Re: It's time again for pants nominations
On Sun, Jun 03, 2018 at 02:15:35PM +0100, Karen Sandler wrote: > > > * Sriram Ramkrishna for his community work, which is a list too long to > > summarize here > > +1, and just to be effusive about why... Sri has continually contributed to > GNOME's PR, bringing life to the engagement team and looking out for > newcomers generally. He's always enthusiastic and the fact that he's > maintained this for so many years in the project is incredible. He's willing > to do the work that other people aren't - he's spend countless time at GNOME > booths, writing GNOME materials, and running interference for the project. > > On a very personal note, Sri took the time to be present on so many hate > threads about GNOME, OPW about me, bringing irrefutable truth (with back-up > links) when the internet was full of lies, exaggerations and threats. > Without him and other GNOME volunteers who jumped into the fray on multiple > occasions, I surely would have left free software. Hear hear. I'd like to support this nomination as well. Sri has also organized LAS GNOME, coordinated the action against Groupon's use of the GNOME name, and numerous other things. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Fixing copyright notices on gnome.org websites
On Wed, Dec 07, 2016 at 06:47:46PM +0100, Alexandre Franke wrote: > On Tue, Dec 6, 2016 at 8:35 PM, Josh Triplett <j...@joshtriplett.org> wrote: > > Unless the individual contributors working on the site have actually > > legally assigned copyright to the GNOME Foundation, those contributors > > likely retain their own individual copyrights. (And I don't think we'd > > want to require such an assignment.) > > That's a really good point. > > > It doesn't seem worthwhile to attempt to include a pile of individual > > copyright notices on every page, but "© The GNOME Foundation" doesn't > > seem quite accurate either. Perhaps it'd make sense to just drop it > > entirely? > > Those pages ace licensed under CC By. Dropping entirely the copyright > notice would make it impossible to properly attribute the work when > used under that license. You could include appropriate attribution without making it a copyright notice. > However, I have since realized that the current notices say "The GNOME > Project" and not "the GNOME Foundation". The latter is a clearly > defined entity and leads to the assignment issues you mentionned. The > former is a name for an informal collective, and I think that solves > the issue you raised. > > Does that look good to you? It might help to explicitly make the authorship credit something like "contributors to the GNOME Project", to make it clear that the attribution refers to many individual people. I don't want to derail the attempt to clean this up, and I doubt any of these approaches will lead to any serious practical issues. I do see many projects attempting to write things like "Copyright The Foo Project Developers", which doesn't have any legal basis, and since the question arose, it seemed appropriate to raise this issue. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Send us your pants nominations
On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 02:52:09PM -0400, Shaun McCance wrote: > GUADEC is coming up soon, and with GUADEC comes the annual Pants Award. > Every year, GNOME awards a pair of pants to somebody in recognition of > their outstanding contributions. The board will make the final decision > on who receives the pants, but we'd love to hear your nominations. > > The award can be for any kind of contribution to our software or our > community. It does not have to be software development work. The only > requirements are that the person is attending GUADEC to receive the > pants, and that it's not a current or outgoing board member. Not sure > if the person fits the requirements? Just nominate! We'll sort it out. Is there a list somewhere of past recipients of the award? A quick check turned up individual mentions of the award, but no comprehensive list. It seems like gnome.org ought to have such a list somewhere. - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME trademark authorization
On Mon, May 16, 2016 at 10:28:04AM -0400, Dave Neary wrote: > On 05/16/2016 09:41 AM, Daniel Espinosa wrote: > > How to avoid any organization or individual, could use GNOME trademark > > to promote against GNOME? > > You cannot use trademark to stop someone from calling a thing by its > trademarked name. > > For example, Mars cannot stop me from calling a Snickers a Snickers. > They can stop me calling a different peanut, nougat, caramel and > chocolate bar a Snickers. > > > Is the case of World of GNOME (WOGUE on G+). It recently has pushed > > blaming, unsupported complaints (no data about his source is based on > > real data from projects maintainers). > > Is the Wogue account talking about GNOME when they call it GNOME? If so, > there is nothing you can do using trademark. > > In terms of things which are not GNOME, you can use the GNOME trademark > if your usage is consistent