Re: Question for candidates: transparency and accountability
Hi Fabiana, On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 3:39 AM, Fabiana Simões wrote: > 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? > I value transparency a lot, and I think the Board should be as transparent as it can - but not more. That is, I understand that some discussions need to happen first behind closed doors. For instance, when discussing a matter publicly might negatively impact the outcome for the Foundation (legal matters for instance), or when some dispute arises between Foundation members that wish to stay private. I think the board has been transparent enough in the last term, and I much appreciated the minutes being more timely than in the past. I share Allan's feeling that the activities of the Foundation would be naturally perceived as more transparent, among other things, if other teams were more often delegated tasks that are currently the sole responsibility of the Board members. > 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 very much agree with this sentiment; the way information is presented today does not lend itself to that kind of visualization. I wouldn't suggest that a quantitative approach to e.g. tasks completed by a Board member during one term would be a fair assessment of all the work that particular person has done, but I can see how a different presentation of the Foundation activities, where tasks can be easily followed and information found in a single place, would be beneficial to making members feel more engaged. Moving off e-mail and towards publicly accessible tools like kanban boards, among others, is a direction worth exploring IMO. Cosimo ___ 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, 2015-05-25 at 12:39 +0200, Fabiana Simões wrote: > Hi everyone, > > 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? Having served on the board, I do think the board is transparent about its activities. The meeting minutes that get published have everything that the board is able to disclose. Sometimes there are things that can't be disclosed. As for accountability, I know in the past some people have asked for a list of who voted how on issues. But the board generally works toward consensus whenever possible, so dissenting votes aren't common. When a board member wishes to have his or her objection noted for the public, that shows up in the minutes. Now, I do think we could do a better job of making this information more digestible. Keeping up with meeting minutes isn't fun. Minutes are full of mundane activities, and it's hard to get the story in your head if you don't read them all and pay close attention. A long time ago, we used to publish reports. We had an annual report and quarterly reports. The reports had synopses from various teams in GNOME, as well as from the board. They were a lot more fun to read than minutes and made it easier to see what's happening at a glance. Getting back to doing reports would be nice, but they are a lot of work. -- Shaun ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates: transparency and accountability
Hey Fabiana, 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 agree with the general thrust of the question: Foundation members should feel that their votes count, and that they have a stake in the Foundation. More than that: I think we need a Foundation that is more visible, and more integrated with the rest of the project. This is something that I would like to help improve, and have ideas about (although I also expect there to be constraints and pressures that limit what we can do in this area). We need to recognise that transparency isn't always simple or straightforward. It takes work to make things transparent (such as writing reports or blog posts), and we all know that Board members are busy and have limited time. Additionally, more transparency wouldn't necessarily make the Foundation easier to understand or more engaging: posting the transcript of every meeting, or making all the finances public, wouldn't make the Foundation more engaging. Likewise, many of the matters that the Board deals with probably aren't that interesting to the membership, and more transparency around them might not make people more active within the Foundation. So I think we need to be smart: we need to identify opportunities where information about the Board will be interesting and meaningful; we need to figure out how to produce that information efficiently, and we need to present it in a way that is easy to digest. It's not a question of more transparency, but when and how to be transparent. I would like us to keep this issue in mind during the day-to-day running of the Board. Also, I do have some ideas for increasing transparency: First, we need to regularly review the Board's communications. Ensuring that agendas and minutes are sent out in a timely fashion and are meaningful is an obvious thing to keep an eye on. Second, I think that there needs to be more information about the performance of individual board members. Right now, when Board members run for re-election, there is very little information about how they have performed in the past year. This risks turning the elections into a popularity contest, and doesn't help us to ensure that we have an effective Board. One thing we could do is keep a record of how board members have voted over the year, as well as the tasks that they have successfully completed. These records could be published ahead of the elections. Third, I'm interested in trying to break down the barrier between the Board and other teams, so that Foundation business is spread out more widely. It would be great if the Engagement Team could be more involved in campaigns that are run by the Board, for example. If I am elected to the Board, I'd be interested in hearing peoples' ideas for increasing transparency, and would be happy to pursue them when possible. Thanks, Allan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates: transparency and accountability
Hi Fabiana, Great question, thanks! Response inline: > I'd like to hear your thoughts on implementing transparency and > accountability on the Board. > > How transparent the work of the Board should be to Foundation members? > What should be communicated and when? > I think it is appropriate the board seek a consensus from the community before adopting any new policy. I also believe it it is fair practice for the board to take steps to advertise posts, such as: secretary, treasurer and president before appointing new officers. I would seek to encourage healthy discussion between the board and the rest of the community about matters of importance arising, which would include, taking conscious steps to publish the agenda and minutes as early as possible. I would also advocate we publish advisory board minutes. More generally, I think it would be useful if we kept an up to date list of all committee names, committee members, committee meeting logs/minutes and policies, just as we already to keep our current members list up to date on the Foundation pages. Always useful to be able to see a more detailed breakdown of income and outgoings so we are clear on how much each “sponsor" is actually contributing to the project in real, practical terms. The community could also benefit from being kept abreast of the specific yearly contributions of advisory board affiliates. > Do you think we have been transparent enough in the last term? If not, how > can we improve things and how high in your priorities would be to do so? > Who knows that GNOME has been a “delinquent” charity in the eyes of so the California State Department of Justice since 2013? The board have done their best under exceptionally challenging circumstances, but of course must always strive to do better, year on year. If elected, I would be seeking feedback from members on an ongoing basis. Transparency and accessibility go hand in hand: This is a top priority for me. > In terms of accountability, it's been unclear to me since joining the > Foundation how much different Board members contribute to the Board's goals > and tasks. Do you think the meeting notes provide enough visibility and > context to the work being done? > It would be useful to be able to provide access to meeting logs, but as I understand things, there are some confidentiality issues which may prevent that from being workable. I suppose I could advocate each director write a monthly or (dare I say it) maybe even a fortnightly report, that sort of thing could make it clear to members that everyone is "pulling their weight” and ensure members are always clear on what tasks are actively being carried out by each member of the board. > > By the end of a term, how can the Foundation have a fair understanding of > one's contributions to the Board? > Jeff’s end of term update was a good call and I get the sense that the rest of the community really appreciated his efforts too. It would be great to see the same sort of thing from all board members and then compiled either into a pdf document or as a condensed so it can be added to the annual report and I would certainly be willing to support an initiative like this. Thanks again, for your questions! Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: 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: Question for candidates: transparency and accountability
2015-05-25 12:39 GMT+02:00 Fabiana Simões : > Hi everyone, Hey Fabiana! > 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? During this last term we had to discuss several items that couldn't be disclosed with the community for the particular subject they were covering or for the parties involved that wanted to remain private. I'm mainly referring to the Groupon legal matter and the huge amount of behind-the-scenes action items each of us took part in during this last year. It's clear these kind of subjects are (and were in the Groupon's case) going to be made public when the Board will actually decide (upon consulting with our legal counsel) that it's time to disclose the information and the results we gathered. That's intended to prevent the external entity, party or person involved to know the plans and next moves of the GNOME Foundation and benefit from it. We had other similar cases as well and I personally made sure and asked the whole Board to evaluate how much had to be disclosed about these specific matters. For example the WHS agreement that was finally signed during this term was made public at [1], the GNOME Foundation --> SFC move of Outreachy was included on the minutes of many Board meetings in a detailed manner. What we probably omitted at first was the name of the new program as there was an explicit request from the organizers. That didn't mean we weren't going to let the Foundation membership know at all about the new name but just that it was going to take a few weeks for us to make that information available. We valued transparency a lot during this term and you can notice how detailed the minutes are going from the items discussed on the meeting itself to the ones discussed on the mailing list. A few examples [2], [3], [4]. (and more :-) ) As the Secretary of the Board transparency has been one of my main goals and will remain as such in case of a re-election. > 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? This is a very interesting point. While right now meeting minutes do provide a good overview of what's going on within the Board itself and the items that are being discussed they don't provide a summary of who worked on what and how long it took for an action item to be completed. During this term we introduced a tasks system based on [5] which helped us identifying who was in charge of a certain item. We might want to bring the meeting minutes to the next level making them more detailed by including the name, surname of the person who achieved a certain action item to facilitate the membership to verify one's involvement. Having some sort of stats every year (also in terms of meeting's participations for each member) would also help. Although the new tasks system served the Board great not every member got used to it and hopefully having a new Board that will start using it from the beginning will definitely allow everyone to be as much as productive as we originally thought when we introduced the software. [1] https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Resources/WHSAgreement [2] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2015-May/msg2.html [3] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2015-April/msg4.html [4] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2015-April/msg2.html [5] http://kanboard.net -- Cheers, Andrea Debian Developer, Fedora / EPEL packager, GNOME Infrastructure Team Coordinator, GNOME Foundation Board of Directors Secretary, GNOME Foundation Membership & Elections Committee Chairman Homepage: http://www.gnome.org/~av ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates: transparency and accountability
Hi Fabiana, - Original Message - | | | Hi everyone, | | 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 I think the transparency should be complete. Since GNOME relies on money from the community. | 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 I think it should be communicated when something big happens (ED contracted, Hackfests, programs like outreachy, etc.) and then after a fiscal year or so. | your priorities would be to do so? I think the last year in GUADEC GNOME showed a very detailed graphic on expenses, actually it was too complex to understanding it at first in my humble opinion =) I think a good way is a simple graphic with the income/outcome/balance and the important items where the outcome went and if it accomplished the expected result. I could understand that the income can need some privacy (companies that doesn't want to show its name or 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 think this needs improvement, and I don't have a clear solution without putting more work on the board right now. | | Thanks, | Fabiana | | ___ | foundation-list mailing list | foundation-list@gnome.org | https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list | Cheers, Carlos Soriano ___ 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 1:23 PM, Alexandre Franke wrote: > It would be nice to have a place to sum up the activities of the > board. I'm not sure yet which form it would take, but it could be a > wiki page per term, or a quarterly report… I also hear the board has > been experimenting with a kanban app, I wonder if this could come in > handy to craft the reports. > > In the past we had some reports by our employees (sysadmin and ED) and > I found them very valuable, so I reckon the board should provide > something similar in some way. Sorry, I forgot to mention the awesome President's report Jeff did. This is really welcome and is an example of the things the board should do, but doesn't solve the difficult-to-follow issue described earlier. -- Alexandre Franke ___ 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 PM, Fabiana Simões wrote: > Hi everyone, Hi, > 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? The board should communicate almost everything they do to the members. I say almost because I see a few exceptions. There are cases such as the groupon campaign where they can't unfortunately say anything about what's going on because that could play against the foundation. There are also cases that don't need to be advertised. For instance say the board is mediating in an issue involving two members. The decision to make this public does not belong to the board, but to the member that complained to the board. So far, I guess the board was good on transparency. There are always times where the community is impatient and wants to know more about something that's going on, but I trust that when the board says "there's nothing we can say right now" it is actually true. > 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? Meeting notes are difficult to read, and more precisely it is hard to follow an ongoing agenda item over several meetings. Each member has to do some digging on their own to find out what happened (and who was involved). It would be nice to have a place to sum up the activities of the board. I'm not sure yet which form it would take, but it could be a wiki page per term, or a quarterly report… I also hear the board has been experimenting with a kanban app, I wonder if this could come in handy to craft the reports. In the past we had some reports by our employees (sysadmin and ED) and I found them very valuable, so I reckon the board should provide something similar in some way. -- Alexandre Franke ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Question for candidates: transparency and accountability
Hi everyone, 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? Thanks, Fabiana ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
[[[ 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. ]]] Nobody ever got a "command" to start a new GNU package, because GNU package developers are volunteers. When people are interested in starting a GNU package, they talk with me about it and we decide jointly that it is one. In the 1990s that was a very informal process. That's how GNOME was started, except that I think I discussed the need with Miguel before he started it. GNOME was conceived as a GNU package since the beginning, which is why it has the name GNOME (GNU Network Object Model Environment, initially). The reason why the GNU Project and the FSF help GNOME development, and encourage people to use GNOME both as end users and as application developers, is that helping GNOME is helping GNU. Miguel made important contributions to free software. GNOME was not his first. Then he changed and started neglecting freedom, and finally denigrating it. Neither one cancels the other. But recall how his name came into this discussion: citing what he said in a memoir that he wrote after rejecting the principles of free software. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: question for candidates
