Re: Changes to the GNOME Foundation Bylaws from 2002
On Tue, Oct 02, 2012 at 01:16:46AM -0400, Chris Leonard wrote: On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 12:29 AM, Daniel Veillard veill...@redhat.com wrote: On Mon, Oct 01, 2012 at 03:07:46AM +0200, Tobias Mueller wrote: Dear Foundation, I propose to change the current bylaws to the document attached. Not saying what the change is, why you want it changed and providing some kind of diff is very very surprizing. It exactly sounds like you don't want that change to be discussed in any way. Diff attached to: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=683980 as discussed on this list two weeks ago. I see no indications that there has been any attempt to conceal this information, your implied accusation is ill-founded. Well, why not pass that information in the mail to announce then ? A simple followup to that announce mail BTW the changes we are making are documented at https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=683980; just solves the issue for me. So NACK on principle, I'm probably not a foundation member anymore but I was part of the group who designed the bylaws and I don't like your way to proceed frankly. Posting and announcing a diff on bugzilla, waiting about two weeks for comment (only a few on the ticket), then asking to move forward. I am not sure I see the procedural issue, what specifically should have been done differently? I'm new here, so I am curious. Well you cannot assume that foundation members watch all bugzilla, right ? So if you send the fact that you are changing the bylaws and that now replying constitute consent, at least give an indication of what the changes are really about, and why. It is pure common sense to me. Daniel -- Daniel Veillard | libxml Gnome XML XSLT toolkit http://xmlsoft.org/ dan...@veillard.com | Rpmfind RPM search engine http://rpmfind.net/ http://veillard.com/ | virtualization library http://libvirt.org/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Changes to the GNOME Foundation Bylaws from 2002
On Tue, Oct 02, 2012 at 11:02:21AM +0200, Tobias Mueller wrote: Hello, On 02.10.2012 09:05, Bastien Nocera wrote: Tobias, can you please re-send this with the proper context for foundation-announce? Yes. You are right, I missed out the context in the assumption that the threading would give it all. But I falsely (and subconsciously) assumed that everyone does do threading and more importantly, watches foundation-list. That was a mistake. I should at least have linked to the thread in the archives. Ah okay, this clarifies then, for me the mail came out of nowhere on my gmail account and without any context it was really surprizing, thanks ! Daniel -- Daniel Veillard | libxml Gnome XML XSLT toolkit http://xmlsoft.org/ dan...@veillard.com | Rpmfind RPM search engine http://rpmfind.net/ http://veillard.com/ | virtualization library http://libvirt.org/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Changes to the GNOME Foundation Bylaws from 2002
On Mon, Oct 01, 2012 at 03:07:46AM +0200, Tobias Mueller wrote: Dear Foundation, I propose to change the current bylaws to the document attached. Not saying what the change is, why you want it changed and providing some kind of diff is very very surprizing. It exactly sounds like you don't want that change to be discussed in any way. So NACK on principle, I'm probably not a foundation member anymore but I was part of the group who designed the bylaws and I don't like your way to proceed frankly. Daniel -- Daniel Veillard | libxml Gnome XML XSLT toolkit http://xmlsoft.org/ dan...@veillard.com | Rpmfind RPM search engine http://rpmfind.net/ http://veillard.com/ | virtualization library http://libvirt.org/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Temporaray enlargement of the GNOME Board with 3 persons
On Tue, Jun 06, 2006 at 03:11:54PM +1000, Jeff Waugh wrote: quote who=[EMAIL PROTECTED] But, they can't be members of the board without an election. Just want to point out that, yes, they can be - please read the Foundation by-laws. The board can change the size of the board at will, and nominate members at will. Which is clearly a hole in the democratic process, the right thing to do would be to fix the bylaws, not jump on the loophole as a justification. The referendum process was not done because it was necessary, it was done to understand the will of the membership (and delegate the decision to them). And to stay in the spirit of that process you should have avoided this last step. Honnestly this look very weird from the outside, the board looks like contradicting itself on every occasion, provides no information about the day to day business (or I missed the minutes since the bunch posted for March), and the only thing which justify not working by delegation is that most of the operation need to be done in secrecy. That's honnestly not the kind of board process we expected when the bylaws were written, Daniel -- Daniel Veillard | Red Hat http://redhat.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] | libxml GNOME XML XSLT toolkit http://xmlsoft.org/ http://veillard.com/ | Rpmfind RPM search engine http://rpmfind.net/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Temporaray enlargement of the GNOME Board with 3 persons
