction free desktop.  Our designs
are all based on being able to write a desktop that allows us to get our
work done, multi-task with whatever interruptions that we have in our
daily life.

Where are we going?  Are you talking about development or user land?

What do other people think?

sri

Cheers
Seif
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Re: Board meeting minutes - was (Re: A question for the candidates)

[Brian Cameron]

Emmanuele:

On 05/28/12 12:06 AM, Emmanuele Bassi wrote:


[just a bit of backstory, here, also to help out eventual other
candidates in case I'm not elected] the meeting minutes are written
down during the meeting itself by using a collaborative editor, so
that everyone on the meeting can actually review in real time what's
being written (this also helps in case I could not hear or understand
what was being said, or when I am talking about some topic/action
item, in which case I cannot really take notes).


It was Vincent's idea to use a collaborative editor, and something we
started really using in my first term as director.  I think it does
make minute taking a lot easier.  Since Karen, Zana, and multiple
directors tend to help with the note-taking, the notes end up better
written.


after the meeting is over, the minute is published on the Foundation's
restricted wiki space, for further review, in case I missed a private
section, or I was being overzealous with one, as well as for clearing
up some of the action items.

after some time pass, the wiki page for the minutes is copied over to
the public section of the Foundation's wiki space, and the contents
are sent using an email.

none of this is automated: Brian was "just" exceptionally good at
sending out minutes every two weeks. :-)


I can confirm that our process is not very automated, and putting
together good minutes is time consuming.  I would say the work
Emmanuele has done compares well with the work done by other GNOME
Foundation secretaries.  While they have not been as timely as they
could be, the quality of the content has remained high.

During my two terms as secretary, I did most of the work of preparing
the agenda even though agenda preparation is really the role of the
president.  This year, since I have been acting as president, I have
been preparing the agendas.  The last week's minutes (whether made
public or not) are used as a template to build the agenda for the next
meeting, which is also on our internal wiki.  While preparing the
agenda, I will fill out the "Discussed on the mailing list" section
and many of these topics feed into the new agenda.  In this regards,
the process has been working very well in the past year.  I think the
job of putting together the minutes works best when the President and
Secretary work together like this.  So this is an area of improvement.


my main two issues as serving as secretary this year were being
overzealous with people reviewing my note-taking (not a native english
speaker, and the conference call phone line can be pretty messy at
times), as well as reviewing the private sections. the first issue can
be ascribed to me being in my first term;


As I am putting together the agenda, I review and update the minutes
when I notice ways to improve it.  I think many board members do the
same.  Your English is quite good, and I rarely find myself correcting
it.


Meeting minutes seems crucial to run a public discussion between the board
and its members as Germán has highlighted and it's not because no one asked
that no one thought it was not important anymore.


I agree with you, and if I'm serving as secretary on the next term,
I'll make a point of addressing my obvious shortcoming of this term.


It was ambitious of you to take on an officer position in your first
term, and I think you should better recognize the good work you have
been doing even in the face of constructive criticism.

Brian

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Re: Announcing Board of Directors Elections 2012

[Brian Cameron]

Foundation Members:

Anyone considering running for the board should read this:

http://vote.gnome.org/overview.html

On 05/16/12 09:10 AM, Tobias Mueller wrote:

Just a quick reminder that as per http://vote.gnome.org/2012/rules.html
the last day to announce candidacies and submit summary statements is
this Sunday, the 2012-05-20.


Thanks for the reminder, Tobias.  Already several exciting candidates
have stepped forward, including:

- David Nielsen   (GNOME Community Volunteer)
- Bastien Nocera  (Red Hat UK Ltd)
- Emmanuele Bassi (Intel Corporation)
- Andreas Nilsson (GNOME Community Volunteer)
- Joanmarie Diggs (Igalia, S.L.)

Having worked closed with all these people, I highly recommend them all.
It is great to see that 3 of these candidates are folks who have served
as officers on the board before, a candidate who will represent the
FOSS a11y community, and GNOME Community Volunteers.  Yet, with only 5
people, more people need to step forward or we will need to extend the
deadline.

So, as we are rapidly approaching the 11th hour, I want to encourage
those people who have been seriously considering running for the board
to do so.  The GNOME Foundation needs your help.  There is a lot of
work to do in the upcoming months.

For example, it has been a tradition at GUADEC to announce the location
of the next year's GUADEC event.  The GNOME Foundation and the KDE e.V.
board is currently working to put together a Press Release that will
highlight our future plans.  You should expect to see this shortly.
Until then, it is not possible to start the bidding process for next
year's event.  So, we are running late on this.  GUADEC planning like
this is going to be the amongst the first big tasks that the new board
will need to help with.  Boston Summits and hackfests need to be
organized.

So, I am disappointed that to see that nobody who is on the GUADEC
or GNOME.Asia organizing committees or others with event planning
experience seem to be considering representing their teams on the
board.  Likewise, I think the board would particularly benefit from
more representation from the marketing, usability, and design teams.  I
would like to encourage more GNOME Community Volunteers to consider
running, and people with other affiliations (Lionel?).  I would like to
encourage people who are considering running to do so, and particularly
encourage someone from Canonical (Rodrigo?) or Suse to consider.  I
privately encouraged Joanie and Max (from GNOME.Asia) to run and am
especially happy to see you took the dive, Joanie.

Brian
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Brian Cameron - Stepping down from the board

[Brian Cameron]

Friends in the GNOME community:

After serving 4 terms on The GNOME Foundation board of directors, I will
be stepping down at the end of this term.

I would like to thank everyone in the community who has supported me
and allowed me to represent them on this board.  It has been a
profoundly rewarding and truly inspirational experience to help The
GNOME Foundation and GNOME community to grow.

The years that I have served on the board have been exciting and
productive times.  I am proud to have served as president and secretary;
to have been involved with the development, release and celebration
surrounding the GNOME 3 release; and to have helped with the
development of successful GNOME programs like the Outreach Program for
Women.  In my time on the board, I have witnessed so much growth within
the community.  Since then, the GNOME Foundation has hired two executive
directors, started having successful annual summits in Asia, and has
more than doubled the number of hackfests held each year.  Just to
mention a few highlights.

My stepping down should not be viewed as me becoming less involved
with GNOME.  I plan to continue working on GNOME for Oracle and expect
that I will continue helping the GNOME Foundation and community in
many ways.  I mostly feel that it is just time for me to step down to
reclaim some of my life back.  4.5 years (including one 18-month term
in 2008-2009) is a long time to serve on The GNOME Foundation board of
directors.  I believe that only Jonathan Blandford served as a board
member for a longer period of time (5 years).

With the two most senior board members (Germán and myself) both
stepping down at the end of this term, it is especially important for
passionate people to serve the community.  So I again encourage people
who are considering to run for the board to step forward.  It is a great
way to increase one's involvement with GNOME and free software and to
help make sure that GNOME continues to rock.

Brian
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Re: Announcing Board of Directors Elections 2012

[Brian Cameron]

Reminder that the list of candidates for the board of directors opened
yesterday on May 7th.  If you are interested in running for the board
of directors, then I very much encourage you to do so.  It is a great
way to deepen ones involvement with GNOME and free software communities.

If you would like to see an example of how to announce your candidacy,
I will share a link to the one I wrote last year:


https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2011-May/msg00010.html

What does it take to be a good board member?  In my experience,
effective board members:

- Have the time to dedicate to The GNOME Foundation and community.  For
  example, I have found that I dedicate roughly 6-10 hours a week on
  GNOME Foundation activities.
- Have a productive volunteer ethic, are involved with GNOME teams,
  participate in IRC meetings, etc.
- Are effective and diplomatic communicators.  The sort of people you
  often find helping to moderate difficult community discussions or
  helping to organize GNOME projects and committees.
- Have experience working on the sorts of projects that The GNOME
  Foundation is involved with.  For example, the GNOME Foundation
  invests a lot of energy organizing events, so having event planning
  experience can be a big help.  Other examples would include experience
  with fund raising (Friends of GNOME), working with GNOME User's
  Groups, GNOME merchandise, etc.

Brian


On 04/17/12 05:14 PM, Brian Cameron wrote:


Dear Foundation Members,

The GNOME Foundation board of directors and the GNOME Foundation
Membership and Elections Committee are pleased to announce the upcoming
elections for the Board of Directors in Spring 2012.

The most important deadlines (UTC) in the timeline are the following:

*GNOME Board Elections 2012*
2012-05-20: List of candidates closed
2012-05-27: Voting Begins
2012-06-10: Voting Ends
2012-06-19: Challenges End


ELECTIONS
=

The seven members of our current Board of Directors have been ruling
GNOME for 12 months now. We, the GNOME Foundation Members, will have
to elect a the board of directors for the next year.


CANDIDACY
=

If you want to run for one of the seven positions on The GNOME
Foundation Board of Directors, then send an email to
foundation-announce gnome org and elections gnome org with your full
name, e-mail, corporate affiliation (if any), and your reasons for
wanting to serve as a director.

Candidacies must be announced prior to 2012-05-20, 23:59 UTC.

All discussion related to the elections should be held on
foundation-list. Members are invited to ask questions to one or all
candidates on that list (see below).

A list of candidates will be announced on 2012-05-23.

At this point, you are invited to ask the candidates questions by
sending them to foundation-list. These candidates might become your
representative, so do not hesitate to ask them questions.

Please try to avoid asking duplicate questions that others have
already asked. Also, bear in mind that the candidates invest a lot of
time answering questions, so please be reasonable with the amount and
scope of the questions. You can also send your questions to
membership-committee gnome org instead, so that the committee can
collect, sift and sort the questions before sending them to
foundation-list for the candidates to respond. Though, if you
prefer to ask your questions directly, please do so.


ELECTORATE
==

Every GNOME foundation member whose membership is valid in the range of
the full voting period, including challenges (2012-05-27 - 2012-06-19)
is eligible to vote.

If you are not a member yet, please consider applying for membership
ASAP. Late applications will most likely not be processed in time.

The GNOME Foundation Membership and Elections Committee will inform
those people who might need to renew via email. We recommend that
members also double check this to avoid a missed opportunity to vote.
Please verify that the email address that is associated with your GNOME
Foundation membership is valid and that you are able to read emails sent
to this address.


VOTING
==

The Electorate will receive complete instructions on how to vote by
2012-05-27 via email.

The 7 candidates who receive the most votes as counted by a single
transferable vote system (Scottish STV) will be elected, except that no
more than two individuals affiliated with any one corporation may be
elected.

In the event of a tie for the final slot on the board, the Elections
Committee will schedule run-off elections as soon as possible.


May 2012
Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
1 2 3 4 5 6
(7) 8 9 10 11 12 13 Announcements and list of candidates opens
(7th)
14 15 16 17 18 19 (20) List of candidates closed (20th)
21 22 (23) 24 25 26 (27) List of candidates announced (23rd)
Instructions to vote are sent (27th)
28 29 30 31

June 2012
Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
1 2 3
4 5 6 7 8 9 (10) Votes must be returned (10th)
11 (12) 13 14 15 16 17 Preliminary results are announced 

Announcing Board of Directors Elections 2012

[Brian Cameron]

Dear Foundation Members,

The GNOME Foundation board of directors and the GNOME Foundation
Membership and Elections Committee are pleased to announce the upcoming
elections for the Board of Directors in Spring 2012.

The most important deadlines (UTC) in the timeline are the following:

  *GNOME Board Elections 2012*
2012-05-20:  List of candidates closed
2012-05-27:  Voting Begins
2012-06-10:  Voting Ends
2012-06-19:  Challenges End


ELECTIONS
=

The seven members of our current Board of Directors have been ruling
GNOME for 12 months now.  We, the GNOME Foundation Members, will have
to elect a the board of directors for the next year.


CANDIDACY
=

If you want to run for one of the seven positions on The GNOME
Foundation Board of Directors, then send an email to
foundation-announce gnome org and elections gnome org with your full
name, e-mail, corporate affiliation (if any), and your reasons for
wanting to serve as a director.

Candidacies must be announced prior to 2012-05-20, 23:59 UTC.

All discussion related to the elections should be held on
foundation-list.  Members are invited to ask questions to one or all
candidates on that list (see below).

A list of candidates will be announced on 2012-05-23.

At this point, you are invited to ask the candidates questions by
sending them to foundation-list.  These candidates might become your
representative, so do not hesitate to ask them questions.

Please try to avoid asking duplicate questions that others have
already asked.  Also, bear in mind that the candidates invest a lot of
time answering questions, so please be reasonable with the amount and
scope of the questions.  You can also send your questions to
membership-committee gnome org instead, so that the committee can
collect, sift and sort the questions before sending them to
foundation-list for the candidates to respond.  Though, if you
prefer to ask your questions directly, please do so.


ELECTORATE
==

Every GNOME foundation member whose membership is valid in the range of
the full voting period, including challenges (2012-05-27 - 2012-06-19)
is eligible to vote.

If you are not a member yet, please consider applying for membership 
ASAP.  Late applications will most likely not be processed in time.


The GNOME Foundation Membership and Elections Committee will inform
those people who might need to renew via email. We recommend that
members also double check this to avoid a missed opportunity to vote.
Please verify that the email address that is associated with your GNOME
Foundation membership is valid and that you are able to read emails sent
to this address.


VOTING
==

The Electorate will receive complete instructions on how to vote by
2012-05-27 via email.

The 7 candidates who receive the most votes as counted by a single
transferable vote system (Scottish STV) will be elected, except that no
more than two individuals affiliated with any one corporation may be
elected.

In the event of a tie for the final slot on the board, the Elections
Committee will schedule run-off elections as soon as possible.


  May 2012
Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
  1   2   3   4   5   6
 (7)  8   9  10  11  12  13   Announcements and list of candidates opens
(7th)
 14  15  16  17  18  19 (20)  List of candidates closed (20th)
 21  22 (23) 24  25  26 (27)  List of candidates announced (23rd)
  Instructions to vote are sent (27th)
 28  29  30  31

 June 2012
Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
  1   2   3
  4   5   6   7   8   9 (10)  Votes must be returned (10th)
 11 (12) 13  14  15  16  17   Preliminary results are announced (12th)
 18 (19) 20  21  22  23  24   Challenges to the results closed (19th)
 25  26  27  28  29  30

---

More information about The GNOME Foundation Membership Committee
and the voting process can be found here:

  https://live.gnome.org/MembershipCommittee
  http://vote.gnome.org

---

Happy Voting,

Brian
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Re: Desktop Summit Planning

[Brian Cameron]

Dave:

The GNOME and KDE boards are currently having some final discussions
before we announce our plans moving forward.  Please be a bit more
patient, and we will announce our plans shortly.

Also note that Ryan Lortie is working most closely on this, so he
would be the most direct person to ping about this.

Thanks for your helping and pushing us on this.

Brian



On 12/14/2011 04:42 AM, Brian Cameron wrote:

The board would like for the Foundation membership to help discuss
and decide whether it makes sense to move forward with having a Desktop
Summit. Although the Desktop Summit survey results indicated a strong
majority were supportive of the current format, we want to want to
understand what plans would engage GNOME Foundation members and
volunteers the most. If we choose to have a Desktop Summit, we need to
consider how the event needs to evolve to be more effectively
collaborative and whether we think it should keep to the current 2-year
schedule.


It's been a few months since this thread - and (as I've indicated
off-list) it's making it hard to figure out whether we're going to put
in a Lyon bid this year without knowing what the GNOME conference will
look like in 2013.

Do you have an ETA on when we might have a decision on this, Brian?

Thanks,
Dave.



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Re: European bank account for donations

[Brian Cameron]

Are any of GNOME's 3 sister organizations that have bank accounts in
Europe a tax free charity currently?  If not, then are we in a position
to meet requirements and set one up?

We need to better understand the tax implications. I do not think it
makes sense for The GNOME Foundation to use European banks if the tax
burdens outweigh the expense of bank transfers.  What are the tax
implications?

I think The GNOME Foundation would be excited to see any serious
proposal that explains a plan and describes what sort of savings The
GNOME Foundation should expect by doing this.

Brian


On 03/ 9/12 09:39 AM, Joaquim Rocha wrote:

On 03/09/2012 12:27 PM, Dave Neary wrote:

GNOME has at least 3 sister organisations, with bank accounts, in the
EU: GNOME Hispanic, GNOME-fr and GNOME Deutschland eV.


It's actually GNOME Hispano.


Why not create some kind of official relationship with one or more of
them?


I think this is a good idea. This relationship could be based on trust
instead of creating yet another organ, with all the bureaucracy it often
involves.

The groups could receive "generic" donations that would be tight to the
GNOME Foundation instead of the local "branches" and whenever the money
needed to be used in Europe, it would be used from them.

--
Joaquim Rocha
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GNOME.Asia 2012 Official Announcement

[Brian Cameron]

Hosting GNOME.Asia 2012
June 9-15, 2012
Hong Kong

It is with great pleasure that we announce that Hong Kong has been
selected as the venue of our upcoming GNOME.Asia 2012. GNOME.Asia 2012
follows the release of GNOME 3.4, helping to bring new desktop
paradigms that facilitate user interaction in the computing world.  It
will be a great place to celebrate and explore the many new features
and enhancements to the groundbreaking GNOME 3 release and to help
make GNOME as successful as possible.

Hong Kong is well known for being one of the largest cities in Asia,
with a thriving cultural scene, solid infrastructure, and robust
public transportation system.   Many countries have a visa-free period
for travel with Hong Kong and the city has well integrated
international connections. We believe that hosting the event in Hong
Kong will bring the spotlight on GNOME and make an impact locally,
regionally and internationally in terms of business and community
building.   Aside from being a business capital, Hong Kong is also
well known as a tourist destination that is famous for its food,
shopping and many attractions.

Potential sites for the conference are the Breakthrough Youth Village
Campsite and City University of Hong Kong, and reasonable rates for
accommodations have been arranged. We are currently evaluating the
best possible dates for the event, and should be able to announce it
within the coming week.

We would like to thank everyone who participated in the GNOME.Asia
2012 bidding process, especially the great work from Team GNOME Hong
Kong and Team GNOME Indonesia.  We look forward to working with you
more in the future!

Brian Cameron
GNOME Foundation President


===


Best regards



Max
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GNOME Foot Logo Trademark

[Brian Cameron]

Foundation Members:

I am happy to report that the GNOME Foot logo currently used by GNOME
has been trademarked as Reg. # 4063108 filed November 29, 2011.

The GNOME Foundation is aware that we need to renew the GNOME word mark
(Reg. #3142483) before September 2012, and we are now working to get
this done.

With the recommendation of the SFLC and Karen Sandler, the GNOME
Foundation is not planning to renew the trademark for the old GNOME
foot logo used with GNOME 1.x (Reg. #3142484) since this logo is no
longer actively used with any GNOME products.

More detail about GNOME Trademarks can be found here:

   http://foundation.gnome.org/licensing/

Brian
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What kind of device is GNOME 3 best suited for?

[Brian Cameron]

I realize that there is a lot of development going on to make GNOME 3
function well on new kinds of devices, such as touch screen support.
Awesome, really.

However, I wonder on what sort of device GNOME 3 is best targeted for.
Most tablets that are currently popular differentiate themselves a lot
by features that relate to media.  Many people love doing things like
playing and creating audio and video using touch screen devices.  We
are starting to see products like this on the market, for example:

  http://www.digitech.com/en/products/ipb-10-programmable-pedalboard

Wow!

One challenge, I think, for the free software community is providing
free media services, yet so much popular media is wrapped up in DRM
and patents.  Perhaps guitar effects pedals, while cool, is probably
a pretty small market.  However, I suspect there are markets where
a GNOME 3 based desktop would be quite useful, such as in specific-use
hardware like, perhaps point-of-sale systems.  a PoS system based on
free software would be an affordable solution to many small business
owners, I'd think.

I am sure this has been discussed, but I am curious what sort of devices
people think GNOME 3 would be best suited for.

Brian
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Re: Desktop Summit Planning

[Brian Cameron]

Foundation:


A point of clarification:

On Wed 14 Dec 2011 04:42, Brian Cameron  writes:


3. The GNOME community has been having trouble finding volunteers to
help make events successful lately.


You mention that we had a problem with this in the last Desktop Summit.
Has this been a problem in other events as well?


Yes, as you might remember, we have had difficulties organizing the
Boston Summit this past year, ending up relocating the event to
Montreal rather last minute.  Also, most of the volunteers who have
made GNOME.Asia successful the past few years have indicated that they
are stepping down, so the future of GNOME.Asia is unclear and plans are
behind normal schedule.  We need volunteer help in these areas badly.
If we want to have the Boston Summit at MIT again, I believe we need
to secure rooms in the next month or two.  Any volunteers?  We need
help in these areas.

Over the years, GNOME community events have grown in frequency, size
and the expectations of hosting professional quality events.  It is a
challenge for a volunteer community to keep up with consistently year
after year.  Currently, events tend to be planned in isolation and
there is too much reinventing of wheels.  GUADEC planning, for example,
tends to mostly be done by the team who won the bid, and their ability
to put together a good event does vary quite a bit from year to year.
Fortunately, the 2012 GUADEC Planning team does seem to be in good
shape, so this is one upcoming event that I am not so concerned about.

I am happy to hear several people report positively about the GNOME
volunteer presence at the Desktop Summit, and I apologize for not
mentioning the name of every volunteer who did a great job helping to
make the event successful, such as Patricia Santana Cruz, Chris Kühl,
Jon Nordby, Stormy Peters, Andreas Nilsson, and and William from
Texas.  I am sure there are many more who have not yet been mentioned.

That said, I do think that the last Desktop Summit event suffered from
a general lack of participation on the GNOME side of things.  When we
were unable to find a sponsor for GNOME social events, alternatives
were not organized, for example.  GNOME was unable to find resources to
help with infrastructure issues, such as identify management or helping
to setup a registration system (a longstanding problem we seem to have
year after year).  More seriously, a event like the Desktop Summit
should inspire collaborative work and there did not seem to be enough
effort in terms of planning concrete collaborative activities.  If we
are to hold Desktop Summits in the future, I think we need to focus
more energy in these areas to make them successful.

I am not trying to make volunteers who did a great job feel badly that
they did not do enough.  Instead, I am trying to highlight that the
amount of work is great and growing.  We need to consider how to
better address this going forward.  How we can ramp up the energy?  If
the workload is too great, should we scale back our event planning
efforts, or find help in other ways (e.g. perhaps by hiring more event
planning help)?

Brian
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Desktop Summit Planning

[Brian Cameron]

GNOME Foundation Members:

At two previous GNOME Foundation IRC meetings, there has been discussion
about how to approach the Desktop Summit[1] going forward.

At the October 26th IRC meeting, Jon McCann spoke about his concerns
about the Desktop Summit.[2]  At the November 23rd meeting, Dave Neary
(who was also very involved in making the past Desktop Summit happen),
highlighted that there are real benefits to sharing facilities and that
concerns can be fixed.[3]  Dave pointed out that it would be best if a
decision could be made sooner than later, since it is hard to start
putting together bids for 2014 if the scope of the event is not clear.

In support of having a Desktop Summit, the survey results taken at the
event did report that a strong majority of attendees felt the event
was a success and wanted it to continue at the 2-year interval.  At the
last GNOME Foundation Advisory board meeting, there was also strong
support with only one advisory board representative against.  The
approving advisory board representatives felt that combining GUADEC and
Akademy makes it easier for them to coordinate (e.g. sending people)
and they appreciate that a combined event eases their ability to
sponsor.  Also, the past two Desktop Summit events have been profitable.

The biggest complaints about the Desktop Summit seem to be:

1. It subtracts momentum from the GNOME brand and community.  With
   GNOME 3 to focus on, the community needs to more focus on making
   GNOME 3 a success, less on collaboration.

2. It is hard to measure what specific collaborative benefits are being
   made possible by the Desktop Summit.  It is hard to point to specific
   advances that have been accomplished.  Some have concerns that not a
   lot of collaboration is actually being done.

The GNOME Foundation board of directors has been discussing this topic
at length[4].  The board is divided with 3 directors believing that the
event needs to be organized significantly differently to continue, 3
directors believing that the survey results and advisory board
discussions indicate the will of the Foundation community, and 1
director undecided.[5]

In discussion, the following options have been suggested as ways to
improve the event.

1. To not have a large combined GNOME+KDE event, and to instead have
   a smaller Desktop Summit or focused hackfest(s) with a more clear
   agenda to work on specific and measurable collaborative tasks.
   GUADEC and Akademy would continue as separate events.

2. To arrange the Desktop Summit so that it is more of a co-located
   event.  The GNOME and KDE events are separate but overlap on
   certain days.  For example, GUADEC could happen first and continue
   for several days, then a few combined days of Desktop Summit
   followed by several days of Akademy.  This setup would likely be
   more complicated for bidding, since it would likely require a
   more dynamic space to accommodate the shifting needs.

3. The GNOME community has been having trouble finding volunteers to
   help make events successful lately.  Some people like Dave Neary,
   Lennart Poettering, and Ekaterina Gerasimova did a great job
   volunteering to make the last Desktop Summit a success.  However,
   the fact that there were too few volunteers engaged caused some real
   issues.  Many of the things GNOME folks have complained about the
   last Desktop Summit were caused more by a lack of GNOME volunteers
   helping than anything else.  For a Desktop Summit to be successful,
   we need to more clearly see that the GNOME community is more
   interested to engage and wanting to get involved.

The board would like for the Foundation membership to help discuss
and decide whether it makes sense to move forward with having a Desktop
Summit.  Although the Desktop Summit survey results indicated a strong
majority were supportive of the current format, we want to want to
understand what plans would engage GNOME Foundation members and
volunteers the most.  If we choose to have a Desktop Summit, we need to
consider how the event needs to evolve to be more effectively
collaborative and whether we think it should keep to the current 2-year
schedule.

The board has some concerns that this topic may be controversial, or
generate flames.  So, please, before responding take a moment to
collect your thoughts and try to avoid rash responses.  Keep in mind
the GNOME Code of Conduct[6].