Hi Andy On 2014-05-20 11:56, Andy Tai wrote: GNOME's core toolkit, gtk+, is used by numerous projects. Currently gtk+ development seems to be driven mainly by the GNOME desktop. However, gtk+ also play critical roles in other free software projects, like MATE, XFCE, and the Cinnamon desktop, and large applications like GIMP, Inkscape, etc. What are your views on the participation of the people of these projects, as stake holders in the direction of gtk+, in the GNOME Foundation? Anyone who contributes to GNOME should feel welcome to become a GNOME Foundation member. However, I do not think that just using a GNOME technology, such as GTK+, is enough to satisfy the requirements for becoming a member of the Foundation. If someone has a strong track record of contributions to GTK+, that would seems to be good justification for joining the Foundation. The best way that the Foundation currently has for the "stakeholder" style of involvement is probably the advisory board: https://wiki.gnome.org/AdvisoryBoard The advisory board is a way for companies and organisations to give feedback to the Foundation board, and this seems like the ideal venue for stakeholders in GNOME technologies. Should the GNOME Foundation encourage (reach out to) these people to get them involved in the GNOME Foundation so they also have a say and even contribute to gtk+ so gtk+ can continue to serve their needs well, important for the continuing successes of gtk+ in the free software world? As the Foundation is not involved with the day-to-day running of the GTK+ project, it is probably not helpful to join the Foundation if the purpose is solely to influence the direction of GTK+. I am not a GTK+ developer, but I have found the GTK+ developers to be responsive at reviewing patches which I have submitted. I think that the best way to influence the direction of the GTK+ project is to contribute, which could take the form of bug reports, code, design work or something else. A good way for the Foundation to support GTK+ development is to financially support hackfests, such as the recent Developer Experience hackfest, held in Berlin, where there was progress on several GTK+ topics. While the Foundation rarely financially supports attendance at hackfests for those who are not members, a strong track record of contributions makes it easier to justify occasional exceptions. -- http://amigadave.com/ signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
[[[ 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. ]]] Care to expand on that? Miguel's history of the GNOME project doesn't make a lot of mention of GNU: Considering the history of Miguel, that is not surprising. He started a company supposedly to develop free software, then came out with proprietary products. Ultimately he more or less went to Microsoft. Namely, a discussion with you about his plans, the use of GNU licenses, and an announcement on a GNU mailing-list. What else did the GNU project and/or the FSF do for GNOME? You've got it the wrong way around. GNOME was started as a contribution to GNU -- that is what GNU packages are. The GNU Project consists of many software projects, one being GNOME. In general, each GNU package is developed separately -- but we urge GNU packages to support each other, so we urge developers of other packages to make them work with GNOME. One of the bad things that Miguel did in the first few years of GNOME development was not to pass these ideas on to the other people he brought into GNOME development. From that experience, I learned that I need to discuss these issues explicitly with the people responsible for GNU packages. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
On Wed, 2014-05-21 at 23:35 -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. ]]] > > > To cooperate formally with a Linux Foundation event would run into a > > problem -- they would probably want to call the GNU/Linux system > > "Linux", and we should not accept that. > > I look forward to the FSF's financial contributions to GNOME > conferences. > > The truth is not for sale. GNOME was launched by the GNU Project to > be part of the GNU system. That system is still GNU, and calling it > "Linux" is bad for GNU, including GNOME. Care to expand on that? Miguel's history of the GNOME project doesn't make a lot of mention of GNU: https://web.archive.org/web/20131106035732/http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/gnome-history.html Namely, a discussion with you about his plans, the use of GNU licenses, and an announcement on a GNU mailing-list. What else did the GNU project and/or the FSF do for GNOME? One thing that it could do though, is update the screenshot of some ancient version of GNOME on the front page: http://www.gnu.org/ Where the stock GNOME logo used for the menu has been replaced by some sort of Celtic knot. > I'd definitely want the GNOME Foundation Board to accept one of its > sponsors using "Linux" > > I agree, but that is a different subject. We were talking about > holding GUADEC in combination with a Linux Foundation event -- not about > merely accepting sponsorship. Guess I wasn't clear enough for you, and I'll rephrase so it's clearer: I'd definitely want the GNOME Foundation Board to accept co-hosting an event with one of its sponsors that uses "Linux" and not GNU/Linux if it meant the durability of those GNOME conferences. They support Free Software as well. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
[[[ 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. ]]] SUSE is a company, not a product, therefore it can not "contains" nonfree software. The company SUSE makes a GNU/Linux distro which they call "SUSE Linux"; it is nonfree. Of course, the distro is not the same thing as the company, but since they are both called "SUSE", promoting one is promoting the other. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates: OEMs
Quite frankly, I don't think this is a fair question to ask. We all would like that to happen of course but we don't have our own OS (at least not just yet), and there is no way Dell, or any OEM for that matter, is going to ship an OS without a well stablished commercial entity behind (from which they can reliably get the kind of support they can't get from the community), which at that point means that it won't be branded as GNOME but SUSE/RHEL... you name it. Realistically, to have OEMs shipping GNOME in a commercial product we need a set of things we don't currently have (like people employed to work on certification, training and support). 2014-05-22 21:10 GMT+02:00 Michael Catanzaro : > On Thu, 2014-05-22 at 14:35 -0400, Jeff Fortin wrote: > > - Our somewhat nonexistent OEM story > > Dell is currently shipping Ubuntu computers running Unity. Wouldn't it > be desirable to see a major OEM shipping GNOME as well? If so, what > steps do you believe GNOME, and the board in particular, should take to > achieve this goal? > > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list > > -- Cheers, Alberto Ruiz ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates: OEMs
On 2014-05-22 15:10, Michael Catanzaro wrote: On Thu, 2014-05-22 at 14:35 -0400, Jeff Fortin wrote: - Our somewhat nonexistent OEM story Dell is currently shipping Ubuntu computers running Unity. Wouldn't it be desirable to see a major OEM shipping GNOME as well? If so, what steps do you believe GNOME, and the board in particular, should take to achieve this goal? As Executive Director,I had a few calls/emails with Dell, trying to get a foothold in the company (or get a donation since they're using GNOME technologies) without too much luck. I think the Foundation needs to promote GNOME as much as possible and find partners, but we need successes to point to as well to get the message across. There are a few companies that have been working on products with GNOME in the last couple of years but already at least one of those efforts have fizzled. My fingers are crossed for the products still under development (I'm looking at you, Endless Mobile, for one) which will create more of an opportunity to approach new partners. With Android having met so much success we need a compelling story - I think we have that, but it's hard to communicate when it's more theoretical. In Dell's case they believe they need to contract with a company who will stand behind the technology, and Canonical serves that function. This is not an easy problem for the GNOME Foundation itself to solve. karen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Question for candidates: OEMs
On Thu, 2014-05-22 at 14:35 -0400, Jeff Fortin wrote: > - Our somewhat nonexistent OEM story Dell is currently shipping Ubuntu computers running Unity. Wouldn't it be desirable to see a major OEM shipping GNOME as well? If so, what steps do you believe GNOME, and the board in particular, should take to achieve this goal? signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
Hi. On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 11:16:14PM +0800, Emily Chen wrote: > 1. For GNOME big event, call for sponsor is really important, what is your > plan to call for more sponsors for conference like GUADEC and GNOME.Asia ? Hm, I haven't developed a fully thought out plan. For now, it's mainly reaching out to contacts and asking whether they would be interested in sponsoring an event. > 2. What is the top 3 goals for GNOME Foundation in the next year, in your > opinion ? > Continue to be a facilitator for the GNOME project to lead the discussions in and around Free Software, ensure that the GNOME project is able to produce the best Free Software solutions, and promote GNOME as a great Free Software product and project so that people use it and contribute to it. > 3. How to raise and increase the fund for GNOME Foundation ? > I would concentrate on making donations coming from individuals nicer. > 4. How many hours you work in GNOME Board related work each week? > That varies from something around 20 hours when busy and 4 hours when not having too much time available, like at the moment where I am in the process of writing up my thesis. Cheers, Tobi ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
[[[ 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. ]]] > To cooperate formally with a Linux Foundation event would run into a > problem -- they would probably want to call the GNU/Linux system > "Linux", and we should not accept that. I look forward to the FSF's financial contributions to GNOME conferences. The truth is not for sale. GNOME was launched by the GNU Project to be part of the GNU system. That system is still GNU, and calling it "Linux" is bad for GNU, including GNOME. I'd definitely want the GNOME Foundation Board to accept one of its sponsors using "Linux" I agree, but that is a different subject. We were talking about holding GUADEC in combination with a Linux Foundation event -- not about merely accepting sponsorship. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
Le 21 mai 2014 07:40, "Richard Stallman" a écrit : > > [[[ 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. ]]] > > for downstream, there's the SUSE > conference or the Fedora Flock; > > To cooperate formally with the SUSE conference would pose an ethical > problem because SUSE contains lots of nonfree software. > > To have the event in proximity to the SUSE conference, without > any public relationship with it, would not have such a problem. SUSE is a company, not a product, therefore it can not "contains" nonfree software. You seems to be incorrectly mixing a company (SUSE), an community project (openSUSE) done only with free software, community events around this project (openSUSE conference and summit) and friend projects like freedesktop meeting which was supported by SUSE which hosted the event in its Nuremberg office. (for the record, I'm a contributor to openSUSE and also working for SUSE). -- Frédéric Crozat ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
On 2014-05-21 13:04, Jeff Fortin wrote: Le dimanche 18 mai 2014 à 12:58 -0400, Dave Neary a écrit : So my question to all of you is: what are the main characteristics you will be looking for in the next executive director? When looking for a profile, there are a number of dials to twiddle: * Technical proficiency & reputation in the community, including free software cultural alignment * Strategy experience - the ability to formulate and communicate a direction for GNOME * Administrative and organizational experience * Business acumen and experience growing a commercial ecosystem * Communication/marketing/evangelism experience * Cost Of these, which do you feel are the most important for GNOME right now I think that expecting an ED candidate to have all of those qualities/skills nailed down simultaneously would be a difficult proposition to entertain. It's basically asking for a 20-years-experienced C*O to lift mountains at non-profit compensation rates and very high risk. Let's be honest: whoever that person might be, there's a heck of a challenge in terms of fundraising; we're far from the situation we were in back in 2009 or so. Karen et al have my respect for weathering the very harsh times GNOME has gone through in recent years. The board, too, requires diversity in the skillset of its members. It's a team effort. I hope my skills and interest in biz/mkt/mngt/design/etc. will be good complements to those of other board members. So in my eyes, in our current circumstances, I would say these are what are valuable traits: business acumen/experience growing a commercial ecosystem; communication skill (I consider that to be a side-effect of the previous item), admin/org experience. Maybe cost in theory, but in practice, what I just described is kind of a biz dev/salesperson... good luck finding an experimented person to fill that role in a cost-constrained scenario! I agree that it's hard to find the right person on our budget but I think there are a lot of different ways that it can play out, as others suggest. To me, understanding the GNOME community (and thus being able to work with all of us to accomplish GNOME's goals) and being passionate about free software (to understand and be able to advocate for adoption and funding) are at a premium. I think we should not be too rigid about our expectations and see who responds to a call for applicants - there are a lot of different ways to do the job right. We need someone to keep convincing our current donors to give (when I joined as ED we'd already lost adboard members and some of our current ones were threatening to leave), to build the connections with our allies to get to the donation level and to help steer GNOME in a direction that individuals and others will want to give. I personally wished many times that I was more technical in my role so I could dive in and help on things that were in the public interest or of concern to one of our partners, rather than agitate for those fixes to be made by others (I haven't really coded in a decade). One thing- it would be great to have someone who is a good public speaker, in order to advocate for GNOME, but also to get invited to the places where people and companies are meeting. With the exception of GNOME's events, the vast majority of my travel was funded by the conferences and having keynotes meant that I could reach more people. Then again as someone else said, traveling takes away time from other things. It is indeed a balancing act :) karen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: question for candidates
On 05/21/2014 12:45 PM, Bastien Nocera wrote: > In the past, we would try to sponsor GNOME folks for hackfests that are > wider than GNOME itself, and in some cases, important people in the > community around those building blocks. > > For example, the location hackfest, built around work on Geoclue2, has > plenty of non-GNOME attendees: > https://wiki.gnome.org/Hackfests/Location2014 > > I believe it also happened for the Color management hackfest: > https://wiki.gnome.org/Hackfests/ColorManagement2012 More examples to Bastien's list. ATK/AT-SPI (or in general Accessibility hackfests): https://wiki.gnome.org/Hackfests/ATK2011 https://wiki.gnome.org/Accessibility/Hackfests/ATK2012 Those had people coming with a Qt(KDE), Mozilla, etc. profiles. > Obviously, it's better when the contributor's home organisation can pay > for costs rather than GNOME. It might not always be the case however. Probably that would make things somewhat more complex, as would add several exceptions to the home organization along the year. FWIW, I was invited and funded by the KDE Sprint 2011 (KDE's equivalent to GNOME Hackfests) organization, being in that specific case case the non-KDE profile. BR -- Alejandro Piñeiro ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
Le dimanche 18 mai 2014 à 12:58 -0400, Dave Neary a écrit : > So my question to all of you is: what are the main characteristics you > will be looking for in the next executive director? > > When looking for a profile, there are a number of dials to twiddle: > > * Technical proficiency & reputation in the community, including free > software cultural alignment > * Strategy experience - the ability to formulate and communicate a > direction for GNOME > * Administrative and organizational experience > * Business acumen and experience growing a commercial ecosystem > * Communication/marketing/evangelism experience > * Cost > > Of these, which do you feel are the most important for GNOME right now I think that expecting an ED candidate to have all of those qualities/skills nailed down simultaneously would be a difficult proposition to entertain. It's basically asking for a 20-years-experienced C*O to lift mountains at non-profit compensation rates and very high risk. Let's be honest: whoever that person might be, there's a heck of a challenge in terms of fundraising; we're far from the situation we were in back in 2009 or so. Karen et al have my respect for weathering the very harsh times GNOME has gone through in recent years. The board, too, requires diversity in the skillset of its members. It's a team effort. I hope my skills and interest in biz/mkt/mngt/design/etc. will be good complements to those of other board members. So in my eyes, in our current circumstances, I would say these are what are valuable traits: business acumen/experience growing a commercial ecosystem; communication skill (I consider that to be a side-effect of the previous item), admin/org experience. Maybe cost in theory, but in practice, what I just described is kind of a biz dev/salesperson... good luck finding an experimented person to fill that role in a cost-constrained scenario! ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