with the GNOME trademark guidelines. (say, > calling a website gnome-sucks.org might be a trademark infringement, > since the gnome-sucks website is not GNOME, or consistent with the GNOME > trademark guidelines). (Disclaimer: not a lawyer, not legal advice...) While a trademark wouldn't stop using the term "GNOME" to refer to GNOME, a trademark is intended to prevent using the name GNOME for something that isn't GNOME, including naming that makes something sound official/affiliated. So while it wouldn't be at all appropriate to prevent "World of GNOME" from using the name GNOME in its discussions of GNOME (no matter what they're saying), I do agree that it *might* potentially be appropriate to require them not to use the *name* "World of GNOME", or to use a domain name that includes "gnome". Not because of anything they're saying (again, trademarks do not and should not shield against criticism), but for the same reason we might not want to let an unaffiliated/unofficial news site use the name "GNOME News" or use "gnomenews" in their domain. That said, I would suggest taking this off-list and discussing it with the GNOME board. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: gnome.io domain donation
On Mon, May 02, 2016 at 04:36:46AM +, John McHugh wrote: > Was thinking of experimenting with ideas for gnome web infrastructure on my > own digital ocean instance and was looking up availability of gnome.io > domain with the intention of using it to test said ideas before > transferring it over to the gnome foundation. > > Its due to be auctioned by park.io this month. Long story short, I was > talking to someone from park.io and they said that they have a history of > donating domains to angularjs and perl foundation (angular.io and perl.io). > > He said he would be happy to donate to open source foundations if they want > it (in relation to the gnome.io domain). > > The contact from park.io was Mike Carson. Don't want to paste his email on > a public mailing list but if any foundation members would like to follow up > on it I can send it privately. If they're willing to donate the domain, rather than auctioning it off, that would be quite helpful. I don't think it'd be at all appropriate for anyone *other* then the GNOME Foundation to hold such a domain. The GNOME Foundation could either make it a redirect or use it for other purposes (such as the same purpose as debian.net or github.io, namely a home for developer subdomains for projects). I think it'd be entirely appropriate for the GNOME Foundation to receive this. Someone from the Board (BCCed) would be the most appropriate person to either broker that or designate someone to do so. - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Yorba Foundation looking to pass on copyrights
On Thu, Mar 24, 2016 at 04:55:49PM -0400, Adam Dingle wrote: > As some of you know, I founded Yorba, a free software non-profit based in > San Francisco that was active from 2009-2015 and developed a few popular > programs for GNOME including the Shotwell photo manager and the Geary email > client, both of which now live in GNOME git. These programs are copyrighted > by Yorba and a few external contributors and are licensed under the LGPL. > > Yorba has run out of funding and is winding down - in fact nobody has worked > there since around April 2015. We now need to shut down the foundation > (which is a California non-profit corporation), but legally we can't do so > while it still holds any assets including the copyrights on its software, > which are considered intellectual property. > > We'd love to find some other free software organization that we can pass our > copyrights on to. We would sell them for a nominal fee. In theory the > copyright recipient could defend the LGPL licensing of these programs if > necessary (though I think the likelihood of such a necessity is low). > > My understanding is that GNOME itself does not hold copyrights. Is anyone > aware of any other free software organization that might be willing and able > to receive our copyrights? Thanks - You might consider the Free Software Foundation (FSF), Software in the Public Interest (SPI), or the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC). - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Agenda for board meeting on November 3rd