Thanks,

Brian

---

[1] https://www.desktopsummit.org/
[2] https://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/IRC20111026
[3] https://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/IRC2023
[4] https://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20110809
https://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20110823
https://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20111018
[5] https://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/2001
[6] https://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct/
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Re: Additional Hackfests - Brno

[Brian Cameron]

Reminder that you have 2 days to touch base with the Brno organizers
to organize any additional hackfests there over February 17-21.

Brian


On 11/30/11 01:26 PM, Brian Cameron wrote:


The Brno Hackfest organizers have recently let the GNOME Foundation
board know that additional rooms for Hackfest use can be secured for
roughly $25-42 USD per day (depending on the size of room needed).
Rooms can be available from February 17-21. However, the organizers
need to reserve rooms no later than December 14th. To me, this cost
sounds rather reasonable.

So, if any GNOME projects would like to meet with the Docs and GTK+
teams at Brno, please discuss and make arrangements in the next two
weeks. The GNOME Foundation would be happy to discuss covering the
costs of additional rooms needed for any additional approved
Hackfest(s). Please contact bo...@gnome.org if you have any questions
or want to discuss organizing any Hackfest.

For details about the current Hackfests planned for Brno:

https://live.gnome.org/Hackfests/BrnoDocs2012
https://live.gnome.org/Hackfests/GtkBrno2012

Let the board know even if you would like to plan a Hackfest at some
other location or timeframe. There are currently no hackfests planned
after February, so it would be good to start planning for more. I
understand the Marketing and a11y teams have been talking about having a
Hackfest. Have others?

Brian



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Re: Proposal - merge the Foundation blog into gnome.org

[Brian Cameron]

Allan:

On 12/ 5/11 04:17 AM, Allan Day wrote:

Ping. Does someone who is on the board want to comment? How do we take
this forward?


I very much like the idea of streamlining the way we "get the word out",
so I think merging the new feed for gnome.org and the Foundation blog.

We could probably do other things to make the News more visible, like
make recent news more visible on the GNOME front page(s) for a period
of time.  I believe that one reason there is a Foundation blog is
because using it ensures that the news is visible on Planet.  It would
be ideal if we made sure that people on Planet saw the latest news,
though this could probably be done in other ways aside from having a
"Foundation blog".  Perhaps, as I suggested earlier, we could just
integrate "News" into the Planet front page more tightly.

I am not sure what you are asking, though, when you ask how do we take
this forward.  Is there disagreement about how we should set this up,
or do we need help making the changes?  For example, do you think we
need to involve the sysadmin team?

Brian



2011/11/30 Andrea Veri:

On Wed, 30 Nov 2011, Dave Neary wrote:


I'm sure there are a few people who would contest this - who are consciously
not foundation members for some reason, while being GNOME hackers - and
there is also the technical difficulty of where you draw the line for
membership rights like having a vote in elections, but I think by and large,
defining the membership of the GNOME Foundation as "people involved in the
GNOME project" is fine.


I'd be interested to hear why people don't feel they want to be
Foundation members. I think it would be beneficial for the project if
there is a closer relationship between being a contributor and being a
Foundation member.


So would I! But I know that in the past when we've talked about the
value of foundation membership, there have been one or two people
who said "I don't want to be a foundation member".


Things are changing on that side, we (Membership Committee) had
several discussions and meetings with a few members of the Board about
the guidelines and policies to adopt when renewing or accepting new
Foundation members.

If there is a problem, people should take it to foundation-list and
discuss a possible solution, saying "I don't want to be a Foundation
member" without a rationale or a motivation will definitely take us no
where.

During past elections (June 2011) we had some issues with the
renewals notifications, someone mailed me saying there was a problem,
the Committee had a meeting and everything is going great now or
should I start talking about the criticisms we received about our
application's form?

The Foundation website is under a complete facelift and it'll go live
really soon with a brand new application's page, more user-friendly
with less fields and without the so-bad checkbox people out there
hate so much.

This is the way to solve problems and I will never stop saying
that every GNOME hacker is *welcome* to join the Foundation, the way I
see the GNOME Foundation is it being a big family, we should help each
other and we should collaborate to make GNOME a better place for
everyone.

Fighting each other is *not* the way to go, please think about that.

cheers,

Andrea


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Additional Hackfests - Brno

[Brian Cameron]

The Brno Hackfest organizers have recently let the GNOME Foundation
board know that additional rooms for Hackfest use can be secured for
roughly $25-42 USD per day (depending on the size of room needed).
Rooms can be available from February 17-21.  However, the organizers
need to reserve rooms no later than December 14th.  To me, this cost
sounds rather reasonable.

So, if any GNOME projects would like to meet with the Docs and GTK+
teams at Brno, please discuss and make arrangements in the next two
weeks.  The GNOME Foundation would be happy to discuss covering the
costs of additional rooms needed for any additional approved
Hackfest(s).  Please contact bo...@gnome.org if you have any questions
or want to discuss organizing any Hackfest.

For details about the current Hackfests planned for Brno:

  https://live.gnome.org/Hackfests/BrnoDocs2012
  https://live.gnome.org/Hackfests/GtkBrno2012

Let the board know even if you would like to plan a Hackfest at some
other location or timeframe.  There are currently no hackfests planned
after February, so it would be good to start planning for more.  I
understand the Marketing and a11y teams have been talking about having a
Hackfest.  Have others?

Brian

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Re: New Foundation Members

[Brian Cameron]

Welcome new members!

Brian


On 11/18/11 05:04 AM, Andrea Veri wrote:

Hi,

The GNOME Foundation Membership Committee is proud to announce our
newly approved Foundation Members. Please welcome and thank them
for their great and valuable contributions over the GNOME Foundation.

They are: *

* Stéphane Maniaci (two Google Summer of Code within GNOME, little
   contributions to the GNOME-Shell's and PiTiVi's modules)
* Maciej Piechotka (libgee's library maintainer, several bug reports
   and bug triaging work)
* Antoine Jacoutot (Porting and packaging GNOME for the OpenBSD
   distribution)
* Michael Hill (GNOME Documentation, organized the Toronto GNOME
   3.2's Release party)
* Jim Campbell (GNOME Documentation Team)
* David Nielsen (Banshee, 2011 GNOME+Mono Hackfest)
* Karen Sandler (Legal work and advices for the GNOME Foundation
   through the SFLC, GNOME's Executive Director)
* Nilamdyuti Goswami (Assamese's language translations for
   GNOME 3.0 and 3.2)
* Zhang Weiwu (Core member of the Beijing GNOME Users Group,
   GNOME Advocate and Ambassador)
* Patricia Santana Cruz (Cheese, Desktop Summit 2011, Bug reporting
   and triaging)
* Tong Hui (Beijing GNOME Users Group, GNOME-related talks and event
   organizator in Beijing)

* Syntax is Name Surname (area of involvement)

For any further question you may have, feel free to mail us at
membership-committee@gnome org. (or me directly)

Andrea Veri,
on behalf of the GNOME Membership Committee



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Re: Meeting Minutes Published - September 20, 2011

[Brian Cameron]

Paul:

Great to see you on the list!


= Minutes for Meeting of September 20 =

[...]

  * Brian - Follow up with getting Alan Day and Sumana Harihareswara
to sign the Copyright Assessment from SFLC.


I can't seem to find any info about a SFLC 'Copyright Assessment'
anywhere; could you tell me what that is or where to find info about it?


This was for back in Feb / March / April when Sumana and Allan were
hired as consultants to help with marketing the GNOME 3.0 launch.  The
Copyright Assessment was for if they created any marketing materials
while as a consultant, GNOME would have the rights to those materials.

As far as the form itself, I'm not sure, though I remember getting
their signature for something - Rosanna would have a copy.


Yes, we did already complete the paperwork for their work contracts.

The GNOME Foundation legal advisers recommended they sign an additional
Copyright Assessment form, but never provided us with a copy of the
form for them to sign.  I just had a meeting with Karen today to get
this moving again.  We will likely ask Alan and Sumana to sign the form
when it is ready.

My understanding is that this form is just a simple agreement to confirm
that Alan and Sumana are agreeable to license the work they did for
The GNOME Foundation under standard and reasonable free licenses.  So,
I do not imagine that this will be anything troublesome.

Brian
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Re: The Boston (or "Boston") Summit?

[Brian Cameron]

Joanie:

The announcement was just made today that the summit is October 8-10
in Montreal:

https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2011-September/msg0.html

Brian


The other day I heard an interesting rumor, which I've since been able
to confirm [1]: There's a small chance that the Boston Summit might be
the Montreal Summit.

Montreal is all kinds of charming awesomeness, and if that is where the
Summit is going to be this year, that's great. But it does of course
mean that some people who didn't have to travel will now have to, and
that some "meetings of convenience" with non-GNOME local folks might
need to be rescheduled. Thus, for the purpose of managing logistics, I
would find it extremely helpful to know where the Summit will be this
year and if it will be held on the traditional date (i.e. only one month
from now).

With apologies to all for being a noodge (and especially to Emmanuele
for my impatience after he suggested we might know something today.)

Thanks in advance!
--joanie

[1] https://live.gnome.org/Boston2011

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Meeting Minutes Published - July 12th, 2011

[Brian Cameron]

The meeting minutes for the July 12th GNOME Foundation board
meeting is now published.  Refer here:

   http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20110712

Other past board meetings are archived here:

   http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes

-- text of the latest minutes follows --

= Minutes for Meeting of July 12th, 2011 =

== Next Meeting ==

  July 26th, 2011

== Attending ==

 * Andreas Nilsson
 * Bastien Nocera
 * Brian Cameron
 * Emily Chen
 * Emmanuele Bassi
 * Germán Póo-Caamaño
 * Karen Sandler
 * Og Maciel
 * Rosanna Yuen
 * Shaun McCance
 * Stormy Peters
 * Ryan Lortie

=== Regrets ===

=== Missing ===

== Recurring Items ==

 * Review past action items.
 * Did each person update their action items?
 * Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published to
   foundation-announce and foundation-list.
 * Make sure to use gobby server for better minute taking.

== New Items ==

 * Welcome new board members.  Thanks to those who will be stepping
   down.
 * Decide on officers, and who will lead the bi-weekly IRC meetings.
   * Will delay deciding who will be officers until Desktop Summit.

 * Women Outreach Program for the next fiscal year
   * The board voted to approve the budget of $30,000 (USD) to continue
 running the program from December-March and May-August, 3 students
 each.
   * ACTION: Karen - Will email Marina to let her know that the board
 has approved funds for the next year of the Women's Outreach fund,
 ccing Board.

 * IRC Meetings
   * Minutes are posted here:
 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes#Foundation_IRC_Meetings
   * ACTION: Shaun - Will lead the GNOME Foundation IRC meetings.

 * GUADEC 2012 bids have been received.  Need to review them and decide.
   * https://live.gnome.org/GUADEC/2012/Bids
 * ACTION: All board members - Review the received bids for GUADEC
   2012.
   * Discussion should happen on board-list, but board members are also
 encouraged to participate on guadec-list and to attend GUADEC
 Event Planning meetings:
   * https://live.gnome.org/Upcoming%20Meeting%20Agenda

 * What to do about the Friends of GNOME campaign.
   * Need someone to take over the maintenance from Og.
   * ACTION: Emmanuele - Will take over Friends of GNOME tasks.
   * ACTION: Karen - Will follow up with cedwards regarding CiviCRM
 contract.
   * Plan to induct new hackers (to be adopted) into the programme at
 Desktop Summit.

 * Bastien has sorted the Red Hat Network (RHN) entitlements issues.

 * LojaGeek.com and Trademarks
   * ACTION: Karen - Will follow up with LojaGeek again.
   * ACTION: Karen - Will follow up with Stefano to discuss use of
 combined Debian/GNOME mark and caution stopping further use until
 agreement is settled on.

 * Quarterly Report Plans
   * Q1 published, Andreas to write about it on gnome.org.
   * Emily is going to take care of Q2 report and hopes to have it done
 by Desktop Summit.

 * Bank Update
   * ACTION: Karen - Will update the contact information in the webpage
 to add information with respect to fraudulent checks.

 * ENSL
   * The board approved $650 to sponsor John Wendell and Antonio
 Fernandes Coelho Neto to attend to ENSL in Brazil as GNOME
 speakers.

== Completed Actions ==

 * Andreas - To touch base with the membership committee about
   finalizing the vote, and to invite the new members to the next board
   meeting.
 * Andreas - Will moderate the IRC meeting on the 29th.
 * Brian - Will provide Karen with past discussions about LojaGeek.
 * Emily & Andreas - Will publish the Q1 quarterly report on the web on
   Friday.

== Status of action items ==

 * Andreas - To ask Kat if she can reach out to the gnome...@gnome.org
   mailing list about finding local German volunteers to help with the
   Desktop Summit 2011. (will ping again)
 * Andreas - Will look into the possibility of a Desktop Summit design
   where the facade is more neutral.
 * Andreas - Will blog a Desktop Summit status report.
 * Andreas - Will discuss with Ryan Lortie providing support contracts
   for GTK+.
 * Andreas - To verify meeting times for the Desktop Summit.  That
   August 9th is a good date for the board and AGM meetings and August
   10th for the Advisory Board meeting.  Will confirm on board list,
   then the advisory board list.
 * Andreas - To start work on next 2011 Annual Report ASAP (due start
   FY2012).  Taken over from Paul.
 * Andreas - Will help Emily publish the quarterly report.
 * Bastien - To discuss the use of badges (a-la Creative Commons,
   last.fm page colors, or PSN badges).
 * Bastien - To talk to Olav Vitters about using bugzilla to track
   Friends of GNOME post card sending.
 * Bastien - To get _a_ WebOS/Palm contact from Lennart Poettering.
 * Bastien - To contact the BBC to discuss about possible collaboration
   in working directly with GNOME.
 * Bastien - Will reach out to Dave Richards from the City of Largo to
  

Meeting Minutes Published - June 28th, 2011

[Brian Cameron]

The meeting minutes for the June 28th GNOME Foundation board
meeting is now published.  Refer here:

   http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20110628

Other past board meetings are archived here:

   http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes

-- text of the latest minutes follows --

= Minutes for Meeting of June 28th, 2011 =

== Next Meeting ==

  July 12th, 2011

== Attending ==

 * Andreas Nilsson
 * Bastien Nocera
 * Brian Cameron
 * Germán Póo-Caamaño
 * Karen Sandler
 * Rosanna Yuen

=== Regrets ===

 * Og Maciel
 * Stormy Peters
 * Emily Chen

=== Missing ===

== Recurring Items ==

 * Review past action items.
 * Did each person update their action items?
 * Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published to
   foundation-announce and foundation-list.
 * Make sure to use gobby server for better minute taking.

== New Items ==

 * New board and next meeting
   * Election results announced
 * 
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2011-June/msg00030.html

   * The next board will include:
 * Bastien Nocera
 * Brian Cameron
 * Emmanuele Bassi
 * Stormy Peters
 * Germán Póo-Caamaño
 * Ryan Lortie
 * Shaun McCance

   * ACTION: Germán - To touch base with the membership committee about
 finalizing the vote, and to invite the new members to the next
 board meeting.

 * CA Legal Status
   * The GNOME Foundation is no longer a suspended organization in the
 state of California.  Thanks Karen!

 * GNOME Foundation IRC meeting on June 29th.
   * ACTION: Andreas - Will moderate the IRC meeting on the 29th.

 * GObject-Introspection Hackfest
   * ACTION: Germán - Will touch base with the GObject-Introspection
 Hackfest and make sure that people attending also attend the
 Desktop Summit if possible.

 * Olav Vitters pinged the board about RHN entitlements.
   * ACTION: Bastien - Will touch base with the appropriate people in
 Red Hat to see if the RHN entitlements can be approved.

 * There are some GNOME related domains that need to be transferred to
   The GNOME Foundation.
   * ACTION: Karen - Will take over discussions to take over ownership
 of some GNOME related domains.

 * LojaGeek.com needs attention with their merchandising agreement.
   * ACTION: Brian - Will provide Karen with past discussions about 
LojaGeek.

   * ACTION: Karen - Will follow up with LojaGeek.

 * Boston Summit Organization
   * ACTION: Karen - Will contact people to try and push forward the
 organization of Boston Summit.

 * Debian/GNOME logo license question
   * ACTION: Karen - Will follow up with Debian about their usage of
 the GNOME logo.

== Completed Actions ==

 * Emily - Will work with Pockey Lam to ensure that MOSC2011 (Malaysia,
   July 3-5, 2011) has the GNOME resources needed.
 * Emily - Will contact the guadec-list and gugmeisters mailing lists
   to encourage people to get involved with GUADEC 2012 planning.
 * Emily - To contact owners of the Quarterly Report sections and get
   the reports finished.

== Status of action items ==

 * Andreas - To ask Kat if she can reach out to the gnome...@gnome.org
   mailing list about finding local German volunteers to help with the
   Desktop Summit 2011. (will ping again)
 * Andreas - Will look into the possibility of a Desktop Summit design
   where the facade is more neutral.
 * Andreas - Will blog a Desktop Summit status report.
 * Andreas - Will discuss with Ryan Lortie providing support contracts
   for GTK+.
 * Andreas - To verify meeting times for the Desktop Summit.  That
   August 9th is a good date for the board and AGM meetings and August
   10th for the Advisory Board meeting.  Will confirm on board list,
   then the advisory board list.
 * Andreas - To start work on next 2011 Annual Report ASAP (due start
   FY2012).  Taken over from Paul.
 * Andreas - Will help Emily publish the quarterly report.
 * Bastien - To discuss the use of badges (a-la Creative Commons,
   last.fm page colors, or PSN badges).
 * Bastien - To talk to Olav Vitters about using bugzilla to track
   Friends of GNOME post card sending.
 * Bastien - To get _a_ WebOS/Palm contact from Lennart Poettering.
 * Bastien - To contact the BBC to discuss about possible collaboration
   in working directly with GNOME.
 * Bastien - Will reach out to Dave Richards from the City of Largo to
   plan for a hackfest there.
 * Bastien - Reach out to the GNOME Advisory Board via email to see if
   they can help out with providing contacts at Yahoo.
 * Bastien - To make sure that the "IM, Contacts & Social Hackfest"
   gets added to http://live.gnome.org/Hackfests.
 * Bastien - To put together a proposal for how technical issues could
   be mediated within the community.
 * Brian - Develop trademark usage forms for common use cases. James
   Vasile from legal is working with Brian on this.
 * Brian - Check records of organizations with existing contracts to
   use the GNOME trademark. T

Meeting Minutes Published - June 14th, 2011

[Brian Cameron]

The meeting minutes for the June 14th GNOME Foundation board
meeting is now published.  Refer here:

   http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20110614

Other past board meetings are archived here:

   http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes

-- text of the latest minutes follows --

= Minutes for Meeting of June 14th, 2011 =

== Next Meeting ==

  June 28th, 2011

== Attending ==

 * Andreas Nilsson
 * Brian Cameron
 * Emily Chen
 * Germán Póo-Caamaño
 * Karen Sandler
 * Og Maciel
 * Stormy Peters

=== Regrets ===

 * Bastien Nocera
 * Rosanna Yuen

=== Missing ===

== Recurring Items ==

 * Review past action items.
 * Did each person update their action items?
 * Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published to
   foundation-announce and foundation-list.
 * Make sure to use gobby server for better minute taking.

== New Items ==

 * Discussed recent changes to the board.
   * The board thanks Paul for his dedicated work on the board and
 wishes him the best in his future endeavors!

 * Welcome Karen as the new GNOME Foundation ED
   * Verified that Karen has access to important mailing lists, Wiki
 pages, etc.
   * Karen - Will compose a press release by the end of the week.
   * Brian - Will work with Karen to finish I9 paperwork.

 * Planning for the Advisory Board meeting next week on Tuesday the
   21st.
   * Agenda will include:
 * Will announce the new ED at the Advisory Board, then on the
   advisory board and foundation mailing lists.
 * Talk about the Desktop Summit
 * Talk about recent hackfests (and ask about ideas for new ones).
 * GUADEC 2012 call for bids is closing.

 * Quarterly Report Plans - Update
   * Q1 report is closing tomorrow.  Will then send to marketing-list
 by Friday for a final review.
   * Emily & Andreas - Will publish the Q1 quarterly report on the web
 on Friday

 * Build GUADEC Event Committee - Update
   * Currently doing the call for bids for GUADEC 2012.
 * https://live.gnome.org/GUADEC/2012/Bids
   * Will have an update after the GUADEC Planning Committee IRC
 meeting on Monday the 20th.
   * GUADEC planning committee will decide if the deadline needs to be
 extended or not at the GUADEC Planning Committee IRC meeting.

== Completed Actions ==

 * Andreas - To send another e-mail to advisory board to remind about
   upcoming Advisory Board meeting dates and times.
 * Brian - Will work with Karen to finish I9 paperwork.

== Status of action items ==

 * Andreas - To ask Kat if she can reach out to the gnome...@gnome.org
   mailing list about finding local German volunteers to help with the
   Desktop Summit 2011. (will ping again)
 * Andreas - Will look into the possibility of a Desktop Summit design
   where the facade is more neutral.
 * Andreas - Will blog a Desktop Summit status report.
 * Andreas - Will discuss with Ryan Lortie providing support contracts
   for GTK+.
 * Andreas - To verify meeting times for the Desktop Summit.  That
   August 9th is a good date for the board and AGM meetings and August
   10th for the Advisory Board meeting.  Will confirm on board list,
   then the advisory board list.
 * Andreas - To start work on next 2011 Annual Report ASAP (due start
   FY2012).  Taken over from Paul.
 * Andreas - Will help Emily publish the quarterly report.
 * Bastien - To discuss the use of badges (a-la Creative Commons,
   last.fm page colors, or PSN badges).
 * Bastien - To talk to Olav Vitters about using bugzilla to track
   Friends of GNOME post card sending.
 * Bastien - To get _a_ WebOS/Palm contact from Lennart Poettering.
 * Bastien - To contact the BBC to discuss about possible collaboration
   in working directly with GNOME.
 * Bastien - Will reach out to Dave Richards from the City of Largo to
   plan for a hackfest there.
 * Bastien - Reach out to the GNOME Advisory Board via email to see if
   they can help out with providing contacts at Yahoo.
 * Bastien - To make sure that the "IM, Contacts & Social Hackfest"
   gets added to http://live.gnome.org/Hackfests.
 * Bastien - To put together a proposal for how technical issues could
   be mediated within the community.
 * Brian - Develop trademark usage forms for common use cases. James
   Vasile from legal is working with Brian on this.
 * Brian - Check records of organizations with existing contracts to
   use the GNOME trademark. Taken over from Vincent Untz. Look at the
   archives in 2005 and try to determine which companies can use the
   GNOME trademark. Know what kind of contracts we had with them.
   Taken over from Jorge.
 * Brian - Will follow up with the lawyers to discuss what would be
   involved to provide liability protection like what the Conservancy
   provides and to see if they have any perspective about whether the
   GNOME Foundation should allow GNOME projects to join Conservancy.
 * Brian - Will touch base with the GIMP organizers to find out their
   plans for the GI

Meeting Minutes Published - June 7th, 2011

[Brian Cameron]

The meeting minutes for the June 7th GNOME Foundation board
meeting is now published.  Refer here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20110607

Other past board meetings are archived here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes

-- text of the latest minutes follows --

= Minutes for Meeting of June 7th, 2011 =

== Next Meeting ==

  June 14th, 2011

== Attending ==

 * Andreas Nilsson
 * Bastien Nocera
 * Brian Cameron
 * Emily Chen
 * Germán Póo-Caamaño
 * Og Maciel
 * Rosanna Yuen
 * Stormy Peters

=== Regrets ===

 * Paul Cutler

=== Missing ===

== Recurring Items ==

 * Review past action items.
 * Did each person update their action items?
 * Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published to
   foundation-announce and foundation-list.
 * Make sure to use gobby server for better minute taking.

== New Items ==

 * Paul is stepping down.
   * Andreas is stepping up to replace Paul as president.
   * Bastien is stepping up as vice-president.
   * After the board agreed Stormy should be considered first as
 replacement for Paul, Germán asked Stormy, and she agreed to step
 up to the board.
   * ACTION: Brian - Wiki and mailing-list updates for Stormy to
 reflect she is on the board.
   * ACTION: Andreas - Will send the announcement of the board member
 changes on Tuesday, June 14th or later.

 * ED Hiring next steps.
* We will need to schedule a meeting with Karen as soon as she
  signs the contract.
* ACTION: Og - Will ping the new ED and the lawyers tomorrow and
  make sure things are moving along.

 * Canonical and Banshee Revenue Sharing - Update
   * ACTION: Stormy - To take over Canonical related action items from
 Paul.

 * Annual Report
   * ACTION: Andreas - Will take over the Financial Report actions.
   * ACTION: Stormy - Will take over GnuCash automation actions.

 * Quarterly Report Plans
   * ACTION: Andreas - Will help Emily publish the quarterly report.
   * ACTION: Germán - Will finish the Financial section of the
 quarterly report.

 * Build GUADEC Event Committee
   * Brian and Emily attended the first GUADEC Event Committee meeting.
   * GUADEC 2012 Bids
 * https://live.gnome.org/GUADEC/2012/Bids
 * Discussed what's needed for a successful GUADEC bid. Would like
   to have it in a country where it has not been before.
   * Past GUADEC Budget Information
 * https://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/FinancialStatus
 * ACTION: Germán - To send link to previous year's GUADEC's
   budgets to guadec-list.

 * Can we send goodies to Pockey Lam for the MOSC2011 conference in
   Malaysia (July 3-5, 2011)
   * ACTION: Emily - Will work with Pockey Lam to ensure that MOSC2011
 has the GNOME resources needed.

 * Seeking $3,209 (USD) for sending speakers to COSCUP.
   * Approved by the board.  Bastien abstained since he is a speaker.
 Stormy abstained as she just started at the start of the meeting
 and has not reviewed the budget. All other votes by those present
 were positive.

 * Sponsor FISL accommodation for two Brazilian contributors ($350).
   * Approved unanimously.