On 2014-05-21 07:30, Emily Gonyer wrote: On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 7:01 AM, Bastien Nocera wrote: On Wed, 2014-05-21 at 01:39 -0400, Richard Stallman wrote: To cooperate formally with a Linux Foundation event would run into a problem -- they would probably want to call the GNU/Linux system "Linux", and we should not accept that. I look forward to the FSF's financial contributions to GNOME conferences. I'd definitely want the GNOME Foundation Board to accept one of its sponsors using "Linux" if it meant the durability of those GNOME conferences. They support Free Software as well. Absolutely. We ought to happily accept the support of anyone and everyone who supports free software, even if their ideals do not line up absolutely perfectly with GNOME's. Perhaps somebody already said this, but GNOME already works with organizations that use different terminology. All of our sponsors use less than ideal ways to describe free software. In our own materials we have insisted on terminology that promotes freedom and while we've encouraged our partners to do the same it's never held up any sponsorship to my knowledge. The Linux Foundation has been a great supporter of GNOME and the Foundation. They used to give a low level sponsorship to GUADEC but upgraded that to an advisory board membership last year. They run great conferences, but they are a trade association and their conferences are very business focused as a result, so very different than what GUADEC is like. I'm all for increasing our partnerships, from anyone, so long as we're confident in what we say and do to support software freedom (and try to educate our partners in a productive and positive way). As for the FSF, I think it's unreasonable to expect sponsorship for GUADEC or other events, as they are also a 501c3 nonprofit. They have supported GUADEC sometimes by paying or partially paying for their representatives to come. They have given sponsorship directly to GNOME to pay for a GNOME intern for OPW, and have been the only charity to support an intern with another organization. I bet if we needed it and asked they would help us with their staff time, office space or other resources if they could spare it. They have offered to do so in the past. full disclosure: I am *not* affiliated with the FSF :D karen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
With regards to priorities of the GNOME Foundation, Last I heard, the case of the OPW cash flow problems was being taken care of, unlike what "news sites" would have you believe. It seemed like a matter of time for sponsors follow-up activities to resolve the situation, and AFAICT we're 75% there. It would be easy for me to mention it's my personal priority, but I won't - it would be a lie to say that I can immediately make a difference in an issue that is in the process of being solved as we speak. I'm not sure how urgently a replacement for the ED can be found, given that GNOME needs to be very careful about its expenditures and that the ED would need to be able to offset his/her own salary, which requires a fair amount of flair. See my candidacy application for more, but if I have to pick, among my areas of interest, the one I find the most important: fundraising and financial security, including investigating where we could diversify or where there are untapped resources. This is much easier said than done, obviously. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 7:01 AM, Bastien Nocera wrote: > On Wed, 2014-05-21 at 01:39 -0400, Richard Stallman wrote: >> To cooperate formally with a Linux Foundation event would run into a >> problem -- they would probably want to call the GNU/Linux system >> "Linux", and we should not accept that. > > I look forward to the FSF's financial contributions to GNOME > conferences. > > I'd definitely want the GNOME Foundation Board to accept one of its > sponsors using "Linux" if it meant the durability of those GNOME > conferences. They support Free Software as well. > Absolutely. We ought to happily accept the support of anyone and everyone who supports free software, even if their ideals do not line up absolutely perfectly with GNOME's. > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list -- Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. - Goethe Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr.Seuss Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. - Albert Einstein ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
On Wed, 2014-05-21 at 01:39 -0400, Richard Stallman wrote: > To cooperate formally with a Linux Foundation event would run into a > problem -- they would probably want to call the GNU/Linux system > "Linux", and we should not accept that. I look forward to the FSF's financial contributions to GNOME conferences. I'd definitely want the GNOME Foundation Board to accept one of its sponsors using "Linux" if it meant the durability of those GNOME conferences. They support Free Software as well. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: question for candidates
On Tue, 2014-05-20 at 17:08 -0400, Emily Gonyer wrote: > > > On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 2:56 PM, Andy Tai wrote: > Hi, I would like to post this question to the candidates: > > > GNOME's core toolkit, gtk+, is used by numerous projects. > Currently gtk+ development seems to be driven mainly by the > GNOME desktop. However, gtk+ also play critical roles in > other free software projects, like MATE, XFCE, and the > Cinnamon desktop, and large applications like GIMP, Inkscape, > etc. > > > What are your views on the participation of the people of > these projects, as stake holders in the direction of gtk+, in > the GNOME Foundation? Should the GNOME Foundation encourage > (reach out to) these people to get them involved in the GNOME > Foundation so they also have a say and even contribute to gtk+ > so gtk+ can continue to serve their needs well, important for > the continuing successes of gtk+ in the free software world? > > > They are (or ought to be) just as involved in the development of GTK+ > as the developers of GNOME Shell are, and their opinions, wants, needs > etc ought to be valued. The GNOME project is not (or at least, should > not) be exclusively about GNOME Shell, but include anyone and everyone > who uses GNOME technologies. The sever fracturing of the community > which has taken place over the last 3-4 years is not healthy for our > community, nor for theirs. Everyone who is using GTK+ ought to be > included in ongoing discussions as to its development. They should be > invited to GUADEC and encouraged to submit talks, and become > foundation members. As long as they contribute to GNOME or its direct eco-system (eg. contributing to MATE, Elementary, etc. isn't contributing to GNOME, contributing to GTK+, NetworkManager, PulseAudio or GStreamer is). > As a member of the board, I will do my best to engage with them and > encourage them to do so, while also doing my best to ensure that their > voices, thoughts, concerns, etc are heard, understood and thought of > in any and all changes going forwards. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: question for candidates
On Wed, 2014-05-21 at 10:32 +0200, Andreas Nilsson wrote: > On 05/21/2014 05:17 AM, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: > > > > > > Now regarding foundation and these other projects. I've long thought > > that need to find a way to support these projects. I have a proposal > > in the works that will suggest that the Foundation will help pay for > > hackfests that does not benefit GNOME the product (e.g. the desktop) > > but does benefit GNOME the eco-system. The idea is that in exchange > > for the money, that everyone would participate in working in the lower > > levels of the stack and not necessarily the design. This is > > controversial because of using our finances, but there are questions > > on whether this will dilute the brand. But that is a separate discussion. > > This is very interesting, considering projects like Mate and Elementary > OS have donation systems by themselves and I assume income from that [1] > [2]. The other thing is that the foundation have limited funds as it is. > I would love to hear other candidates view on this matter. It would be a > deal breaker for me. In the past, we would try to sponsor GNOME folks for hackfests that are wider than GNOME itself, and in some cases, important people in the community around those building blocks. For example, the location hackfest, built around work on Geoclue2, has plenty of non-GNOME attendees: https://wiki.gnome.org/Hackfests/Location2014 I believe it also happened for the Color management hackfest: https://wiki.gnome.org/Hackfests/ColorManagement2012 Obviously, it's better when the contributor's home organisation can pay for costs rather than GNOME. It might not always be the case however. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: question for candidates
Hi. On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 11:56:16AM -0700, Andy Tai wrote: > What are your views on the participation of the people of these projects, > as stake holders in the direction of gtk+, in the GNOME Foundation? Should > the GNOME Foundation encourage (reach out to) these people to get them > involved in the GNOME Foundation so they also have a say and even > contribute to gtk+ so gtk+ can continue to serve their needs well, > important for the continuing successes of gtk+ in the free software world? > Absolutely. And, as others have said, we were and are trying to foster relations with hackfests. I think that is good and necessary. Cheers, Tobi ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: question for candidates
On 05/21/2014 05:17 AM, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: Now regarding foundation and these other projects. I've long thought that need to find a way to support these projects. I have a proposal in the works that will suggest that the Foundation will help pay for hackfests that does not benefit GNOME the product (e.g. the desktop) but does benefit GNOME the eco-system. The idea is that in exchange for the money, that everyone would participate in working in the lower levels of the stack and not necessarily the design. This is controversial because of using our finances, but there are questions on whether this will dilute the brand. But that is a separate discussion. This is very interesting, considering projects like Mate and Elementary OS have donation systems by themselves and I assume income from that [1] [2]. The other thing is that the foundation have limited funds as it is. I would love to hear other candidates view on this matter. It would be a deal breaker for me. 1. http://mate-desktop.org/donate/ 2. http://elementaryos.org/ (you donate when you download it) - Andreas ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
[[[ 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. ]]] for downstream, there's the SUSE conference or the Fedora Flock; To cooperate formally with the SUSE conference would pose an ethical problem because SUSE contains lots of nonfree software. To have the event in proximity to the SUSE conference, without any public relationship with it, would not have such a problem. for accessing the commercial side there's the Linux Foundation. To cooperate formally with a Linux Foundation event would run into a problem -- they would probably want to call the GNU/Linux system "Linux", and we should not accept that. However, having the event in proximity to one of their events, without any public relationship, would not have such a problem. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Question for candidates
[[[ 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. ]]] A question for candidates: How will you direct the GNOME Foundation to promote the general idea of free software: that software should be free/libre? -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
2014-05-21 3:08 GMT+00:00 Marina Zhurakhinskaya : > > - Original Message - > > From: "Richard Stallman" > > To: "Marina Zhurakhinskaya" > > Cc: emilychen...@gmail.com, foundation-list@gnome.org > > Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2014 6:25:22 AM > > Subject: Re: Question for candidates > > > > [[[ 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. ]]] > > > > One possible idea would be to have joint events with KDE. One joint > > event could cost less, in total, than two separate events. > > > > I don't know what practical obstacles there might be, but in principle > > I think it is ok. > > Hi Richard, > > As other people mentioned, we've had joint events with KDE, which > logistically worked out well. However, GUADEC is a 200-300 person event, > and our goal for it is to have GNOME community members meet each other and > have a chance to interact and work face-to-face. This becomes more > difficult in a group twice the size, where not everyone is a GNOME user or > contributor. This is why it was decided to host GUADEC separately and to > have dedicated freedesktop hackfests that contributors involved with common > technologies can attend, despite the financial attractiveness to sponsors > of a joint event. > > As you know, GNOME.Asia is co-located with FUDCon this year, and it would > be interesting to know how that works out. GNOME.Asia has been much smaller > than GUADEC in the past, and having many people attend it because of the > co-location is definitely a positive outcome, so our interest in > co-locating it might be different from co-locating GUADEC. > > I second what Marina said about GNOME.Asia. The goal of GNOME.Asia is to promote GNOME in Asian region. Most of the audience are GNOME/Linux users, FOSS community people. only 20% are core developers and leads from GNOME community. This is different from GUADEC. Then co-host with other conference like FUDCon is working very well this way, because our audience is the same, we have common speakers, local organizers are already familiar with each other. This year, in GNOME.Asia/ FUDCon 2014, we bring more speakers, attract more audience, find more local sponsors, at the same time, we reduce the cost by share with FUDCon. Hope you enjoy your trip to Beijing and thank you for speaking at this > joint event! > Yes, we are looking forward to RMS's speech this Sunday. -Emily > > Marina > > > > > -- > > Dr Richard Stallman > > President, Free Software Foundation > > 51 Franklin St > > Boston MA 02110 > > USA > > www.fsf.org www.gnu.org > > Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. > > Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. > > > > > ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 8:16 AM, Emily Chen wrote: > Hi, > > I would like to ask below questions to future board: > > 1. For GNOME big event, call for sponsor is really important, what is your > plan to call for more sponsors for conference like GUADEC and GNOME.Asia ? I've read some of the responses of the other candidates, and I would say that I largely agree that having diversified group both local and corporate is a good starting point. But for that we need to create relationships with these companies. Our advisory board mainly consists of tech giants like Google who support Free Software. But it would be interesting to use our existing set of regional mailing lists to brainstorm ways to talk with local companies. For instance, we have very few companies that are purely European, Latin American or Indian. Why is that? Those are good questions to ask. Who are using our stack? Did you know? If you use DBus, you're using our stack? GLib is a dependency. Start with that conversation to the companies you talk with at a local conference. Max alluded to this question a bit but he focused purely on activity in Asia. But that answer needs to be answered globally. The plan really rests on having a competent Executive Director who can make cogent arguments to propspective donors. Let me give you an example, go through all the projects on http://01.org/, how many of those projects depend on DBus? Gstreamer? How many blu-ray players depend on libxml2? Have you ever looked at the packaging of various common consumer devices like your SmartTV? Read the licenses? Identify any of the libraries? Free Software is ubquitous. Every large company has some kind of plan for Free Software/Open Source, some of them have a community manager. > 2. What is the top 3 goals for GNOME Foundation in the next year, in your > opinion ? I think getting our finances in order is a good start. Secondly, I really like to continue working on volunteer capture. Volunteers are the lifeblood of an open source project, and we want to be able to get diversified set of talents. Not necessarily talking about coders, but people who have background in marketing, technical writing, video editing, and so forth. If you didn't have people like Bastian Hougaard, you wouldn't have that awesome release video for GNOME 3.12. Those people don't come easily. Finally, we really do need to find a good Executive Director, one is saavy and can build the financial net to fund these important initiatives. > 3. How to raise and increase the fund for GNOME Foundation ? I think I answered this above. Increasing our value to our current adboard members, by showing improvement on the stack, show how we are improving the Linux (the kernel) eco-system are examples that I think will resonate with our adboard member. Obviously, we will need to find new sources of income, and that could be micro-payment system. For instance, if a bug is fixed on bugzilla, then a donation button could be presented so that money can go back into the foundation. Continue working on getting specific fundraising like we've done for privacy. These are all good ways to get revenue. Finally, build the best damn desktop out there. Money will come if we are successful in our endeavor. > > 4. How many hours you work in GNOME Board related work each week? > I generally work about 5-7 hours a week on GNOME Foundation. It's been fluctuating lately because I"ve been putting efforts in engagement and the qa team. sri > Thanks! > > Emily Chen > > > > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list > ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