On Thu, Nov 05, 2015 at 05:41:43PM -0500, Richard Stallman wrote: > To download anything from the Google app store requires a nonfree > program, Google Play. This program is known to have a back door (see > http://gnu.org/proprietary/proprietary-back-doors.html) that is > universal or pretty close. > > I suspect that uploading to the app store also requires nonfree software, > but I don't know for certain. To the best of my knowledge it does not, though some effort is required to avoid it. (See some of the recent discussion about the Android SDK and its EULA, for instance.) It's possible that it requires proprietary JavaScript; I have not personally tested that. > Thus, I think the GNOME Foundation should not do this. When we > recommend free software for Android, let's instead recommend > fdroid.org as the place to get them. While I do think we should recommend fdroid.org as preferable and only link to it (such as in links from the GNOME application and its documentation), and avoid linking to a version in the Play store (e.g. "To use the Foo feature, install the Foo application for Android, available via https://f-droid.org/...;), that doesn't preclude making the application available via the Google Play store for users who already have that installed. Users who have it would find it there when searching that store, while users who do not use Google Play will not receive any encouragement from GNOME to start doing so, and will instead get a link to f-droid. Doing so seems quite similar to making an application available for Windows: we don't encourage people to run Windows, but we sometimes make Free Software available for Windows for users who already do run it. - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: gnomes collecting pants nominations
On Sat, Jul 18, 2015 at 10:03:33PM -0500, Michael Catanzaro wrote: On Sat, 2015-07-18 at 12:33 -0400, Jeff Fortin Tam wrote: * Is not a board member (since the board decides who the winner is). Quick question: does this rule exclude current board members, incoming board members, or both? Same question here. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Agenda for board meeting on July 7th
On Thu, Jul 09, 2015 at 09:04:52PM -0400, Richard Stallman wrote: * https://kickstarter.com/projects/technoruninc/stratos/ What is the relationship between this and GNOME? None whatsoever, other than that their mockups appear to depict GNOME, which is part of why it needs investigation. I see two problems in the kickstarter page. The smaller, superficial problem is that it says Linux and means GNU. If they would like our support, we should insist they change that. I'm much less concerned about whether they want GNOME's *support* (as it seems rather unlikely either that they'd seek such support or that we'd offer it), and more concerned about whether they're actually acting in good faith or whether they might be doing something that will actively damage the reputations of Linux, GNU, GNOME, and other Free Software projects. - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Foundation 501(c)3 status
On Wed, May 27, 2015 at 11:07:37AM -0700, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote: I advise those who wish to follow 501(c)(3) status of Free Software related orgs to check this repository [0] that community members maintain. It includes a copy of the IRS revocation notice file [1] and the IRS in good standing list [2] (which you can also get from the IRS website directly). I was able to verify that GNOME Foundation was in good standing with the IRS as of *today* at 09:51 UTC with the following commands: $ wget -N http://apps.irs.gov/pub/epostcard/data-download-pub78.zip $ unzip data-download-pub78.zip $ egrep -i 'GNOME *Foundation' data-download-pub78.txt 043572618|Gnome Foundation Inc.|Boston|MA|United States|PC $ env TZ=UTC /bin/ls -l data-download-pub78.zip -rw--- 1 bkuhn bkuhn 19044058 May 27 09:51 data-download-pub78.zip You can do similar with our Git repository as follows: $ git clone https://gitorious.org/floss-foundations/npo-public-filings.git $ cd npo-public-filings $ egrep -i 'GNOME *Foundation' IRS-501c3-Database/irs-qualified-c3-list.txt $ git log -1 IRS-501c3-Database/irs-qualified-c3-list.txt *And* you can also use our Git repository's history to show that GNOME Foundation never had its status revoked historically -- keeping track of such potential incidents for any non-profit is why we download those files each month. Thus, this command can confirm for you: $ git log IRS-501c3-Database/irs-revoked-c3-list.txt|grep -i GNOME Keeping that information in a git repository is really handy; thanks! Have you considered posting about this repository and its purpose more widely, such as on LWN or similar, to make more people aware of it? And thanks for the confirmation about GNOME's status. [0] https://www.gitorious.org/floss-foundations/npo-public-filings/source/master: (It's on gitorious now, but we're franticly looking for a place to move it since gitorious dies this month) You might consider talking to the Sunlight Foundation or similar, who track other information like this, including on a historical basis. I've CCed Paul Tagliamonte of the Sunlight Foundation (also of OSI and Debian), who might be able to help here. - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for candidates