 * IM, Contacts & Social Hackfest (June 13-17, Cambridge)
   * Everything is moving along well, according to Bastien.
   * https://live.gnome.org/Hackfests/IMContactsSocial2011

 * Bank update (Rosanna)
   * Gotten most of the money returned.  Getting all of the funds will
 take 6-8 weeks.
   * Rosanna has a meeting with the bank tomorrow to discuss these
 ongoing issues.  Will provide an update after the meeting.

 * Dates for GUADEC advisory board meeting, board meeting and (all
   hands) meeting.
   * ACTION: Andreas - To send another e-mail to adboard to remind
 about upcoming Advisory Board meeting dates and times.

 * Membership Renewal Issues.
  * Some people's renewal emails went to spam and they did not catch it
in time to renew in time for voting.
  * ACTION: Germán - Will talk to membership committee to see if we can
do something to help remind people to renew memberships to avoid
people losing the ability to vote.

== Completed Actions ==

 * Andreas - Will send the announcement of the board member changes on
   Tuesday, June 14th or later.
 * Brian - Wiki and mailing-list updates for Stormy to reflect she is
   on the board.
 * Brian - Will call the lawyer to find status on ED hiring and update
   the board.
 * Emily - Will take care of handling funds from GNOME 3.0 Goodies.
   Send out a updated expense budget report after produced GNOME 3
   goodies.  Will need to adjust after spending money to deliver gifts
   for the GNOME 3 Party Best Photo winners.
 * Emily - Update Tracking ID for 112 Launch Party Packages.
 * Germán - To send link to previous year's GUADEC's budgets to
   guadec-list.  This new action item was done shortly after the
   meeting.
 * Og - Will ping the new ED and the lawyers tomorrow and ma

Meeting Minutes Published - May 24th, 2011

[Brian Cameron]

The meeting minutes for the May 24th GNOME Foundation board
meeting is now published.  Refer here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20110524

Other past board meetings are archived here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes

-- text of the latest minutes follows --

Minutes for Meeting of May 24th, 2011

Next Meeting

  June 7th, 2011

Attending

 * Andreas Nilsson
 * Bastien Nocera
 * Brian Cameron
 * Emily Chen
 * Germán Póo-Caamaño
 * Rosanna Yuen

Regrets

 * Og Maciel
 * Paul Cutler

Recurring Items

 * Review past action items.
 * Did each person update their action items?
 * Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published to
   foundation-announce and foundation-list.
 * Make sure to use gobby server for better minute taking.
 * Provide an updated budget for review that helps with plans.

== New Items ==

 * Thanks to Red Hat for providing conference call services!

 * ED Hiring next steps
   * ACTION: Brian - Will call the lawyer to find status on ED hiring
 and update the board.

 * Desktop Summit Planning
   * Andreas asked the organizers for information about the rooms that
 will be used for the board and adboard meetings.
 * Andreas - To verify meeting times for the Desktop Summit.  That
   August 9th is a good date for the board and AGM meetings and
   August 10th for the Advisory Board meeting.  Will confirm on
   board list, then the advisory board list.
   * Desktop Summit Visa Situation
 * KDE will handle visa letters.

 * IM, Contacts & Social Hackfest Plans
   * Bastien is taking part in this event.
   * One person may need travel sponsorship.
   * ACTION: Bastien - To make sure that the "IM, Contacts & Social
 Hackfest" gets added to http://live.gnome.org/Hackfests.

 * Need To Build GUADEC Event Committee
   * https://live.gnome.org/GUADEC/CommitteeMembers
   * Currently has only 3 members: Brian Cameron, Emily Chen, and
 Christophe Fergeau.
 * Two of these people are not based in Europe.

 * Quarterly Report
   * http://foundation.gnome.org/reports/
   * 2010 Q4 (October-December) Report done, but not included in fgo
 summary.
 * http://foundation.gnome.org/reports/gnome-report-2010-Q3.html
   * 2011 Q1 (January-March) Report Draft (unfinished)
 * http://live.gnome.org/GnomeMarketing/QuarterlyReports/2011/Q1
   * ACTION: Emily - To contact owners of the Quartery Report sections
 and get the unfinished reports published, and get the 2011 Q2
 report started.

 * COSCUP
   * Emily is having ongoing discussions with COSCUP organizers about
 sending GNOME speakers to COSCUP.

 * Bastien recommends nominating a leader to deal with situations of
   conflict within the GNOME community to help with technical issues,
   like when patches are not accepted.
   * Bastien - To put together a proposal for how technical issues
 could be mediated within the community.

 * Bank Update
   * Currently in the middle of paperwork to handle the fraudulent
 check issues.

== Completed Actions ==

 * Andreas - Will look into planet.gnome.org header to see if we can
   add a link to see news.gnome.org.  This will help more readers to
   hopefully notice IRC meeting. Filed as bug #650977
 * Andreas - Will follow up with Andrew Savory from LiMo to see if
   relevant information from their GTK+ study can be made more public.
   (will ping again). No reply for 6 months.
 * Bastien - To sign and send the GTK+ / MeeGo contract back to Igalia.
 * Bastien - Will try to find people who can consolidate the feedback
   about the Texas Instruments Zoom2 device to provide back to Texas
   Instruments.
 * Germán - To have a draft Fiscal Year Budget in October for the board
   to review. (It was sent on December to

https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2010-December/msg00057.html)

== Status of action items ==

 * Andreas - To ask Kat if she can reach out to the gnome...@gnome.org
   mailing list about finding local German volunteers to help with the
   Desktop Summit 2011. (will ping again)
 * Andreas - Will look into the possibility of a Desktop Summit design
   where the facade is more neutral.
 * Andreas - Will blog a Desktop Summit status report.
 * Andreas - Will discuss with Ryan Lortie providing support contracts
   for GTK+.
 * Bastien - To discuss the use of badges (a-la Creative Commons,
   last.fm page colors, or PSN badges).
 * Bastien - To talk to Olav Vitters about using bugzilla to track
   Friends of GNOME post card sending.
 * Bastien - To get _a_ WebOS/Palm contact from Lennart Poettering.
 * Bastien - To contact the BBC to discuss about possible collaboration
   in working directly with GNOME.
 * Bastien - Will reach out to Dave Richards from the City of Largo to
   plan for a hackfest there.
 * Bastien - Reach out to the GNOME Advisory Board via email to see if
   they can help out with providing contacts at Yahoo.
 * Brian - Devel

Re: Question for candidates

[Brian Cameron]

RMS:


* What do you think GNOME should do to help promote the ideals of free
software, beyond being composed of free programs.


GNOME is a free software project, so I do think it is important to work
to promote the ideals of free software.  I think GNOME does a great job
doing this in many ways.  We do this already by encouraging more
involvement by women via the Women's Outreach Program, more involvement
by students via Google Summer of Code, and so on.

There is a lot more we could do.  For example, it would be exciting if
the FSF and GNOME could do joint fund raising to improve free software
accessibility or to organize something more significant for Software
Freedom Day.

Brian
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Re: Questions for candidates - board processes & significance

[Brian Cameron]

Dave:


I was away last week travelling, so I'm coming late to the election
campaign. I have almost decided who I would like to vote for, but there
are still a few things which are important to me when considering a
prospective board member.

1. If elected, will you seek a named position
(chairman/treasurer/secretary) on the board? If so, why?


I have served as secretary for the past two years.  I am undecided about
what position I might seek in the next term, but I do think I will seek
some position again.


2. Board meetings are minuted, and these minutes are published
regularly. However, the board also increasingly makes decisions on
board-list with the Apache +1/0/-1 convention. Would you support the
minuting of these votes, including recording any -1 votes?


Yes I would.  This seems a reasonable request to me, and I approve of
being more transparent.  That said, I think it is very rare when a vote
is controversial.


3. I think financial transparency is important. If you plan on applying
for the treasurer position, what changes (if any) would you propose for
the budgeting process? How often would you publish financial reports for
the foundation? Are you happy with the level of transparency in the
board's finances now?


I am not planning to run for treasurer.  I would like to see The GNOME
Foundation become more transparent and to release information more
regularly.  In the past year, we really struggled to get the Annual
Report completed and it was quite late.

The GNOME Foundation really needs more interested volunteers to help
with things like this, especially if there is interest in improving
things in these areas.


4. Our relationship with a number of groups has suffered this year - and
one of the lesser known ones (but one I'm involvedd in) is the Libre
Graphics Meeting organisers (a group of people representing a couple of
dozen "free art" projects). Are you aware that the LGM organisers
withdrew all the funds that the GNOME Foundation was managing for them
this year, because they have been unhappy with the responsiveness and
quality of communication with the foundation over the past 2 - 3 years?
Do you have any thoughts on why this particular relationship degraded?


The LGM's needs were beyond the capacity of our abilities and staffing.
Considering the frequency that they needed access to their funds, it
makes more sense for them to manage their own funds.  While the
situation was frustrating, I think it is a sign that LGM is very robust
that they outgrew the services GNOME could provide them.


And will you commit to handling or delegating answers to all
time-critical queries which come to the board during your term?


We really try our best.  Things sometimes do become problems when a
request or query is made and there is no clear person to delegate to.
Improving the structure of the GNOME community is often a part of the
solution.  For example, the board is currently working to create an
Event Planning committee to help deal with the most common sorts of
queries the board tends to currently deal with.


5. In general, as a board member communication is vital to keep people
outside the board informed whenever there is a delay or when extra input
is needed on something they're working on. For incumbents, are you happy
with the level of communication & reactivity in the current board? For
new candidates, what would you like to do to ensure that the
communication & reactivity of the board improves in the coming term?


As secretary, I have worked hard to keep communication channels open and
to keep people informed.  Is there more we could do?  Of course.  I
would like to continue to help build teams of volunteers.  I think that
GNOME tends to work best, as a community, when we encourage people to
get more actively involved in helping to ensure that things are working
well, communication is effective, etc.


6. Board members are ambassadors for the foundation. I think it's
important that board members be social, and be nice. Are you nice?


I think I am nicer, but uglier, than the average American.

Brian
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Re: Two Questions for the Board Candidates

[Brian Cameron]

On 05/26/11 12:38, Lefty wrote:

I'd be interested to know what, if anything, candidates for the Board propose 
to do to
address the ongoing waste of time and energy in the community over trivia like 
"Linux"
versus "GNU/Linux", "free" versus "open source", and the like. This extends to 
things
like "litmus tests" on mailing lists derailing discussions into observations 
about
which email clients or operating systems participants might be using at the 
time they
post, for example.


Since GNOME is a free software project, some discussion about topics
like "GNU/Linux" are bound to happen, and at times these do become
tense.

I do not think there is a problem in discussing such topics as long
as they are done in the right forums.  In the past I have suggested
creating a new mailing list focused on free software specific GNOME
topics.  If such discussions are creating too much noise on other
lists, this might be a good solution.

The GNOME Foundation board does work to deal with issues when
discussions become problematic, wasteful of time, or violate the
Code of Conduct.  The board typically only gets involved in exceptional
situations.  Generally, it does seem that people try to be reasonable
and responsible with their communications.

With GNOME 3 recently being released, there are probably more things to
debate, discuss, and get heated about than normal.  So, I agree the
board will likely need to be more involved with helping to moderate
discussions and keep the community focused on what is important.


Attempts to divide the community and delegitimize individuals and
their viewpoints are common, and becoming increasingly so in the past
few years. Bad feelings have driven many away from the level of
involvement in the community they've previously had. Do candidates see
this as a problem? Do they have any proposals for addressing it?


Yes, it is a problem when the GNOME community attitude is unwelcoming.
I believe that through making better efforts to moderate, and to do more
things to welcome new people (such as programs like the Women's Outreach
program) help to create a more suitable atmosphere for collaboration.

That said, there will be some degree of conflict and disagreement in
any group.  It sometimes can be hard to draw the line between ongoing 
bad behavior and a passionate outburst.  So, these sorts of situations

will always need to be handled on a case-by-case basis.


Second: Do candidates have any view as to how the disastrous attempts
at engagement by GNOME with the mobile space might be improved on?

Do candidates have any thoughts on the future of GNOME with respect
to the mobile space?


I very much feel the same as Stormy.

Brian
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Re: Question to candidates: on-line services

[Brian Cameron]

Gil:

On 05/26/11 17:27, Gil Forcada wrote:

Hi members,

Everyday more and more services are offered on the cloud and there's
also initiatives powered by Free Software (tomboy on-line...).

One of the main problems for Free Software projects providing cloud
services is the hardware/administration/connection expenses which are
mostly a no-go for a Free Software project without any backing from a
big corporation.


Thanks for the great question.  The GNOME community already provides
a lot of great on-line services ranging from source code control
systems, a CRM system, and a significant web presence.  So, I think
it is important to recognize that this is not something completely
new.  The main development is that such services seem to be more
end-user focused rather than developer focused.  I helped in these
efforts by helping to push the Tomboy Online hackfest in the past
year.

One challenge that has been hampering efforts in this vein has been the
fact that GNOME's server hardware has been aging.  Over the past couple
of years, the board has been working with the community to address
these issues, but there is more to do.


As a member of a the future board will you look for ways to promote and
look for resources to offer these free software cloud services? Maybe
part of a funding campaign (be a Friend of GNOME and have a Tomboy
on-line account for free).


Most specific decisions on how to run Friends of GNOME and do such
promotion is handled by GNOME Marketing Team.  Many board members are a
part of the Marketing Team, so there is some overlap.  I am supportive
of any campaign to improve the presence of GNOME and free software
online services.

Brian
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Re: question for candidates

[Brian Cameron]

Andy:

On 05/25/11 13:10, Andy Tai wrote:

As Fedora is the only current GNU/Linux distribution adapting GNOME 3.0
as the default desktop, how would you facilitate to make GNOME
technologies to work well (meaning minimal local patching needed) on
other GNU/Linux distributions like Debian, and such distributions which
may work on components competing with certain parts of GNOME, such as
Ubuntu?  And how would you facilitate to make GNOME 3 run well on other
free OS environments, especially the BSD based ones, like OpenBSD and
FreeBSD?


I think everyone is encouraged to work towards making GNOME work to
meet their needs, as with any free software.  As long as patches
can be kept manageable and under control, then I do not foresee any
serious problems.


And how would you facilitate collaborations with Ubuntu, especially,
despite the different viewpoints of developers on issues like GNOME
Shell vs. Unity?


The GNOME Foundation already does work to encourage discussion
between important contributors.  There are a lot of topics to consider
and discuss surrounding GNOME Shell and Unity and other technologies
based on GNOME.  I am sure this will be a big focus over the next year
and beyond.  At any rate, I think that Unity and GNOME Shell share
enough infrastructure that there should be no serious concern that we
will stop collaborating.

Brian
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Re: Candidates question: Contributor agreement

[Brian Cameron]

Olav:

On 05/26/11 05:01, Olav Vitters wrote:

Given that we already have a policy on copyright assignments[1], I
wondered what is your position regarding contributor agreements[2]?
Should the board do something with contributor agreements and if so,
what should be done?


I am proud to say that over the past few years The GNOME Foundation has
gotten several modules to drop their frivolous demands for assignments
by applying pressure in this area.

The GNOME Copyright assignment policy is clear that while we generally
oppose them, still any situation must be considered on a case-by-case
basis.  So, whenever there is an issue, we still need to discuss it
and this often takes time.

Brian
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Re: Questions for all board candidates

[Brian Cameron]

Jeff:

On 05/26/11 07:43, Jeff Schroeder wrote:

1.) For incumbents, have you missed any meetings? What is your % of
missed vs attended meetings and why? For new challengers, how much
time can you dedicate to working on the board each week? How do you
plan on spending that time?


Overall, attendance has been quite good on the board over the past
year.  I think this board has been more active than past boards I
have served on.  Since Stormy left her position as ED, the board has
naturally been under pressure to keep the momentum going.

I missed 3 (out of 23) board meetings and 0 (out of 5) advisory board
meetings in the past year.  One missed meeting I could not attend since
I was on a plane to GNOME.Asia on 8/19/2010.  Most board members missed
at least one meeting in the past year due to time zone conversion
confusion, and it happened twice to me.


2.) Other open source / free software projects run their meetings in
the open via IRC (such as Fedora's FESCO I believe). Would you
consider that, and if not, what about recording how board members vote
on a given topic. This includes +1 / -1 / abstains and perhaps give a
small comment on any -1 or abstain.


As GNOME Foundation secretary, I have worked hard to make sure that
GNOME Foundation board discussion with useful links are included in the
minutes.  When a vote is controversial, I have tried to provide
details.  The fact that you see so few notes about -1 or abstain votes
is more because the board tends to be in agreement on most matters.


In my opinion, as an open
foundation, the transparency of the board is absolutely critical
_where possible_. Leaders should always set the example for members.


I think that the level of transparency has been good.  If people think
there are any particular issues, lets talk about them and figure out
how to improve things.  Some private meetings are necessary to deal
with some things, such as employee or advisory board relations,
non-for-profit tax status, etc.

The GNOME Foundation has been running regular public IRC meetings to
discuss community concerns.  Often the agenda is empty, as it is
at the moment:

http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes#Foundation_IRC_Meetings

You are right that many of the things that the board works on are
things that would be better managed more publicly by committees or
teams, such as the Release Team, the Marketing Team, and the Travel
Planning Committee.  The board recognizes this and is currently working
to set up a new Events Planning Committee and better formalize the
GUADEC planning committee.  This should help.

When people notice that topics are being discussed at the board level
that people think should be better discussed at a wider level, then
we normally talk about them on this mailing list or at the next IRC
meeting.  Join us, it would be great to get more community involvement
and help.

* When: Wednesday, May 18th, 14:00 UTC
* Where: irc.gnome.org, #foundation
* Next Meeting: Wednesday, June 1st, 14:00 UTC
* Agenda: http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/MeetingAgenda

Brian
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Re: [question to candidates] GNOME OS

[Brian Cameron]

Andy:

On 05/26/11 04:51, Andy Wingo wrote:

You just used the name "Richard Stallman" as a token for "this argument
is invalid."

You then proceeded to call someone stalinist; was it Richard?  Was it
GNOME OS proponents?  Unclear.


This was a poor attempt at humor, I guess.  With my words I was only
trying to discourage a divisive attitude such as Richard sometimes
seems to when he talks about "GNU/Linux".  I clearly failed miserably.


In any case, it's quite offensive, especially coming from a member of
and candidate for the board.


Apologies, I did not mean to offend.

Brian
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Re: Fwd: Question for the canditates

[Brian Cameron]

I'd like to ask two questions of all the candidates please:

1) As GNOME has matured the number of officially supported language
bindings has decreased. The quality and availability of various
language communities own bindings has varied wildly to say the least.
How would you work to improve this situation?


If this is an issue, The GNOME Foundation could work to raise awareness
and to encourage more people to get involved.  Organizing a hackfest, as
others have highlighted, can be an effective way to make progress in a
specific area.  The Python binding community has been organizing regular
hackfests:

  http://live.gnome.org/Hackfests

With GNOME 3 recently out the door, there are numerous areas where
attention is needed (accessibility, touch-screen, HIG, etc.).  If there
are specific language binding problems that need to be addressed, we
should discuss and prioritize them.


2) What are your own feelings on supporting fairly new languages and
standards like Go and Perl 6?


It is not clear to me exactly what you mean by support.  The GNOME
Foundation does not provide the same kind of support that distros may
provide, for example.  If there is a serious interest in better
supporting particular languages, we would need to discuss this on
a case-by-case basis, I should think.  For example, a language could
only be supported if there were enough people interested to do the work
involved.

Brian
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Re: [question to candidates] GNOME OS

[Brian Cameron]

Fred:


GNOME OS has been mentioned and questioned repeatedly in recent
discussions on desktop-devel-list, about its definition itself[1],
and the changing (or not?) role of the GNOME project with regards
to distributions (based or not on the Linux kernel).


I remember sitting in Jon McCann's talk at Den Haag last Summer where
GNOME OS was first brought to my attention.  It seems a catchy use of
the GNOME brand, but we clearly have not yet found an effective way to
make use of it.

Using the GNOME brand to foster divisions within the Free Software or
GNU/Linux community, to me, feels like the sort of thing Richard
Stallman would be into.  While I love free software, I personally do
not drink this sort of Stalinist kool-aid.  I think it is far more
interesting to work as a community on free software alternative
products that are competitive with those from Microsoft and Apple.


What are your thougths on this?[2] Do you think this is a foundation
job to answer those questions? If not, is this a responsibility of the
release team? Or something that is best left unanswered, as pieces are
put into positions by different persons?


Yes, I do.  I think that the GNOME Foundation, as a community, needs to
answer these questions and decide how the "GNOME" brand should be used.
We need to discuss, and perhaps vote if the answers are not just
obvious.  Remember, the GNOME board of directors only works to express
the will of the Foundation membership - the board members are your
representatives.

I do think there is real value in having a good definition of our
brand.  It does not seem clear how we should best encourage both a
"GNOME" vision of usability and also promote the fact that GNOME
Technologies are found in GNOME Shell, mobile devices, Sugar, OLPC,
the City of Largo, etc.  The fact that usability can vary across
different hardware and distros, and that we do not yet have a GNOME 3
HIG contributes to things being fuzzy at the moment.

Some have proposed that the GNOME brand be tied to the usage of
particular combinations of technologies or kernels.  Perhaps we need to
use the GNOME brand in a spectrum of ways rather than a single "GNOME
OS".  Perhaps the GNOME Foundation could be a body that blesses
acceptable usages of the brand, such as what can be called "GNOME
Mobile OS", "GNOME Developing World OS", "GNOME Accessibility OS",
"GNOME Technologies", or whatever.  Having some structure and process
towards how we use the GNOME brand could be very useful, especially if
the community ever did something like setup an internet application
store.

The "Build on What we Have (or: too much structure is poison)" section
of the GNOME Foundation charter highlights that The GNOME Foundation
does not have the mandate to be divisive, or that would encourage
forking.  The charter says:

  Any new structure which the GNOME foundation provides, if taken too
  far, will be artificial, ignored, or at worst: really really annoying
  to developers.

  Furthermore, the foundation can have no real powers of enforcement;
  compliance with foundation decision should be an act of good-faith.
  If we've lost consensus to the point where we're regularly forcibly
  ejecting people from the foundation and co-opting their projects,
  we're sunk anyway.

  Instead, the foundation will work with GNOME's strengths to make it
  better. A foundation that provides cohesion, vision, direction, and
  enough organization will be an incredible asset. A foundation that
  attempts to do this, but hides the iron fist under a velvet glove
  will not. Such an entity would likely be ignored, and words like
  "fork" would be thrown around.

How to use a brand effectively is no short discussion.  I think it is
the discussion we are having right now, really.  A very timely thing
to consider with GNOME 3 out the door.  I hope that we, as a community,
are able to do this in a non-divisive manner.

You have to love people who put terms like "iron fists" and "velvet
gloves" in their charter.

Brian
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Meeting Minutes Published - May 10th, 2011

[Brian Cameron]

The meeting minutes for the May 10th GNOME Foundation board
meeting is now published.  Refer here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20110510

Other past board meetings are archived here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes

-- text of the latest minutes follows --
Minutes for Meeting of May 10th, 2011

Next Meeting

* May 24th, 2011

Board Meeting Private Agenda

Attending

* Andreas Nilsson
* Bastien Nocera
* Brian Cameron
* Emily Chen
* Og Maciel
* Rosanna Yuen

Regrets

* Paul Cutler

Missing

* Germán Póo-Caamaño

Recurring Items

* Review past action items.
* Did each person update their action items?
* Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published
  to foundation-announce and foundation-list.
* Make sure to use gobby server for better minute taking.

New Items

* Marketing Update and Post Mortum. Alan Day and Sumana
  Harihareswara joined for this section of the meeting.
  o Things to focus on:
+ The Fedora 15 release will be the first release with
  GNOME 3 so it will likely shape public perceptions.
+ Need to coordinate better planning for the 3.2
  release, and releases going forward.
+ Building relationships with Journalists and media.
+ Set up press kit materials.
+ Build burst capacity into *.gnome.org sites.
+ Need a leader for the Ambassador program.
  o Considered ways to improve marketing involvement:
+ Getting more people involved with updating the
  website or GNOME Journal.
+ Better recognition.
+ One of the conclusions was that if we just execute
  better on the things we know we should be doing, we
  will see improvement. We do not necessarily need more
  plans or structure. It is important to return email
  promptly, be encouraging, and so on.
  o Alan and Sumana agreed to put together a Wiki page to
highlight their experience working for The GNOME Foundation
to help people get better engaged and involved with The
GNOME community.

* Open Help Conference
  o The board oted +6 to approve the budget of $3,170 for 4
people to attend.
  o ACTION: Brian - One attendee to the Open Help Conference
needs an invitation letter for their Visa. Brian to provide
a signed copy to Shaun McCance.
  o ACTION: Brian - To notify Shaun McCance that the hackfest
costs will be covered.

* COSCUP asked if a GNOME speaker could talk at COSCUP 2011.
  o This COSCUP conference focus is "Gadgets beyond
Smartphones", so they are looking for a speaker to talk
about topics like small footprint devices like netbooks and
mobile.
  o Bastien expressed interest in attending COSCUP in Taiwan to
discuss GNOME Mobile, which is the topic of the upcoming
COSCUP event.
+ Emily and Bastien to discuss further offline.

* The board approved Bastien signing the GTK+/MeeGo contract for
  The GNOME Foundation.
  o ACTION: Bastien - To sign and send the GTK+/MeeGo contract
back to Igalia.

* The board approved budgeting $2,500 (USD) for Og traveling to
  FISL.

* The board approved sending GNOME stickers to Paul to hand out at
  Fedora events.