Full disclosure - I wrok for Intel as the Tizen SCM architect. Since I brought up Tizen, I wanted to make it known that there is a relationship. On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 8:35 PM, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: > On Sun, May 18, 2014 at 6:18 PM, Max wrote: >> Hi everyone, >> >> Thanks for run the board. >> This is the most busy time for GNOME.Asia summit(4 days to go). >> GNOME.Asia team and Beijing team are busy for the summit. >> >> My question to all of you: >> >> * What's your plan for "Promote / Growth GNOME in Asia" >> -- GNOME.Asia summit ? >> Central event management system for both GUADEC and GNOME.Asia?( I saw >> it last GUADEC but not start to use) >> Other idea? >> > > Growth in Asia has been a bit of a puzzle for me. But let's think > strategically on how we could promote and grow in asia. Now, I think > there are a couple of things that we can do in terms of promotion. > Let's first talk about Tizen. Tizen stack is the basis of the mobile > phone stack which interestingly enough contains many pieces of GNOME > technologies. So by extension people who use Tizen use GNOME > technologies and there is a wealth of companies specifically in Asia > that are using Tizen for IVI, Mobile, and IOT. There is probably some > fundraising opportunities there and a way to get our name out. > > How about partnering with Asian based distros and make sure that we > have a specific asian experience on GNOME? Recruiting folks who might > be interesting to do this? > > Most of these ideas require a stable platform to do volunteer > recruitiment. So while they maybe good ideas, you need to make sure > that we put in an infrastrucutre in place that immediately makes them > useful. > > >> >> -- Google Summer of code / Outreach Program for Women >> What's your plan for GsoC and OPW in Asia? > > Should there be a plan? We should take applicants who are interesterd > regardless of race, creed, or color. In general, we seem to have good > representation from Asia in tehse programs. > >> How many country get GsoC / OPW in Asia? What's your plan for promote >> it with more country in Asia? > > I think the same thing applies as above. Now, if you're talking about > highlighting the program in Asia, the best place to start is to put > posters in universities or popular cultural events. For instance, in > SXSW, we put a lot of posters out there talking about teh next round > of OPW. We even had some responses of that. Having presentations > from GNOME OPW students in Asia is another good way to do this. At > Linuxcon, there are a number of OPW kernel who are doing BOF and > presentation and they are coming as a group to talk about the work > tehy are doing. We did something similar at GUADEC last year, but we > should really expand that to other areas. > > While tech conferences and universities are a good place, don't be > afraid to go to places that are unusual. Open air markets for > instance might be interesting. Pay a kid to walk around handling > fliers to out to people outside a store? Or maybe do it yourself. > >> >> >> -- GNOME Foundation member in Asia? >> How do we know our other member in Asia?( I suggest tobi last year, if >> they want to fill their country when foundation member renew or new ) >> How do we get these member / resource together? >> > > This isn't something the board itself can solve. This is really > something that you want the engagement team to be working on. The > board can help fund, and provide logistical support. But ultimately, > we want to get enthusiastic people recruit others. Sometimes that is > really easy. For instance, I knwo at least two people we brougiht > into the foundation simply because we noticed that they were > doingpro-bono support on #gnome. Sending them a t-shirt and > sponsoring their inclusion into GNOME Foundation is a great way to > reward people like them. > > >> -- Are you interesting to involve Asia event? and how do you involve? >> > > I would love to be involved, but my opportunities to travel is quite > small due to job constraints and time constraints. But I would love > to help logistically if I can. In fact, I encouraged at least one > person in the foundation to help GNOME Asia with the conference > logistics as an event planner. > > > Max, it's unfortunate you did not run for the board this year. I hope > you or Emily Chen will consider running next year. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
On Sun, May 18, 2014 at 6:18 PM, Max wrote: > Hi everyone, > > Thanks for run the board. > This is the most busy time for GNOME.Asia summit(4 days to go). > GNOME.Asia team and Beijing team are busy for the summit. > > My question to all of you: > > * What's your plan for "Promote / Growth GNOME in Asia" > -- GNOME.Asia summit ? > Central event management system for both GUADEC and GNOME.Asia?( I saw > it last GUADEC but not start to use) > Other idea? > Growth in Asia has been a bit of a puzzle for me. But let's think strategically on how we could promote and grow in asia. Now, I think there are a couple of things that we can do in terms of promotion. Let's first talk about Tizen. Tizen stack is the basis of the mobile phone stack which interestingly enough contains many pieces of GNOME technologies. So by extension people who use Tizen use GNOME technologies and there is a wealth of companies specifically in Asia that are using Tizen for IVI, Mobile, and IOT. There is probably some fundraising opportunities there and a way to get our name out. How about partnering with Asian based distros and make sure that we have a specific asian experience on GNOME? Recruiting folks who might be interesting to do this? Most of these ideas require a stable platform to do volunteer recruitiment. So while they maybe good ideas, you need to make sure that we put in an infrastrucutre in place that immediately makes them useful. > > -- Google Summer of code / Outreach Program for Women > What's your plan for GsoC and OPW in Asia? Should there be a plan? We should take applicants who are interesterd regardless of race, creed, or color. In general, we seem to have good representation from Asia in tehse programs. > How many country get GsoC / OPW in Asia? What's your plan for promote > it with more country in Asia? I think the same thing applies as above. Now, if you're talking about highlighting the program in Asia, the best place to start is to put posters in universities or popular cultural events. For instance, in SXSW, we put a lot of posters out there talking about teh next round of OPW. We even had some responses of that. Having presentations from GNOME OPW students in Asia is another good way to do this. At Linuxcon, there are a number of OPW kernel who are doing BOF and presentation and they are coming as a group to talk about the work tehy are doing. We did something similar at GUADEC last year, but we should really expand that to other areas. While tech conferences and universities are a good place, don't be afraid to go to places that are unusual. Open air markets for instance might be interesting. Pay a kid to walk around handling fliers to out to people outside a store? Or maybe do it yourself. > > > -- GNOME Foundation member in Asia? > How do we know our other member in Asia?( I suggest tobi last year, if > they want to fill their country when foundation member renew or new ) > How do we get these member / resource together? > This isn't something the board itself can solve. This is really something that you want the engagement team to be working on. The board can help fund, and provide logistical support. But ultimately, we want to get enthusiastic people recruit others. Sometimes that is really easy. For instance, I knwo at least two people we brougiht into the foundation simply because we noticed that they were doingpro-bono support on #gnome. Sending them a t-shirt and sponsoring their inclusion into GNOME Foundation is a great way to reward people like them. > -- Are you interesting to involve Asia event? and how do you involve? > I would love to be involved, but my opportunities to travel is quite small due to job constraints and time constraints. But I would love to help logistically if I can. In fact, I encouraged at least one person in the foundation to help GNOME Asia with the conference logistics as an event planner. Max, it's unfortunate you did not run for the board this year. I hope you or Emily Chen will consider running next year. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: question for candidates
Pardon my late reply. On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 11:56 AM, Andy Tai wrote: > Hi, I would like to post this question to the candidates: > > GNOME's core toolkit, gtk+, is used by numerous projects. Currently gtk+ > development seems to be driven mainly by the GNOME desktop. However, gtk+ > also play critical roles in other free software projects, like MATE, XFCE, > and the Cinnamon desktop, and large applications like GIMP, Inkscape, etc. > > I think inclusivity of these projects are very important. Embracing these other projects is an important step in making sure that GTK+ and GLib are healthy eco-systems that projects downstream can depend on. > What are your views on the participation of the people of these projects, > as stake holders in the direction of gtk+, in the GNOME Foundation? Should > the GNOME Foundation encourage (reach out to) these people to get them > involved in the GNOME Foundation so they also have a say and even > contribute to gtk+ so gtk+ can continue to serve their needs well, > important for the continuing successes of gtk+ in the free software world? > We are already reaching out and we've made a little progress. During the West Coast Hackfest, thanks to Allan Day, we were able to invite one of the ElementaryOS designers over, and he was able to spend a couple days with us. One of the positive outcomes was that we are hopefully set to eliminate ElementaryOS's private widget set library and use GNOME's. In turn, there are several widgets that Matthias have identified that was useful for GTK+. So here is an excellent example of how diversity solves problems. I can say that both GNOME and ElementaryOS folks were quite enthusiastic afterwards from my conversations with them.[1] A couple comments on the West Coast Hackfest - the hackfest is geared to be outward facing. Most of our conferences and hackfests are quite insular and internal. You want GNOME hackers to be exposed to people who use our software or might want to use our software. In turn, we want to really highlight the benefits of using the GNOME stack. We don't do enough of this. I hope the next year, we can work on a more aggressive conference instead of a hackfest that will bring more attention to the GNOME eco-system to people who are developing either software solutions or turnkey hardware appliances like kiosks. In general, thanks to the hard work of Tiffany, Christian Hergert, and Cosimo we had successful hackfest and is a good base. Now regarding foundation and these other projects. I've long thought that need to find a way to support these projects. I have a proposal in the works that will suggest that the Foundation will help pay for hackfests that does not benefit GNOME the product (e.g. the desktop) but does benefit GNOME the eco-system. The idea is that in exchange for the money, that everyone would participate in working in the lower levels of the stack and not necessarily the design. This is controversial because of using our finances, but there are questions on whether this will dilute the brand. But that is a separate discussion. Nothing excites me more than seeing GNOME partner wtih more people and organization, being diversified will help hopefully attract more adboard members as well. We live in interesting times, we have many projects that have pick up the "design the desktop as a product" bug, and they have choosen GNOME as the basis of it. I think that is fantastic. sri [1] See my blog post on West Coast Hackfest, the release notes for the last GTK+ release, and Matthias's post on West Coast Hackfest > > -- > Andy Tai, a...@atai.org > Year 2010 民國99年 > 自動的精神力是信仰與覺悟 > 自動的行為力是勞動與技能 > > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list > > ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
- Original Message - > From: "Richard Stallman" > To: "Marina Zhurakhinskaya" > Cc: emilychen...@gmail.com, foundation-list@gnome.org > Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2014 6:25:22 AM > Subject: Re: Question for candidates > > [[[ 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. ]]] > > One possible idea would be to have joint events with KDE. One joint > event could cost less, in total, than two separate events. > > I don't know what practical obstacles there might be, but in principle > I think it is ok. Hi Richard, As other people mentioned, we've had joint events with KDE, which logistically worked out well. However, GUADEC is a 200-300 person event, and our goal for it is to have GNOME community members meet each other and have a chance to interact and work face-to-face. This becomes more difficult in a group twice the size, where not everyone is a GNOME user or contributor. This is why it was decided to host GUADEC separately and to have dedicated freedesktop hackfests that contributors involved with common technologies can attend, despite the financial attractiveness to sponsors of a joint event. As you know, GNOME.Asia is co-located with FUDCon this year, and it would be interesting to know how that works out. GNOME.Asia has been much smaller than GUADEC in the past, and having many people attend it because of the co-location is definitely a positive outcome, so our interest in co-locating it might be different from co-locating GUADEC. Hope you enjoy your trip to Beijing and thank you for speaking at this joint event! Marina > > -- > Dr Richard Stallman > President, Free Software Foundation > 51 Franklin St > Boston MA 02110 > USA > www.fsf.org www.gnu.org > Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. > Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. > > ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: question for candidates
- Original Message - > From: "Andy Tai" > To: "GNOME Foundation" > Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2014 2:56:16 PM > Subject: question for candidates > > Hi, I would like to post this question to the candidates: > > GNOME's core toolkit, gtk+, is used by numerous projects. Currently gtk+ > development seems to be driven mainly by the GNOME desktop. However, gtk+ > also play critical roles in other free software projects, like MATE, XFCE, > and the Cinnamon desktop, and large applications like GIMP, Inkscape, etc. > > What are your views on the participation of the people of these projects, as > stake holders in the direction of gtk+, in the GNOME Foundation? Should the > GNOME Foundation encourage (reach out to) these people to get them involved > in the GNOME Foundation so they also have a say and even contribute to gtk+ > so gtk+ can continue to serve their needs well, important for the continuing > successes of gtk+ in the free software world? GTK+ was one of the main themes of the Developer Experience Hackfest last month. The work done was covered in many blog posts and resulted in the GTK+ roadmap. https://wiki.gnome.org/Hackfests/DeveloperExperience2014 https://wiki.gnome.org/Hackfests/DeveloperExperience2014/GtkRoadmap Beyond that, Matthias Clasen has been writing regular blog posts about the new features. http://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/ The roadmap has a long list of work to be done, and offers an opportunity to help and to provide feedback. GNOME 3 desktop and applications' needs, which are reflected in the roadmap, should be a primary consideration for GTK+ development, because this is our product. It's great if we are also able to provide an attractive technology to other projects, but it seems that right now we don't have enough people working on GTK+ to satisfy both goals and need participation of these other projects to help create anything that is custom to their needs. It would be great to hear from people who participated in the hackfest about any interaction with projects that use GTK+ so far and to reach out to these groups. Thanks, Marina > > > -- > Andy Tai, a...@atai.org > Year 2010 民國99年 > 自動的精神力是信仰與覺悟 > 自動的行為力是勞動與技能 > > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list > ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: question for candidates
Le mardi 20 mai 2014 à 11:56 -0700, Andy Tai a écrit : > What are your views on the participation of the people of these > projects, as stake holders in the direction of gtk+, in the GNOME > Foundation? Should the GNOME Foundation encourage (reach out to) > these people to get them involved in the GNOME Foundation so they also > have a say and even contribute to gtk+ so gtk+ can continue to serve > their needs well, important for the continuing successes of gtk+ in > the free software world? > I am unaware of the GTK+ project actively discouraging* participation, and I'm not sure that downstreams are "choosing not to fix GTK+ because they specifically don't want to" - rather, they're undermanned just the same, and busy enough with their own amount of bugs (just look at how long release cycles are for apps like GIMP, Inkscape, PTV...). It is not a problem easily fixed by marketing/outreach (and I say this from experience as the PTV marketing machine!). I think anyone will agree that GTK+ needs help, but whether or not that happens is a technical matter, heavily dependent on available skilled manpower. GTK+ is, as far as I know, an open meritocracy like any other respectable Free Software project and I'm pretty sure the maintainers are overjoyed when potential new contributors show up, which I suspect is a very rare occurrence. The way I see it (with my downstream/community hat on), GTK+ is a big/complex codebase, with an overloaded infrastructure (in this case, the bug tracker) leading to an unclear course of action, lagging community interaction, somewhat foggy roadmap and maintainers being in "survival mode", which is perfectly understandable given the circumstances. The "infrastructure" (or "process") side of things is something I'd like to help address (I touched upon the subject in one of my GUADEC 2013 talks), but it's really not going to happen overnight, especially as we are all volunteers. Related reading: the comments section of https://oli.wordpress.com/2014/03/22/engaging-developers/ *: I posit that it is simply a side-effect of all I've mentioned above, which makes it kind of a chicken-and-egg situation. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