On Wed, May 27, 2015 at 10:27:28AM -0400, Richard Stallman wrote: Thinking about your answer, and a couple of others, I realize that I didn't phrase my question clearly. You've made several _technical_ suggestions for how GNOME can be more useful and thus do more to enhance GNU/Linux and the free world. They are interesting ideas, and could make GNOME a better piece of free software. However, the foundation board doesn't make technical decisions, and the foundation couldn't implement ideas of this kind. The first of the two items I mentioned was as much an issue of policy as technology, and the second was a high-level direction. The board does not make technical decisions, but the board and the foundation can offer general, non-binding guidance, as well as encourage development in specific areas or towards specific goals by various means (e.g. targeted hackathons, user studies, hardware availability). Nonetheless, I understand the distinction you're making. Thus, what I really should ask the candidates is this. How do you suggest the GNOME Foundation could contribute more to advance the cause of free software and users' freedom, over and above what GNOME contributes by being useful free software? A few possibilities, more tailored towards what the Foundation could do rather than what GNOME software could do: - More direct partnership with organizations creating software that is commonly used with GNOME and built on GNOME technologies; not just between community members in each community, but taking advantage of the GNOME Foundation's organizational status to establish higher-level contacts with people setting direction for those organizations. For instance, the GNOME Foundation should have some relationship with Mozilla around Firefox and its use of GTK and GNOME technologies on Linux, and with the LibreOffice project. We should use such relationships for two purposes: to ensure that those projects integrate with GNOME as well as any native GNOME application, and to attempt to get projects commonly used with GNOME to maintain policies that align with the cause of Free Software. - More direct partnership and promotion with those working to bring Free Software to many more users, such as Endless. (*Not* suggesting a monetary partnership here.) - The GNOME Foundation, as an organization, could take a position on more issues related to Free Software. GNOME has issued position statements before (such as https://www.gnome.org/news/2015/03/gnome-supports-gpl-compliance-through-vmware-suit-2/); we could also work with other activism-centric organizations like the EFF, and ensure that we have processes in place to quickly determine which causes we'd want to sign on for. - I would suggest that the GNOME Foundation should take a position on the responsible hosting of Free Software. SourceForge has started demonstrating an utter lack of responsibility, bundling malware with installers for Free Software, including GNOME projects like the GIMP. I'm currently thinking of writing up a Hosting Free Software Responsibly statement for projects, organizations (FSF, GNOME, etc), and hosting sites to sign on to. - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for candidates
On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 07:53:42AM -0400, Richard Stallman wrote: I'd like to ask the candidates, how do you think GNOME should contribute more to the advance of free software and users' freedom in general (in addition to being useful free software). GNOME does a great deal to make Free Software more usable, and as a result, it's the face of Free Software to many GNU/Linux users. We'd have *far* fewer Free Software users without desktop environments like GNOME. This puts us in the interesting position of maintaining a desktop environment for which one of the primary user groups consists of novice computer users. We need to take those users into account: the new users trying out GNOME, and the satisfied-but-not-blindly-loyal users already using GNOME. So, first and foremost, GNOME needs to continue maintaining not just high quality and usability, but *consistency* as well. Many people who stick to proprietary environments do so because they're used to those environments, and sudden inconsistency can send them running in revolt (sometimes to our benefit). The maintainers of those proprietary environments are discovering that their loyal user base can be as much an albatross as an asset. But that same issue can apply to us as well: we must weigh the value of new UI experiments against the cost of making any change at all. Experienced users (https://xkcd.com/627/) have little problem saying oh, the menu is over here now, and perhaps hopping on IRC or a mailing list to gripe if they feel strongly enough about it; even if they're initially puzzled a bit, they're confident enough to poke at it. Novice users presented with the same UI change may seek help, worry that they've broken something, or seek out another device. Even a well-meaning UI change that makes things better for many users still has a cost. Second, for all the flak GNOME 3 gets sometimes about being a UI that looks like it'd be more at home on a tablet (note: not a sentiment I share), where are the GNOME tablets and convertible/detachable systems? Where is our answer to the users who have partly or entirely given up traditional computers in favor of an only-partly-Free Android device, or a completely proprietary iOS device? Where is our auto-updating appliance to browse/watch/read/play? There are a few nods to touchscreen usability