On Tue, Jun 06, 2006 at 08:33:45PM +1000, Jeff Waugh wrote: Considering the current state of affairs, I think it's wholly appropriate that the board is nominating Quim Gil (next in line from previous election results) to fill the position left vacant by Luis' resignation, but I don't yes, agreed, it's defining a new practice, but this sounds sane as long as that person is still okay with this. believe it's appropriate or necessary for the board to increase the number of directors (with or without referendum, but to answer your charges, mostly without) at this stage. I can't juge on the 'necessary', but I think it's inappropriate too. and the only thing which justify not working by delegation is that most of the operation need to be done in secrecy. I don't believe anyone has cited 'secrecy', though the word 'private' has come up. Ultimately the workings and decision of the board is not secret at all, but there are activities that require a certain amount of privacy or sensitivity. The process of dealing with employees, and the handling of the accounts (handling, not reporting) are good examples. I don't think this is even remotely controversial - anyone who has participated in the running of a non-profit organisation (including you, Daniel) would be well aware of this kind of balancing. To have balance one need one opposite side, a perceived one. Sure some details can't be shared, as you know I'm well aware of that, BUT I also always promoted being as public as possible with issues. Currently the board work is opaque, which would be fine if the few signals emitted were good, but 'we are overhelmed we need to reverse to some extend a voted decision' is not a good signal. If the board is not appropriately reporting its activities, then any member The board is not reporting its activities in a timely fashion. should feel absolutely comfortable to ask questions and make demands. But I would ask that those questions and demands be specific and reasonable. :-) Okay, what happen at the board meetings since March, time of last published minutes I could find. I assume it's reasonable request to at least know if you are meeting, and what are the problems/questions you are facing with the details you can share. It then helps getting a sense of how much work need to be done you can't cope with and hence how necessary increasing the board size again really is. I hope my reaction can be understood, and my request not unreasonnable, but really that request should not need to be done, this should be normal process, Daniel -- Daniel Veillard | Red Hat http://redhat.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] | libxml GNOME XML XSLT toolkit http://xmlsoft.org/ http://veillard.com/ | Rpmfind RPM search engine http://rpmfind.net/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Minutes of the Board meeting 2005 Nov 16
Minutes of the Board meeting 2005 Nov 16 Administrativia: Following the result of the referendum the board size will be 7 in the future. Attendance: === Owen Taylor (chairing) Jody Goldberg Miguel de Icaza Tim Ney (leaving after 30 mn) Daniel Veillard Murray Cumming Luis Villa Dave Neary Christian Schaller Regrets: Jonathan Blandford Federico Mena-Quintero Actions completed: == ACTION: Murray to get getting privacy policy online - Done ACTION: Board members to add items to FoundationBoard_2fMoneyUses page - Done Actions: ACTION: Dave to start looking for vendors to host the GNOME online shop - ongoing ACTION: Owen will send out mail to full board requesting interest in representing GNOME on LSB Desktop group - still open New Action: === ACTION: Owen to make up hiring plans and prepare the associated informations Agenda: === * Murray's idea of making FoundationBoard wiki page public - it was our workplace for the last year, most items were made public though the Minutes - we will try to get a public Board page * Tim's departure - Tim Ney has decided to leave the GNOME Foundation for other endeavors. Tim has helped greatly in getting the GNOME Foundation off the ground and incorporated as a non-profit. He has played an essential role in fundraising and in organizing the GNOME conference GUADEC over the last 4 years. Tim has consistently been a strong voice for free and open software in government around the globe. We thank him for the work he has put in on behalf of the GNOME project and wish him well in his new endeavor. In light of Tim's departure, the GNOME Board has taken the decision to separate the administrative