- Original Message - > From: "Ekaterina Gerasimova" > To: "Marina Zhurakhinskaya" > Cc: "foundation-list" > Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2014 9:12:35 AM > Subject: Re: Question for candidates > > On 20 May 2014 01:55, Marina Zhurakhinskaya wrote: > > - Original Message - > >> From: "Max" > >> To: "foundation-list" > >> Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2014 9:18:33 PM > >> Subject: Question for candidates > >> > >> Hi everyone, > >> > >> Thanks for run the board. > >> This is the most busy time for GNOME.Asia summit(4 days to go). > >> GNOME.Asia team and Beijing team are busy for the summit. > >> > >> My question to all of you: > >> > >> * What's your plan for "Promote / Growth GNOME in Asia" > >> -- GNOME.Asia summit ? > > > > The GNOME.Asia team is doing a fantastic job organizing the conference and > > it will undoubtedly boost the interest in GNOME. It would be great to have > > meetups of people working on GNOME and free software in Beijing throughout > > the year, so that more people who learned about GNOME at the conference > > are interested in travelling to the next year's location. > > Local meetups are a great idea and have proven to be popular when > organised, even if only for "GNOME Beers" around releases. As the > question is about plans for the future, how are you planning to help > this happen? I would generally just like to encourage people to organize these locally. Meg Ford's blog is a great source of inspiration and ideas on what to do to foster a local community, as she and Jim Campbell started the Chicagoan Hacking on GNOME group. One of the findings she made was for a larger turn-out, it's good to have broader events that include hacking on various free software projects. http://fordmeg.blogspot.com/ For running newcomers workshops, I already recommended OpenHatch resources and GNOME Newcomers Workshop and Tutorial resources, which I created. I'd like to invite people to help out with the Newcomers Workshop at GUADEC and then replicate it locally. Myself and the board are available to answer any questions about hosting local events. > > >> Central event management system for both GUADEC and GNOME.Asia?( I > >> saw > >> it last GUADEC but not start to use) > > > > I created a new "activities to track" page for the board and added it > > there. We will find out what is going on with it and encourage > > development. > > There are many issues that the board tracks and works on, why do you > think that the board should take over the tracking of this rather than > let those who created it (OPW interns and mentors) and those who would > benefit from it (GUADEC and GNOME.Asia organisers) keep track? This relates to organizing events, which is one of the key functions of the Foundation the board needs to facilitate. > > Given that the board rarely interferes in development, how do you > propose to encourage further work on this project? This particular project is an infrastructure project, rather than GNOME technology development project. Even with GNOME technology projects, it's sometimes appropriate for the board to get involved to encourage development, such as in the areas of privacy and accessibility, for which we had fundraising campaigns. For this work, we can ask people who worked on the system about their availability to continue the work and/or ask them to make a call on Planet GNOME for new volunteers, along with the explanation of the work that has been done and that yet needs to be done. If no volunteers step up, the board can investigate allocating resources to this project. > > >> Other idea? > >> > >> > >> -- Google Summer of code / Outreach Program for Women > >> What's your plan for GsoC and OPW in Asia? > > > > We should continue to provide materials and encouragement for past OPW and > > GSoC participants to run introduction to free software / GNOME / GSoC / > > OPW sessions and host meetups in their cities throughout the year, so that > > we have more applicants from Asia applying for these programs who have > > experience contributing to free software. There are materials available > > for OpenHatch "Open Source Comes to Campus" and GNOME Newcomers Workshop, > > which can be used for such events. > > > >> How many country get GsoC / OPW in Asia? What's your plan for promote > >> it > >> with more country in Asia? > > > > Of 39 interns GNOME has this summer,
Re: Question for candidates
Yes, the pebbles distribution you made is what makes more sense to me at this time! thanks Dave for your question! 2014-05-21 0:36 GMT+02:00 Dave Neary : > Thanks Andrea, > > On 05/20/2014 05:23 PM, Andrea Veri wrote: > > > What I would aim for is someone with great communication / marketing > > skills for attracting new advisory board members but most of all a > > strong passion and dedication for the free software movement, with these > > feelings being stronger than the desire to earn an high stipend. (at > > least until the Foundation finances are back on track again) > > So, how would you distribute your 25 pebbles? Seems like 7 each on > fundraising, cheap and promotion, and 4 on philosophical alignment? > > Cheers, > Dave. > > > -- > Dave Neary, Lyon, France > Email: dne...@gnome.org > Jabber: nea...@gmail.com > -- Cheers, Andrea Debian Developer, Fedora / EPEL packager, GNOME Sysadmin, GNOME Foundation Membership & Elections Committee Chairman Homepage: http://www.gnome.org/~av ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
Thanks Andrea, On 05/20/2014 05:23 PM, Andrea Veri wrote: > What I would aim for is someone with great communication / marketing > skills for attracting new advisory board members but most of all a > strong passion and dedication for the free software movement, with these > feelings being stronger than the desire to earn an high stipend. (at > least until the Foundation finances are back on track again) So, how would you distribute your 25 pebbles? Seems like 7 each on fundraising, cheap and promotion, and 4 on philosophical alignment? Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary, Lyon, France Email: dne...@gnome.org Jabber: nea...@gmail.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: question for candidates
2014-05-20 20:56 GMT+02:00 Andy Tai : > Hi, I would like to post this question to the candidates: > > GNOME's core toolkit, gtk+, is used by numerous projects. Currently gtk+ > development seems to be driven mainly by the GNOME desktop. However, gtk+ > also play critical roles in other free software projects, like MATE, XFCE, > and the Cinnamon desktop, and large applications like GIMP, Inkscape, etc. > > What are your views on the participation of the people of these projects, > as stake holders in the direction of gtk+, in the GNOME Foundation? Should > the GNOME Foundation encourage (reach out to) these people to get them > involved in the GNOME Foundation so they also have a say and even > contribute to gtk+ so gtk+ can continue to serve their needs well, > important for the continuing successes of gtk+ in the free software world? > Indeed yes, although GNOME has its own roadmap, design and views which obviously differ from what other GNOME forks are providing to users we will never ever think about closing the door to anyone willing to contribute and provide their opinions back upstream. (with GNOME still being the upstream for those forks) One of the free software beauties is its malleability, like you can shape a metal the way you want the same can be achieved with the code licensed under a free software license. Some users and communities were not happy about the direction GNOME was taking, that's legit, someone should be free to use the DE of their choice, the DE that helps them being more productive, the DE that makes them feel at home, the DE that has all the features they need where they need them. I will be more than happy to welcome back those communities and contributors, try to engage them and hear their opinions finding a common path. -- Cheers, Andrea Debian Developer, Fedora / EPEL packager, GNOME Sysadmin, GNOME Foundation Membership & Elections Committee Chairman Homepage: http://www.gnome.org/~av ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
2014-05-20 14:37 GMT+02:00 Ekaterina Gerasimova : > Hi Andrea, > > On 19 May 2014 18:55, Andrea Veri wrote: > > On Mon, 19 May 2014, Max wrote: > >> My question to all of you: > >> > >> * What's your plan for "Promote / Growth GNOME in Asia" > >> -- GNOME.Asia summit ? > >> Central event management system for both GUADEC and GNOME.Asia?( I > >> saw it last GUADEC but not start to use) > >> Other idea? > > > > Two OPW interns have been working for several months to provide a > > valid event management system for all the major GNOME events. The > > software is currently based on OSEM (the Open Source Event Manager > > [1]) and a test-bed is privately available on one of our testing > > machines at OSUOSL. Part of the upcoming GUADEC organizers have been > > granted access to the istance, if you are missing access to it please > > let me know. > > > > We should definitely find out what has gone wrong with it and why it > > has not been declared ready for production yet. I will make sure to > > follow-up on this as one of my goals for the next term if elected. > > > >> -- Google Summer of code / Outreach Program for Women > >> What's your plan for GsoC and OPW in Asia? > >> How many country get GsoC / OPW in Asia? What's your plan for > promote > >> it with more country in Asia? > > > > While OPW has had a great success in India (thanks to english being > > widely spoken there) it did not have the same success on other Asia > > regions probably because of the language barrier. What we can probably > > do is localizing the content of the OPW flyer so that more women can > > be aware of the Outreach Program for Women and apply for it. (I will > > make sure to discuss about this with Marina if elected and propose the > > idea to the relevant localization team) > > Both of the above seem to be something which can be done now and does > not require you to be on the board. Why do you say that you would need > to be elected to the board to do these? > I'm sure anyone out there would be able to achieve a lot of what the current Board does without being part of the Board themselves. The Board of Directors is primarily a team, a team of people that take care of particular areas within the GNOME Project. When their particular action items have been fulfilled they report back their findings / results to the next meeting. Decisions are taken by the team as a whole, actions are something Board members take care of personally, thus the theoretical possibility to accomplish the majority of tasks out there without being part of the Board itself. That said the decision on whether we should keep working on a customized version of OSEM is something I'd love to discuss with the Board as a whole, last time I heard of it several people were not happy about how the software was getting along. My plan for this is to first hear all the opinions from the current / next GUADEC (and GNOME.Asia) organizers, then discuss the proposed changes with the Board and finally find someone to be able to look into the code again. (maybe another OPW intern?) What I want to avoid is building a software that organizers won't use and finding out what the current needs are is something that requires planning, time and coordination between the involved teams. -- Cheers, Andrea Debian Developer, Fedora / EPEL packager, GNOME Sysadmin, GNOME Foundation Membership & Elections Committee Chairman Homepage: http://www.gnome.org/~av ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
2014-05-18 18:58 GMT+02:00 Dave Neary : > Hi everyone, > Hey Dave! > For me, the defining thing the next board will do is hire a successor to > Karen Sandler as executive director of the foundation. > > So my question to all of you is: what are the main characteristics you > will be looking for in the next executive director? > > when looking for a profile, there are a number of dials to twiddle: > * Technical proficiency & reputation in the community, including free > software cultural alignment > * Strategy experience - the ability to formulate and communicate a > direction for GNOME > * Administrative and organizational experience > * Business acumen and experience growing a commercial ecosystem > * Communication/marketing/evangelism experience > * Cost > > Of these, which do you feel are the most important for GNOME right now, > and why? Are there other criteria which you think are important that I > didn't list? > Hiring a new ED has never been so important to the GNOME Foundation than it is now for the reason that many have outlined already, it being the current financial status of the Foundation. So while the "Strategy experience" would be a nice to have in the new ED (but easily delegable to the Board of Directors), I feel we should aim at other skills (like "Business acumen and experience growing a commercial ecosystem" and "Communication/marketing/evangelism experience") that might be of help to the current financial situatiation. The next ED should have great communication skills, it should help the GNOME Foundation gathering some more attention from corporate sponsors by explaining them why they should invest their money on the GNOME Project. Looking for corporate sponsors won't be easy especially during the current terribly bad economic situation. Investing your money as a company into a free software project requires you to either have strong ideals on the FOSS movement or some other sort of interest. (i.e you are developing a customized GNOME release to be of use in your company and you want to give back to the project either directly by being an Advisory Board member or indirectly by forwarding patches upstream, the latter would not be of help increasing the Foundation's finances though or you just want some publicity for your products by showing up your logo on the various organized events etc.) Another good point you introduced is related to the stipend the next ED should earn yearly. It's clear the invested resources on this matter won't be as high as they have been in the past. Said that I'm wondering how high is our percentage to find someone capable of such position (and with such responsibilities) without promising a relatively high stipend? also is it still true that higher you pay someone higher their skills and productivity should (and will) then be? What I would aim for is someone with great communication / marketing skills for attracting new advisory board members but most of all a strong passion and dedication for the free software movement, with these feelings being stronger than the desire to earn an high stipend. (at least until the Foundation finances are back on track again) -- Cheers, Andrea Debian Developer, Fedora / EPEL packager, GNOME Sysadmin, GNOME Foundation Membership & Elections Committee Chairman Homepage: http://www.gnome.org/~av ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: question for candidates
On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 2:56 PM, Andy Tai wrote: > Hi, I would like to post this question to the candidates: > > GNOME's core toolkit, gtk+, is used by numerous projects. Currently gtk+ > development seems to be driven mainly by the GNOME desktop. However, gtk+ > also play critical roles in other free software projects, like MATE, XFCE, > and the Cinnamon desktop, and large applications like GIMP, Inkscape, etc. > > What are your views on the participation of the people of these projects, > as stake holders in the direction of gtk+, in the GNOME Foundation? Should > the GNOME Foundation encourage (reach out to) these people to get them > involved in the GNOME Foundation so they also have a say and even > contribute to gtk+ so gtk+ can continue to serve their needs well, > important for the continuing successes of gtk+ in the free software world? > They are (or ought to be) just as involved in the development of GTK+ as the developers of GNOME Shell are, and their opinions, wants, needs etc ought to be valued. The GNOME project is not (or at least, should not) be exclusively about GNOME Shell, but include anyone and everyone who uses GNOME technologies. The sever fracturing of the community which has taken place over the last 3-4 years is not healthy for our community, nor for theirs. Everyone who is using GTK+ ought to be included in ongoing discussions as to its development. They should be invited to GUADEC and encouraged to submit talks, and become foundation members. As a member of the board, I will do my best to engage with them and encourage them to do so, while also doing my best to ensure that their voices, thoughts, concerns, etc are heard, understood and thought of in any and all changes going forwards. Emily Gonyer > > > -- > Andy Tai, a...@atai.org > Year 2010 民國99年 > 自動的精神力是信仰與覺悟 > 自動的行為力是勞動與技能 > > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list > > -- Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. - Goethe Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr.Seuss Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. - Albert Einstein ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
On 20 May 2014 00:58, Michael Catanzaro wrote: > On Mon, 2014-05-19 at 11:18 +0100, Ekaterina Gerasimova wrote: >> one of the options that I want the board to investigate >> is to tie in the executive director's wage and travel budget with >> adboard fees in such a way that the executive director will only be >> compensated up to a maximum of what the Foundation receives in adboard >> fees. This would free up some of the donations to be spent on >> sponsoring the Foundation members to attend events and do outreach. > > I understand the value of performance-based bonuses, but this sounds > like it would create the possibility that a new company joins the > adboard and its fee goes entirely to the executive director. Not necessarily: for example it would be possible to assign a specified portion to a "bonus", some portion to travel and possibly some portion to other spending. My point is that the total compensation for an executive director must not exceed the income from the advisory board. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