Completed Actions

* Andreas - To invite Marina Zhurakhinskaya (Women's Outreach),
  Shaun McCance (upcoming OpenHelp Hackfest), and Dave Neary
  (Desktop Summit & training) to talk at the meeting.
* Andreas - To collect 3 bullet items from each speaker
  highlighting what they will talk about.
* Bastien - To respond to Ryan Lortie's propsoal to improve
  technical leadership. This new action was done shortly after the
  meeting.
* Brian - One attendee to the Open Help Conference needs an
  invitation letter for their Visa. Brian to provide a signed copy
  to Shaun McCance. The new action was done shortly after the
  meeting.
* Brian - To notify Shaun McCance that the hackfest costs will be
  covered. This new action was done shortly after the meeting.

Status of action items

* Andreas - Will follow up with Andrew Savory from LiMo to see if
  relevant information from their GTK+ study can be made more
  public. (will ping again).
* Andreas - To ask Kat if she can reach out to the
  gnome...@gnome.org mailing list about finding local German
  volunteers to help with the Desktop Summit 2011. (will ping again)
* Andreas - Will look into the possibility of a Desktop Summit
  design where the facade is more neutral.
* Andre

Meeting Minutes Published - April 26th, 2011

[Brian Cameron]

The meeting minutes for the April 26th GNOME Foundation board
meeting is now published.  Refer here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20110426

Other past board meetings are archived here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes

-- text of the latest minutes follows --

Minutes for Meeting of April 26th, 2011

Next Meeting

* May 10th, 2011

Attending

* Andreas Nilsson
* Bastien Nocera
* Brian Cameron
* Germán Póo-Caamaño
* Og Maciel
* Paul Cutler
* Rosanna Yuen

Regrets

* Emily Chen

Missing

Recurring Items

* Review past action items.
* Did each person update their action items?
* Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published
  to foundation-announce and foundation-list.
* Make sure to use gobby server for better minute taking.

New Items

* Advisory Board Meeting
  o Next meeting planned for Tuesday, May 3rd.
  o ACTION: Andreas - To invite Marina Zhurakhinskaya (Women's
Outreach), Shaun McCance (upcoming OpenHelp Hackfest), and
Dave Neary (Desktop Summit & training) to talk at the
meeting.
  o ACTION: Andreas - To collect 3 bullet items from each
speaker highlighting what they will talk about.

* Sriram Ramkrishna raised some interesting questions about
  rhythmbox and MeeGo on April 19th.
  o Plan to raise this issue with the Intel Advisory Board
members.

* The two marketing contracts are signed and completed.
  o Paul recommended inviting Allan and Sumana to an upcoming
board meeting to do a post-mortum. The board agreed.
  o ACTION: Brian - Follow up with getting Alan Day and Sumana
Harihareswara to sign the Copyright Assessment from SFLC.

* Brian wrote a proposal on April 14th about how to better organize
  earmarked fundraising.
  o ACTION: All board members - To review and comment Brian's
April 14th proposal regarding better organizing earmarked
fundraising.

* Improving relations with Canonical
  o Meeting now scheduled for April 27th.

Completed Actions

* Brian - Will draft an 2012 GUADEC Call for Bids email based on
  previous ones.
* Paul - Will put together an email to Canonical regarding working
  towards improving relations. (Cancelled per board meeting 4/12)
* Paul - Set up a phone call with the right people at Canonical,
  the GNOME Foundation board and/or GNOME release team to discuss
  how to improve relations. (Scheduled for April 27)
* Paul - Will work with Allan Day and Sumana Harihareswara to get
  the marketing contracts signed. (Done and forwarded to Rosanna)
* Paul - Sent Justin credit card info for Trademark application
* Paul - Will email John (J5) Palmieri to find out what needs to
  happen for Boston Summit 2011 planning.

Status of action items

* Andreas - Will follow up with Andrew Savory from LiMo to see if
  relevant information from their GTK+ study can be made more
  public. (will ping again).
* Andreas - To ask Kat if she can reach out to the
  gnome...@gnome.org mailing list about finding local German
  volunteers to help with the Desktop Summit 2011. (will ping again)
* Andreas - Will look into the possibility of a Desktop Summit
  design where the facade is more neutral.
* Andreas - Will blog a Desktop Summit status report.
* Andreas - Will discuss with Ryan Lortie providing support
  contracts for GTK+.
* Andreas - Will look into planet.gnome.org header to see if we can
  add a link to see news.gnome.org. This will help more readers to
  hopefully notice IRC meeting.
* Bastien - Will try to find people who can consolidate the
  feedback about the Texas Instruments Zoom2 device to provide back
  to Texas Instruments.
* Bastien - Will take over the internal review process task from
  Diego Urrelo (hopefully he can automate it).
* Bastien - To find a way to automate the process of exporting
  results from internal review process and email it to the board.
* Bastien - To discuss the use of badges (a-la Creative Commons,
  last.fm page colors, or PSN badges).
* Bastien - To talk to Olav Vitters about using bugzilla to track
  Friends of GNOME post card sending.
* Bastien - To get _a_ WebOS/Palm contact from Lennart Poettering.
* Bastien - To contact the BBC to discuss about possible
  collaboration in working directly with GNOME.
* Bastien - Will reach out to Dave Richards from the City of Largo
  to plan for a hackfest there.
* Bastien - Reach out to the GNOME Advisory Board via email to see
  if they can help out with providing contacts at Yahoo.
* Brian - Develop trademark usage forms for common use cases. James
  Vasile from legal is working

Re: Call for hosts for GUADEC 2012

[Brian Cameron]

Jon:

On 04/27/11 09:56 AM, William Jon McCann wrote:

What does this call (and its deadline) mean with regard to a potential
co-hosting with aKademy in 2012 again ("Desktop Summit")?


The GNOME Foundation board and the aKademy board has already decided
that the Desktop Summit will be a bi-annual event for the time being.


Oh, that is unfortunate.  I assume that a newly elected board will be
able to reverse this decision.  Is that correct?


Yes, I thought that should have been clear by my saying "for the time
being".

Since there are questions, I will try to be more clear.  I think that
GNOME and aKademy have only really agreed to have a co-hosted event in
2011 and to not have a co-hosted event in 2012.  Beyond that, I do not
think there is a real clear plan beyond a recognition that having a
co-hosted event bi-annually seems to be a forming pattern.  Decisions
are very much being made year-by-year.

But, correct, these decisions will be made by future elected boards
and I would imagine that they would base their decisions on input from
The GNOME Foundation community and how well things go in Berlin.

Brian
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Re: Meeting Minutes Published - March 29th, 2011

[Brian Cameron]

Olav:

On 04/26/11 09:35 AM, Olav Vitters wrote:

On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 09:29:09AM -0500, Brian Cameron wrote:

For example, there have been several occasions where organizations
have approached The GNOME Foundation wanting to donate funds with the
idea of doing a link exchange.  We have turned away such offers in


That were real contacts with organizations that *really* wanted to
support GNOME?


I know of at least two occasions where there was a real discussion
with another organization that worked with Free Software who wanted to
advertise on the GNOME website.  We turned them both away because we
couldn't agree how to promote their organization on The GNOME website.


I also see loads of link exchange emails for gnome.org and regard all as
spam.


Perhaps I shouldn't have used the term "link exchange".  It really does
not describe well the two situations that we had in the past.  I used
the term more because I figured people would understand the concept.

Brian
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Re: Meeting Minutes Published - March 29th, 2011

[Brian Cameron]

Martyn:

On 04/26/11 02:11 AM, Martyn Russell wrote:

On 18/04/11 18:01, Martyn Russell wrote:

On 18/04/11 16:34, Stormy Peters wrote:

No comments from anyone on this?


Here are my thoughts...


I could put something a bold on the gtk.org website, but I would rather
we had something more centralised on gnome.org for all companies?

I get the feeling there isn't much interest in this?


I think there is a lot of interest, actually.

For a long time, The GNOME Foundation has been discussing how to make
it more possible to partner with other organizations.  Lately we have
been talking about how to better promote organizations that do GNOME or
GTK+ consulting.  There is also value in providing some way to promote
organizations that wish to donate or provide resources to The GNOME
Foundation.  Perhaps we should be working to solve the larger problem?

For example, there have been several occasions where organizations
have approached The GNOME Foundation wanting to donate funds with the
idea of doing a link exchange.  We have turned away such offers in
the past simply because The GNOME Foundation currently does not have
the infrastructure to do this - namely there is no clear place on the
GNOME website, GNOME planet, GNOME blogs, etc. to put such links or
advertisements.  We could also probably do more things like associating
donor logos with events to better encourage donations and fund raising.
For example, perhaps we could do more to sell package sponsorships where
an organization could get their logo associated with a number of events
over the year for a more reasonable cost than doing them all separately.

Another example is that sometimes organizations do things like donate
a server or computer to The GNOME Foundation.  The GNOME website does
not currently have a nice place to say thanks about such things.  The
Friends of GNOME has a page to thank previous donors[1], but it does
not seem the right place to thank organizations, and does not seem
particularly inspired anyway.

I also have some concern about what the larger GNOME Foundation
community even thinks about doing such things.  Putting ads on a
website can make for negative reactions, especially if not done
tastefully.  I would think this would be a concern regardless of
whether promoting GTK+ or GNOME consulting firms, or organizations in
general.

In all of these situations, I would think that The GNOME Foundation
would only want to be seen as endorsing organizations that are
reputable and reasonably aligned with The GNOME Foundation's mission
to promote GNOME and Free Software.  So, there likely is a need to
have some process to review and approve offers to promote such
organizations or consulting firms.

At any rate, if there is interest in tackling this problem, it seems
like it might make most sense to solve the more general problem.  These
problems are so similar that it would probably be easier to tackle both
at once and I think it would help this project gain traction.

Brian

[1] http://www-old.gnome.org/friends/previous-donors.html
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Meeting Minutes Published - April 12th, 2011

[Brian Cameron]

The meeting minutes for the April 12th GNOME Foundation board
meeting is now published.  Refer here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20110412

Other past board meetings are archived here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes

-- text of the latest minutes follows --

Minutes for Meeting of April 12th, 2011

Next Meeting

* April 26th, 2011

Attending

* Bastien Nocera
* Brian Cameron
* Emily Chen
* Og Maciel
* Paul Cutler
* Rosanna Yuen

Regrets

* Germán Póo-Caamaño
* Andreas Nilsson

Missing

Recurring Items

* Review past action items.
* Did each person update their action items?
* Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published
  to foundation-announce and foundation-list.
* Make sure to use gobby server for better minute taking.

New Items

* GNOME 3 Release Hackfest and GNOME.Asia Update
  o The event went really well. People felt it really added to
the GNOME 3 launch.
  o Having the event in India made GNOME.Asia feel much more
like an international event since the previous three
GNOME.Asia events were all in eastern Asia.
  o A lot of local people from India were very enthusiastic to
learn about GNOME and interested to get involved.
  o There seems to be some significant interest in setting up
GNOME Users Groups in India.
  o Emily mailed the GNOME.Asia Status Report to the board.
  o GNOME.Asia is starting to plan where and when the next
GNOME.Asia event will be held. A call for bids planned for
this fall to determine this.
  o ACTION: Emily will contact Allan Day to announce the best
photo competition on www.gnome.org.

* Marketing Contracts
  o The contracts are now completed.
  o ACTION - Paul will work with Allan Day and Sumana
Harihareswara to get the marketing contracts signed.

* LGM Funds
  o Germán finished the bookkeeping for the LGM Funds.
  o The board decided to move forward with dispersing funds to
LGM, paying them the $25,002.24 (USD) that The GNOME
Foundation has been holding for them.
  o The board decided to no longer manage funds for external
organizations. It is too much work, especially now that
there is more of an interest for GNOME projects to get more
involved with fund raising.

* GIMP / a11y / GStreamer / Banshee Funds
  o The GNOME Foundation holds money for these projects
currently. The board decided to organize a meeting between
these teams to determine how to best manage handling the
money going forward. For example:
+ Other GNOME projects may want money to be held. Need
  to determine a reasonable mechanism for allowing
  projects to enter/exit this program.
+ Need to decide rules for how the money should be
  managed. What happens with funds that are not spent
  for extended periods of time, for example? For
  example, GIMP has only spent their funds once to
  attend a LGM conference. The GIMP money is just
  accumulating.
+ The accounting burden is non-trivial, and an
  accountant probably needs to be hired. How should
  this be managed?
  o ACTION: Brian will touch base with the GIMP organizers to
find out their plans for the GIMP money.
  o ACTION: Brian & Og to coordinate a fund raising meeting
with the GStreamer, a11y, GIMP, and Banshee teams. Will
draft an agenda.

* Starting 2012 GUADEC Call for Bids.
  o ACTION: Brian will draft an 2012 GUADEC Call for Bids email
based on previous ones.
  o ACTION: Emily will contact the guadec-list and gugmeisters
mailing lists to encourage people to get involved with
GUADEC 2012 planning.

* Boston Summit
  o ACTION: Paul will email J5 to find out what needs to happen
for Boston Summit 2011 planning.

* Advisory Board Meeting
  o The board decided the next Advisory Board meeting will be
held on Tuesday, May 3rd.
  o ACTION: Emily will send out an email the the Advisory Board
list letting them know the next meeting is scheduled for
May 3rd.

* Sumana Harihareswara requested $200 to pay for a press release
  marketing service on April 2nd No responses so far.
  o The board agreed to pay the $200.

* JC Hulce asked to use the GNOME logo for "Gubuntu". What response
  should be given?
  o Permission only required if changes are made to the logo
  o Request

Re: Call for hosts for GUADEC 2012

[Brian Cameron]

Andre:

On 04/18/11 03:05 PM, Andre Klapper wrote:

On Mon, 2011-04-18 at 15:02 -0500, Brian Cameron wrote:

For those of you who would like to host the next GUADEC in 2012 you are
hereby invited to write a formal invitation to the board of the GNOME
Foundation at board gnome org.  The deadline for the proposals is June
20, 2011.  Please send proposals to bo...@gnome.org.


What does this call (and its deadline) mean with regard to a potential
co-hosting with aKademy in 2012 again ("Desktop Summit")?


The GNOME Foundation board and the aKademy board has already decided
that the Desktop Summit will be a bi-annual event for the time being.

So GUADEC 2012 will not be a co-hosted event.

Sorry if this was not more clear already.

Brian

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Call for hosts for GUADEC 2012

[Brian Cameron]

The GNOME Foundation invites proposals to host GUADEC, the annual GNOME
conference, during the Summer of 2012.  GUADEC is the biggest gathering
of GNOME users and developers and includes a multi-day conference, the
annual general meeting of the members of the GNOME Foundation, and a
week of coding, meeting, and discussing.

For those of you who would like to host the next GUADEC in 2012 you are
hereby invited to write a formal invitation to the board of the GNOME
Foundation at board gnome org.  The deadline for the proposals is June
20, 2011.  Please send proposals to bo...@gnome.org.

The conference will require availability of facilities for one week,
including a weekend, during the summer. Dates should avoid other key
free software conferences.

Key points which proposals should consider, and which will be taken into
account when deciding among candidates, are:

 * Local community support for hosting the conference.
 * Venue details.  Information about infrastructure and facilities
   to hold the conference should be provided.
 * Information about how internet connectivity will be managed.
 * Lodging choices ranging from affordable housing to nicer hotels, and
   information about distances between the venue and lodging options.
 * The availability of restaurants or the organization of catering
   on-site, cost of food/beer.
 * The availability and cost of travel from major European cities.
 * Local industry and government support.
 * Please provide a reasonably detailed budget.
 * Bear in mind that at GUADEC, the hallway track and social activities
   are also very important.

See the GUADEC check list [1] and the call-for-bids for previous GNOME
events for additional things to consider when putting together a
call-for-bids.  Also feel free to contact bo...@gnome.org if you have
any questions or need help.

A few words of advice: organizing a conference of this size is hard
work, but there are many people in the community with experience who
will be there to help you.

Thank you and looking forward to your bids!

Brian

[1] - http://live.gnome.org/GuadecPlanningHowTo/CheckList
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Re: Meeting Minutes Published - March 29th, 2011

[Brian Cameron]

Olav:

On 04/12/11 07:39 AM, Olav Vitters wrote:

On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 09:00:06PM -0500, Brian Cameron wrote:

 * Paul&  Andreas - Will raise their concerns regarding allowing
   GNOME projects joining the Conservancy.


Seems outcome is -1. What's bad/concern?


There is nothing bad about Conservancy.  It is a great organization
that is promoting free software.  What's not to like?

Note that the last time we talked with the Conservancy, they were still
trying to determine whether or not they would be willing to accept GNOME
projects.  If they decide not, then joining the Conservancy may not be
an option for GNOME projects regardless of what we think.

That said, the GNOME board of directors are not very supportive of
GNOME projects joining the Conservancy.  Since The GNOME Foundation
is already a non-for-profit, our organization is in a position to
provide most, if not all, of the useful benefits that Conservancy
provides.  Overall, we feel it is better for GNOME projects to work
within the GNOME framework if possible.

Thats said, it took the Conservancy a long time to set up its
organization to provide its benefits.  So, the board hopes that people
in the GNOME community can be patient as we figure out how to set up
similar benefits.  For example, The GNOME Foundation is currently
working to figure out how to better manage accounting so we can handle
the additional burden of helping GNOME projects do more targeted fund
raising.

Brian
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Meeting Minutes Published - March 29th, 2011

[Brian Cameron]

The meeting minutes for the March 29th GNOME Foundation board
meeting is now published.  Refer here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20110329

Other past board meetings are archived here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes

-- text of the latest minutes follows --

Minutes for Meeting of March 29th, 2011

Next Meeting

* April 11th, 2011

Attending

* Andreas Nilsson
* Bastien Nocera
* Brian Cameron
* Emily Chen
* Germán Póo-Caamaño
* Og Maciel
* Paul Cutler
* Rosanna Yuen

Regrets

Missing

Recurring Items

* Review past action items.
* Did each person update their action items?
* Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published
  to foundation-announce and foundation-list.
* Make sure to use gobby server for better minute taking.

New Items

* On February 16th, Joanmarie Diggs asked if the GNOME a11y PayPal
  account can be used to receive GNOME a11y funds.
  o The main issue is that The GNOME Foundation does not have
the staff to handle the accounting. Currently all PayPal
transactions are handled manually. If this could be
automated, this would make it more possible to consider
this sort of request.
  o Perhaps The GNOME Foundation needs to find volunteers or
hire people to help with accounting or to automate PayPal &
CRM automation.
  o ACTION: Paul - Will write a response to Joanie Diggs to
discuss how to move forward regarding receiving GNOME a11y
funds.

* There has also been discussion about whether GNOME projects
  should be allowed to join Conservancy.
  o Andreas, Bastien, Paul: -1
  o Emily, German, Og, Paul: 0
  o ACTION: Brian - Will follow up with the lawyers to discuss
what would be involved to provide liability protection like
what the Conservancy provides and to see if they have any
perspective about whether the GNOME Foundation should allow
GNOME projects to join Conservancy.
  o ACTION: Paul & Andreas - Will raise their concerns allowing
GNOME projects joining the Conservancy.

* CiviCRM Improvements
  o The board decided to approve $1,000 (USD) to improve the
CiviCRM, as Rosanna requested.
  o ACTION: Og - Will notify Rosanna that $1,000 (USD) to
improve CiviCRM has been approved.

* GNOME 3 release!
  o Andreas feels that the GNOME 3 release is solid.

* GNOME.Asia (Brian, Andreas, or Emily - update)
  o Lots of good work getting done on marketing, the release
team, improving websites, fixing bugs.
  o Everybody in Bangalore is excited about the Hackfest.
  o The entrance admission has been eliminated, so the number
of participants is naturally increasing.
  o The event is profitable even though there is no longer an
entrance fee.

* GNOME 3 Launch Party Update
  o Some parties have had trouble receiving the goodies due to
tax issues.
  o Alan & Emily are planning a GNOME 3 Launch Party photo
competition.
  o The board decided to return the $700 (USD) surplus to The
GNOME Foundation bank account.

* Johannes Schmid informed the board that at the Toronto hackfest
  that they discussed about an organization that decided to use Qt
  instead of GTK+ mainly because they were able to get a support
  contract for Qt. Therefore we thought it might be a good idea to
  give interested companies a chance to present themselves as
  commercial support options on developer.gnome.org. Perhaps via
  some "Get support" link. Do we have any response?
  o ACTION: Andreas - Will discuss with Ryan Lortie providing
support contracts for GTK+.

* Improve news.gnome.org
  o ACTION: Andreas - Will look into planet.gnome.org header to
see if we can add a link to see news.gnome.org. This will
help more readers to hopefully notice IRC meeting.

* Continuing to work towards improving relationships with
  Canonical.

Completed Actions

* Bastien - To e-mail Murray about contacting UPS one more time
  regarding the lost Event Box.
* Bastien - Will help find a home for the European Event Box.
* Emily - Create a PO in Oracle and transfer the gold sponsorship
  from Oracle to GNOME.Asia Summit 2011 (Done, in process)
* Emily - Produce, Deliver and Tracking goodies for GNOME 3.0
  Launch Parties.(Done)
* Emily - Prepare to launch the GNOME Store in Beijing
  o http://gnome.taobao.com/
* Og - Will notify Rosanna that $1,000 (USD) to improve CiviCRM has
  been approved. This new action item was completed shortly after

Meeting Minutes Published - March 15th, 2011

[Brian Cameron]

The meeting minutes for the March 15th GNOME Foundation board meeting is
now published.  Refer here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20110315

Other past board meetings are archived here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes

-- text of the latest minutes follows --

Minutes for Meeting of March 15th, 2011

Next Meeting

* March 29th, 2011

Attending

* Andreas Nilsson
* Bastien Nocera
* Brian Cameron
* Emily Chen
* Germán Póo-Caamaño
* Og Maciel
* Paul Cutler
* Rosanna Yuen

Regrets

Missing

Recurring Items

* Review past action items.
* Did each person update their action items?
* Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published
  to foundation-announce and foundation-list.
* Make sure to use gobby server for better minute taking.

New Items

* Discussion about improving The GNOME Foundation relationship with
  Canonical.
  o Mark Shuttleworth raised some good questions and concerns
about GNOME direction and GNOME release team process to the
board.
  o ACTION: Paul - Will put together an email to Canonical
regarding working towards improving relations.
  o ACTION: Paul - Set up a phone call with the right people at
Canonical, the GNOME Foundation board and/or GNOME release
team to discuss how to improve relations.

* Fraudulent check
  o A person not affiliated with GNOME brought to the board's
attention a fraudulent check that was used for a non-GNOME
related promotion.
  o The check used publicly available account information (used
for donations), and used a GNOME account that does not
allow for withdrawals.
  o The recipient of the check did not try to deposit it, as it
looked fraudulent.

* ED Hiring
  o The board agreed to do away with the bonus plan and instead
roll $15,000 (USD) into the salary directly. This is, on
average, the amount Stormy received via bonus in past
years.

* Bastien is looking for new contacts at Yahoo.
  o ACTION: Bastien - Reach out to the GNOME Advisory Board via
email to see if they can help out with providing contacts
at Yahoo.

* Desktop Summit
  o The registration website is currently using KDE
infrastructure.
  o Some people are not comfortable with this, but this was the
easiest way to get things done with very limited resources.
  o ACTION: Andreas - Will look into the possibility of a
design where the facade is more neutral.
  o ACTION: Andreas - Will blog a Desktop Summit status report.

* GNOME 3.0 Launch
  o After producing and shipping the GNOME 3.0 launch goodies
to 112 registered launch parties, there is $739.96 (USD)
budget remaining.
  o How should the budget be used? Options discussed:
+ Transfer the money back to the GNOME Foundation
  account.
+ Use the money to support Bangalore GNOME.Asia Summit
  and 3.0 Hackfest.
+ Use the money to provide more goodies for parties
  (e.g. for parties that registered late).
+ Use the money to provide goodies to offer in exchange
  for a donation at GNOME.Asia?
  o The board agreed to consider these options and vote via
email after the meeting.
  o ACTION: Emily - Follow by email about vote for the options
for extra money
  o ACTION: Emily - Update Tracking ID for 112 Launch Party
Packages.
  o ACTION: Emily - Prepare to launch the GNOME Store in Beijing
  o ACTION: Emily - Create a PO in Oracle and transfer the gold
sponsorship from Oracle to GNOME.Asia Summit 2011
  o Emily - Produce, Deliver and Tracking goodies for GNOME 3.0
Launch Parties.

* The GNOME Foundation acquired the gnome-touch.org domain.

Completed Actions

* Andreas - Will send out emails to get more contacts or
  suggestions for someone who may be interested in applying.
* Og - Will work to update the GNOME websites to update pages that
  refer to Stormy as the Executive Director.
* Og - Will email the ED mailing list and ask for an update on how
  the hiring process is going, how many applications, etc.
* Og - Will email the foundation-list mailing list with a reminder
  of January 12th IRC meeting time details.
* Paul - To send email to the Advisory Board to request for help
  regarding Dave Neary's request. (Complete thanks to Vincent's
  reminder)
* Paul - Will discuss with Canonical what we can do to improve
  communication. (Conference call with 

Meeting Minutes Published - February 15th, 2011

[Brian Cameron]

The meeting minutes for the March 1st GNOME Foundation board meeting is
now published.  Refer here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20110301

Other past board meetings are archived here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes

-- text of the latest minutes follows --

Minutes for Meeting of March 1st, 2011

Next Meeting

* March 8th, 2011

Attending

* Bastien Nocera
* Brian Cameron
* Emily Chen
* Germán Póo-Caamaño
* Og Maciel
* Paul Cutler
* Andreas Nilsson

Regrets

* Rosanna Yuen

Missing

Recurring Items

* Review past action items.
* Did each person with action items send their status reports to
  the board list before the meeting?
* Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published
  to foundation-announce and foundation-list.
* Make sure to start up the gobby server for better note taking.
* Update foundation.gnome.org website.

New Items

* Marketing Contract
  o Allan Day and Sumana Harihareswara both accepted the
Marketing contract position.
  o Plan is to provide guidance via the gnome-marketing mailing
list. Several board members are subscribed to this list.
  o Need to finalize the contract.
  o ACTION - Brian will finalize contract with Allan Day and
Sumana Harihareswara

* ED Hiring
  o The ED Hiring Committee provided the board with
recommendations. The board is currently planning interviews.
  o ACTION: Brian to provide the questions the ED Hiring
Committee used when doing interviews to the board via
email.