functions of the Executive Director position from the communication and organizational roles that have been attached to it and to look to fill these roles separately. We feel this will allow us to take better advantage of GNOME's strong international network of volunteers. * Any necessary election stuff. - to avoid any possible confusion that might result from Tim departure announcement, the board has asked the elections committee to extend nominations for candidates for next year's board open for another 24 hours. * Moving forward on hiring someone in the part-time role: - we need someone based in the US to handle administrative functions for the GNOME foundation. - Owen will drive this process * next meeting Wed 30 November Daniel -- Daniel Veillard | Red Hat http://redhat.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] | libxml GNOME XML XSLT toolkit http://xmlsoft.org/ http://veillard.com/ | Rpmfind RPM search engine http://rpmfind.net/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Advisory referendum, not decision [Was: Beginning of the 2005 GNOME Foundation elections]
With my Secretary of the GNOME Foundation hat firmly on: On Thu, Nov 17, 2005 at 09:01:34PM +0100, David Neary wrote: Candidacies must be announced prior to November 14, 2005 or thereabouts (which has already passed). Currently, I count 8 nominees (Federico, Christian, Jonathan, Bastien, Vincent, Behdad, Quim, David). I count 12: Jeff, Federico, Behdad, German, Christian, Vincent, Luis, Jonathan, Bastien, Anne, Quim, Dave (me) There have been a problem with Anne's post to foundation announce, it did reach the mailing list but when I went there to handle the bounces my filters which cleans up bounces had apparently erronously deleted her post. I can confirm that a copy of her mail to foundation list was also sent to the announce list too. The board is 11 people, including Tim. The executive director (the title) is not a member of the board. Tim Ney (the individual) is. So there is no vacancy on the board. Confirmed. I would also like to confirm that the board expected the referendum to be binding and that there is no doubts that the upcoming elections have 7 seats open. I hope this clarifies some of the situation, Daniel -- Daniel Veillard | Red Hat http://redhat.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] | libxml GNOME XML XSLT toolkit http://xmlsoft.org/ http://veillard.com/ | Rpmfind RPM search engine http://rpmfind.net/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Number of valid nominees [Was: Advisory referendum, not decision [Was: Beginning of the 2005 GNOME Foundation elections]]
On Thu, Nov 17, 2005 at 07:10:29PM -0300, Germán Poó Caamaño wrote: El jue, 17-11-2005 a las 15:09 -0500, Dominic Lachowicz escribió: Hi Dave, I count 12: Jeff, Federico, Behdad, German, Christian, Vincent, Luis, Jonathan, Bastien, Anne, Quim, Dave (me) Only 8 have sent any mail to foundation-announce, which is required by the election's rules. So Jeff's, Anne's, German's, and Luis' candidicies appear to be either invalid or incomplete by the foundation's rules. Or perhaps they are blocked by some mailing-list admin bot. http://foundation.gnome.org/elections/2005/rules.html http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2005-November/thread.html Otherwise, thanks for clearing that up. You can see the archives of foundation-list for those statements that were send to both lists. For instance: Anne sent it to both lists according to: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2005-November/msg00028.html Luis has written that he sent to both lists. (I don't know which is the statement valid for Jeff). And I sent it to both lists according to: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2005-November/msg00039.html So, I guess the announcements are still waiting for approval on foundation-announce list. No, they were discarded by the SPAM cleanup bot. It is my fault, see my other post, the candidacy should still be considered valid, I take the blame for that, sorry about this ! Daniel -- Daniel Veillard | Red Hat http://redhat.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] | libxml GNOME XML XSLT toolkit http://xmlsoft.org/ http://veillard.com/ | Rpmfind RPM search engine http://rpmfind.net/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: New rules for the elections [was Re: Nomination process should not be public until after deadline]