HI Emily! >Hi, >1. For GNOME big event, call for sponsor is really important, what is your plan to call for more sponsors for conference like GUADEC and GNOME.Asia ? >3. How to raise and increase the fund for GNOME Foundation ? I think questions 1 and 3 are relevant to each other, we need to identify organizations that they are using GNOME desktop as default but they are not aware of such events. e.g http://bosslinux.in/node/95. I think we need to reach out to such organizations regarding sponsorship and fund raising. In last couple of years i could see same big names for sponsorship and of-curse local sponsorship is also important. Another thing is if one wants to donate GNOME, one of the way is http://www.gnome.org/friends/ or paypal but i met people who are using GNOME but they don't know they are using GNOME , one of the simple way is just like wikipedia raises fund we can have simple advertising in GNOME shell itself like "if you want to help us" similar like this(Gnome shell or gnome-help ..) >4. How many hours you work in GNOME Board related work each week? 10 hours a week. Thanks, Anish P. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
question for candidates
Hi, I would like to post this question to the candidates: GNOME's core toolkit, gtk+, is used by numerous projects. Currently gtk+ development seems to be driven mainly by the GNOME desktop. However, gtk+ also play critical roles in other free software projects, like MATE, XFCE, and the Cinnamon desktop, and large applications like GIMP, Inkscape, etc. What are your views on the participation of the people of these projects, as stake holders in the direction of gtk+, in the GNOME Foundation? Should the GNOME Foundation encourage (reach out to) these people to get them involved in the GNOME Foundation so they also have a say and even contribute to gtk+ so gtk+ can continue to serve their needs well, important for the continuing successes of gtk+ in the free software world? -- Andy Tai, a...@atai.org Year 2010 民國99年 自動的精神力是信仰與覺悟 自動的行為力是勞動與技能 ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Foundation budget (was: Re: Question for candidates)
On 20 May 2014 14:21, Dave Neary wrote: > Hi, > > Apologies in advance for a question that will take us away from the main > thread topic... > > On 05/20/2014 06:15 AM, David King wrote: >> Initially, I think that much of the money raised by an executive >> director would go towards financially supporting the executive director >> role. If the Foundation's revenues continue to drop (as has been the >> case over the last few years), an executive director role would become >> untenable without increased funding from sponsors. > > I have not been paying close attention in the past 3-4 years, but when I > was, we had: > * Added new members to the advisory board > * Increased advisory board membership to $10,000 for small companies and > $20,000 for large companies > > The executive director was, at the time I was on the board, the only > salary outgoing, but advisory board revenues should be $140,000 unless > I'm mistaken from my reading of the advisory board page - which ad board > members have we lost? HP, Nokia, Motorola, Oracle from the looks of > it... am I missing anyone? The revenues from advisory board fees since 2006 are as follows (I do not have access to any financial information before that time): 2006: USD 69000 (USD 5000 for smaller companies, USD 1 for larger companies and some in between) 2007: USD 105000 (same as above) 2008: USD 11 (same as above) 2009: USD 132000 (same as above, although a number of companies paid more) 2010: USD 18 (the USD 1/2 pricing structure was introduced) 2011: USD 135000 2012: USD 12 2013: USD 12 2014: USD 13 All figures from 2006-2013 are what the Foundation actually received in the bank account. All of the figures are against the years in which they were incurred, not necessarily paid, so there may be differences from the annual reports. 2014 figures are what the Foundation has invoiced and is expecting to receive by the end of the year. Rosanna has been in the Foundation payroll since 2006 as an employee. > The theory at the time I was on the board was that ad board revenues > paid for employees with a little margin for error, and we fundraised for > everything else. Has that principlegone by the wayside? Unfortunately, yes. I'm not sure whether this was a concious decision or just tended in that direction as the boards changed, but I am hoping to reverse this trend in the future. I think this is possible as any new employee can be hired on new terms. > Also, at the time we had started to build up some cash reserves after a > few years when we really did not have a lot of room to manoeuver - have > we depleted those? I did not notice any budgets proposed that were in > deficit, but I was not paying very close attention. At the moment, yes, but that is because we are still waiting on invoices to be paid. The Foundation is waiting for $38 in unpaid invoices, many of which I am expecting to see paid in the upcoming month. Around 75% of those are related to the OPW, and most of the rest to advisory board fees for 2013. Once those invoices are paid, the Foundation will have reserves of around $15. Ideally, the Foundation should hold reserves of $35 if it never pays out OPW costs before the associated sponsorship is received (which is what the board has currently voted for). > Thanks, > Dave. > > -- > Dave Neary, Lyon, France > Email: dne...@gnome.org > Jabber: nea...@gmail.com > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
On 2014-05-20 07:48, Emily Gonyer wrote: On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 11:16 AM, Emily Chen wrote: Hi, I would like to ask below questions to future board: 1. For GNOME big event, call for sponsor is really important, what is your plan to call for more sponsors for conference like GUADEC and GNOME.Asia ? I think it is of utmost importance that big events have numerous sponsors, both large and small. Local businesses ought to be encouraged to support events. I'm not sure what sorts of local business organizations exist in Europe and Asia but something similar to the Chambers of Commerce here in the USA likely do, and would be useful as primary contact points to reach out to for donations. I think this is a great idea, local organizers have always tried to do this, with differing degrees of success. One of the biggest challenges has been getting the materials organized in a timely way - we really want to get the materials ready at least six months in advance. I was hoping that the extra lead time this past year with announcing the GUADEC location so early would have helped with this but invariably the team is always later than we should be. Having volunteers help with this for next year would surely help. So if anyone is reading this and wondering how to help out... 2. What is the top 3 goals for GNOME Foundation in the next year, in your opinion ? I think that it will be extremely important in the next year to reach out to related projects. Since the advent of GNOME 3 we have seen a severe fracturing in the ecosystem, which is not benefiting anyone. Reaching out to related projects (Unity, Cinnamon, Mate, ElementaryOS, XFCE, etc) and asking them to participate in GUADEC, GNOME.Asia, the Boston Summit is vitally important. GNOME is about more than just the shell and recognizing that everyone who uses GNOME technologies is, or should be welcomed into the project. We have tried to do some of this already, as I indicated in the other email but we can always do better :) Specifically though, we've reached out to Unity, Cinnamon, Mate and XFCE. I think the biggest goal is getting a handle GNOME's admin and financial situation, much of which is already being done. There are too many financial related emails for me to respond to at this point but I'll just say here that a great deal of my work on the financial side was keeping our existing corporate donors. I was glad It was a bit of a triumph to expand the advisory board as we have done recently but it's was much tougher to just keep status quo than I understand it was in the past. I think companies are tighter with their budgets and also GNOME technologies were in a state of transition, at least in perception by our donors. Kat has been very encouraging of people to step up while not being on the board in these emails and I think this is awesome. If every member (or a lot of the members) of the GNOME foundation recommended sponsorship of GNOME events and advisory board to the companies they have relationships with it would be an easier effort for the board and Executive Director. Similarly, just being an advocate of GNOME technologies is very helpful. If companies aren't using our stuff they're going to be much less likely to give. There was a thread asking about the skills needed by an Executive Director, where many were saying that fundraising was our top priority. I don't disagree with this per se, but the ability to fundraise (as somebody else already said) comes from a technical understanding of the value of GNOME. I think having a commitment to GNOME's ideals and being able to bring attention to GNOME as a good communicator is of utmost importance. Stormy's blog about being an ED is helpful to see what the job is and you can also see some of the reports of the work I did (sorry I wasn't always consistent with this format or tagging): http://blogs.gnome.org/gnomg/category/stuffdone/ 3. How to raise and increase the fund for GNOME Foundation ? I've touched on this elsewhere, so I'll be brief: We need to increase individual and small-business donations. There are many ways to do so which we have left untapped including Facebook & Google Wallet donations, encouraging the use of AmazonSmile and similar programs, etc. I think we should explore having GTK+ sponsorship or something similar, which would engage users of GNOME technologies, many of which are smaller companies. 4. How many hours you work in GNOME Board related work each week? In the last month I've probably worked about 5 hours per week on GNOME related matters. karen Thanks! Emily Chen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Foundation budget (was: Re: Question for candidates)
Hi, Apologies in advance for a question that will take us away from the main thread topic... On 05/20/2014 06:15 AM, David King wrote: > Initially, I think that much of the money raised by an executive > director would go towards financially supporting the executive director > role. If the Foundation's revenues continue to drop (as has been the > case over the last few years), an executive director role would become > untenable without increased funding from sponsors. I have not been paying close attention in the past 3-4 years, but when I was, we had: * Added new members to the advisory board * Increased advisory board membership to $10,000 for small companies and $20,000 for large companies The executive director was, at the time I was on the board, the only salary outgoing, but advisory board revenues should be $140,000 unless I'm mistaken from my reading of the advisory board page - which ad board members have we lost? HP, Nokia, Motorola, Oracle from the looks of it... am I missing anyone? The theory at the time I was on the board was that ad board revenues paid for employees with a little margin for error, and we fundraised for everything else. Has that principlegone by the wayside? Also, at the time we had started to build up some cash reserves after a few years when we really did not have a lot of room to manoeuver - have we depleted those? I did not notice any budgets proposed that were in deficit, but I was not paying very close attention. Thanks, Dave. -- Dave Neary, Lyon, France Email: dne...@gnome.org Jabber: nea...@gmail.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
On 20 May 2014 01:55, Marina Zhurakhinskaya wrote: > - Original Message - >> From: "Max" >> To: "foundation-list" >> Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2014 9:18:33 PM >> Subject: Question for candidates >> >> Hi everyone, >> >> Thanks for run the board. >> This is the most busy time for GNOME.Asia summit(4 days to go). >> GNOME.Asia team and Beijing team are busy for the summit. >> >> My question to all of you: >> >> * What's your plan for "Promote / Growth GNOME in Asia" >> -- GNOME.Asia summit ? > > The GNOME.Asia team is doing a fantastic job organizing the conference and it > will undoubtedly boost the interest in GNOME. It would be great to have > meetups of people working on GNOME and free software in Beijing throughout > the year, so that more people who learned about GNOME at the conference are > interested in travelling to the next year's location. Local meetups are a great idea and have proven to be popular when organised, even if only for "GNOME Beers" around releases. As the question is about plans for the future, how are you planning to help this happen? >> Central event management system for both GUADEC and GNOME.Asia?( I saw >> it last GUADEC but not start to use) > > I created a new "activities to track" page for the board and added it there. > We will find out what is going on with it and encourage development. There are many issues that the board tracks and works on, why do you think that the board should take over the tracking of this rather than let those who created it (OPW interns and mentors) and those who would benefit from it (GUADEC and GNOME.Asia organisers) keep track? Given that the board rarely interferes in development, how do you propose to encourage further work on this project? >> Other idea? >> >> >> -- Google Summer of code / Outreach Program for Women >> What's your plan for GsoC and OPW in Asia? > > We should continue to provide materials and encouragement for past OPW and > GSoC participants to run introduction to free software / GNOME / GSoC / OPW > sessions and host meetups in their cities throughout the year, so that we > have more applicants from Asia applying for these programs who have > experience contributing to free software. There are materials available for > OpenHatch "Open Source Comes to Campus" and GNOME Newcomers Workshop, which > can be used for such events. > >> How many country get GsoC / OPW in Asia? What's your plan for promote it >> with more country in Asia? > > Of 39 interns GNOME has this summer, 14 are from India, 1 from China, and 1 > from Philippines. As I mentioned above, we need to encourage these people and > other community members to promote the internship programs and help people > become contributors before they apply. > >> -- GNOME Foundation member in Asia? >> How do we know our other member in Asia?( I suggest tobi last year, if >> they want to fill their country when foundation member renew or new ) > > There is https://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeWorldWide , which we can encourage > people to fill out. There are also translators, whose information you can get > from Git or on https://l10n.gnome.org/teams/. Also there are localization and > regional mailing lists. > >> How do we get these member / resource together? > > I think you already do a lot of this by organizing GNOME.Asia! Perhaps you > can have a BoF at the conference to figure out what are the resources you > want to put together and what are the activities you want to see happen. > >> -- Are you interesting to involve Asia event? and how do you involve? > > The GNOME Foundation sponsored Sindhu to go to FOSSASIA this year, where she > ran contributing to GNOME workshop, did a talk about documentation, and > participated in a panel about women in IT. We should have more people > proposing talks and going to FOSSASIA next year. We should also have people > proposing talks and going to LinuxCon Japan. Identifying and participating in > any other free software conferences in Asia would be great. > >> -- Anything you plan with Asia. > > Thanks for all the great questions! I'm excited about growing our presence in > Asia and I'm sure we will succeed. > > Marina > >> >> >> GNOME.Asia team member >> >> >> Max Huang >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> ___ >> foundation-list mailing list >> foundation-list@gnome.org >> https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list >> > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