* Improving communication with Canonical
  o ACTION: Paul will discuss with Canonical what we can do to
improve communication.

* Event Box
  o ACTION: Bastien will help find a home for the European
Event Box.

* Hardware
  o The System76 laptop will be made available to the new ED
when hired.
  o A new laptop will be purchased to replace Rosanna's aging
one.
  o ACTION: Paul will follow-up to acquire a laptop for
Rosanna.

Completed Actions

* Brian - To provide the questions the ED Hiring Committee used
  when doing interviews to the board via email. This new action
  item was completed shortly after the meeting.
* Paul - Updated foundation.gnome.org to remove Stormy's bio
* Paul - Extended job offers to two marketing contractors and let
  the others know they didn't get the position
* Paul - Will update the GNOME Mobile website with the link and
  logo improvements.
* Rosanna - Will take care of providing funds needed for production
  of goodies to be sent to registered parties.
* Rosanna - Will handle the purchase orders with Google for
  GIMP/GStreamer GSoC mentor payments as she has been doing it
  already for GNOME.

Status of action items

* Andreas - Will follow up with Andrew Savory from LiMo to see if
  relevant information from their GTK+ study can be made more
  public. (will ping again).
* Andreas - To ask Kat if she can reach out to the
  gnome...@gnome.org mailing list about finding local German
  volunteers to help with the Desktop Summit 2011. (will ping again)
* Andreas - Will send out emails to get more contacts or
  suggestions for someone who may be interested in applying.
* Bastien - Will try to find people who can consolidate the
  feedback about the Texas Instruments Zoom2 device to provide back
  to Texas Instruments.
* Bastien - Will take over the internal review process task from
  Diego Urrelo (hopefully he can automate it).
* Bastien - To find a way to automate the process of exporting
  results from internal review process and email it to the board.
* Bastien - To discuss the use of badges (a-la Creative Commons,
  last.fm page colors, or PSN badges).
* Bastien - To talk to Olav Vitters about using bugzilla to track
  Friends of GNOME post card sending.
* Bastien - To get _a_ WebOS/Palm contact from Lennart Poettering.
* Bastien - To contact the BBC to discuss about possible
  collaboration in working directly with GNOME.
* Bastien - Will reach out to Dave Richards from the City of Largo
  to plan for a hackfest there.
* Bastien - To e-mail Murray about contacting UPS one more time
  regarding the lost Event Box.
* Bastien - To e-mail GIMP about changing their website, and
  procedure for donating.
* Bastien - Will email Joanie about options about whether it makes
  sense for orca to consider being a FreeDesktop project.
* Brian - Develop trademark usage forms for common use cases. James
  Vasile from legal is working with Brian on this.
* Brian - Check records of organizations with existi

Re: Dropping TM when using GNOME Brand?

[Brian Cameron]

Allan:

Sounds good.  Let me know when you have the page updated and I'll ask
the legal folks to give it a final look over to make sure the wording
is good.

Brian


On 03/ 2/11 09:43 AM, Allan Day wrote:

I understand that as "it's okay to remove the TM in the two examples I
gave". If someone disagrees, shout loud :-)


Thanks for the clarification. I'll add these notes to our brand
guidelines [1] if that's OK.

Allan

[1] http://live.gnome.org/BrandGuidelines


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Re: Dropping TM when using GNOME Brand?

[Brian Cameron]

Vincent:


A few years ago, it was agreed that it's fine to use the GNOME logo with
just GNOME instead of GNOME™: the trademark is still valid even if we
don't explicitly put the ™. Is this still valid?

Use cases:
  - GNOME logo during boot of the GNOME 3 live image
  - GNOME logo in the System Information panel of the control center
  - etc.


I asked our legal folks this question, and they responded as follows:

> Yes, it is recommended that you generally use the Tm, but in isolated
> instances it's fine to go without.

I hope this is helpful.

Brian
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Meeting Minutes Published - February 15th, 2011

[Brian Cameron]

The meeting minutes for the February 15th GNOME Foundation board
meeting is now published.  Refer here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20110215

Other past board meetings are archived here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes

-- text of the latest minutes follows --

Next Meeting

* March 1st, 2011

Attending

* Bastien Nocera
* Emily Chen
* Germán Póo-Caamaño
* Og Maciel
* Paul Cutler
* Rosanna Yuen
* Brian Cameron
* Og Maciel

Regrets

* Andreas Nilsson

Missing

Recurring Items

* Review past action items.
* Did each person with action items send their status reports to
  the board list before the meeting?
* Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published
  to foundation-announce and foundation-list.
* Make sure to start up the gobby server for better note taking.
* Update foundation.gnome.org website.

New Items

* Marketing Contract
  o Several candidates have applied.
  o The Board has approved to spend $10,000 USD and hire two
people to assist with GNOME marketing (+6).

* FAD in Ghana
  o The board agreed that we would like to budget sending 2
people if possible (spending up to USD $5,000).
  o ACTION: Brian to follow up with Ben to find out if he is
interesting in going, and to try to identify 2 people to
go.

* GNOME 3.0 Launch parties - Budget and update
  o There are now 130 registered parties. Originally planned
for 100 parties.
+ 25 parties in India alone.
  o The board has agreed to spend USD $7,111 in support of the
launch parties since more parties have registered than
expected. The previous amount was USD $5,926.
  o Originally planned for 500 t-shirts. Now planning 600.
  o Planning to produce some things locally if there are a
large number of parties in a region.

* GNOME.Asia Summit 2011 update
  o Google is now a Platinum sponsor. Thank you to Google!

* Servers
  o The board has approved the purchase of the hardware needed
+ Two new servers. One is similar to ComboBox to host
  VMs to migrate GNOME services too, including Tomboy
  Online and others. The second server (USD $2000+)
  will host mission critical services, including LDAP,
  git and account related services.
+ This replaces the "button" server which has crashed
  multiple times in the last year.

* Dave Neary's Advisory board request
  o ACTION: Paul to send email to the Advisory Board to request
for help.

* Trademark issues - can we update GNOME Mobile with a link to the
  GNOME Mobile product?
  o ACTION: Brian will mail Paul the link to the GNOME mobile
product that we should add to the Mobile website, and
follow up with the lawyers. To trademark GNOME Mobile, the
GNOME logo needs to be more clearly associated with the
GNOME Mobile product.
  o ACTION: Paul will update the GNOME Mobile website with the
link and logo improvements.

* The board voted to support the Banshee maintainers proposal for
  Amazon / Banshee integration with Canonical.

* Rosanna highlighted that the taxes are due today. They are not
  ready, but an extension has been filed.

Completed Actions

* Andreas - Will invite Dave Neary to give an update to the
  advisory board.
* Andreas - Will find out if the Desktop Summit call for Sponsors
  will be ready to present at the advisory board meeting.
* Brian - Will send out an email to marketing-list about a deadline
  for resume submission.
* Brian - To follow up with Ben to find out if he is interesting in
  going, and to try to identify 2 people to go. This new action was
   done shortly after the meeting.
* Brian - Will mail Paul the link to the GNOME mobile product that
  we should add to the Mobile website, and follow up with the
  lawyers. To trademark GNOME Mobile, the GNOME logo needs to be
  more clearly associated with the GNOME Mobile product. This new
  action was done shortly after the meeting.
* Paul - Will follow up with the marketing-list to provide more
  details about what sort of work we would like to have done for
  the marketing contract.
* Paul - Will send an email to announce the meeting agenda to the
  advisory board list by Friday.

Status of action items

* Andreas - Will follow up with Andrew Savory from LiMo to see if
  relevant information from their GTK+ study can be made more
  public. (will ping again).
* Andreas - To ask Kat if she can reach out to the
  gnome...@gnome.org mai

Re: Meeting Minutes Published - February 1st, 2011

[Brian Cameron]

Og:

Looking on the board mailing list archives, you did send regrets to the
list on February 1st.  So I think you did not attend.

Brian


On 02/16/11 03:07 PM, Og Maciel wrote:

On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 4:02 PM, Stormy Peters  wrote:

You represent GNOME. You are a director on the Board of Directors. You
represent me and everyone of the GNOME Foundation members. If my
congressman/woman could not remember if they participated in important
discussions, I'd be equally concerned.


Understood. I hope you'll accept my word that I am fully committed to
the work I do for the GNOME Foundation and that the fact I was
confused about being present at said meeting was by no means lack of
my interest or commitment. I have been to one too many meetings and
was truly confused. I sure hope this lapse won't tarnish all the hard
work I have done so far.

As your representative I value your concern and thank you so much for
making sure I stay true to my commitment to the Foundation and
community.


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Re: Meeting Minutes Published - February 1st, 2011

[Brian Cameron]

Stormy:


On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 12:46 PM, Brian Cameron
mailto:brian.came...@oracle.com>> wrote:

* Review past action items.
* Did each person with action items send their status reports to
  the board list before the meeting?

Has this been happening? Some of the action items have been there for a
long time. Some have been on there since last July.


We did do a review of action items during the December 23rd and January
6th meetings.  We did close a lot of old and stale actions, as you can
see:

  http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20101223
  http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20110106

That said, there are probably some that we missed and should address.
I already added it to our agenda for the next meeting to do this again.


* Orca / Software Freedom Conservancy
  o Discussions underway. The SFC is working to determine if it
is possible for GNOME projects to join the SFC.
  o ACTION: Bastien will email Joanie about options about
whether it makes sense for orca to consider being a
FreeDesktop project.

What would be the advantage for GNOME projects to join the SFC? I
thought the GNOME Foundation provided all the services that SFC does.
(I'm not opposed to the idea, just would like to understand why the
projects want to.)


I think their website explains the benefits:

  http://sfconservancy.org/overview/
  http://sfconservancy.org/members/services/
  http://sfconservancy.org/members/apply/

The main benefits seem to be that they will help your project take care
of finances/fundraising, and they also provide some protection against
liabilities.  The above website provides more details.

So far, we have just had some discussions with the folks at Conservancy
about whether it makes sense for GNOME projects to be a part of
Conservancy.  That said, it is not yet clear if the Conservancy will
accept GNOME projects.  We are waiting to find out from them if it is
even an option.

I believe that the orca project is interested in using Conservancy to
accept donations targeting the orca project.

There has been some discussion amongst the board about whether it might
make sense to allow people to make GNOME a11y donations via Friends of
GNOME or otherwise handle this within The GNOME community.  However,
some people (e.g. the marketing team) has concerns that if we open the
door to allowing specific GNOME subgroups or projects to receive
earmarked funds that this would or could spiral out of control, or make
FoG too complicated.

But, even if we supported receiving a11y funds via some GNOME Foundation
mechanism, I think Joanie is still interested in having orca join the
Conservancy if possible since she has indicated that she is very
interested in the liability protection that they offer.

There has been some discussion about whether The GNOME Foundation could
provide similar protections, but I believe that their liability
protection is possible because of the way their organization is
structured.  For example, they require that all project funds be
managed centrally by them.  I am not sure it would be practical or
possible for The GNOME Foundation to require this of all GNOME modules.

Brian
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Re: Meeting Minutes Published - February 1st, 2011

[Brian Cameron]

Og:

On 02/16/11 02:16 PM, Og Maciel wrote:

On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 2:46 PM, Brian Cameron  wrote:

Attending

* Andreas Nilsson
* Bastien Nocera
* Brian Cameron
* Emily Chen
* Germán Póo-Caamaño
* Og Maciel
* Paul Cutler
* Rosanna Yuen

Regrets

* Og Maciel


Was I there or not? :)


Can you fix the Wiki if it is in error?

Thanks,

Brian

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Meeting Minutes Published - February 1st, 2011

[Brian Cameron]

The meeting minutes for the February 1st GNOME Foundation board
meeting is now published.  Refer here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20110201

Other past board meetings are archived here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes

-- text of the latest minutes follows --

Minutes for Meeting of February 1st, 2011

Next Meeting

* February 15th, 2011

Attending

* Andreas Nilsson
* Bastien Nocera
* Brian Cameron
* Emily Chen
* Germán Póo-Caamaño
* Og Maciel
* Paul Cutler
* Rosanna Yuen

Regrets

* Og Maciel

Missing

Recurring Items

* Review past action items.
* Did each person with action items send their status reports to
  the board list before the meeting?
* Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published
  to foundation-announce and foundation-list.
* Make sure to start up the gobby server for better note taking.
* Update foundation.gnome.org website.

New Items

* LiMo is leaving the GNOME Advisory Board.

* Advisory Board Meeting
  o Meeting on Tuesday, February 8th @ 11:00 a.m. EST.
  o GNOME Launch Party Update / bank transfer
  o Would like to invite Fred Muller, who drafted the call for
sponsors, to attend the Advisory Board meeting. to present
about GNOME.Asia and GNOME 3 Launch Parties.
  o Planned Agenda
+ Hiring Committee Update
  # Very high level, no need to discuss names or
numbers. Focus on timing and the process moving
along, when to expect more of an announcement.
+ LiMo Leaving the Advisory Board
+ Desktop Summit
+ GNOME 3 Launch Party
+ Mobile Bid Announcement
+ Event Box
  # Thank you to Canonical for providing funding.
  # Progress being made putting the Events Box
together, preparing a banner.
+ Marketing Position
+ Upcoming Hackfests.
  o Topics for Future Advisory Board Meeting agenda:
+ FoG Update
+ Travel
  o ACTION: Paul will send an email to announce the meeting
agenda to the adboard list by Friday.

* Desktop Summit.
  o Local meeting Desktop Summit at FOSDEM on Friday at 4pm @
hotel lobby.
  o ACTION: Andreas will invite Dave Neary to give an update to
the advisory board.
  o ACTION: Andreas will find out if the Desktop Summit call
for Sponsors will be ready to present at the advisory board
meeting.

* GNOME 3 Launch Parties
  o Over 50 parties have registered.
  o http://live.gnome.org/ThreePointZero/LaunchParty
  o ACTION: Rosanna will take care of providing funds needed
for production of goodies to be sent to registered parties.

* Marketing Position
  o ACTION: Brian will send out an email to marketing-list
about a deadline for resume submission.

* Orca / Software Freedom Conservancy
  o Discussions underway. The SFC is working to determine if it
is possible for GNOME projects to join the SFC.
  o ACTION: Bastien will email Joanie about options about
whether it makes sense for orca to consider being a
FreeDesktop project.

Completed Actions

* None

Status of action items

* Andreas - Will follow up with Andrew Savory from LiMo to see if
  relevant information from their GTK+ study can be made more
  public. (will ping again).
* Andreas - To ask Kat if she can reach out to the
  gnome...@gnome.org mailing list about finding local German
  volunteers to help with the Desktop Summit 2011. (will ping again)
* Andreas - Will send out emails to get more contacts or
  suggestions for someone who may be interested in applying.
* Bastien - Will try to find people who can consolidate the
  feedback about the Texas Instruments Zoom2 device to provide back
  to Texas Instruments.
* Bastien - Will take over the internal review process task from
  Diego Urrelo (hopefully he can automate it).
* Bastien - To find a way to automate the process of exporting
  results from internal review process and email it to the board.
* Bastien - To discuss the use of badges (a-la Creative Commons,
  last.fm page colors, or PSN badges).
* Bastien - To talk to Olav Vitters about using bugzilla to track
  Friends of GNOME post card sending.
* Bastien - To get _a_ WebOS/Palm contact from Lennart Poettering.
* Bastien - To contact the BBC to discuss about possible
  collaboration in working directly with GNOME.
* Bastien - Will reach out to Dave Richards from the City of Largo
  to plan for a

Meeting Minutes Published - January 18, 2011

[Brian Cameron]

The meeting minutes for the January 6th GNOME Foundation board
meeting is now published.  Refer here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20110118

Other past board meetings are archived here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes

-- text of the latest minutes follows --

Minutes for Meeting of January 18th, 2011

Next Meeting

* February 1st, 2011

Attending

* Andreas Nilsson
* Bastien Nocera
* Emily Chen
* Germán Póo-Caamaño
* Og Maciel
* Paul Cutler
* Rosanna Yuen

Regrets

Missing

* Brian Cameron

Recurring Items

* Review past action items.
* Did each person with action items send their status reports to
  the board list before the meeting?
* Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published
  to foundation-announce and foundation-list.
* Make sure to start up the gobby server for better note taking.
* Update foundation.gnome.org website.

New Items

* Mono Hackfest:
  o http://live.gnome.org/GNOME%2BMonoHackfest2010
  o Held in Brussels, February 7-11 (directly after FOSDEM
2011).
  o The Board has approved it. (+6)

* Event Box:
  o FOSDEM is in a couple of weeks and GNOME 3 is around the
corner. Having a functional Event Box in Europe is a must.
  o Bastien will ask to Murray to insist to UPS wrt the lost
Event Box.
  o We are going to replace the old event box with a new one.
€3,000 would be ok, but it should not restricted to that.
   If it were necessary, €5,000 well spent still would be ok.
   The figures are approximate.
  o [ACTION]: Bastien to e-mail Murray about contacting UPS one
more time regarding the lost Event Box.

* Friends of GNOME (FoG) updates
  o Needs to follow up with those who have deliverables.
+ Not getting replies.  Does the Board have any
  suggestions?
  o Keeping Previous Donors web page up to date.
  o Helping Rosanna track new subscriptions and donations.
+ GIMP
  # [ACTION]: Bastien to e-mail GIMP about changing
their website, and procedure for donating.
+ Women's Outreach
+ a11y

* Canonical notified the board of their plans to ship Qt by default.
  o http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/568
  o Discussing how to respond.
  o What can we do to improve the popularity of GTK+?
+ Better documentation, examples for User and Developer
  documentation may improve GTK+'s appeal.
+ Someone should take on spearheading a series of
  conversations, hackfests, etc .to raise GTK+
  awareness.
  # GNOME Journal themed publication with coding
tutorials?
  # Get some articles re-published from LWN?

Completed Actions

* Brian - Will discuss with Bradley Kuhn ideas about how to improve
  GNOME/a11y Fundraising.
* Paul - Will do a call for agenda items to the Advisory Board
  list.

Status of action items

* Andreas - Will follow up with Andrew Savory from LiMo to see if
  relevant information from their GTK+ study can be made more
  public. (will ping again).
* Andreas - To ask Kat if she can reach out to the
  gnome...@gnome.org mailing list about finding local German
  volunteers to help with the Desktop Summit 2011. (will ping again)
* Andreas - Will send out emails to get more contacts or
  suggestions for someone who may be interested in applying.
* Bastien - Will try to find people who can consolidate the
  feedback about the Texas Instruments Zoom2 device to provide back
  to Texas Instruments.
* Bastien - Will take over the internal review process task from
  Diego Urrelo (hopefully he can automate it).
* Bastien - To find a way to automate the process of exporting
  results from internal review process and email it to the board.
* Bastien - To discuss the use of badges (a-la Creative Commons,
  last.fm page colors, or PSN badges).
* Bastien - To talk to Olav Vitters about using bugzilla to track
  Friends of GNOME post card sending.
* Bastien - To get _a_ WebOS/Palm contact from Lennart Poettering.
* Bastien - To contact the BBC to discuss about possible
  collaboration in working directly with GNOME.
* Bastien - Will reach out to Dave Richards from the City of Largo
  to plan for a hackfest there.
* Brian - Develop trademark usage forms for common use cases. James
  Vasile from legal is working with Brian on this.
* Brian - Check records of organizations with existing contracts to
  use the GNOME trademark. Taken over from Vincent Untz. Look at

Re: Official announcement and invitation to GNOME 3.0 Hackfest and GNOME.Asia Summit 2011

[Brian Cameron]

Vinicius:


I would really like to go, but at the moment I am worried about how
much it would cost for me to go from Brazil to India. Kayak.com tells
me it is a 27 hours flight with prices from about USD 1800.

Considering that with this amount of money I can almost attend to two
European events, I would rather prefer to meet you guys later in some
closer venue.


If travel cost is the only concern, please consider submitting an
application for travel subsidy.

  http://live.gnome.org/Travel

Remember that applications that do a good job of explaining the things
you expect to do and get done at the hackfest tend to be taken most
seriously.  Having a good plan is a more important selection criteria
than the cost of travel.

Brian
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Re: sponsoring a GNOME developer training session at Fedora Action Day Ghana

[Brian Cameron]

Ben:

This sounds like a wonderful opportunity.  Thanks for continuing to
help us in this valuable way.  Some questions:

- When is the date?
- Considering it doesn't make sense to travel to someplace like Ghana
  for just 1 day, how many days lodging do you think is reasonable to
  motivate volunteers to consider helping us in this way?
- What language is the conference held in?  Should this affect who goes?
- Are there any concerns about getting visas?
- Does the event need to be focused on Fedora?  If The GNOME Foundation
  were sending people, could we get "GNOME" or "Free Software" in the
  event title?
- What visibility do you expect The GNOME Foundation will get from this?
- Could you provide more details about the budget?
- Could the GNOME training sessions be held on other days than the
  conference, so that the volunteer would need to be there for more
  than 1 day?  Or does it make sense to discuss with the event
  organizers making it a 2-day event or something?

We'd have to see a more detailed budget and plan to make a decision,
but it sounds very reasonable.  It is important to the GNOME Foundation
to reach out to the developing world.

Are there other conferences in Africa that you think we should be
planning to send people?

I do think that there should be an announcement on the developing-world
list.  I think we could be better about posting updates to that list,
and notification about possibly interesting events like this.

Brian



Isaac Sanni-Thomas, one of the Ghanian Fedora Ambassadors that I met
at Idlelo [1] last year, is organizing a Fedora Action Day (FAD) [2]
in Accra, Ghana:

http://d3vnulls.blogspot.com/2010/12/fad-2011-in-ghana.html

As part of my continued interest in GNOME related outreach activities
in Sub-Saharan Africa, I would like to help setup a GNOME developer
training session at this event. This is a great opportunity to promote
GNOME in this region because the primary organizors of this event are
from Ghana and are already working within F/OSS communities. We have a
good chance of attracting people to the GNOME community at this event.

What are the possibilities for getting travel sponsorship for this
event for 1 or 2 people (not necessarily me)? Here are suggestions for
sessions I would like to see but it really depends on the
person/people going:

* tour of GNOME 3
* hands on session working through the GNOME development work flow
(bugzilla, git, fixing real a bug or two, etc)
* hands on developer training - work through adding a small feature to
a GNOME module

I think it would be appropriate to have GNOMErs who have already been
doing outreach work in less economically developed countries run these
sessions but this is not required. I attended the 'GNOME in Asia and
Brazil' session run by Emily Chen and Jonh Wendell this year at
GUADEC. I think both of these people are good candidates for running
these training sessions at the Accra FAD. I haven't actually spoken to
either them yet so I could also post a request of volunteers on my
blog. Or one of you guys could ask for volunteers and pick an
appropriate person/people.

One of the challenges I see with this proposal is that Ghana is a long
way to travel in terms of time and money for only a one day event. One
of my personal goals for my outreach activities is to make this kind
of situation disappear by having GNOMErs in Sub-Saharan Africa. But
since we're not there yet, we're left with this situation.

Thanks for your time. I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Thanks, Ben

1. http://www.idlelo.net/
2. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FAD
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Re: How to open Gnome Malaysia Usergroup

[Brian Cameron]

Mohd:

On 01/19/11 06:28 AM, Mohd Fazli Azran wrote:

Dear sir,

I`m representative form Open Source Developer Club Malaysia (OSDCMY). We
are the local community in Malaysia that promote and market OSS to
Malaysia people. We now to ready to lead the OSS community in Malaysia s
now we start many project for OSS any link with may OSS community in
Malaysia like Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE, FreeBSD, Joomla, Drupal and etc.


Note that GNOME is a Free Software project.  There are some open source
groups that do have a "GNOME Users Group" subgroup.  According to the
GNOME Users Group guidelines:

  http://live.gnome.org/UserGroups/Guidelines

It is expected that GNOME Users Groups do make an effort to promote and
foster both GNOME and free software.  There is also a Code of Conduct
and Speaker Guidelines that apply to GNOME Users Groups members when
they are representing GNOME or at GNOME related functions.  There are
other details you should review in the Guidelines to fully understand.

Just so you understand what a "GNOME Users Group" means.

Brian
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Re: How to open Gnome Malaysia Usergroup

[Brian Cameron]

Also, look here:

   http://live.gnome.org/UserGroups

There is even a FAQ.

Brian


On 01/19/11 10:18 PM, Frederic Muller wrote:

Dear Mohd Fazli Azran,

I think you already have a lot of good suggestions and pointers to start
your new project. I'll recommend an excellent howto on running GNU/Linux
User Groups which can be applied to GNOME User Groups right here:
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/User-Group-HOWTO.html

You have about 15+ years of people experience in one single document
about what and what not to do to make your group successful. you just
need to apply some of the topics to be GNOME specific but overall a
great start for your group.

See you soon either online or live!

Fred

On 01/20/2011 11:25 AM, Pockey Lam wrote:

Dear Mohd,

It's nice to see you so passionate about FOSS and GNOME!

You can find a lot of useful information about how to start and run a
local GNOME community at http://live.gnome.org/UserGroups

As Brian mentioned, gugmasters and GNOME.Asia groups [1] are the right
places for you to contact.

As a core member of GNOME.Asia [2] , our aim is to grow the GNOME
community in Asia. We have members from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India,
Vietnam, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, etc. it would be nice if we
can have representatives from Malyasia as well! We have been also
helping local communities to start and grow their GNOME communities, we
can definitely put you in touch with other Asian Gugs (GNOME User
Groups), please do subscribe to the two mailing lists [1] and we can
talk more over there!

[1] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-asia-list
[1] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gugmasters-list
[2] http://live.gnome.org/GnomeAsia
[2] http://gnome.asia

One more thing! As the next major release, GNOME 3.0 is coming in early
April, we highly encourage local communities to celebrate this big
release, more information can be found at
http://live.gnome.org/ThreePointZero/LaunchParty. By hosting activities,
it can definitely help to boost GNOME awareness and users locally as
well.