in GNOME, and a few people have demonstrated GNOME on a tablet, but an on-screen keyboard and finger-sized UI elements does not make a sufficiently usable tablet UI. Developers might balk at the idea of a device like that, and certainly most would not want to write code on such a device. But we often talk of making software that Just Works, and many people want the same from a complete hardware/software stack. It's not up to us to tell people what they want and don't want; it's up to us to make sure that whatever they want, it's available in Free Software, and not exclusive to the proprietary world. We could learn some things from Android, or from Chromium OS. That *doesn't* mean I want to see an app ecosystem on GNOME, especially not one that encourages proprietary applications; that's one innovation we could do without. However, just as early versions of GNOME and KDE took some inspiration from Windows, and later versions of GNOME took some inspiration from OS X (and just as some of those environments have taken inspiration from GNU/Linux), these days we would do well to understand what people seek out from tablets and Chromebooks, and figure out ways to provide those features while retaining and promoting the values of Free Software. Because if we spend our time only fighting against proprietary desktops and laptops, we're fighting on the wrong front; we may wake up to find that many of those desktops and laptops have vanished, in favor of more usable proprietary appliance-like devices rather than in favor of Free Software. - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question on community to the candidates.
On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 09:16:02PM -0700, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: It is my impression (and I state impression because I am providing no data) that GNOME has more reliance on people paid to work on GNOME than community. I do not question the passion and dedication to those who are paid on GNOME, I know that they would do it as a community even if they were not paid. If you agree with my impression, what actions do you think would help increase participation in GNOME? Participation in the core parts of GNOME is not trivial, and requires an enormous amount of time and dedication to get to become familiar with the huge codebase that we have, as well as gain the trust of the maintainer of the module you are interested in. If you disagree with my impression, what makes you believe that it is not the case? How would you change my mind? I did not bring any data points, so you don't have to either. I'm more interested in giving you a biased opinion and I want to know how you would react to it. I do agree with your impression, though I don't necessarily consider that a bug. I think it's a feature that many people get paid to work on GNOME. However, I do think one of the incredible strengths of Free Software is that anyone can contribute, regardless of who they work for. And I think it's critical that GNOME retain that property. A project that has an extensive set of paid contributors but alienates its community contributors can rot from the root upward without fresh minds and viewpoints joining in. (If nothing else, where does one hire new paid contributors *from* if not the comunity?) I do not believe GNOME systematically suffers from that problem, but I have seen signs of it here and there. The biggest thing I would suggest that GNOME do: ensure that development, planning, and design of *all* GNOME projects occurs in the open. It's not enough to push commits to a public repository if taking part in a project requires being part of the right private meeting. Projects considered part of GNOME should ensure that the community has visibility into where those projects are going, and an opportunity to influence that direction. That doesn't mean projects need to support incessant bikeshedding, nor does it mean projects must follow a Linux-kernel-style wherever the contributions may lead us evolutionary policy, but whatever vision a project follows should be transparent to all prospective contributors. If one or more companies are driving the development of a project and are not interested in participating in an open development process, they can host their periodic-code-drop project on their own site and not call it part of GNOME. Related to that, any project considered part of GNOME is ultimately a collaborative part of the GNOME community, and not the personal fiefdom of an individual maintainer. The primary job of a maintainer is to apply good taste, which *does* mean saying no quite often, but there should always be a reason, and it should never be because we're working on something behind the scenes that we can't tell you about or let you work on, go away. I'm not going to point fingers at any particular project here, but I have heard from many people who have become frustrated trying to contribute to nominally GNOME projects due to problems like those. - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to the candidates.