On Fri, Oct 28, 2005 at 03:38:15PM +0200, Vincent Untz wrote: On Fri, October 28, 2005 00:21, Olav Vitters wrote: I suggest to keep the official candidates and the amount of candidates secret until after the nomination deadline. Candidates can of course announce their candidacy publicly, but I hope that when the official list is not known, nobody will run just because we do not have 11 persons yet (or something like that). I also hope this avoids the not-so-known people from responding when they see the 'big names' on the list. This proposition makes a lot of sense to me. Is there an objection to this? Well, I would object on the ground that no democracy function that way and it's a strange precedent. Plus it somewhat oppose all free-speech principle you would find in democracies. Also, I would like to see a rule about Planet GNOME and similar sites: And blocking the media ? Damn I would not vote for you if you were candidating for a Grenoble's mayor position, that's frigthening... What do you think? I'm puzzled you don't realize how anti democratic a suggestion this is. Daniel -- Daniel Veillard | Red Hat http://redhat.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] | libxml GNOME XML XSLT toolkit http://xmlsoft.org/ http://veillard.com/ | Rpmfind RPM search engine http://rpmfind.net/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Minutes of the Board meeting 2005 Sep 28
Minutes of the Board meeting 2005 Sep 28 Attendance: === Owen Taylor (chairing) Tim Ney Daniel Veillard Jonathan Blandford Federico Mena-Quintero Murray Cumming Luis Villa Dave Neary Regrets: Jody Goldberg Miguel de Icaza Missing: Christian Schaller Actions completed: == ACTION: Owen to add a section on things the foundation should do once it has the money - done it's on the foundation board page ACTION: Jonathan to post about election items we tend to forget or postpone from year to year - not needed, mostly reducing the board size, and this is being handled ACTION: Tim to send a mail to the advisory board about sponsoring travel for hackers to go to the Summit - done Actions: ACTION: Dave to start looking for vendors to host the GNOME online shop - Ongoing ACTION: Dave to proceed to details stage of merchandizing agreement - Ongoing ACTION: Murray to take the task to find documentation authors and get it done - Federico is handling this again ACTION: Tim to go though the trademark registration check with the user groups so they submit the licence agreement - ongoing, should update the status in the group Wiki page New Action: === ACTION: Murray to go over the trademark agreement page and fix the dandling links to the logo ACTION: Murray to provide a simpler english explanation of the trademark agreement meaning ACTION: Jonathan to investigate how to set up and encourage hacking sessions at the Summit ACTION: Owen check with the Election commitee for membership reminders Agenda: === * Question on trademark agreement - we need a set of ready to use logos for the trademarks agreement - they are in the Wiki but we need to update the trademark agreement links - an english explanation of the legal wording of the trademark agreement would be nice * Sponsoring hackers to Summit - processing of the existing request * The format of the Summit - ligthning talks but otherwise no formal presentations - small 5-10 minutes presentations at the beginning of BOFs but otherwise open discussions - encourage hacking sessions * Elections - anything we need to do to make sure everything work smoothly ? - Vincent nearly finished anonymous voting so it looks fine - expiration of foundation membership reminders * Referendum about reducing board size - need around 25 persons to express interest in the referendum on the foundation-list and then the referendum will be held * next meeting Wed 12 October Daniel -- Daniel Veillard | Red Hat Desktop team http://redhat.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] | libxml GNOME XML XSLT toolkit http://xmlsoft.org/ http://veillard.com/ | Rpmfind RPM search engine http://rpmfind.net/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Petition for referendum
On Wed, Sep 28, 2005 at 06:26:19PM -0400, Jonathan Blandford wrote: On Wed, 2005-09-28 at 21:32 +0200, David Neary wrote: Hi, I would like to propose reducing board size to 7 people. The board do not want to decide on this reduction, but will respect the decision of the membership by referendum. However, the board didn't agree on even having a referendum this evening (this is the problem which reducing board size will fix). That's not a fair characterization, Dave. We can't come to consensus that shrinking the board is a good idea, and told you to go ahead and propose the referendum so we could discuss it on foundation-list. I also think Dave misrepresented the discussion at the board meeting in his mail. Daniel -- Daniel Veillard | Red Hat Desktop team http://redhat.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] | libxml GNOME XML XSLT toolkit http://xmlsoft.org/ http://veillard.com/ | Rpmfind RPM search engine http://rpmfind.net/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reducing the board size