There are indeed too much information to give regarding this topic and
we are all excited to see you joining us!

Cheers,
Pockey

On 01/20/2011 04:14 AM, Brian Cameron wrote:


Mohd:

Thank you for expressing an interest in setting up a GNOME Users Group.

Note that The GNOME Foundation has official User's Groups sign the
"Trademark Agreement for Users Groups" which you can find here:

http://live.gnome.org/Trademark

So, the first step would be to send bo...@gnome.org a signed copy of
the form if you find it agreeable.

Also the gugmasters mailing list is for people interested in GNOME
User's Groups, so it would be a good forum to join and discuss further.
Information about the list, including subscription information, is
here:

http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gugmasters-list
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gugmasters-list/

There is also a mailing list for GNOME users in Malaysia:

http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-my-list

Also, you might find the asia-summit-list to be a useful resource for
general Asian GNOME topics:

http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/asia-summit-list

Brian



I`m representative form Open Source Developer Club Malaysia
(OSDCMY). We
are the local community in Malaysia that promote and market OSS to
Malaysia people. We now to ready to lead the OSS community in
Malaysia s
now we start many project for OSS any link with may OSS community in
Malaysia like Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE, FreeBSD, Joomla, Drupal and
etc.

But in Malaysia i can see we not have any GNOME community. So think we
better start one and we can start 1st translation project. OSDC.My
already manage the biggest open source conference almost 2 years
already
we call it Malaysia Open Source Conference (MOSC <http://conf.oss.my>).
We now are prepare to do our 3rd MOSC2011 for this years. Yeah need a
lot of work to do now. But at least we can make people interest about
OSS and perhaps we can be one of the contributor to the OSS community
around the world. If we not start now others will not start. I`m also
involve other OSS ambassador like Fedora, openSUSE & PCBSD and OWASP.
Hope GNOME ca help us how to start GNOME Malaysia. Thanks

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Re: How to open Gnome Malaysia Usergroup

[Brian Cameron]

Mohd:

Thank you for expressing an interest in setting up a GNOME Users Group.

Note that The GNOME Foundation has official User's Groups sign the
"Trademark Agreement for Users Groups" which you can find here:

  http://live.gnome.org/Trademark

So, the first step would be to send bo...@gnome.org a signed copy of
the form if you find it agreeable.

Also the gugmasters mailing list is for people interested in GNOME
User's Groups, so it would be a good forum to join and discuss further.
Information about the list, including subscription information, is
here:

  http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gugmasters-list
  http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gugmasters-list/

There is also a mailing list for GNOME users in Malaysia:

  http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-my-list

Also, you might find the asia-summit-list to be a useful resource for
general Asian GNOME topics:

  http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/asia-summit-list

Brian



I`m representative form Open Source Developer Club Malaysia (OSDCMY). We
are the local community in Malaysia that promote and market OSS to
Malaysia people. We now to ready to lead the OSS community in Malaysia s
now we start many project for OSS any link with may OSS community in
Malaysia like Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE, FreeBSD, Joomla, Drupal and etc.

But in Malaysia i can see we not have any GNOME community. So think we
better start one and we can start 1st translation project. OSDC.My
already manage the biggest open source conference almost 2 years already
we call it Malaysia Open Source Conference (MOSC ).
We now are prepare to do our 3rd MOSC2011 for this years. Yeah need a
lot of work to do now. But at least we can make people interest about
OSS and perhaps we can be one of the contributor to the OSS community
around the world. If we not start now others will not start. I`m also
involve other OSS ambassador like Fedora, openSUSE & PCBSD and OWASP.
Hope GNOME ca help us how to start GNOME Malaysia. Thanks

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Issue with meeting minutes

[Brian Cameron]

In the latest GNOME Foundation board meeting minutes (January 6th),
some information that we intended to keep private was included:


  * Hiring updates
o Marketing: only Lefty has applied so far (private)
  + ACTION: Andreas will send out emails to get more
contacts or suggestions for someone who may be
interested in applying.


We did not mean to highlight specifics about who had applied for this
position.  Instead we meant to communicate that we were simply seeking
more applications at this point in time.

Apologies for this oversight,

Brian
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Meeting Minutes Published - January 6, 2011

[Brian Cameron]

The meeting minutes for the January 6th GNOME Foundation board
meeting is now published.  Refer here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20110106

Other past board meetings are archived here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes

-- text of the latest minutes follows --

Minutes for Meeting of January 6th, 2011

Next Meeting

* January 18th, 2010

Attending

* Andreas Nilsson
* Brian Cameron
* Og Maciel
* Paul Cutler
* Rosanna Yuen

Regrets

* Bastien Nocera
* Emily Chen
* Germán Póo-Caamaño

Missing

Recurring Items

* Review past action items.
* Did each person with action items send their status reports to
  the board list before the meeting?
* Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published
  to foundation-announce and foundation-list.
* Make sure to start up the gobby server for better note taking.
* Update foundation.gnome.org website.

New Items

* Friends of GNOME (FoG) Updates
  o Needs to follow up with those who have deliverables.
  o Keeping Previous Donors web page up to date.
  o Helping Zana track new subscriptions and donations.
+ GIMP
+ Women's Outreach
+ a11y

* a11y Fundraising
  o Normally FoG alternates between general and specific
campaigns. Perhaps the schedule or pattern could be
changed. Considering we are already not on schedule with
FoG, a new schedule needs to be considered anyway.
  o The next FoG Campaign was intended to be for raising money
for servers. Could consider doing an a11y campaign instead.
  o ACTION: Brian will discuss with Bradley Kuhn ideas about
how to improve GNOME/a11y Fundraising.

* Hiring updates
  o Marketing: only Lefty has applied so far (private)
+ ACTION: Andreas will send out emails to get more
  contacts or suggestions for someone who may be
  interested in applying.
  o ED:
+ ACTION: Og will email the ED mailing list and ask for
  an update on how the hiring process is going, how
  many applications, etc.

* Action item review. Closed a few stale action items.

* Meetings
  o IRC Meeting - The meeting was planned for January 5th and
was missed. Now planned for Wednesday, January 12th.
+ ACTION: Og will email the foundation-list mailing
  list with a reminder of January 12th IRC meeting time
  details.
  o Advisory Board
+ Have not had a meeting since November.
+ ACTION: Paul will do a call for agenda items to the
  adboard list.

Completed Actions

* Andreas - Will finish the Friends of GNOME revamp and find
  someone with proper javascript skills to help.
* Andreas - To take the GUADEC feedback and post it to a public
  wiki page.
* Bastien - Setup committee to look at GTK+/MeeGo integration bids.
* Bastien - To form a working group to review the GTK+/MeeGo bids
  and choose a final list.
* Brian - Get information about what should be in an "Employee
  Handbook". Draft approved by board. Now under review by the GNOME
  legal team.
* Brian - To draft initial email about hiring marketing help. Paul
  will assist with editing and send to marketing-list.
* Emily - To send the budget for the GNOME 3.0 launch activities to
  the board for review and vote.
* Germán - Will help Paul put together the Financial Report for the
  Annual Report.
* Paul - Will lead putting together the GNOME Annual Report.
* Paul - To work with Jonathan Blandford for the pants article in
  the annual report.
* Rosanna - Research the GNOME Guidestar website and update if
  necessary. Rosanna sent an update about the status of Guidestar,
  but work is still needed. Need to find someone to keep the
  website up-to-date.

Status of action items

* Andreas - Will follow up with Andrew Savory from LiMo to see if
  relevant information from their GTK+ study can be made more
  public. (will ping again).
* Andreas - To ask Kat if she can reach out to the
  gnome...@gnome.org mailing list about finding local German
  volunteers to help with the Desktop Summit 2011. (will ping again)
* Bastien - Will try to find people who can consolidate the
  feedback about the Texas Instruments Zoom2 device to provide back
  to Texas Instruments.
* Bastien - Will take over the internal review process task from
  Diego Urrelo (hopefully he can automate it).
* Bastien - To find a way to automate the process of exporting
  results from internal review process and email it to the board.
* Bastien - To discuss th

Re: Meeting Minutes Published - December 23, 2010

[Brian Cameron]

Dave:


 * Brian - Develop trademark usage forms for common use cases. James
   Vasile from legal is working with Brian on this.


I suggest looking at the MariaDB trademark guidelines for a good
starting point. I especially like that they have outlined overall goals
that inform the policy (kind of like the GPL preamble) - this is the
check-list by which the trademark policy&  forms' success can be measured.


I assume you mean this:

  http://kb.askmonty.org/v/mariadb-trademark-policy

Our guidelines seem reasonably similar:

  http://foundation.gnome.org/licensing/guidelines/

Aside from having more clear Goals (their goals look good), I think it
might also be nice if we released our policy and related forms under
a nice free license like they have.

Brian
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Meeting Minutes Published - December 23, 2010

[Brian Cameron]

The meeting minutes for the December 23rd GNOME Foundation board
meeting is now published.  Refer here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20101223

Other past board meetings are archived here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes

-- text of the latest minutes follows --

Minutes for Meeting of December 23rd, 2010

Next Meeting

* January 6th, 2010

Attending

* Andreas Nilsson
* Brian Cameron
* Emily Chen
* Germán Póo-Caamaño
* Paul Cutler
* Rosanna Yuen

Regrets

* Bastien Nocera
* Og Maciel

Missing

Recurring Items

* Review past action items.
* Did each person with action items send their status reports to
  the board list before the meeting?
* Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published
  to foundation-announce and foundation-list.
* Make sure to start up the gobby server for better note taking.
* Update foundation.gnome.org website.

New Items

* Desktop Summit Update (Andreas)
  o One of the hardest parts has been selecting the context
management system (CMS). Drupal has been selected. There
are still questions about where to host it, but that should
be resolved soon.
  o The budget is being worked on.
  o Beds in Hotel/Hostels have been prebooked for the
conference period.
  o I signed paperwork and sent off to GNOME Foundation and KDE
E.v.
  o The organizers are planning a face-to-face meeting at
Fosdem, probably on Saturday during lunch.
  o Andreas spoke with Kat while in Berlin and checked how
things are going. Things are progressing well according to
her.

* Germán sent the 2011 budget to the foundation-list.

* GTK+/MeeGo project call for bids.
  o A bid was chosen and will be announced soon. Those who
submitted bids have been contacted and told if their bid
was selected or not.

* Marketing contract
  o Announcement that we have $5,000 to spend on a contractor
was sent to the marketing list.
  o ACTION: Paul will follow up with the marketing-list to
provide more details about what sort of work we would like
to have done for the marketing contract.

* GNOME 3.0 launch events
  o Emily provided a budget for providing goodies for GNOME 3.0
launch events.
  o Plan to know exactly how many launch events will be held by
the end of February.
  o Paul, Brian, Germán, and Emily give a +1.

* Travel committee wants to try out Egencia
  o Egencia is a business travel site that is affiliated with
expedia.com).
  o Cost is $375 per year plus $7 per transaction. They can
hold this offer only through end of 2010.
  o This service is only useful for purchasing tickets for U.S.
based airlines.
  o The travel committee believes this service will save time.
  o Everyone gave a +1, so this is approved.

* The board reviewed open action items and closed several that are
  no longer being actively worked on.

Completed Actions

* Andreas - To check with Johannes and Shaun about having a
  Developer Documentation Hackfest. The hackfest is now being
  organized.
* Bastien - Setup committee to look at GTK+/MeeGo integration bids.
* Bastien - To form a working group to review the GTK+/MeeGo bids
  and choose a final list.
* Brian - To draft initial email about hiring marketing help. Paul
  will assist with editing and send to marketing-list.
* Germán - Will help Paul put together the Financial Report for the
  Annual Report.
* Germán - Will follow up with Shaun McCance about how the board
  can help with his proposal for funding developer documentation.
  The hackfest is now being organized.
* Paul - Will lead putting together the GNOME Annual Report.
* Paul - To work with Jonathan Blandford for the pants article in
  the annual report.
* Paul - Will create the Executive Director hiring mailing list.
* Stormy - To schedule a meeting with companies that do consulting
  work with GNOME to start discussions on how we can help (how can
  we work together). Sent email. Got a couple of positive
  responses. This is no longer being actively worked on.

Status of action items

* Andreas - Will finish the Friends of GNOME revamp and find
  someone with proper javascript skills to help.
* Andreas - Will follow up with Andrew Savory from LiMo to see if
  relevant information from their GTK+ study can be made more
  public. (will ping again).
* Andreas - To take the GUADEC feedback and post it to a public
  wiki page. (someone else did this I think?)
* Andreas - To ask Kat if she can reach out to the

Meeting Minutes Published - December 9, 2010

[Brian Cameron]

The meeting minutes for the December 9th GNOME Foundation board
meeting is now published.  Refer here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20101209

Other past board meetings are archived here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes

-- text of the latest minutes follows --

Minutes for Meeting of December 9th, 2010

Next Meeting

* December 23rd, 2010

Attending

* Andreas Nilsson
* Bastien Nocera
* Brian Cameron
* Emily Chen
* Germán Póo-Caamaño
* Paul Cutler
* Rosanna Yuen

Regrets

* Og Maciel

Missing

Recurring Items

* Review past action items.
* Did each person with action items send their status reports to
  the board list before the meeting?
* Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published
  to foundation-announce and foundation-list.
* Make sure to start up the gobby server for better note taking.
* Update foundation.gnome.org website.

New Items

* Developer Documentation Hackfest (Andreas)
  o Things went good - discussions about tools to advertise to
developers (Anjuta) and what kind of developers to target.
New developer.gnome.org as an extension of
library.gnome.org - working on redirects and new website to
launch. Andreas thought it would be good to have another
hackfest in the near future to continue to build on it.
  o ACTION: Andreas to check with Johannes and Shaun about
having a Developer Documentation Hackfest.

* Hiring Marketing Help (Brian)
  o Stormy's proposal that we hire someone on a 5-month
contract to help with GNOME 3.0 marketing received 4 +1
votes.
  o Seeking references from people or consultants who would be
interested in a short-term contract to improve GNOME and
GNOME 3 marketing.
  o Email the marketing list with a call for bids
  o Need to set expectations
  o ACTION: Brian to draft initial email about hiring marketing
help. Paul will assist with editing and send to
marketing-list.

* The "Updating Trademark Agreements" (Brian)
  o ACTION: Paul to review Justin's email about updating
trademark agreements and email the marketing team for
feedback.

* FoG launch update (Og)
  o The new campaign is for general funding. The next Campaign
which will start in April will be focused on funds to
purchase sysadmin resources such as servers.
  o This campaign is to get 100 new subscribers by the end of
the year.
  o About to set up the ruler to measure new subscriptions.
  o The next campaign starts in April and will be to purchase
sysadmin resources, such as needed servers.
  o According to Zana's research, Google Checkout doesn't do
recurring subscriptions. Need to investigate.
  o ACTION: Og to look into Google Checkout as an annual
payment option for FoG.

* Budget next steps. Is it ready to share with foundation-list?
  (Germán)
  o ACTION: Germán will provide an updated budget for review
that we'll plan to send to foundation-list for community
review.

* GTK+/MeeGo project call for bids (Bastien)
  o The GNOME Foundation received 2 strong bids and one
interesting, but out of scope, bid.
  o Will consider going back to Nokia and ask for additional
funding for the out of scope bid.
  o Goal is to have the bid selected prior to Dec. 17th
  o ACTION: Bastien to form a working group to review the
GTK+/MeeGo bids and choose a final list.

* Annual Report (Paul)
  o Should be made public in the next week.

* GNOME 3.0 launch events & GNOME.Asia (Emily)
  o Pockey sent two updates To the Board with 3 projects that
GNOME.Asia is working on:
+ GNOME.Asia summit - Next week the host city will be
  chosen and announced (will be April 6th - 10th to
  coincide with GNOME 3.0 launch).
+ Global Launch parties (inspired by Software Freedom
  Day) - Details and costs and launch party materials
  in Pockey's email.
+ How to improve GNOME survey - The GNOME.Asia team is
  putting together a report to highlight how to improve
 GNOME for Asian users.
  o ACTION: Emily to send the budget for these activities to
the board for review and vote.

Completed Actions

* Paul - Diego had an action item to send an updated "Día GNOME"
  article for the Annual Report.
* All Board Members - Review the Executive Director job
  description.

S

Re: Meeting Minutes Published - November 11, 2010

[Brian Cameron]

Stormy:


Attending

* Stormy Peters


I was not there but I think about you all lots!


Oops, corrected in the Wiki minutes.

Brian
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Re: GNOME's logo been incorrectly used

[Brian Cameron]

Dave:

On 12/ 8/10 07:46 AM, Dave Neary wrote:

Also, there's a decent copyright claim there by the icon author, if his
artwork is being reused without his knowledge or consent, unless of
course there's a GNOME foot in the wild somewhere under FDL or a CC license.


The GNOME Foot could only be licensed by the copyright holder.  I'd
think any licenses assigned without permission by the copyright holder
would not be considered valid.  So, how can there be images in the
wild?  I'd think the copyright holder should know how it has been
licensed with permission.

Is it not The GNOME Foundation who owns the copyright to the logo?  I
thought the author of the foot logo image provided the artwork as a
part of a contest.

Brian



Frederic Muller wrote:

This company is somehow in "my backyard". Do you want me to get in touch
with them and test the waters?

Fred

On 11/29/2010 06:35 PM, Andrew wrote:

G'day all,
so i was out shopping and i found the gnome foot plastered on some
brand of wii accessory, see the attached image,
also i did some google'ing and found the website
http://www.pro-gamer.com.cn/home.aspx if you look through you can see
the gnome foot clearly visible on the main page, and if you click
through the image gallery you'll see products with the gnome foot on
it.

cheers andrew



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Meeting Minutes Published - November 11, 2010

[Brian Cameron]

The meeting minutes for the November 11th GNOME Foundation board
meeting is now published.  Refer here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/2010

Other past board meetings are archived here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes

-- text of the latest minutes follows --

Minutes for Meeting of November 11th, 2010

Next Meeting

* December 9th, 2010

Attending

* Andreas Nilsson
* Bastien Nocera
* Brian Cameron
* Germán Póo-Caamaño
* Og Maciel
* Paul Cutler
* Stormy Peters
* Rosanna Yuen

Regrets

* Emily Chen

Missing

Recurring Items

* Review past action items.
* Did each person with action items send their status reports to
  the board list before the meeting?
* Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published
  to foundation-announce and foundation-list.
* Make sure to start up the gobby server for better note taking.
* Update foundation.gnome.org website.

New Items

* Joanmarie Diggs joined the meeting to give an update on GNOME
  accessibility.
  o Currently orca and the a11y project is underfunded.
  o Many tasks are being done by unpaid and overworked
volunteers.
  o There is not enough manpower to get the work done.
  o The orca team came up with a 2-year roadmap of work that
needs to be done and there are not enough resources to get
all the work done.
  o Fortunately there has been a lot of resources provided by
Spain in the past year, but these resources may not
continue to be available.
  o A $40,000 budget for FY2012 would help the a11y project.
  o The GNOME Foundation currently has a $20,000 a11y budget.
Half is allocated for travel and half is allocated for
contracting work. This includes roughly a $5,000 surplus
from previous year, $10,000 from Mozilla, and $5,000 from
F123-Mais Diferenças.

* Possible solutions:
  o Perhaps a Friends of GNOME campaign could target a11y.
  o Perhaps we could revisit funding a11y tasks via bounties
(e.g. The GOPA program). That project did not work so well
since the bounties were too small. Perhaps a $40,000 budget
would allow for larger bounties.
  o We should do more PR, blogs, and publish more clear plans
about what work we want to do to raise awareness.
  o Can plan to do a targeted FoG campaign. Plan to do a
campaign for servers in Spring, 2011. So, an a11y campaign
could follow.
  o Can we work more closely with advisory board companies to
get more people allocated to a11y instead of, or in
addition to, raising funds.
  o Perhaps we could determine a more consistent way to
allocate some money from the yearly advisory board fees to
programs that need money every year such as a11y.

* Next steps:
  o The a11y team needs to provide a more clear a11y-wide
roadmap instead of just an orca roadmap. It would be easier
to get resources if we had a clear list of work that needs
attention. Joanie said that she hopes that a draft roadmap
might be ready in a few weeks.

* Review of the Executive Director job description
  o The board felt that the description put together looks good.
  o All feedback on the Executive Director job description
needs to be done by Sunday so we can make the announcement
on Monday.
  o Hiring committee
+ Working to put together the committee.
+ The board considered whether it would be good to do
  panel interviews.
  # They tend to be valuable, but it can be
complicated to find a time that works for
everyone.
  # Bastien suggests that perhaps we can find a
committee that is located in the same region to
make timing easier. If so, should we have
separate committee's in different regions?

* ACTION: Og will work to update the GNOME websites to update pages
  that refer to Stormy as the Executive Director.

Completed Actions

* Brian - To write-up the feedback from Stormy's review and to
  provide it to Stormy.
* Paul - Will work on 2010 Annual Report
  o Paul - To fix the annual report: remove all TM in the GNOME
logos, s/GNOME Asia/GNOME.Asia/g, use right font for GNOME
logo.
  o Paul - Will follow up with Germán about the financial data
for the Annual Report.
* Paul - To make sure Board members have access to the Foundation
  blog.
* Paul - To foll

Re: Meeting Minutes Published - November 6, 2010

[Brian Cameron]

Dave:


 * Justin Colannino from the Software Freedom Law Center sent the
   board an email with the form to register the GNOME trademark to
   review before submission.


Have you talked to Luis about the trademark registration process he went
through some years ago? He spent a lot of time regularising the
situation in 2007/2008.


Yes, Luis is involved in discussions.

Brian

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Re: Tee-Shirt Contest & Countries Eligibility

[Brian Cameron]

On 11/17/10 12:36 PM, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:

On 11/17/10 13:35, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:

For what it's worth, GNOME pretty much ignores such regulations in all its
other dealings.  Doesn't necessarily mean that it's violating any law.  It
just doesn't bother checking.  Doing it for such a small contest sounds
overkill to me.


Plus, if not paying the winners cash means that we can get away with it, I
suggest we just give them ten tshirts instead of $100.


The GNOME Foundation did put some thought into creating rules for the 
cash prizes associated with the GOPA program a few years back:


  http://projects.gnome.org/outreach/a11y/rules/

There will probably be ongoing desires to do things like have contests
with cash prizes, so there would be some value in reworking these sorts
of rules into something more generic we could use as general rules for
these sorts of contests.

Is there any interest in the community to help out in this sort of
capacity?  I think it would be good if we could have better rules that
both provide reasonable protection and avoid any sort of discrimination.

Brian
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Meeting Minutes Published - November 6, 2010

[Brian Cameron]

The meeting minutes for the November 6th GNOME Foundation board
meeting is now published.  Refer here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20101106

Other past board meetings are archived here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes

-- text of the latest minutes follows --

Minutes for Meeting of November 6th, 2010 @ BostonSummit

Next Meeting

* November 11th, 2010

Attending

* Andreas Nilsson
* Bastien Nocera
* Brian Cameron
* Emily Chen
* Germán Póo-Caamaño
* Og Maciel
* Paul Cutler
* Stormy Peters
* Rosanna Yuen

Regrets

Missing

Recurring Items

* Review past action items.
* Did each person with action items send their status reports to
  the board list before the meeting?
* Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published
  to foundation-announce and foundation-list.
* Make sure to start up the gobby server for better note taking.
* Update foundation.gnome.org website.

New Items

* Annual Report
  o Paul announced that the Annual Report is done.
  o The board agreed to discuss on the mailing list how to
handle printing and mailing out copies.

* Sponsorship
  o Discussion about providing more options for companies and
organizations to contribute to GNOME.
  o Similar to Diego's proposal last June:
+ 
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/marketing-list/2010-June/msg1.html

  o Should The GNOME Foundation also offer some benefits for a
fee smaller than the normal Advisory Board fee.
+ Perhaps for $5,000 an organization could have a
  quarterly phone call with the Executive Director and
  get a link/logo on the GNOME website.

* MeeGo GTK+ Work
  o Bastien set a deadline for the end of November for
accepting bids.

* Executive Director Hiring Process
  o The board agreed to announce starting an Executive Director
hiring process.
  o Stormy and the board has written draft of the Executive
Director job description.
  o Discussion about whether we should hire other staff (event
manager, fund raiser, marketing for GNOME 3) in addition to
or instead of an Executive Director. Perhaps hiring someone
to work on marketing for GNOME 3 would make a lot of sense
with the release date approaching.
  o ACTION for all board members: Review the Executive
Director job description.
  o Process:
+ Announce on Foundation list, Foundation blog, Planet
  GNOME, LinkedIn, etc.
+ Screened candidates then are referred to the Board
+ Board will do final panel interview and give any
  offer to a suitable candidate.
+ Establish a hiring committee to screen and interview
  candidates to get it down to 2-3 candidates.
+ Who should be on the hiring committee:
  # At least one board member: Germán or Brian
  # Stormy Peters
  # 2-3 people from the wider GNOME community.
Suggestions included:
* Bradley Kuhn
* Chris Blizzard
* Jonathan Blandford
* Collabora (perhaps Robert McQueen)
* Litl (Lucas Rocha, Havoc Pennington)
+ Handling applicants
  # Resumes and discussion should not happen on the
board-list, especially if any people who are on
the board decide to apply.
  # Resumes from applicants should be sent to an
Executive Director only mailing list.
  # ACTION: Paul will create the Executive Director
hiring mailing list.
+ Revisit marketing in 30 days

* Goals for the Summit
  o Hack on board action items and topics!
  o Talk to Ted regarding downstream / upstream collaboration.
  o Federico - GTK / MeeGo bids.

* Advisory Board planning
  o Prepared the agenda. This will include:
+ Boston Summit Status.
+ Hiring an Executive Director.
+ Budget for Fiscal Year 2011.

* Stormy's Bonus
  o The board settled on an amount for the bonus.
  o ACTION: Brian to write-up the feedback from Stormy's review
and to provide it to Stormy.