on how to make GNOME the desktop of the future, with perfectly integrated functionality, a suite of native applications, and a novel new UI. These are points that would help GNOME do better at what it does today, and take better care of the users it has. - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: code of conduct question for Board candidates
On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 05:05:30PM +0200, Alexandre Franke wrote: On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 7:42 PM, Josh Triplett j...@joshtriplett.org wrote: Nobody is asking anyone to sign anything. A CoC would simply be a stated policy for expected behavior on community resources, such as mailing lists, IRC, Bugzilla, wikis, email, etc. Except the board did ask the GUADEC 2014 attendees to sign something. There was a box that needed to be checked to register for the conference. I was talking about a hypothetical improvement to the community code of conduct, not to the conference code of conduct. For a conference code of conduct, it makes sense to require explicit assent, not least of which because when people have spent money getting to and attending an event, and they then do something sufficiently severe to warrant being excluded from that event, explicit assent helps protect the conference from further trouble that they might try to stir up as a result. That doesn't apply as much to free online communication and community resources. - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: code of conduct question for Board candidates
On Sun, May 24, 2015 at 05:15:29PM -0400, Richard Stallman wrote: [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] I suggest that we postpone discussion on codes of conduct until after the election. It is likely be a very big debate and likely to drown out discussion with the candidates. I would partially agree. The purpose of the candidate QA is for prospective voters to seek out information they desire about candidates, in order to inform their vote. So, to the extent people are seeking further information specifically about the candidates and their positions, that's fine; to the extent people are looking to discuss codes of conduct in general, or start a large discussion about what GNOME should actually do, that should wait until we have the new board. - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates: transparency and accountability
On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 12:39:50PM +0200, Fabiana Simões wrote: I'd like to hear your thoughts on implementing transparency and accountability on the Board. How transparent the work of the Board should be to Foundation members? What should be communicated and when? Do you think we have been transparent enough in the last term? If not, how can we improve things and how high in your priorities would be to do so? In terms of accountability, it's been unclear to me since joining the Foundation how much different Board members contribute to the Board's goals and tasks. Do you think the meeting notes provide enough visibility and context to the work being done? By the end of a term, how can the Foundation have a fair understanding of one's contributions to the Board? I believe the board should be entirely transparent about all of its activities and discussions, with two exceptions: First, if the board is discussing some legal or contractual issue that cannot be disclosed until after a certain point, then detailed records should still be kept, but those records can be kept private until the point where they can be released/discussed. And second, if the board is handling some privacy-sensitive issue for community members, such as harassment or dispute mediation, then the decision of how much to disclose there should be up to the parties involved rather than to the board. Other than exceptions like those, the board should be entirely transparent and public about its activities and records. From what I've seen in the board minutes and similar, I think the board has been quite transparent about what happens in board meetings, but I agree that the board could potentially improve transparency about followups and resolutions that happen via activity outside of board meetings. I also think that activity summaries such as those other board members have recently posted help to avoid the hidden in plain sight problem that the minutes can have. Do you have any specific examples of board-related activities you could point to where you think additional transparency would have been helpful, as an example of what to improve? I certainly plan to be entirely transparent about my *own* activities if elected to the board. - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: code of conduct question for Board candidates