On 19 May 2014 18:55, Andrea Veri wrote: > On Mon, 19 May 2014, Max wrote: > >> Hi everyone, > > Hey Max! > >> My question to all of you: >> >> * What's your plan for "Promote / Growth GNOME in Asia" >> -- GNOME.Asia summit ? >> Central event management system for both GUADEC and GNOME.Asia?( I >> saw it last GUADEC but not start to use) >> Other idea? > > Two OPW interns have been working for several months to provide a > valid event management system for all the major GNOME events. The > software is currently based on OSEM (the Open Source Event Manager > [1]) and a test-bed is privately available on one of our testing > machines at OSUOSL. Part of the upcoming GUADEC organizers have been > granted access to the istance, if you are missing access to it please > let me know. > > We should definitely find out what has gone wrong with it and why it > has not been declared ready for production yet. I will make sure to > follow-up on this as one of my goals for the next term if elected. > >> -- Google Summer of code / Outreach Program for Women >> What's your plan for GsoC and OPW in Asia? >> How many country get GsoC / OPW in Asia? What's your plan for promote >> it with more country in Asia? > > While OPW has had a great success in India (thanks to english being > widely spoken there) it did not have the same success on other Asia > regions probably because of the language barrier. What we can probably > do is localizing the content of the OPW flyer so that more women can > be aware of the Outreach Program for Women and apply for it. (I will > make sure to discuss about this with Marina if elected and propose the > idea to the relevant localization team) > > That would hit another language barrier though which mainly relates to > the fact none of the current mentors are Chinese speakers. Max, did > you try interacting with any local university already? if yes, is > there anyone (both english and chinese speaker) who might be > willing to mentor a chinese-speaking student during one of the next OPW > rounds? > >> -- GNOME Foundation member in Asia? >> How do we know our other member in Asia?( I suggest tobi last year, if >> they want to fill their country when foundation member renew or new ) >> How do we get these member / resource together? > > I'm not sure whether adding a "country" field on the foundation > database would be enough to achieve the proposed goal given someone > might just decide to not specify that information at all (for > protecting the privacy for example), additionally there is no real > need for the Membership Committee (and the Foundation generally) to > know where a contributor is based. But that's not all the Committee is > very busy lately and increasing the information to manage for each > single member would not be ideal. (I'm also sure the "country" field > would become inconsistent within a few months from it being introduced > for the simple fact someone might just forget to send an update to the > committee specifying he just moved to a new country) > > What we can probably do is populating the "apply" form some more > including more information about how new or existing members can reach > their localized communities. (by suggesting the new member to > subscribe to gnome-cc-l...@gnome.org (Country Code) for example or if > missing to ask the creation of a new list in case that specific community > is growing in number) > >> -- Are you interesting to involve Asia event? and how do you involve? >> >> -- Anything you plan with Asia. > > I've not been following very closely what the current situation for > GNOME.Asia is but Dave and Kat's emails clearly state the Foundation > is totally oriented on improving the current situation for the next > term and they will be personally there at the upcoming event to > instruct participants on the multiple ways to be engaged to the GNOME > project as contributors. > > Max, how much the events that were organized and sponsored by the > GNOME Foundation did benefit the Asia region as a whole? how many new > contributors joined your ranks? what do you think could help you > improve the organization of the GNOME.Asia event? There were no funding requests to the current board for organisation of events in Asia, with the exception of GNOME.Asia. There was one request for attendance to a non-GNOME conference, where a talk about GNOME was given. > During the past GUADEC we discussed the creation of an additional > planet to aggregate all the chinese-speaking feeds to help > non-english-speaking contributors to be aware of what's going on > behind the scenes of events like GNOME.Asia but generally any other > initiative happening in that area (the Planet GNOME rules currently > disallow localized content to be posted and while that keeps the > planet polished from mixed content to be published it also restricts > non-english-speakers to read it), do you think such addition would > still make sense? if yes, do you
Re: Question for candidates
Hi Andrea, On 19 May 2014 18:55, Andrea Veri wrote: > On Mon, 19 May 2014, Max wrote: >> My question to all of you: >> >> * What's your plan for "Promote / Growth GNOME in Asia" >> -- GNOME.Asia summit ? >> Central event management system for both GUADEC and GNOME.Asia?( I >> saw it last GUADEC but not start to use) >> Other idea? > > Two OPW interns have been working for several months to provide a > valid event management system for all the major GNOME events. The > software is currently based on OSEM (the Open Source Event Manager > [1]) and a test-bed is privately available on one of our testing > machines at OSUOSL. Part of the upcoming GUADEC organizers have been > granted access to the istance, if you are missing access to it please > let me know. > > We should definitely find out what has gone wrong with it and why it > has not been declared ready for production yet. I will make sure to > follow-up on this as one of my goals for the next term if elected. > >> -- Google Summer of code / Outreach Program for Women >> What's your plan for GsoC and OPW in Asia? >> How many country get GsoC / OPW in Asia? What's your plan for promote >> it with more country in Asia? > > While OPW has had a great success in India (thanks to english being > widely spoken there) it did not have the same success on other Asia > regions probably because of the language barrier. What we can probably > do is localizing the content of the OPW flyer so that more women can > be aware of the Outreach Program for Women and apply for it. (I will > make sure to discuss about this with Marina if elected and propose the > idea to the relevant localization team) Both of the above seem to be something which can be done now and does not require you to be on the board. Why do you say that you would need to be elected to the board to do these? ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
On 19 May 2014 16:29, Andre Klapper wrote: > On Mon, 2014-05-19 at 15:20 +0100, Ekaterina Gerasimova wrote: >> Many of the applicants for GSoC and OPW are already from Asia and >> especially from India. I think that the split is largely related to >> English being a commonly spoken language in India, but not so >> prominent in other Asian countries. > > [This comment is not targeted to anybody specifically.] > > Apart from knowledge of English language I'm curious how much cultural > dimensions come into play (see [1] for a short intro). > For those who don't know, some examples: > * Uncertainty avoidance - I need to join this IRC chat thingy and > talk to a room full of strangers? That's scary! > * Individualism - I'm supposed to actively apply for this > competition instead of being asked by recruiters at my > university, as usual? > * Power distance - I expect my mentor to tell me what to do vs. I > discuss and argue with mentors/devs about potential solutions. > * High-level communication - telling me in public (mailing list, > IRC) that my proposed solution could be improved makes me feel > like being criticized and losing my face/reputation. > > And probably more. I believe some of our workflows and communications we > are used to feel very uncomfortable to some cultures. In my experience helping newcomers from South America, Europe and Asia, all of these do come into play for people from all backgrounds. The Free software culture itself seems to be a bit of a puzzle to many people on the outside as it is so different from many other communities. I find that reassuring newcomers and actively encouraging them to communicate with the rest of the community instead of asking for help in private (while explaining all the associated benefits), helping them integrate into the community and making sure that good work is rewarded with more responsibility goes a long way. > andre > > [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede%27s_cultural_dimensions_theory > -- > Andre Klapper | ak...@gmx.net > http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/ > > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
Hi Emmanuele On 2014-05-20 12:07, Emmanuele Bassi wrote: On 20 May 2014 11:36, David King wrote: Thanks for pointing this out. As you can see from the income and expenses in the preliminary 2013 annual report, the Desktop Summit (co-located event with KDE) has traditionally been a much more profitable event for the Foundation than GUADEC. https://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeMarketing/AnnualReport/AnnualReport2014/Finances that is a naive intepretation of the results of co-located desktop summit. the desktop summits have been, historically, *less* profitable than GUADEC for the foundation; the only reason why the 2011 one looks more profitable when compared to the last two GUADECs is because the last two GUADECs were in absolute terms less profitable; we spend more money in getting more people at GUADEC, and we get fewer sponsors. I do not think that is what the figures in the annual report show. The 2009 Desktop Summit income is shown under 2010 (as mentioned underneath the income table) and was ~$162 000. The expense for that year is listed in the 2009 annual report, and is ~$75 000. The 2011 Desktop Summit income was ~$84 000 and the expenses were ~$30 000. To summarise, the net income from the GUADEC/Desktop Summits is as follows: * 2009 Desktop Summit: $87 000 * 2010 GUADEC: -$49 000 * 2011 Desktop Summit: $54 000 * 2012 GUADEC: $3 000 The figure for the 2010 GUADEC does not look right, so I am guessing that there is a mistake in the annual report figures. Kat (or a current board member with access to the raw figures), can you clarify the numbers? Also, preliminary numbers for the 2013 GUADEC would be very useful, if they are available. there's no guarantee we'd have more sponsors by co-locating GUADEC with aKademy, and we'd still have to split the revenue of the conference. That is correct, but even with the revenue split between GNOME and KDE, the previous Desktop Summits seem much more profitable than GUADEC. It would be good to hear about the experience from the KDE side also, to see whether their experience is similar to that of the Foundation. on top of that, there are the various issues that co-locating or flagship conference entail, and that were discussed *at length* after the 2009 and 2011 desktop summits. Presumably, you are referring to public discussions on foundation-list (or other mailing lists)? I would have to look into threads discussing those issues again, as it has been some time since I read them. Even if a future Desktop Summit would be focused purely on co-location (as opposed to co-operation), it should reduce the costs of the event, and bring in more money for GNOME. that's wishful thinking. I only mentioned that co-location "should" reduce costs, not that it "would". I do not think that is a particularly wishful idea, and the available figures suggest that co-location has been financially successful in the past. There are, of course, many other factors that make an event as a whole a success. if we ever decided to cut costs on GUADEC by co-locating it, I'd probably look into co-locating it with a conference that is more in line with GNOME than aKademy. for downstream, there's the SUSE conference or the Fedora Flock; for accessing the commercial side there's the Linux Foundation. we could also look into EFF or FSF Europe events, given the alignment of the interests. Those are good suggestions, thanks. I did not intend to say that we should only consider co-locating a Desktop Summit with KDE, merely that the approach has been successful (depending on your definition of that term) before. It has worked well twice before, so I think that any practical obstacles can be overcome. I contend the idea that it (the desktop summit) worked "well" in any way, shape, or form. It seems to have worked well financially. I attended both conferences, and enjoyed the experience immensely, as well as finding it productive. I am sure many other people did also, based on blog posts and email threads at the time. I have also been to several GUADECs, and I have found those events enjoyable and productive too. I think that your contention that the Desktop Summits did not work well in any way is overly dismissive of the work that the organisers put in, and I do not think that it is a fair representation of the success of the events. we've been doing much more solid work with the freedesktop.org summit/hackfests than we ever did with the desktop summits, both in terms of tangible results and community outreach. To me, those serve a different focus than a co-located Desktop Summit. A co-located Summit should help to reduce costs. The freedesktop.org summits have been excellent at driving collaboration between projects, and I see them as complementary to a flagship conference. I do not think that the freedesktop.org events should be folded into a co-located Desktop Summit. -- http://amigadave.com/ signature.asc Description: Dig
Re: Question for candidates
On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 11:16 AM, Emily Chen wrote: > Hi, > > I would like to ask below questions to future board: > > 1. For GNOME big event, call for sponsor is really important, what is your > plan to call for more sponsors for conference like GUADEC and GNOME.Asia ? > I think it is of utmost importance that big events have numerous sponsors, both large and small. Local businesses ought to be encouraged to support events. I'm not sure what sorts of local business organizations exist in Europe and Asia but something similar to the Chambers of Commerce here in the USA likely do, and would be useful as primary contact points to reach out to for donations. > 2. What is the top 3 goals for GNOME Foundation in the next year, in your > opinion ? I think that it will be extremely important in the next year to reach out to related projects. Since the advent of GNOME 3 we have seen a severe fracturing in the ecosystem, which is not benefiting anyone. Reaching out to related projects (Unity, Cinnamon, Mate, ElementaryOS, XFCE, etc) and asking them to participate in GUADEC, GNOME.Asia, the Boston Summit is vitally important. GNOME is about more than just the shell and recognizing that everyone who uses GNOME technologies is, or should be welcomed into the project. > > 3. How to raise and increase the fund for GNOME Foundation ? I've touched on this elsewhere, so I'll be brief: We need to increase individual and small-business donations. There are many ways to do so which we have left untapped including Facebook & Google Wallet donations, encouraging the use of AmazonSmile and similar programs, etc. > > 4. How many hours you work in GNOME Board related work each week? > N/A > Thanks! > > Emily Chen > > > > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list > -- Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. - Goethe Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr.Seuss Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. - Albert Einstein ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
Hi Michael On 2014-05-19 18:48, Michael Catanzaro wrote: On Mon, 2014-05-19 at 16:55 +0100, David King wrote: I have a follow-up question (for David and incumbents): why do you want (or not want) to hire a new executive director? What responsibilities do you think the executive director role should entail? Can the foundation afford to wait to hire a new executive director? I partially answered this in my responses to Dave Neary: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2014-May/msg00030.html https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2014-May/msg00069.html In short, the executive director needs to bring in enough money to fund the position, grow the revenues of the Foundation to keep its financial situation secure, and to grow the Foundation as a whole. Much of the process for this will be administrative, such as helping the administrative assistant with accounting and other necessary work. Part of the role will be evangelizing for GNOME at conferences and to existing and future sponsors. Some of the role would be acting as a figurehead, answering questions about GNOME and making sure that GNOME is presented well in the press. Stormy Peters wrote a very useful blog post about what she saw as the role of the executive director when she was in that position: http://stormyscorner.com/2009/01/what-do-i-do-as-executive-director-of-gnome.html I think that is broadly true of the executive director role, just that the proportions differ depending on the needs of the Foundation at the time. I'm asking because most of Karen's work was not highly-visible. I'm aware that she worked on recruiting new advisory board members and spoke at conferences, both of which seem important. But I'm sure there must be more to the job that I am unaware of, to justify the significant expense. I think that, in future, the Foundation cannot afford an executive director who is more costly to employ than the income gained from advisory board revenues. I think that Emily Gonyer's proposal to scale back corporate sponsorship would make it more difficult to continue to employ an executive director in the traditional role. -- http://amigadave.com/ signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
hi; On 20 May 2014 11:36, David King wrote: >> One possible idea would be to have joint events with KDE. One joint >> event could cost less, in total, than two separate events. > > > Thanks for pointing this out. As you can see from the income and expenses in > the preliminary 2013 annual report, the Desktop Summit (co-located event > with KDE) has traditionally been a much more profitable event for the > Foundation than GUADEC. > > https://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeMarketing/AnnualReport/AnnualReport2014/Finances that is a naive intepretation of the results of co-located desktop summit. the desktop summits have been, historically, *less* profitable than GUADEC for the foundation; the only reason why the 2011 one looks more profitable when compared to the last two GUADECs is because the last two GUADECs were in absolute terms less profitable; we spend more money in getting more people at GUADEC, and we get fewer sponsors. there's no guarantee we'd have more sponsors by co-locating GUADEC with aKademy, and we'd still have to split the revenue of the conference. on top of that, there are the various issues that co-locating or flagship conference entail, and that were discussed *at length* after the 2009 and 2011 desktop summits. > Even if a future Desktop Summit would be focused purely on co-location (as > opposed to co-operation), it should reduce the costs of the event, and bring > in more money for GNOME. that's wishful thinking. if we ever decided to cut costs on GUADEC by co-locating it, I'd probably look into co-locating it with a conference that is more in line with GNOME than aKademy. for downstream, there's the SUSE conference or the Fedora Flock; for accessing the commercial side there's the Linux Foundation. we could also look into EFF or FSF Europe events, given the alignment of the interests. > >> I don't know what practical obstacles there might be, but in principle >> I think it is ok. > > > It has worked well twice before, so I think that any practical obstacles can > be overcome. I contend the idea that it (the desktop summit) worked "well" in any way, shape, or form. we've been doing much more solid work with the freedesktop.org summit/hackfests than we ever did with the desktop summits, both in terms of tangible results and community outreach. ciao, Emmanuele. -- W: http://www.emmanuelebassi.name B: http://blogs.gnome.org/ebassi/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