On Sun, Sep 18, 2005 at 11:52:41PM +0200, Anne Østergaard wrote: Points of importance for the future of the Foundation should not be decided with 6 votes in favour and 5 against. For the record, such a situation never happened in the past. There have been issues where there was a relatively clear split between two group of divergent opinions, but in those case the resolution wasn't to vote, usually a middle way has been attempted, or (for good or bad) the issue has stalled and no decision was done. For the sake of transparency I will also say that the management of the foundation only employee, our Director Tim Ney, has been the only recurring issue over the years leading to this situation. As a secretary this is a very hard issue, because when this happen I am always blocked between the two conflicting problem of trying to function as openly as possible and the obvious privacy issue that our employee deserves. Daniel -- Daniel Veillard | Red Hat Desktop team http://redhat.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] | libxml GNOME XML XSLT toolkit http://xmlsoft.org/ http://veillard.com/ | Rpmfind RPM search engine http://rpmfind.net/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Minutes of the Board meeting 2005 Sep 14
Minutes of the Board meeting 2005 Sep 14 Attendance: === Owen Taylor (chairing) Tim Ney Daniel Veillard Dave Neary Federico Mena-Quintero Murray Cumming Regrets: Luis Villa Jonathan Blandford Miguel de Icaza Missing: Jody Goldberg Christian Schaller Actions completed: == ACTION: Luis to post the Minutes of the meeting with the advisory board - Done Actions: ACTION: Dave to start looking for vendors to host the GNOME online shop - Ongoing ACTION: Dave to proceed to details stage of merchandizing agreement - Ongoing ACTION: Murray to take the task to find documentation authors and get it done - Federico is handling this again ACTION: Owen to add a section on things the foundation should do once it has the money - ongoing ACTION: Tim to go though the trademark registration check with the user groups so they submit the licence agreement - ongoing, should update the status in the group Wiki page ACTION: Jonathan to post about election items we tend to forget or postpone from year to year - ongoing New Action: === ACTION: Tim to send a mail to the advisory board about sponsoring travel for hackers to go to the Summit Agenda: === * Sponsoring hackers to Summit - can we involve companies ? try to run this through the advisory board list - try to get sponsorship for hackers who work on performances since this one of the main topic * Store - now paying our German lawyer - try to finish the deal * referendum about reducing board size - Dave will start the debate on the foundation-list * next meeting Wed 28 September Daniel -- Daniel Veillard | Red Hat Desktop team http://redhat.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] | libxml GNOME XML XSLT toolkit http://xmlsoft.org/ http://veillard.com/ | Rpmfind RPM search engine http://rpmfind.net/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Advisory Board Meeting Minutes, Aug. 2nd
On Mon, Sep 19, 2005 at 12:48:33PM +0200, Vincent Untz wrote: On Mon, September 19, 2005 12:07, Daniel Veillard wrote: ACTION: Luis to post the Minutes of the meeting with the advisory board - Done Are there public minutes the members can see or is it only for the board? (or did I not delete them? :-)) Dohh, I saw them so I though they were sent publicly, but this wasn't the case. I don't see why they should be blocked from being public at this point do here they are. - Forwarded message from Luis Villa [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2005 08:01:34 -0400 From: Luis Villa [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Advisory Board Meeting Minutes, Aug. 2nd Apologies for getting these out so late. No good reason for it; have taken a mental note never to volunteer for minute taking again :) Attendance: GNOME Foundation Board: Owen Taylor Jonathan Blandford David Neary Luis Villa Murray Cumming Tim Ney (Executive Director) Representing Nokia:Carlos Guerreiro Representing Novell: Nat Friedman, Robert M. Love Representing Sun: John Rice Regrets: Stormy Peters Absent: Daniel Veillard Federico Mena-Quintero Christian Schaller Murray Cumming on release process: * basically frozen for 2.12 * pending improvements: nautilus, clipboard improvements, cairo- more in http://live.gnome.org/ReleasesNotes2p12Items * Luis Villa mentioned that Novell/SuSE are helping with 2.11 QA for the first time, which is very welcome. This is along with 'traditional' unstable branch assistance from Ubuntu and Fedora. Groups/companies who want to assist with QA of the unstable branch should contact Luis ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) or the bug team ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Owen Taylor on Foundation Activities: * Trademark: trademark licenses are being finalized * Finalizing GUADEC 2006 plans: (27th May-31st May) Tim Ney and Christian Schaller have been working with the regional hosts in Barcelona. This will be the