On Sun, May 24, 2015 at 07:11:42PM +0200, Olav Vitters wrote: On Sat, May 23, 2015 at 10:06:49AM -0700, Josh Triplett wrote: I'm entirely in favor of an improved code of conduct, both for events and in general. And thank you for raising this issue. Some searching turned up https://wiki.gnome.org/Foundation/CodeOfConduct , but that's definitely insufficient. (It's a nice set of sentiments, but not a functional code of conduct.) By contrast, the GUADEC 2014 code of conduct you linked to sets the higher standard I would expect, and that I've come to expect from other conferences as well. I'm in favor of improving the general code of conduct to the same standard. Why and how is it definitely insufficient? Marina linked to several resources about codes of conduct and their effectiveness; specifically, see http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Code_of_conduct_evaluations . For instance, a more effective Code of Conduct should include information like For issues arising on mailing lists, IRC, or Bugzilla, contact exam...@gnome.org, who can help address issues, and if necessary, can limit or ban access to those resources. Which I would hope is simply a statement of what we'd *already* do; I'd be shocked, for instance, if the IRC channel operators or server admins have never had to ban anyone. For the record: I'm not personally looking to put forth a proposal to update the current community code of conduct; I'm simply stating that I would be quite receptive to a well-considered proposal to do so. I quite like the Code of Conduct and I've signed it. By contrast, the 2014 GUADEC one is a very long statement specifically about a conference, not about a community. I don't see how the board has _any_ influence on the GNOME community. This while the conference one assumes you're attending a conference and that someone can expel you, can possibility contact law enforcement, etc. And that's the upper limit of what a Code of Conduct for a mailing list, IRC channel, Bugzilla, or other community resource should do as well: expel someone from a list, channel, Bugzilla server, etc. Nobody's talking about a document that has legal effect. While I disagree with the portion of the current CoC that says There is no official enforcement of these principles (not least of which for almost certainly being inaccurate), I agree with the this should not be interpreted like a legal document. For instance, nobody should be saying well, they're acting terribly and being disruptive, we all know it, but they're not violating the exact letter of the CoC, so my hands are tied. I don't follow why I'd sign something can cause legal issues for me if I could do without that. Nobody is asking anyone to sign anything. A CoC would simply be a stated policy for expected behavior on community resources, such as mailing lists, IRC, Bugzilla, wikis, email, etc. - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: Best use of Trademark Fundraiser money?
On Sun, May 24, 2015 at 07:23:01PM +0200, Andreas Nilsson wrote: As part of the GNOME Trademark Fundraiser [1], the Foundation raised $102 608 USD. Since the trademark claims from the other part in the issue was withdrawn, it was never taken to court and the money was never spent on that. What, in your mind, is the best use of these funds now? Kept as a War Chest [2] or spent on something specific? As stated in the fundraiser, If we are able to defend the mark without spending this amount, we will use the remaining funds to bolster and improve GNOME.. That applies to *all* money directly donated to GNOME, as well. If, in working with the people we worked with on the Groupon issue, we get legal advice that suggests we'd be in a stronger position to defend GNOME by registering trademarks in additional countries, or otherwise getting specific legal structures into place, I think it makes sense to use some of the funds for that purpose; however, that would be a *very* small fraction of the funds raised. I also don't think it's worth keeping all of that money aside in a war chest in anticipation of a future legal issue that may never arise. So, I would suggest that after we consider any potential follow-up legal protections we're advised to take, we place the funds into the general GNOME Foundation account as we would any donations directly to the Foundation. I don't think it makes sense to earmark these funds for any particular purpose other than legal issues, and legal issues should not take up any significant fraction of these funds. I also don't think it makes sense to plan a project that involves spending that entire sum at once, rather than putting it in the GNOME Foundation account where it can be used as needed towards purposes that improve GNOME. - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: code of conduct question for Board candidates
On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 12:34:14AM +0100, Magdalen Berns wrote: OK in light of these responses, I feel I should maybe better clarify that whilst I agree this sort of stance may be a fair way to moderated communications with non-members, I do not agree with expelling card carrying members from lists, channels or servers under any circumstances. I agree that people should not lose access to resources while remaining a Foundation member. An offense serious enough to permanently lose access to those resources is an offense serious enough to revoke someone's membership in the Foundation. Let us hope that we don't ever have to put that into practice. Ultimately, people have a right to be objectionable a-holes. as long as they are not infringing on anyone else’s rights in the process, in my view. I regret that this mail is too short to fully contain the depths of my disagreement. Rather than continue an extensive debate on what is likely a fundamental point of disagreement, I'll summarize my own position on the same point, and leave the rest for some time other than the candidate QA period: People can do as they like on their own systems and resources, but when participating in the GNOME community, they should do so with respect. Refusing to exclude anyone is itself an exclusionary policy; it selects for the kind of people who will put up with absolutely anything, and excludes people who do not feel comfortable in such an environment. That creates a kind of community that I would not want to see GNOME become; there are too many of those already, because there are too many projects unwilling to kick out awful people. See also http://www.slideshare.net/dberkholz/assholes-are-killing-your-project - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: code of conduct question for Board candidates