* For Libre Graphics reimbursements, The GNOME Foundation is
  waiting for receipts.

Completed Actions

* Andreas - Will get feedback for the Annual Report for Daniel
  Galleguillos.
* Andreas - 

Meeting Minutes Published - October 28, 2010

[Brian Cameron]

The meeting minutes for the October 28th GNOME Foundation board
meeting is now published.  Refer here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20101028

Other past board meetings are archived here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes

-- text of the latest minutes follows --

Minutes for Meeting of October 28th, 2010

Next Meeting

* November 6th, 2010

Attending

* Andreas Nilsson (IRC only since he is attending the Ubuntu
  Developer Summit)
* Bastien Nocera
* Brian Cameron
* Emily Chen
* Germán Póo-Caamaño
* Og Maciel
* Paul Cutler
* Stormy Peters
* Rosanna Yuen

Regrets

Missing

Recurring Items

* Review past action items.
* Did each person with action items send their status reports to
  the board list before the meeting?
* Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published
  to foundation-announce and foundation-list.
* Make sure to start up the gobby server for better note taking.
* Update foundation.gnome.org website.

New Items

* Unity and GNOME 3
  o 
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/10/shuttleworth-unity-shell-will-be-default-desktop-in-ubuntu-1104.ars

  o Canonical announced that Unity will be the default
Ubuntu 11.04 desktop.
  o Unity is based on compiz and not GNOME Shell or mutter.
  o This news is disappointing. It is also potentially
distracting and disruptive to GNOME 3 plans and release.
  o Paul highlighted that Ubuntu has 70% of the Linux Desktop
market share, so losing GNOME Shell on Ubuntu is a big loss.
  o Regardless, Canonical is still an important ongoing partner
in the GNOME community.
  o While Unity is a concern, it is still more important to
focus on making sure that GTK+ based GNOME is competitive
with Qt than to fight over the best shell for GNOME.
  o ACTION: Andreas is at the Ubuntu Developer Summit and is
talking to people about the situation with Unity and will
write up a report to the board list.

* GNOME Foundation IRC Meetings
  o The most recent October 27th Foundation IRC meeting was
better run, organized, and attended than previous IRC
meetings.
  o There were some flaws in the planning. Need to be better
about planning future meetings. For example:
+ The time was not mentioned in the email reminder to
  foundation-list.
+ Date/time was not included in /topic of the
  #foundation IRC channel.
  o The next IRC meeting is planned for Wednesday, November 3rd

* Desktop Summit 2011
  o Dave Neary has been playing the lead role in Desktop Summit
planning.
  o Should Dave formally be the leader? How does this fit in
with what Kat and Andreas have been doing?
  o Agreed to discuss on the mailing list.

* When will we have a budget for the current fiscal year?
  o Germán said it will be ready in 1 week.
  o Emily and Germán agreed to meet over the next week to work
together on this.

* Nokia / MeeGo call for bids
  o No updates yet. Bastien has talked with stakeholders in the
community to push this.
  o ACTION: Bastien to mail people he is talking to about the
Nokia / MeeGo call for bids about 1) what it would cost to
do the work 2) whether they are interested in the project

* Status of Annual Report
  o Paul received a proof document last Tuesday.
  o Need to update some financial numbers.
  o Should have the final version done by next week.

* Need to tell FreeWear we approved their marketing agreement.
  o ACTION: Brian to contact FreeWear about moving forward
with their marketing agreement.

* Stormy leaving The GNOME Foundation
  o Stormy announced to the board that she is leaving The GNOME
Foundation CEO position. She announced this to the board on
Wednesday, October 20th.
  o Stormy and the board agreed to make this information public
on Tuesday, November 2nd. Just before the Boston Summit to
give people time to have face-to-face interactions with
Stormy to help with the transition.
  o Stormy is going to start a new job to work on the open web
at the Mozilla Foundation.
  o The board wishes her well and the best of luck with her new
position in the free software community!
  o Stormy is planning to run for The GNOME Foundation board of
directors in the next term.

* Reminder to the board: Complete Stormy's bonus feedback.

Completed Actions

* Og - Organized the next GNOME Foundation IRC me

Re: Next Foundation IRC list is on November 3rd!

[Brian Cameron]

Meeting minutes from today's IRC meeting is here:

  http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/IRC20101027

The log of the meeting is also attached to the above Wiki page.

Brian


On 10/27/10 10:42 AM, Stormy Peters wrote:

Hi GNOME folks,

Thanks for participating in the GNOME Foundation meeting today. For
those that were not able to attend, we will be publishing the minutes.

We had a lot of topics to discuss and did not get to them even though we
went over 30 minutes! So by common agreement, we are having our next
meeting next week!

   When: Wednesday, November 3rd, from 14:00 to 15:30 UTC
   Where: irc.gnome.org , #foundation

Foundation IRC meetings are held on #foundation in irc.gimp.org
 to discuss current matters related to the GNOME
Foundation. Any on interested in attending, may attend, just keep the
conversation constructive.

The meeting page with the agenda is here:
http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/MeetingAgenda

Please add any topics you'd like to discuss to this page and they will
automatically show up on the meeting page:
http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/MembersAgenda

Looking forward to another productive meeting!

Best,

Stormy



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Meeting Minutes Published - October 14, 2010

[Brian Cameron]

The meeting minutes for the October 14th GNOME Foundation board
meeting is now published.  Refer here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20101014

Other past board meetings are archived here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes

-- text of the latest minutes follows --

Minutes for Meeting of October 14th, 2010

Next Meeting

* October 28th, 2010

Attending

* Andreas Nilsson
* Bastien Nocera
* Brian Cameron
* Emily Chen
* Germán Póo-Caamaño
* Og Maciel (late)
* Paul Cutler
* Rosanna Yuen
* Stormy Peters

Regrets

Missing

Recurring Items

* Review past action items.
* Did each person with action items send their status reports to
  the board list before the meeting?
* Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published
  to foundation-announce and foundation-list.
* Make sure to start up the gobby server for better note taking.
* Update foundation.gnome.org website.

New Items

* FreeWear.org
  o The board decided to approve the FreeWear.org proposal to
allow them to sell GNOME-branded merchandise.

* Boston Summit (November 6-8)
  o The Boston Summit needs to be announced more widely.
  o We need to do more promotion since the dates are different
this year. The event is not happening over Columbus Day
weekend as it has in past years.
  o The Boston Summit would benefit from some effort to help
coordinate an agenda of what people plan to work on.
  o Most people who attend are core GNOME developers who
already know about it, so the lack of an agenda is perhaps
not surprising.
  o This year there may be some costs associated with the
venue, coffee/food, a party, and covering travel
sponsorships. Last year the cost was $2,568, but this year
the costs will likely be higher.
  o We could get more sponsors and attendees if we develop a
more clear message about what we are going to do.
  o People on the board agreed to ping people who are planning
to attend and to try to put together an agenda of what will
be worked on there, and to promote the event.
  o Need to announce that people can submit requests for travel
sponsorship.
+ Need to decide how much travel sponsorship will be
  funded. In the past The GNOME Foundation has not
  sponsored much travel costs for The Boston Summit.
  Last year was the first time and only 1 person was
  sponsored for that event.
  o ACTION: Og will email Xan López to see what he plans for
the summit. This new action was done shortly after the
meeting. Emily will ping Vincent to see what he plans for
the summit.
  o ACTION: All board members will help to put together a draft
agenda for the Boston Summit. This involves emailing those
who will be participating and collecting information about
what things will be worked on.

* Foundation IRC Meeting
  o Selected the date as October 27th.
  o ACTION: Og received a link to initial ideas from Paul and
will publish a post about the Foundation IRC Meeting for
October 27, 2010 and send an email to the Board shortly
after the meeting.
  o ACTION: All board members to put together a draft agenda
for the Foundation IRC Meeting by Saturday, October 16th.

* Desktop Summit 2011
  o Andreas attended the Desktop Summit 2011 kick-off meeting
in Berlin (September 22-25, 2010).
  o Andreas reported that the meeting went well and planning is
underway.
  o Lately discussing keynote speakers and the papers
committee. Not clear if they have made any decisions on the
papers committee.
  o ACTION': Andreas to ask Kat if she can reach out to the
gnome...@gnome.org mailing list about finding local German
volunteers to help with the Desktop Summit 2011.

* Reminder: Stormy bonus feedback

* Nokia / MeeGo call for bids
  o Bastien reported that the announcement had been sent out,
but no replies yet.
  o ACTION: Bastien will send out a deadline date for the MeeGo
call for Bids after getting some feedback from the
community

* Board meeting at Boston Summit
  o Andreas is still not sure if he could attend.
  o Bastien and Germán will not be able to attend.

* Women's Outreach Project
  o http://live.gnome.org/GnomeWomen/OutreachProgram
  o Lots of candidates!
  o Potential mentors can add their projects to the wiki. Those
ar

Re: Meeting Minutes Published - September 30, 2010

[Brian Cameron]

The meeting minutes for the September 30th GNOME Foundation board
meeting is now published. Refer here:

http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20100930



Discussed on the mailing list


[...]


* The board approved providing $4,000 (USD) to cover 7º Forum @
Latinoware (November 10-12) travel expenses.
o http://www.latinoware.org/


Oops, that should be:

 * The board approved providing $4,000 (USD) to cover 7º Forum @ ENSL
   (November 6-7) travel expenses.

* http://ensl.org.br/

Sorry about any confusion.  I have updated the Wiki minutes with this
change.

Brian
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Meeting Minutes Published - September 30, 2010

[Brian Cameron]

The meeting minutes for the September 30th GNOME Foundation board
meeting is now published.  Refer here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20100930

Other past board meetings are archived here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes

-- text of the latest minutes follows --

Minutes for Meeting of September 30th, 2010

Next Meeting

* October 14th, 2010

Attending

* Bastien Nocera
* Brian Cameron
* Emily Chen
* Germán Póo-Caamaño
* Paul Cutler
* Rosanna Yuen

Regrets

* Og Maciel
* Stormy Peters (attending Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in
  Computing 2010)

Missing

* Andreas Nilsson

Recurring Items

* Review past action items.
* Did each person with action items send their status reports to
  the board list before the meeting?
* Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published
  to foundation-announce and foundation-list.
* Make sure to start up the gobby server for better note taking.
* Update foundation.gnome.org website.

New Items

* Happy Release Day!
  o GNOME 2.32 was released on September 29th.
  o http://library.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/2.32/
* GNOME.Asia 2011 proposal
  o Emily detailed plans that the GNOME.Asia community are
making to organize a GNOME 3 Launch hackfest in conjunction
with the GNOME 3.0 release in early April.
  o Planning a 5 day hackfest + 1 day conference/Release Party.
  o The GNOME.Asia organizers are having weekly IRC meetings
for planning.
  o Would like to host developers to work on the mechanics of
the GNOME 3.0 release (developers, marketing team, release
team) to help make the GNOME 3.0 launch successful.
  o Currently researching venues in host countries.
  o Planning to do a survey to find out if people from key
teams are willing/able to attend.
  o ACTION: Emily to send the GNOME 3.0 Launch Hackfest survey
to the board and work with Pockey to send to key
participants.
  o ACTION: Emily to talk with other GNOME User's Groups to
coordinate the possibility of there being a multi-city
GNOME 3.0 Hackfest/Party.

* Collecting feedback about GUADEC.
  o Feedback has been collected on a private Wiki page. Plan to
make it public after doing some cleanup.
  o http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoardPrivate/GuadecFeedback
  o Was apparently helpful for the Desktop Summit 2011 meeting.
  o Would be a good topic for discussion on GUADEC mailing
lists and other event planning lists.
  o ACTION: Paul to check GUADEC feedback page for spelling,
and possible anonymity leaks.

* Om Chandra
  o Om is the teacher of Ministry of Education, Youth, and
Sport of Cambodia and an E-Learning Training Coordinator of
Open Learning Program of Open Institute NGO who was wanting
to work with us.
  o Possibly interested in receiving GNOME related training.
  o Emily continues to trade emails with Om to determine the
best ways to help.

* Fiscal Year End
  o Fiscal Year Budgeting Process.
+ Emily: Working on July & August expenses. Data has
  been imported into GnuCash.
+ Emily will be on vacation from October 1-7, so she
  will not be able to work on this next week.

* GNOME 3 as a Foundation goal -- discussion with membership
  o ACTION: Paul to follow-up with Og on status of the "GNOME 3
as a Foundation Goal" action.

* Board Peer Reviews
  o Bastien needs information about how the past peer review
was handled.
  o ACTION: Brian to send Bastien a link to past board
discussion on how board peer review was managed.
  o ACTION: Stormy to add Bastien to ?LimeSurvey for board peer
review.
  o Stormy year end review
+ Brian will start the review process by early next
  week.

* Reminder to board members - Employee Handbook feedback required
  by tomorrow.

* GNOME/FSF Meeting
  o On Monday, September 27th Brian and Stormy met with Peter
Brown from the FSF to discuss collaboration opportunities.
  o A write-up of the meeting was sent to the board after the
meeting.
  o ACTION: All board members please share your feedback on the
GNOME/FSF meeting.

* Feedback for Nokia Proposal by Bastien.
  o ACTION: Bastien to update and flesh out what we expect from
bids.

* Using Bugzilla of CiviCRM to track Friends of GNOME Postcards
  o https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=630213

New GNOME licensing forms - please help

[Brian Cameron]

Foundation Members:

I have been working with James Vasile and Luis Villa over the past year
to update the GNOME Brand licensing forms for merchants and user's
groups.  We just finished what I think is the last round of review and
have addressed all the concerns raised by both James and Luis.

I do need some help.  The updated User's Group form is currently a
web-form, but James recommends that we should really change this to a
PDF document and require a signature like we have in the Merchant
form.  I do not know how to do this, so if there is someone out there
who can create PDF files from HTML, I would appreciate some help.  We
have some users groups that would like to sign the new form, so it
would be good if this could be done soon.

The new forms are much more clear, address issues that were raised
about the old forms, provide better protections, and give Users Groups
more freedoms that we think GNOME User's Groups should have.  For
example, the old form disallowed User's Groups from selling GNOME 
branded merchandise to support group activities, but the new form allows

this with reasonable restrictions.

I would appreciate any review or comments from the wider GNOME
Foundation community.  Direct links to the forms can be found in the
footnote[1], and are also available here with some additional
information:

  http://live.gnome.org/Trademark

I also created a FAQ and User Group Guidelines, which are needed for
these forms.  It would be good to get any review comments about these as 
well


  http://live.gnome.org/Trademark/FAQ
  http://live.gnome.org/UserGroups/Guidelines

Assuming this is agreeable to the Foundation, I plan to move the new
forms to the http://foundation.gnome.org/legal website once the User's
Group form is converted to PDF.

Brian

---

[1] Updated Forms:

Latest Merchant Form:
http://live.gnome.org/Trademark?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=tm_agreement.odt

Latest User Group Form:
http://live.gnome.org/Trademark?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=user_group_agreement.html

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Meeting Minutes Published - September 16, 2010

[Brian Cameron]

The meeting minutes for the September 16th GNOME Foundation board
meeting is now published.  Refer here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20100916

Other past board meetings are archived here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes

-- text of the latest minutes follows --

Minutes for Meeting of September 16th, 2010

Next Meeting

* September 30th, 2010

Attending

* Andreas Nilsson
* Brian Cameron
* Emily Chen
* Germán Póo-Caamaño
* Og Maciel
* Paul Cutler
* Rosanna Yuen
* Stormy Peters

Regrets

Missing

* Bastien Nocera

Recurring Items

* Review past action items.
* Did each person with action items send their status reports to
  the board list before the meeting?
* Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published
  to foundation-announce and foundation-list.
* Make sure to start up the gobby server for better note taking.
* Update foundation.gnome.org website.

New Items

* Collecting feedback about GUADEC.
  o ACTION: Andreas to take the GUADEC feedback and post it to
a public wiki page,

* Developer Documentation Tools hackfest (December 2-5) and the 7º
  Forum GNOME event in Natal, Brasil (November 5-6th).
  o Expenses approved for both.

* Boston Summit
  o ACTION: Emily will plan blog posts to announce sponsorship
for Boston Summit.

* Sponsorship proposal process
  o ACTION: Stormy to update the hackfest wiki pages to make it
clear that The GNOME Foundation needs detailed information
about expenses included with proposals if they are asking
for GNOME Foundation sponsorship.
+ Goals for attending: For example, why the sponsored
  travelers need to be there?
+ Goals for event.
+ Costs, broken down to the level of who is traveling
  from where. Particularly expensive travel costs
  should be justified. If, for example, on traveler is
  considerably more expensive than the others, there
  should be some clear justification.
+ Potential sponsorship and income.
+ Provide a write up after the event?
  o ACTION: Og will start a discussion on the mailing list
about how The GNOME Foundation, wants to organize event
planning for events that carry the GNOME brand.
+ Email sent to the Board.

* GIMP asked The GNOME Foundation to handle the purchase orders
  with Google for their GSoC (Google Summer of Code) mentor
  payments. This past year we
  handled three student projects for them.
  o The board voted and approved doing this for GIMP and
GStreamer (if GStreamer asks again).
  o ACTION: Rosanna will handle the purchase orders with
Google for GIMP/GStreamer GSoC mentor payments as she has
been doing it already for GNOME.

* Om Chandra (the teacher of Ministry of Education, Youth, and
  Sport of Cambodia and an E-Learning Training Coordinator of Open
  Learning Program of Open Institute NGO who was wanting to work
  with us) wanted sponsorship to attend GUADEC for training. What
  is the status.
  o Stormy asked him if he could attend GNOME Asia instead. He
agreed, but he had issues with the visa to Taiwan and so
was not able to make it.
  o ACTION: Emily will send Om Chandra an email about whether
there is still an opportunity for training or further
cooperation.

* Fiscal Year Budgeting Process
  o ACTION: Germán to have a draft Fiscal Year Budget in
October for the board to review.

* GNOME 3 as a Foundation Goal -- discussion with membership
  o Need to relate 2011 goals to Stormy's performance (and make
it measurable).
  o Emails sent to foundation-list, but not much response.
  o ACTION: Og will read up on the "GNOME 3 as a Foundation
Goal" discussion that has already taken place and will
write something to be sent to Stormy for further discussion
and feedback.

* Stormy fiscal year end review
  o Discussion about whether we should continue with the bonus
plan or move to a flat salary for the next fiscal year.
  o Difficult to measure Foundation goals (and then relate to
those to Stormy where applicable, or not).
  o ACTION: Brian to send an email to discuss Stormy's bonus
and salary process for 2011 with the board.
  o ACTION: Board to review and finalize Stormy's year-end
review feedback and bonus for 2010.

* Boston Summit: fees for the venue.
  o The organizers are working on gett

Meeting Minutes Published - September 2, 2010

[Brian Cameron]

The meeting minutes for the September 2nd GNOME Foundation board meeting
is now published.  Refer here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20100902

Other past board meetings are archived here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes

-- text of the latest minutes follows --

Minutes for Meeting of September 2nd, 2010

Next Meeting

* September 16th, 2010

Attending

* Andreas Nilsson
* Bastien Nocera
* Emily Chen
* Og Maciel
* Paul Cutler
* Stormy Peters

Regrets

* Rosanna Yuen
* Germán Póo-Caamaño

Missing

* Brian Cameron

Recurring Items

* Review past action items.
* Did each person with action items send their status reports to
  the board list before the meeting?
* Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published
  to foundation-announce and foundation-list.
* Make sure to start up the gobby server for better note taking.
* Update foundation.gnome.org website.

New Items

* Nokia Proposal.
  o The GNOME Foundation met with Nokia to discuss Bastien's
proposal how to spend the money they provided, and they
liked it. Bastien is now writing up a call for bids.
  o ACTION: Bastien emailing with Nokia and GTK+/XI2
maintainers to further detail out the proposal of how to
spend the money provided by Nokia. Major issues include the
bug discussed on d-d-l and touch framework. Bastien
gathering more information currently.

* Fiscal Year Budgeting Process
  o Request from GNOME Brazil
+ Jonh Wendell informed the board that the costs for
  the 7º Forum GNOME event in Natal, Brasil (November
  5-6th) will be $4468.24 (USD).
+ This event will be co-hosted with ENSL
  # http://www.ensl.org.br/
  o Ping the people who requested budget money from 2010 and
ping them for 2011 requests.
  o ACTION: Emily to create list of everyone who requested
money in 2010. Emily will contact them and ask about their
plans for 2011.

* GNOME 3 as a Foundation goal
  o Need more discussion with membership.
  o Emails sent to foundation-list, but not much response.
  o ACTION: Og will assist with the GNOME 3 as a Foundation
goal task.

* GNOME IRC Meeting - Define topics
  o ACTION: Bastien to talk to sysadmins about the GNOME IRC
meeting, follow-up on Sept 16th.
  o ACTION: Paul to start brainstorming for the GNOME IRC
meeting.

* Release team - application module sets
  o Paul emailed the release team to follow up on the decision
of how applications will be included in GNOME going
forward. Short term, this could help the release-notes by
adding additional applications.

* Hackfests
  o Ideas for hackfest topics for Italy and Largo Florida.
  o Two opportunities for hosting a hackfest: Dave Richards
(City of Largo) and Daniel Siegel (Bolzano) are willing to
host.
  o Stormy and Daniel emailed 4 or 5 teams and may have a lead.
  o Bastien pinged Dave Richards. Dave is interested in "GNOME
Administration" (pessulus, sabayon, GSettings) or
performance ("bootcharts", visual performance).

* Boston Summit
  o Fees for the venue. We have the rooms for free over the
weekend. We are working on which rooms and cost for Monday
but the Boston Summit will happen that weekend and J5 has
announced it.

* 2010 Q2 GNOME Quarterly Report Update
  o It is done - just needs to be posted on the website.

* Desktop Summit
  o Andreas will attend the organization meeting in September
to represent the Board.
  o Still working on who will represent previous GUADEC
organizers at this meeting. Dave Neary provided his
availability and Vincent Untz will soon. Stormy also asked
Reinout van Schouwen.
  o Should we ask Ekaterina (Kat) Gerasimova to be the GNOME
representative for the Desktop Summit?
+ The Board agreed to this.
+ Andreas to serve as the liaison/point of contact to
  help Kat.
+ ACTION: Andreas to reach out to Ekaterina (Kat)
  Gerasimova to see if she wants to be the GNOME
  representative for the 2011 Desktop Summit and, if
  so, to invite her to the Desktop Summit meeting.

* Accessibility team update (Stormy)
  o There have been some communication issues with the GNOME
a11y team and we have several potential opportunities.
  o ACTION: Brian will follow up w

Re: Meeting Minutes Published - August 19, 2010

[Brian Cameron]

Behdad:

On 09/ 3/10 10:07 AM, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:

On 09/03/10 04:48, Dave Neary wrote:
When I was last on board I had started gathering such documents here:

   http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoardPrivate/Documents

But can't find them anymore.  Either someone removed that page or I'm not
allowed to see it (which I assumed as a previous board member I would be).


We have archived all the forms on a different page.  Though I wasn't
aware of Hackermundi before, so I will need to track down that one.  If
anyone has any pointers, or even can highlight about when discussions
went on with them, then that would help me dig through the email
archives.

Brian
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Re: Meeting Minutes Published - August 19, 2010

[Brian Cameron]

Dave:

On 09/ 3/10 03:48 AM, Dave Neary wrote:

Hi,

Brian Cameron wrote:

 * GNOME Trademarks
   o TM can claim without formal registration
   o Do we want a (R) registered trademark on the correct GNOME
 foot / logo?
   o GNOME foot (old) has a registered trademark
   o French website
 + ACTION: Bastien to send the French website a
   follow-up email about GNOME Trademarks


Luis worked on "cleaning up" GNOME's trademark story around 2006-07 - it
would be worthwhile asking him the current situation, since he is the
one who took charge of the issue back then. As far as I know, we
registered the GNOME foot + wordmark in the US through Wilson Sonsini.


I have been working with James Vasile and Luis on this.  We have, for
example, been working to update the forms to address some of the
issues that have been raised over the years.  We also wrote a FAQ.
Eventually I'd like to see these migrate to the fdo website, but we
are still discussing some points with James.

  http://live.gnome.org/Trademark


 * Jorge - Check records of organizations with existing contracts to
   use the GNOME trademark. Taken over from Vincent. Look at the
   archives in 2005 and try to determine which companies can use the
   GNOME trademark. Know what kind of contracts we had with them.


I can help fill in some gaps here - there's Killermundi, Hackerthreads,
a jewellery creator (although I think his license has lapsed now).


I hadn't been aware of Killermundi.  Do you have a contact person?
I am talking with the people from Hackerthreads and know what's going
on with that.

The jewelry creator never got off the ground.  We prepared the form,
but they seemed to lose interest at the last minute and never signed
it.


While I was on the board, I worked with James Vasile on a trademark
license contract, which should be part of the material the board has,
for that jeweller, and James tried to make something modular that could
be reused. That contract has no automatic renewal clause, and ran for an
X year term (X=2 is set in a prefix). I have the last revision we came
up with (Stormy should have it too, and it's in board-list archives).
Let me know if you want me to send it on.


I think the forms on the website I show above are the latest iterations
of the forms intended to be "modular".

Brian


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Meeting Minutes Published - August 19, 2010

[Brian Cameron]

The meeting minutes for the August 19th GNOME Foundation board meeting
is now published.  Refer here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20100819

Other past board meetings are archived here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes

-- text of the latest minutes follows --

Minutes for Meeting of August 19th, 2010

Next Meeting

* September 2nd, 2010

Attending

* Andreas Nilsson
* Bastien Nocera
* Og Maciel (late)
* Paul Cutler
* Rosanna Yuen
* Stormy Peters

Regrets

* Brian Cameron (GNOME.Asia)
* Emily Chen (GNOME.Asia)
* Germán Póo-Caamaño

Missing

Recurring Items

* Review past action items.
* Did each person with action items send their status reports to
  the board list before the meeting?
* Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published
  to foundation-announce and foundation-list.
* Make sure to start up the gobby server for better note taking.
* Update foundation.gnome.org website.