first time GUADEC is co-located (with a large Catalan software congress). Should hopefully have an agreement with local schools to use GNOME by the time we are there. Nat asks: why are we not doing this for 9 days, like KDE? Tim mentions Summit, and difficulties of ramping up gradually. Facilities have been offered through the 4th, so we might be able to extend it some. Havoc Pennington notes that the emphasis on the KDE conference was heavily on actual code writing, which is different from GUADEC. Nat pushes for mini hack-fest post GUADEC. * 3 days of actual development * one day of presentations of what was done. David Neary discusses Formal GNOME store: * getting there, all pieces in place except stuck on contract negotiation/lawyers Marketing (presented by Murray Cumming): Lots of activity here lately. Marketing group would like more involvement from the ad board members, which would be beneficial for everyone. Some needs: * need specific customer stories/details from the companies- would like folks to see and add to http://live.gnome.org/MarketingTeam/GnomeDeployments * would like funding for boxes of shippable supplies to help present ourselves better at conferences: see http://live.gnome.org/MarketingTeam/EventsOrganisation/GnomeEventBox * would like feedback on current target markets for ad board members, so that marketing team can help tailor messages to those groups * Luis Villa mentions the OSDW (osdw.org), and suggests that something similar for ISVs be discussed at the next ad board meeting. * Some posters have been done here: http://www.aracnet.com/~sri/ Trademarks: * Discussion of Trademark policy for distros and software Summit: * Boston summit, second weekend of October (8th-10th) * performance mini-summit- is summit right place for it? will this help companies justify sending people? Luis takes an action to sketch this into the outline schedule. * Robert Love (Novell), Sun would like to spend time on performance * more information here: http://live.gnome.org/Boston2005 -- Daniel Veillard | Red Hat Desktop team http://redhat.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] | libxml GNOME XML XSLT toolkit http://xmlsoft.org/ http://veillard.com/ | Rpmfind RPM search engine http://rpmfind.net/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reducing the board size
On Sat, Sep 17, 2005 at 07:00:30PM -0400, Luis Villa wrote: On 9/14/05, Daniel Veillard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Sep 14, 2005 at 09:01:38PM +0200, David Neary wrote: I'm in favour of reducing the board to 7 people. I would like to see us have a referendum on the issue next month. The board has huge problems being pro-active. Any issue which is slightly contentious has an opposition in a board of 11 people. It's inevitable. And when there is opposition, there are many voices, and when there are many voices, there is no resolution. My experience is rather that all board members are busy members of the community, so getting people do do things is hard. If you get 7 persons instead of 11 you reduce also the amount of available time from board members. People running for the board will need more time upfront to fullfill their board member requirements. I have not had time to review the records, but I'm pretty sure that at least two board members have taken zero action items all year, and a I'm one of them, my participation has been limited to providing minutes, and I entierely agree it's not a satisfactory situation. couple have taken very few, and that this has been fairly consistent every year I've been on the board (though it has been different people each year, that's just how it is.) So at least in an average year you could cut the board down to seven people with very, very little impact on the amount of work done. Assuming you're lucky to get only the motivated people left in the set of 7. This is taking risks I think. In addition, as Dave mentioned, I think that cutting down the number of people would increase actual campaigning, which is, I think a good thing. Amount of time available for board work would certainly be something that people might campaign on- certainly, I'd be less likely to vote for someone who I know is very busy, so we might actually get (gasp) selection of the board, instead of the current 'virtually whoever self-nominates gets in' situation, which I think is damaging to the ability of the board to function as a coherent, motivated unit. This could work both ways, individual conflicts impact is reduced in a larger group too. Finally, I'd suggest that it is also quite possible that a board with fewer people might more actively seek out and charter new teams more actively, instead of 'hoarding' some of the work. A board that did less work itself and did more to distribute work would both need less time and (I think) be more effective in the work it did do. My analysis is that we have trouble at the execution level. Reducing the group size is advocated as a way to fix this, I have doubts about it, I don't think this will solve the problem , but I don't have any other proposal, so I won't object anymore. Having a referendum about this is just fine from my viewpoint. Daniel -- Daniel Veillard | Red Hat Desktop team http://redhat.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] | libxml GNOME XML XSLT toolkit http://xmlsoft.org/ http://veillard.com/ | Rpmfind RPM search engine http://rpmfind.net/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Minutes of the Board meeting 2005 Aug 31