On Sat, May 23, 2015 at 11:41:06AM -0400, Marina Zhurakhinskaya wrote: Thanks to all the candidates for stepping up to run for the board and for all the work you already do for the Foundation! Many free software organizations have adopted codes of conduct for their events [1] and some for their communities [2]. Detailed codes of conduct with specific enforcement guidelines signal to newcomers that the community has high standards of behavior. They give participants who observe or are subject to inappropriate behavior something to point to that shows that such behavior is outside of what is expected and guidelines on how to proceed in getting it addressed. What do you think about adopting a detailed code of conduct, similar to the one used for GUADEC 2014 [3], for all GNOME events and creating a similarly detailed code of conduct for the GNOME community? I'm entirely in favor of an improved code of conduct, both for events and in general. And thank you for raising this issue. Some searching turned up https://wiki.gnome.org/Foundation/CodeOfConduct , but that's definitely insufficient. (It's a nice set of sentiments, but not a functional code of conduct.) By contrast, the GUADEC 2014 code of conduct you linked to sets the higher standard I would expect, and that I've come to expect from other conferences as well. I'm in favor of improving the general code of conduct to the same standard. Would you consider putting forth a concrete proposal along those lines, taking into account the models and requirements for an effective code of conduct? In the process, I'd also suggest extending the Applies to for the code of conduct to include not just lists, bugzilla, and specific individuals, but also conferences (such as GUADEC), IRC and other communication, and members of the Foundation and the Board. - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Board of Directors Elections 2015 - Candidacy - Josh Triplett
Name: Josh Triplett Email: j...@joshtriplett.org or jtripl...@gnome.org Affiliation: Intel, but not speaking for Intel or wearing my Intel hat except when explicitly stated as such. I've been a Free Software developer for 15 years, and a GNOME user since the early 1.x days, running GNOME with Sawfish and Window Maker. I've seen the transition to 2.0, with its massive improvements in usability and sensible defaults (especially by 2.2 and 2.4 when the zeal towards change tempered a bit), as well as the crowd of people saying the sky was falling and that they were switching to another environment. I've seen the transition to 3.0, with its massive improvement in usability and user experience (especially by 3.2 and 3.4 when the zeal towards change tempered a bit), as well as the crowd of people saying the sky is falling and that they are switching to another environment. I run and depend on GNOME 3 every day, and it's one of the few projects whose release notes I eagerly anticipate to hear about the next dose of awesome coming my way. I originally got involved with GNOME development as part of working on OpenOffice.org; GNOME hosted the cross-distribution ooo-build patchset, which later became go-oo and then LibreOffice. My first FOSS contribution was to make OO.o build without the then-proprietary Java. I'm primarily a plumbing developer; I work on the Linux kernel, low-level libraries and daemons, and distribution glue. I'm a prolific bug reporter for several projects, often with patches; I like working to get bugs fixed rather than worked around, even when working around them would be easier or require changes in fewer places. More recently, I've worked on several policy issues: I worked with Sriram Ramkrishna and Andrea Veri to help address the Groupon issue, and I wrote what is now the GNOME Foundation's official policy for depicting GNOME in film/video. I enjoy working on policy and enablement issues in addition to development. As with my goal of seeing bugs fixed rather than worked around, I prefer to tackle difficult policy issues head-on rather than avoiding them. If elected as a Board member, I plan to take that as here's your mop and plunger, get to work. GNOME has a difficult challenge ahead, carefully balancing the goals of the GNOME user community, the GNOME developer community, the broader community of people using and building on GNOME technologies, and the ultimate goal of building the best possible Free Software desktop environment. In the GNOME 3 timeframe especially, GNOME often helps drive improvements in the full stack, from the kernel on up, and vice versa. This makes it possible for GNOME to tackle difficult technical goals that could not be solved with changes to GNOME alone. However, it also requires increased collaboration among plumbing developers, as those components must serve the needs of many different users and environments. In addition, GNOME's own components are increasingly used in environments other than GNOME, requiring the same improvements to collaboration. I look forward to helping GNOME better address this and other challenges. - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