New Items

* Annual Report
  o Daniel Galleguillos needs some feedback. Andreas will look
at it right after the meeting.
+ ACTION: Andreas will get feedback for the Annual
  Report for Daniel Galleguillos.

* 2010 Q2 GNOME Quarterly Report Update
  o All reports now in! Just need to put in format; Vinicius
Depizzol will help. Hope to be done by Monday.

* Fiscal Year Budgeting Process.
  o Been discussing process. First step is to reach out to
local user groups. About to kick off process. Everyone
needs to help - cannot be all German.

* GNOME IRC Meeting
 o Define topics. Paul Cutler will start a brainstorming
   process for the topics.

* Boston Summit
  o Fees for the venue. The organizers are working on getting
free rooms. John (J5) Palmieri has pinged them every week
or so and we have not heard back in a while.

* Hackfests
  o GTK+ and WebKitGTK+
+ Both are a go.
+ Do they need funding? Have they done fundraising?
+ ACTION: Andreas will find out if the GTK+ and
  WebKitGTK+ Hackfests need help fundraising.
  o Developer Docs. Looks good now with goals and lots of good
attendees.
  o Dave Richards from the City of Largo would like to host a
hackfest at the Boston Summit. He is particularly
interested in something around thin clients.
+ ACTION: Bastien will reach out to Dave Richards from
  the City of Largo to plan for a hackfest there.
  o Board mentors for hackfest organizers idea.
+ ACTION: Stormy will ask Diego Urrelo if he would like
  to continue to work on the board mentors for hackfest
  organizers idea.

* Nokia Proposal
  o We met with Nokia to discuss Bastien's proposal: use
$50,000 to contract out work to make GTK+ et al work on the
platform. They were in agreement. Bastien is now writing up
a call for bids. MeeGo might be interested in helping with
events around underlying technologies.
+ ACTION: Bastien to write up a call for bids for Nokia
  proposal, and discuss the technology with people from
  Nokia.

* GNOME 3 as a Foundation Goal
  o Discussion with membership
  o Emails sent to foundation-list, but not much response.
Should we run another survey?
+ We want to do another survey for sure (keep questions
  simple)
+ ACTION: Og to help in getting the GNOME 3 as a
  Foundation Goal survey topics together
+ ACTION: Stormy to share feedback on how to build the
  questions for the GNOME 3 as a Foundation Goal
  survey.

* Advisory Board fees for small businesses
  o ACTION: Paul will follow-up with Board to read the Advisory
Board fees for small businesses proposal, ask for feedback
and set a date to vote by.

* Initial Marketing Contract
  o Please vote. Any questions?

* security@ being an alias for board-list
  o Followed up, just need to "do it" (security@ or release-
team-private@ ?)

* GNOME IRC Meeting
  o Schedule next (no Q&A at AGM)

* Mentoring new board members program
  o Create a mail list like: board-men...@gnome.org ? (Pending
to Paul)
  o Collect mentor wish list from mentees.

* Marketing arrangement for Ronaldo Padula (Loja Geek Depto
  Comercial) to sell GNOME branded merchandise in Brazil.
  o Email was sent to Ronaldo but he has not replied. Og will
follow

Meeting Minutes Published - August 5, 2010

[Brian Cameron]

The meeting minutes for the August 5th GNOME Foundation board meeting
is now published.  Refer here:

http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20100805

Other past board meetings are archived here:

http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes

-- text of the latest minutes follows --

Minutes for Meeting of August 5th, 2010

Next Meeting

* August 19th, 2010

Attending

* Andreas Nilsson
* Bastien Nocera
* Brian Cameron
* Emily Chen
* Germán Póo-Caamaño
* Paul Cutler
* Rosanna Yuen

Regrets

* Og Maciel
* Stormy Peters

Missing

Recurring Items

* Review past action items.
* Did each person with action items send their status reports to
  the board list before the meeting?
* Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published
  to foundation-announce and foundation-list.
* Make sure to start up the gobby server for better note taking.
* Update foundation.gnome.org website.

New Items

* Reassigning action items from previous board members.
  o Paul will take over the action guifi.net action item.
  o Paul will take over the Code of Conduct action item.
  o Andreas will follow up with Vincent to find out the status
Philosophy, Copyright Assignment task.
  o Brian will follow up with who can present GNOME in Cancún.

* secur...@gnome.org being an alias for board-list
  o ACTION: Bastien will investigate whether secur...@gnome.org
should be sent to the release team instead of the board.

* Scheduling the next GNOME IRC Meeting
  o Process for setting up an IRC meeting
+ Create an agenda / Ask for feedback from the
  community.
+ Pick a time zone. The time of the meeting is rotated
  so that people from different time zones can attend
  meetings more easily.
+ Email the foundation list, blog about it, send an
  email before the event.
+ Remember to the Board members they should be present
  as much as possible.
  o It was suggested that perhaps we should rotate the
responsibility of managing the IRC meeting.
  o The board will discuss this on the mailing list and set up
an agenda.
  o ACTION: Paul will send an email to the board to put
together an agenda for a GNOME IRC meeting.

* ACTION: Paul to make sure Board members have access to the
  Foundation blog.

* GNOME Advisory Board Meeting Update
  o ACTION: Andreas will follow up with Andrew Savory from LiMo
to see if relevant information from their GTK+ study can be
made more public.

* GUADEC
  o There were remaining posters and Brian shipped them at a
cost of $100 which will be reimbursed.
  o The board will create a Wiki page with tips to better
manage GUADEC/event planning in the future. The Wiki will
start as a private Wiki page and will be made more public
when it is fleshed out.
  o ACTION: Bastien will ask for feedback about GUADEC on the
gnome-foundation list.
  o ACTION: Bastien will create private Wiki page to sort ideas
about how to better organize events like GUADEC.
  o ACTION: Bastien will touch base with Gil Forcada and Luis
Villa and add their feedback about GUADEC.

* Board roles (chairman, secretary, treasurer, etc.)
  o The board voted and approved the following roles:
+ Paul - Chairman
+ Andreas - Vice-Chairman
+ Germán - Treasurer
+ Emily - Vice Treasurer
+ Brian - Secretary
+ Og - Vice Secretary

* Mentoring new board members program
  o Create a wiki page
  o Create a mail list like: board-men...@gnome.org
+ ACTION: Paul will create a board-mentor mailing list.
  o The new members on the board would prefer a more formal
mentor / mentee relationship.

* GNOME.Asia Summit (August 14-15)
  o Wire the $9,225 (USD) funds to Taiwan account.
  o ACTION: Emily will work with Rosanna on on transferring the
money to GNOME.Asia.

* Desktop Summit 2011: Berlin - Ekaterina (Kat) Gerasimova @
  OpenIsmus
  o ACTION: Germán will follow up with Murray about Kat helping
with planning and possible "ack" as a sponsor.

* Free Agent t-shirt. (Update from GUADEC)
  o Shirts were sold for €20 and given to volunteers (such as
the local volunteer organizers) for free.
  o About 50 of the 100 were distributed.
  o The GNOME Foundation made €700, but the costs to print the
t-shirts were €1,050.
  o Bri

Meeting Minutes Published - July 25, 2010

[Brian Cameron]

The meeting minutes for the July 25th GNOME Foundation board meeting
is now published.  Refer here:

   http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20100725

Other past board meetings are archived here:

   http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes

-- text of the latest minutes follows --

Minutes for Meeting of July 25, 2010

Next Meeting

* August 5th, 2010

Attending

* Andreas Nilsson (late)
* Bastien Nocera
* Brian Cameron
* Diego Escalante Urrelo
* Emily Chen
* Germán Póo-Caamaño
* Paul Cutler
* Rosanna Yuen
* Srini Ragavan
* Stormy Peters
* Vincent Untz

Regrets

* Og Maciel

Missing

* Jorge Castro

Recurring Items

* Review past action items.
* Did each person with action items send their status reports to
  the board list before the meeting?
* Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published
  to foundation-announce and foundation-list.
* Make sure to start up the gobby server for better note taking.
* Update foundation.gnome.org website.

New Items

* GNOME Foundation Goals for next year
  o Board Member Personal Goals:
+ Paul:
  # GNOME 3.0 launch success (oversight,
communication), marketing, documentation,
sysadmin.
+ Brian:
  # Make the board more transparent and organized.
  # Work with James Vasile on merchandising, the
employee handbook and other legal matters.
  # Continue to work to make the Foundation website
a more useful resource for getting things done
and collaborating.
  # Define the role of The GNOME Foundation and
promote GNOME in the developing world,
usability, a11y.
+ German:
  # Keep the budget in order and updated every
month.
+ Emily:
  # Grow GNOME in Asia, fundraising, Friends of
GNOME.
+ Bastien:
  # Find new ways to collaborate with Yahoo, Nokia,
Intel, etc. and work to build new revenue
streams.
  # Focus on GNOME Mobile (see where MeeGo is
going) and work with vendors to acquire more
development hardware.
+ Andreas:
  # Encourage new contributors into the GNOME
project and make it an interesting place to
participate.
  # Make GNOME work better with the kernel and
distributions.
  # Focus on promotion and telling the world about
the cool stuff we are doing.
+ Og:
  # Get more involved with the accessibility team
and find ways to help them achieve their goals.
  # Continue working with the GNOME Translation
Project crew and find ways to get more quality
translations and new contributors to the next
release.
  # Acknowledge those who have contributed to the
success of GNOME doing non-coding tasks by
promoting them with blog posts and awards.
  o Foundation Wide Goals:
+ Successful launch of GNOME 3.0.
+ Promote GNOME in the developing world.
+ Develop GNOME Mobile.
+ Maintaining the GNOME Brand and Trademark.
+ Grow the GNOME user base..
+ Develop more active local groups (work to get them
  more involved with upstream, revive gugmasters-list).
+ Develop a well defined roadmap that both companies
  and community are behind.
+ Business development, partnerships.
+ Run surveys to help prioritize GNOME Foundation
  goals.
* Events
  o GUADEC (July 26-30)
+ "Open Desktop Day" at GUADEC on Monday.
  # Starts at 10:30am and lasts until about 4pm.
  # Stormy will do a kickoff presentation followed
by community presentations.
  # ACTION: All board members should plan to join
the "Open Desktop Day" at GUADEC on Monday for
the networking at 10:30am, 12:30am, and 3:00pm.
+ Advisory Board Meeting at GUADEC on Tuesday.
  # Discussion about planning, preparation, and
o

Meeting Minutes Published - July 15, 2010

[Brian Cameron]

The meeting minutes for the June 24th GNOME Foundation board meeting
is now published.  Refer here:

  http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20100715

Other past board meetings are archived here:

  http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes

-- text of the latest minutes follows --

Minutes for Meeting of July 15, 2010

Next Meeting

* July 25th, 2010 at GUADEC

Attending

* Andreas Nilsson
* Brian Cameron
* Diego Escalante Urrelo
* Emily Chen
* Germán Póo-Caamaño
* Jorge Castro
* Og Maciel
* Paul Cutler
* Rosanna Yuen
* Srinivasa Ragavan
* Stormy Peters
* Vincent Untz

Regrets

* Bastien Nocera

Missing

Recurring Items

* Review past action items.
* Did each person with action items send their status reports to
  the board list before the meeting?
* Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published
  to foundation-announce and foundation-list.
* Make sure to start up the gobby server for better note taking.
* Update foundation.gnome.org website.

New Items

* Welcome to new board members, and fairwell to members stepping
  down from the board.

* Reassigning key action items:
  o ACTION: Diego to send an email to board-list to pass on the
internal-review-process hat
  o ACTION: Og will take over from Diego and talk to John and
Ronaldo Padula (Loja Geek Depto Comercial).

* GNOME IRC Meeting Update, and schedule for next meeting
  o Attended by few Foundation members including Board members.
Updates on various topics have been included in the minutes.
  o http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/IRC20100710
  o To improve attendance at future meetings, the Board agreed
to prepare an agenda prior to the next meeting, which is a
month after GUADEC and a month before GNOME 3.0.
  o ACTION: Paul will organize the next GNOME Foundation IRC
meeting and create an agenda.

* Meeting planning for GUADEC
  o GNOME Advisory Board Meeting Update
+ Advisory Board meeting will be on Tuesday, July 27th
  at 09:30am local time.
+ ACTION: Stormy will mail the agenda for the GNOME
  Advisory Board meeting.
  o Board meeting:
+ Board meeting will be held on Sunday, July 25th at
  09:30am local time.

* Feedback from membership about Stormy's bonus
  o The board will rework how information about Stormy's bonus
and performance reviews moving forward. The process will be
to focus more on getting better feedback about GNOME
Foundation goals in general.

* The Board is negotiating with requests for additional funds from
  the GNOME.Asia Summit organizers
  o ACTION: Emily to mail the list about final GNOME.Asia
financial situation so that the board can make budget
decisions.

* Boston Summit
  o Venue fee is higher than compared with previous years. This
is in part due to our need to change the date.
  o ACTION: Stormy to work with John (J5) Palmieri to
negotiate the costs for the Boston Summit.

* Desktop Summit 2011: comments on the bids, participating in
  interviews
  o Updated bids from:
+ Berlin
+ Bulgaria: No response.
+ Istanbul
  o ACTION: Paul and Brian have volunteered to help out with
the Desktop Summit 2011 bid interviews.
* Free Agent t-shirt.
  o The Board approved printing 100 t-shirts.
  o ACTION: Brian to make arrangements to print 100 "Free
Agent" t-shirts to have at GUADEC.

* 2010 Q2 GNOME Quarterly Report Update
  o ACTION: All board members - The Board agreed to review the
2010 Q2 GNOME Quarterly Report draft sent by Brian.

* Annual Report update
  o ACTION: Paul will send an email update about the Annual
Report to the board.

* GNOME 3 as a Foundation goal:
  o Discussion has been started on foundation-list with few
responses. Need to invigorate the discussion. The Board
plans to run another survey to try and get more useful
feedback from the community. The last survey did not
generate very useful information, but we could likely get
better information by asking about technical and
non-technical goals separately.

Completed Actions

* Germán - Will contact the students from Bangladesh who requested
  an invitation letter to find out details about what they need and
  to address the concerns raised by the organization. -- Bharath
  Acharya took care of it, the details were received and an
  invitation letter 

Meeting Minutes Published - June 24, 2010

[Brian Cameron]

The meeting minutes for the June 24th GNOME Foundation board meeting
is now published.  Refer here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20100624

Other past board meetings are archived here:

 http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes

-- text of the latest minutes follows --

Minutes for Meeting of June 24, 2010

Next Meeting

* July 15, 2010

Attending

* Bastien Nocera
* Brian Cameron
* Diego Escalante Urrelo (late)
* Emily Chen
* Germán Póo-Caamaño
* Jorge Castro
* Og Maciel
* Paul Cutler
* Rosanna Yuen
* Stormy Peters
* Vincent Untz

Regrets

* Srinivasa Ragavan

Missing

* Andreas Nilsson

Recurring Items

* Review past action items.
* Did each person with action items send their status reports to
  the board list before the meeting?
* Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published
  to foundation-announce and foundation-list.
* Make sure to start up the gobby server for better note taking.
* Update foundation.gnome.org website.

New Items

* Annual Report Update
  o Now picking out pictures to include in the Annual Report.
  o Plan to have the Annual Report ready for printing on July
15th.

* Sysadmin Position
  o The time to apply is now closed.
  o The GNOME Foundation got quite a few applications.
Currently in the process of reviewing them.

* CSUN Conference
  o The board has agreed to pay $2,000 for the booth, out of
the funds allocated for a11y.
  o ACTION: Stormy will contact Eitan Isaacson to make sure
that plans are made to get a booth a CSUN.

* Reimbursing additional costs (visa, vaccinations, etc.) for
  Fernando Herrera's travel to Idlelo (230 Euro)
  o Germán talked to Fernando and he asked to not be
reimbursed. Fernando just wanted to point out that the
GNOME Foundation should consider paying for such additional
costs when sending representatives to future events..
  o ACTION: Germán will update the Travel policy that the
Foundation will cover such extra costs when the board
requests that a representative attend an event on behalf of
GNOME Foundation.
  o ACTION: Vincent to send a Thank You note to Fernando for
representing GNOME at Idlelo.

* ACTION: Stormy will follow up with Om Chandra (a teacher of
  Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sport of Cambodia and an
  E-Learning Training Coordinator of Open Learning Program of Open
  Institute NGO) to find out if he should receive travel subsidy to
  GUADEC.

* ACTION: Germán will contact the students from Bangladesh who
  requested an invitation letter to find out details about what
  they need and to address the concerns raised by the organization.

* Desktop Summit 2011:
  o ACTION: Germán will write a template that people who fill
out bids can complete that can be made public.
  o ACTION: Board members must read the bids received for the
Desktop Summit 2011 and make comments or propose questions
that have not already been raised.

* Making public the results of the GNOME Foundation Goals survey
  ran last January.
  o 
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2010-January/msg00135.html

  o ACTION: Stormy will publish the results of our GNOME
Foundation Goals survey.

* Texas Instruments Zoom2 devices
  o Update from Brian. People who have received the device have
found it difficult to work with.
  o ACTION: Bastien will try to find people who can consolidate
the feedback about the Texas Instruments Zoom2 device to
provide back to Texas Instruments.
  o ACTION: Brian will provide to Bastien the feedback received
so far about the Texas Instruments Zoom2 devices.
* Next Foundation IRC meeting
  o The next Foundation IRC meeting will be held on Saturday
July 10th at 2pm UTC.

* The Clutter copyright assignment issue has been resolved. There
  will be no need for copyright assignment.

* The board's idea to use the Nokia money was not well received by
  the GNOME Mobile list. We are discussing and debating on the
  mobile list. We would like to have an action plan by GUADEC and
  use the money by the end of the year.

   * ACTION: Bastien will help Stormy identify some opportunities how
 to best use the money provided by Nokia.
* The board approves spending $3,000 to purchase new t-shirts,
  mousepads, and stickers for new Friends of GNOME gifts. Also some
  of the stickers will be used for inclusion in the Event Box.
* ACTION: Stormy will set up a doodle survey to figure out the time
  for the fu

Stormy's Bonus - 10/09 to 03/10

[Brian Cameron]

GNOME Foundation:

A few weeks ago the GNOME Foundation completed Stormy Peter's bi-annual
review process.  This review is for the period from October, 2009
through March, 2010.  For this period, Stormy was awarded a $4,970
bonus.  Stormy's maximum bonus per year can be $24,000.

Following is a report that provides a brief justification for how the
board arrived at the bonus amount for each category.  Note that the
dollar amount in parens after each category section and subsection
shows the yearly maximum that can be achieved for each goal category.

Fund Raising


 + Friends of GNOME

   The Friends of GNOME bonus is calculated annually at the end of the
   fiscal year, so no bonus in this review period.

   Bonus $0 (out of $1,500 max)

 + Increase revenue

   * $30,000. IBM adboard fees.
   * $5,000. Collabora support for a sysadmin.
   * $11,000. Additional hackfest money - The GNOME Foundation already
 brought in $11,000 more than we expected all year for a total of
 $25,800.

   For total increased revenue of $46,000, the bonus of $450 for every
   $10,000 equals $2,070.

   Bonus: $2,070 (out of $4,500 max)

GNOME 3
===

 + Manage the GNOME 3.0 Marketing Campaign

   Although there was some good progress in developing the GNOME 3.0
   Marketing campaign at the Marketing hackfest last November, there is
   still a lot left to do.  The board would like to see more substantial
   GNOME 3 marketing material and more of a marketing effort happening.
   The board hopes that the Marketing hackfest in Zaragoza will help
   things to leap forward so that the bonus will be larger in the next
   review cycle.

   Bonus = $0 (out of $2,000 max)

 + Managing a Successful Release

   The board decided to wait to pay out in this category until the next
   review cycle since it should be easier to determine the overall
   success of the GNOME 3 release at that time.

   Bonus = $0 (out of $2,000 max)

 + Managing the Press

   The GNOME Foundation has had more press releases in this six month
   period than in the previous couple of years and put together the
   press team led by Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier.

   Bonus = $500 (out of $2,000 max)

Community Building
==

 + Improving GNOME infrastructure

   Stormy has been a great team builder and gets a lot of good work done
   keeping the GNOME community organized.  Stormy has also been working
   more closely with Rosanna and helping to ensure that tasks are
   getting done on time.  Her work to help foster and build out teams
   like the press team, the marketing team, the travel subsidy team,
   and the women's outreach program has been particularly notable.  In
   this area, Stormy really shines, and deserves a $1,000 bonus.

   Bonus = $1,000 (out of $2,000 max)

 + GNOME Mobile

   The GNOME community seems to be getting better at developing a Mobile
   story, but there is still so far to go.  Lacking a real success in
   the mobile space, the board feels that no bonus is warranted in this
   category.

   Bonus = $0 (out of $2,000 max)

 + Developing World

   Stormy was very involved with putting together a GNOME presence at
   Idlelo, FOSS Nigeria, GNOME.Asia, and several events in Latin
   America.  The board feels that we are starting to see results in
   this area, warranting a $400 bonus.  That said, the board would like
   to see more outreach going forward.

   Bonus = $400 (out of $2,000 max)

Eyes And Ears
=

 + CRM

   Although the CRM system is set up, it is not yet fully configured or
   being fully utilized.  The board decided to wait until the next
   review cycle to allocate this bonus when it is more clear how
   successful the CRM system becomes.

   Bonus = $0 (out of $2,000 max)

 + Marketing Assets

   A lot of good work developing marketing assets has been done
   (especially for the event box) which warrants a $500 bonus.  However
   the board feels that the GNOME community is not as far along as we
   would like in terms of marketing, nor are our existing marketing
   assets as visible as we would like.  The board expects that the
   recent Marketing hackfest in Zaragoza will help to accelerate things
   so that the bonus will be larger in the next review cycle.

   Bonus = $500 (out of $2,000 max)

Discretionary Bonus
===

Overall the board is very happy with Stormy's ongoing progress and feels
that a lot of good work has been done in this review cycle.  For the
many things that Stormy does which are not broken down into the above
goals, a $500 bonus is justified.

Bonus = $500 (out of $2,000 max)
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Re: GNOME Speaker Guidelines

[Brian Cameron]

Lefty:

If it isn't clear already, the Speaker Guidelines are not intended to be
used in frivolous ways.  If people think that this needs to be spelled
out more clearly in the guidelines, then please propose improved text.
I can't imagine that anybody would take a complaint about someone giving
a talk and using a MacBook seriously, unless the situation were somehow
extraordinary (e.g. if a speaker had a "GNU/Linux Killer" sticker on
their MacBook, that might warrant some concern and discussion).

There is no need to discuss Apple or Microsoft or any other specific
company.  If you have concerns about how the guidelines might be applied
about topics concerning free source vs. open source vs. proprietary
technologies, then let's please talk about this without naming specific
companies.

Brian


On 06/25/10 05:39 PM, Lefty (石鏡 ) wrote:

On 6/25/10 8:30 AM, "Patryk Zawadzki"  wrote:


I bet
at least one person in the audience is offended when they see the
presenter using a Mac. Or sporting a Windows t-shirt. Or using an
iPod. Or mentioning that Apple did something better than GNOME.
"Security, seize and escort the speaker out of the building." :)


By the way: I would certainly recommend that anyone who's offended by a
presenter using a Mac, wearing a Windows t-shirt, or both at the same time,
to take their concerns directly and immediately to the Board of Directors.

I would suggest that the Board of Directors tell them to "Get a grip."

Is it _that_ difficult to distinguish between the sort of offense that
someone like Celeste Lyn Paul, a KDE board member, expressed when she wrote
( http://identi.ca/notice/6304540)...

"Do men really think RMSs virgin joke at #gcds was not sexist? Very
disappointed in FLOSS comm chatter about this."

...on the one hand, and the "offense" that someone who feels a speaker is
not being "pure" enough, or something, by using a "non-free-software-
movement-approved" piece of hardware, or wearing a t-shirt bearing the logo
of a "non-free-software-movement-approved" company, on the other? Do you see
no distinction between the two, Patryk?

(I am, admittedly, making the assumption that the reason your "at least one
person" is taking offense is because the "free software movement" has a deep
dislike, at the very least, for both Apple and Microsoft. Correct me if
they're taking offense on color choices, style/industrial design or some
other score.)

As I recall, there was no shortage at all of MacBooks in the _audience_ at
GCDS, and that's been pretty typical. There were plenty at FOSDEM as well.

Do you think someone would be reasonable for your "at least one person" to
"take offense" at the members of the community who happen to like Macs? What
do you think he-or-she should do about this?


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Re: GNOME Speaker Guidelines

[Brian Cameron]

Sergey:

Please do not derail this discussion.  The topic at hand is to discuss
how to create simple guidelines to help people understand how to best
represent themselves and GNOME when speaking at various events.

This topic is not about individuals that you or others might find
offensive.  It is especially not about individuals who haven't even
spoken at GNOME events.  It is also not about whether or not there
is any relationship between making offensive jokes and general bad
behavior in society.

If you have points to raise on how to improve our proposed guidelines,
could you do so without naming specific individuals?  Also, asking
rhetorical questions is not nearly as useful as suggesting improved
text, or pointing out what you think needs to be improved about the
proposed guidelines.

Please try and contribute to the conversation in a more constructive
manner.  Many volunteers have been working hard for months to try and
put together some simple guidelines that are reasonable and meet
people's main concerns.  To be respectful to these volunteers and their
hard work, we should try and keep on topic.

Brian


On 06/25/10 05:06 PM, Sergey Panov wrote:

On Fri, 2010-06-25 at 08:08 -0700, Stone Mirror wrote:

Within the past two weeks, a male attendee sexually assaulted a couple
of women at a Linux conference. Perhaps he believed that they were
"EMACS virgins" and he was exercising his "holy duty".


And the "Open Source" heresy founding father, ESR, is a self-professed
"gun nut". Should we be mentioning ESR and "Open Source" movement every
time the gun violence is in the news?

- S


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