[ Oops I realize I forgot to post the minutes from last board meeting !] Minutes of the Board meeting 2005 Aug 31 Administrativia: Attendance: === Owen Taylor (chairing) Tim Ney Daniel Veillard Dave Neary Luis Villa Jonathan Blandford Miguel de Icaza Federico Mena-Quintero (45:) Regrets: Jody Goldberg Murray Cumming Missing: Christian Schaller Actions completed: == ACTION: Daniel to send request for proposal for specific topic to be worked on at the next Summit - ongoing proposal should go on the Wiki like last year, Luis to build that page this was discussed during the meeting with the advisory board redundant with wiki page = done ACTION: Dave to try to get a german lawyer feedback on the contract for the GNOME online shop within a week. - Ongoing ACTION: Tim to ask our lawyers to see how much it would cost to try to deposit the trademark in Europe and if the local groups can help us get it. - their answer is that we should try to handle deposits ourselves through existing trademark groups to avoid doing it country by country. Done Actions: ACTION: Dave to start looking for vendors to host the GNOME online shop - Ongoing ACTION: Dave to proceed to details stage of merchandizing agreement - Ongoing ACTION: Murray to take the task to find documentation authors and get it done - Federico did the first step, Jonathan is taking over ACTION: Owen to make the final announcement of the Trademark proposals - Done ACTION: Luis to post the Minutes of the meeting with the advisory board - Ongoing New Action: === ACTION: Add a section on things the foundation should do once it has the money ACTION: Tim to go though the trademark registration check with the user groups. ACTION: Jonathan to post about election items we tend to forget or postpone from year to year Agenda: === * Region events (e.g. Brazilian Forum - Tim has been talking to the organizers there, about a second one) GUADEC is the main event but not everybody can go so we should encourage local events, and how we can help * How can we get GNOME hackers involved, get them there * How can we empower people locally to represent GNOME In general helping the user group developp is the main mechanism to create such events. Promoting the work of existing user's group is probably one of the most effective way. The list at http://live.gnome.org/UserGroups show a number of local groups. getting report published in the quaterly news letter. * SPI trademark discussion Luis is gonna represent the GNOME Foundation at the SPI. * Preparation for the Summit It's in 6 weeks. Register, register speed talks, prepare per topic sections. This lives in http://live.gnome.org/Boston2005 * Talks about the financial status (done at the beginning of the teleconf) * next meeting Wed 14 September Daniel -- Daniel Veillard | Red Hat Desktop team http://redhat.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] | libxml GNOME XML XSLT toolkit http://xmlsoft.org/ http://veillard.com/ | Rpmfind RPM search engine http://rpmfind.net/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Changing the name of GUADEC
On Tue, Sep 06, 2005 at 02:08:04PM +0200, Dave Neary wrote: There is no name recognition. GUADEC has no brand value. Changing it will help sponsorship, not hurt it. No-one outside the geek community likes the meaningless acronym tho,ng. It's *so* 1990s, already. So let's change GNOME first, by that logic it's the most urgent item then the name for the conference should follow ! Content of the conference/project is what matters, the name is just a semi arbitrary token used to designate the think. Changing the name won't get the cash and developpers pourring in, changing the content or the way we do thing would. The only significant reason to change an established name is if that name carry more negative than its brand value, I don't think we are at that point, but you start to argue in that sense since people feedback is that they are not happy with the name change. If you want to change things at the project level discuss that frankly and then we will see if changing names is worthwhile once there is a consensus, but changing name for the sake of changing name is a no thanks! from my viewpoint. Daniel -- Daniel Veillard | Red Hat Desktop team http://redhat.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] | libxml GNOME XML XSLT toolkit http://xmlsoft.org/ http://veillard.com/ | Rpmfind RPM search engine http://rpmfind.net/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Minutes of the Board meeting 2005 July 27
[ Oops, it seems I forgot to send those to the public lists at the end of July ] Minutes of the Board meeting 2005 July 27 = Attendance: === Owen Taylor (chairing) Daniel Veillard Murray Cumming Tim Ney Jody Goldberg Miguel de Icaza Luis Villa Federico Mena-Quintero Regrets: Christian Schaller Jonathan Blandford Dave Neary Actions completed: == ACTION: Murray to schedule an advisory board phone call meeting in approximately 2 months - Done ACTION: Owen to publish the summarized financial number from GUADEC - Done Actions: ACTION: Dave to start looking for vendors to host the GNOME online shop - Ongoing ACTION: Dave to proceed to details stage of merchandizing agreement - Ongoing ACTION: Daniel to send request for proposal for specific topic to be worked on at the next Summit - ongoing proposal should go on the Wiki like last year, Luis to build that page ACTION: Murray to take the task to find documentation authors and get it done - Federico did the first step, we are making a proposal to a candidate, should be resolved before next meeting. ACTION: Owen to make the final announcement of the Trademark proposals - ongoing ACTION: Tim and Dave to draft a room requirement for GUADEC and get Christian informed - Christian and Tim looked at the space last week, ongoing New Action: === ACTION: Luis to start a wiki page for the agenda at the Gnome Summit Agenda: === * Preparing the advisory board meeting next week check the agenda * gnome-fr trademark We are not worried about this use of the logo but future use should follow the guideline published on-line: http://live.gnome.org/DraftLogoGuidelines * next meeting on the 10th August Regrets from Murray Daniel -- Daniel Veillard | Red Hat Desktop team http://redhat.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] | libxml GNOME XML XSLT toolkit http://xmlsoft.org/ http://veillard.com/ | Rpmfind RPM search engine http://rpmfind.net/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Formation of Gnome-user-foundation
On Mon, Mar 14, 2005 at 04:01:22PM +, Alan Cox wrote: On Llu, 2005-03-14 at 13:11, Daniel Veillard wrote: If you have a high level of income, then your bugs matters If you are part of our club, then your bugs matters IMHO Its just a variant on the bounties. If Novell can do bounties why can't 50 users get together and issue a bounty on a matter that annoys them. Is it any different to a business saying to Red Hat or Novell We need XYZ then we could do 5000 desktops. I think there was an agreement on no more bounties, je are just finishing to ventilate the existing bounty fund, but not accept new bounties funding. I agree it shouldn't control development or dictate to volunteers what feature to add but providing it is seperated clearly (as with any other user group) then is there a problem ? To me the problem was pay 25$ and be part of our powerful club which looks to me the last thing to do to try to grow GNOME in new areas like Africa and Asia. More bugzilla triaging is good, doing more analysis on user input is good, generating upfront user segregation on income is really bad. Daniel -- Daniel Veillard | Red Hat Desktop team http://redhat.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] | libxml GNOME XML XSLT toolkit http://xmlsoft.org/ http://veillard.com/ | Rpmfind RPM search engine http://rpmfind.net/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Minutes of the Board meeting 2005 Mar 9
On Sat, Mar 12, 2005 at 04:18:15PM +0200, Toni Willberg wrote: On Sat, 2005-03-12 at 06:13 -0500, Daniel Veillard wrote: - Merchandizing Some agreement we need a shop to sell GNOME items. The question is how to minimize the work needed there is multiple ways, the best one seems to delegate to a single supplier at this point, granting a non-exclusive agreement. The next question is the product line: books are good sellers, for example a handbook like Mozilla did, it's unclear we can invest money on this. We clearly should have t-shirt, sweatshirt to bootstrap the store. Initial target: get a shop by 2.12 release. Hi. I'd like to request that a supplier with possibility ship from various locations would be considered. For us Europeans it's quite expensive to order items from the US due the shipping costs and a possible import tax. We are aware of that problem, but it's not easy to find. If know a good potential supplier provide its coordinates. Daniel -- Daniel Veillard | Red Hat Desktop team http://redhat.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] | libxml GNOME XML XSLT toolkit http://xmlsoft.org/ http://veillard.com/ | Rpmfind RPM search engine http://rpmfind.net/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