Hi Richard On 2014-05-20 06:25, 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. ]]] One possible idea would be to have joint events with KDE. One joint event could cost less, in total, than two separate events. Thanks for pointing this out. As you can see from the income and expenses in the preliminary 2013 annual report, the Desktop Summit (co-located event with KDE) has traditionally been a much more profitable event for the Foundation than GUADEC. https://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeMarketing/AnnualReport/AnnualReport2014/Finances Even if a future Desktop Summit would be focused purely on co-location (as opposed to co-operation), it should reduce the costs of the event, and bring in more money for GNOME. I don't know what practical obstacles there might be, but in principle I think it is ok. It has worked well twice before, so I think that any practical obstacles can be overcome. -- http://amigadave.com/ signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
[[[ 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. ]]] One possible idea would be to have joint events with KDE. One joint event could cost less, in total, than two separate events. I don't know what practical obstacles there might be, but in principle I think it is ok. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
Hi Dave On 2014-05-19 16:14, Dave Neary wrote: On 05/19/2014 04:31 AM, David King wrote: Right now (taking into account the poor financial situation that the Foundation is facing), I think that a candidate for the executive director position would be someone who has experience of raising funds for not-for-profit organisations. For GNOME, the board does not exert strong control over the project, but tries to steer it in the right direction by ensuring that funding is directed appropriately, making the executive director role particularly challenging. My follow-on question, then: raising money for what? Initially, I think that much of the money raised by an executive director would go towards financially supporting the executive director role. If the Foundation's revenues continue to drop (as has been the case over the last few years), an executive director role would become untenable without increased funding from sponsors. Once the executive director role is securely funded, I think that there would be more time to spend growing the Foundation, which is the more traditional role of the executive director. If there is an abundance of funding available, the board should work with the executive director and the Foundation to use the money effectively to further the Foundation's goals, such as by funding hackfests, outreach (possibly with a particular emphasis on local outreach, as this has come up as part of other discussions) and sponsoring contributions (such as with the accessibility and privacy campaigns). I do not think that technical proficiency is an essential quality for an executive director, if by that you mean ability to code. I meant "understanding of the technology, ability to explain it, and ability to be articulate about what the GNOME project needs to do to stay relevant". In that case, I think technical proficiency is of critical importance, as fundraising would be extremely difficult without an ability to explain on a technical and social level about the importance of sponsors' (and potential sponsors') support of GNOME. This is what I meant when I mentioned that an executive director would need to understand GNOME's position in the Free Software and wider communities in order to raise funds effectively, so thanks for giving me the opportunity to clarify. -- http://amigadave.com/ signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
On 20 May 2014 00:48, Michael Catanzaro wrote: > On Mon, 2014-05-19 at 16:55 +0100, David King wrote: >> Finally, and only once the financial situation is more clear, the >> board >> needs to find a new executive director. I anticipate that these >> goals, >> which in some ways amount to getting the Foundation "back on track" >> will be challenging to meet over the next year. > > I have a follow-up question (for David and incumbents): why do you want > (or not want) to hire a new executive director? What responsibilities do > you think the executive director role should entail? Can the foundation > afford to wait to hire a new executive director? I would expect the executive director to be responsible for the day-to-day running of the Foundation, for executing instruction from the board, fundraising, making sure that adboard fees are paid in a timely manner, seeking out new sources of funding, communicating with the community, representing the Foundation in an official capacity, seeking out legal advice from pro-bono lawyers when needed… there are many important tasks that an executive director does on a week-to-week basis which the current board has taken over. Unfortunately, these do add up to more than can be reasonable expected of any board to do on a volunteer basis, so I think a second employee is essential. The issue from a financial point of view is that the Foundation cannot afford to hire an executive director right now. Doing so right now would threaten the existence of the Foundation. I think the Foundation will be more stable from a financial point of view by around GUADEC time, which means that the hiring process can probably be started in June after revisiting the finances. > I'm asking because most of Karen's work was not highly-visible. I'm > aware that she worked on recruiting new advisory board members and spoke > at conferences, both of which seem important. But I'm sure there must be > more to the job that I am unaware of, to justify the significant > expense. Apart from fundraising, it is difficult to assess the impact of an executive director on the Foundation as most of the other duties do not produce an immediate and quantifiable result. I agree that the expense is quite significant, especially from a European point of view, which is why I am keen to partially tie it in with our income. > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list > ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
Dear Marina Thanks for reply my question. On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 8:55 AM, Marina Zhurakhinskaya wrote: > > - Original Message - > > From: "Max" > > To: "foundation-list" > > Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2014 9:18:33 PM > > Subject: Question for candidates > > > > Hi everyone, > > > > Thanks for run the board. > > This is the most busy time for GNOME.Asia summit(4 days to go). > > GNOME.Asia team and Beijing team are busy for the summit. > > > > My question to all of you: > > > > * What's your plan for "Promote / Growth GNOME in Asia" > > -- GNOME.Asia summit ? > > The GNOME.Asia team is doing a fantastic job organizing the conference and > it will undoubtedly boost the interest in GNOME. It would be great to have > meetups of people working on GNOME and free software in Beijing throughout > the year, so that more people who learned about GNOME at the conference are > interested in travelling to the next year's location. > > > Central event management system for both GUADEC and GNOME.Asia?( I > saw > > it last GUADEC but not start to use) > > I created a new "activities to track" page for the board and added it > there. We will find out what is going on with it and encourage development. > > Thanks, it help a lot. > > Other idea? > > > > > > -- Google Summer of code / Outreach Program for Women > > What's your plan for GsoC and OPW in Asia? > > We should continue to provide materials and encouragement for past OPW and > GSoC participants to run introduction to free software / GNOME / GSoC / OPW > sessions and host meetups in their cities throughout the year, so that we > have more applicants from Asia applying for these programs who have > experience contributing to free software. There are materials available for > OpenHatch "Open Source Comes to Campus" and GNOME Newcomers Workshop, which > can be used for such events. > > OpenHatch is a good idea, but it might need non-english interface(website). I join the OpenHatch and introduce it in Taiwan Campus, but I think it will be better if it could have different language pages. I think I might be could contact tryneeds platform http://tryneeds.westart.tw/tryneeds/ it focus to translate open source application to Chinese. > > How many country get GsoC / OPW in Asia? What's your plan for > promote it > > with more country in Asia? > > Of 39 interns GNOME has this summer, 14 are from India, 1 from China, and > 1 from Philippines. As I mentioned above, we need to encourage these people > and other community members to promote the internship programs and help > people become contributors before they apply. > > Agree > > > > > > -- GNOME Foundation member in Asia? > > How do we know our other member in Asia?( I suggest tobi last year, > if > > they want to fill their country when foundation member renew or new ) > > There is https://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeWorldWide , which we can encourage > people to fill out. There are also translators, whose information you can > get from Git or on https://l10n.gnome.org/teams/. Also there are > localization and regional mailing lists. > > I think https://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeWorldWide might not active now, and *GNOME community at Google Maps <http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http:%2F%2Fwww.gnome.org%2F~jdub%2Frandom%2FGnomeWorldWide.kml>. there is only 1 man there.* Maybe we could have a wiki page and split it by location, like http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Ambassadors_list > > How do we get these member / resource together? > > I think you already do a lot of this by organizing GNOME.Asia! Perhaps you > can have a BoF at the conference to figure out what are the resources you > want to put together and what are the activities you want to see happen. > > > -- Are you interesting to involve Asia event? and how do you involve? > > The GNOME Foundation sponsored Sindhu to go to FOSSASIA this year, where > she ran contributing to GNOME workshop, did a talk about documentation, and > participated in a panel about women in IT. We should have more people > proposing talks and going to FOSSASIA next year. We should also have people > proposing talks and going to LinuxCon Japan. Identifying and participating > in any other free software conferences in Asia would be great. > > > > > > -- Anything you plan with Asia. > > Thanks for all the great questions! I'm excited about growing our presence > in Asia and I'm sure we will succeed. > > Marina > > Thanks Marina ^^ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
Dear Andrea On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 1:55 AM, Andrea Veri wrote: > On Mon, 19 May 2014, Max wrote: > > > Hi everyone, > > Hey Max! > > > My question to all of you: > > > > * What's your plan for "Promote / Growth GNOME in Asia" > > -- GNOME.Asia summit ? > > Central event management system for both GUADEC and GNOME.Asia?( I > > saw it last GUADEC but not start to use) > > Other idea? > > Two OPW interns have been working for several months to provide a > valid event management system for all the major GNOME events. The > software is currently based on OSEM (the Open Source Event Manager > [1]) and a test-bed is privately available on one of our testing > machines at OSUOSL. Part of the upcoming GUADEC organizers have been > granted access to the istance, if you are missing access to it please > let me know. > > Yes, I am missing access ^^ > We should definitely find out what has gone wrong with it and why it > has not been declared ready for production yet. I will make sure to > follow-up on this as one of my goals for the next term if elected. > > > -- Google Summer of code / Outreach Program for Women > > What's your plan for GsoC and OPW in Asia? > > How many country get GsoC / OPW in Asia? What's your plan for > promote > > it with more country in Asia? > > While OPW has had a great success in India (thanks to english being > widely spoken there) it did not have the same success on other Asia > regions probably because of the language barrier. What we can probably > do is localizing the content of the OPW flyer so that more women can > be aware of the Outreach Program for Women and apply for it. (I will > make sure to discuss about this with Marina if elected and propose the > idea to the relevant localization team) > > That would hit another language barrier though which mainly relates to > the fact none of the current mentors are Chinese speakers. Max, did > you try interacting with any local university already? if yes, is > Yes, I try interacting with local University, and I think Beijing team and other GNOME Users Group in Asia do too. > there anyone (both english and chinese speaker) who might be > willing to mentor a chinese-speaking student during one of the next OPW > rounds? > > I think we could discuss more with other mentors, the point is "They really don't know how to start and which is start point". There might be need "GNOME Love" for both english and chinese speakers who is first time to be a mentor. ^__^ > Max, how much the events that were organized and sponsored by the > GNOME Foundation did benefit the Asia region as a whole? how many new > contributors joined your ranks? what do you think could help you > improve the organization of the GNOME.Asia event? > > Good point, Andrea ^^ I just check the Events - GNOME Wiki https://wiki.gnome.org/Events * for GNOME community google schedule https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=mdnrfqhbsjn37b6sgad089q...@group.calendar.google.com, who have the permission to add the event? I only see the GUADE and Beijing GUG meeting and Taiwan GUG meeting. In Taiwan, we have "Taiwan Open Source" Calendar https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=p09uh8cg4uvt2ij4obf45cl...@group.calendar.google.com You could see the Mozilla, Pycon APAC and other Linux Users Group .activities. Taiwan OSSF(Open Source Software Foundry) news will list and mail community event, it's good to remind people to join or where to find an event to join. http://www.openfoundry.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9219&Itemid=4;isletter=1 I think we might be do some event list more detail like openSUSE:Advocates events http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Ambassadors_events > During the past GUADEC we discussed the creation of an additional > planet to aggregate all the chinese-speaking feeds to help > non-english-speaking contributors to be aware of what's going on > behind the scenes of events like GNOME.Asia but generally any other > initiative happening in that area (the Planet GNOME rules currently > disallow localized content to be posted and while that keeps the > planet polished from mixed content to be published it also restricts > non-english-speakers to read it), do you think such addition would > still make sense? I think that is make sense to non-english speakers to read it, at least you will know somebody is moving. Who care about that. > if yes, do you have a list of feeds to aggregate > there already? is a planet really needed or would a news feed on the > GNOME.Asia website be enough for the goal? > > If everyone think that is a good idea, we could beg the GNOME foundation member in Asia first, provide their non-english feed. (I have 2 blogs, one for English and the other one is Chinese, but most case, I write the Chinese one XD ) > It's just awesome how deeply you care about GNOME and expanding its > horizons to Asia. Thanks for your contributions Max! > > [1] https://github.com/openSUSE/osem > > Thanks And
Re: Question for candidates
- Original Message - > From: "Michael Catanzaro" > To: "David King" > Cc: "foundation-list" > Sent: Monday, May 19, 2014 7:48:54 PM > Subject: Re: Question for candidates > > On Mon, 2014-05-19 at 16:55 +0100, David King wrote: > > Finally, and only once the financial situation is more clear, the > > board > > needs to find a new executive director. I anticipate that these > > goals, > > which in some ways amount to getting the Foundation "back on track" > > will be challenging to meet over the next year. > > I have a follow-up question (for David and incumbents): why do you want > (or not want) to hire a new executive director? What responsibilities do > you think the executive director role should entail? Can the foundation > afford to wait to hire a new executive director? We need to hire an executive director because we need someone whose paid full-time job is to make sure that the Foundation operates well and grows. Fundraising for their own salary would still afford the executive director a lot of time for other activities. The key responsibilities for the executive director would be to track and prioritize all the things that need to happen to have the Foundation thrive and to work with the Foundation members to get those things done. The executive director personally can focus on any number of those things, depending on which match their skills best. I think we should aim to start the hiring process for an executive director as soon as all the OPW back payments and advisory board fees for this year are paid. This is when we will best be able to evaluate if having an executive director is sustainable with the current Foundation's income and how much we need to tie their salary to additional fundraising. > > I'm asking because most of Karen's work was not highly-visible. I'm > aware that she worked on recruiting new advisory board members and spoke > at conferences, both of which seem important. But I'm sure there must be > more to the job that I am unaware of, to justify the significant > expense. > > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list > ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
- Original Message - > From: "Emily Chen" > To: "foundation-list" > Sent: Monday, May 19, 2014 11:16:14 AM > Subject: Question for candidates > > Hi, > > > I would like to ask below questions to future board: > > > 1. For GNOME big event, call for sponsor is really important, what is your > plan to call for more sponsors for conference like GUADEC and GNOME.Asia ? In many cases, for an organization to sponsor these conferences, they need to have some ongoing relationship with GNOME and budget the sponsorship in advance. We have been finding out a lot about interests of some of the sponsors we approached this year, and we have started to track this information. We should make an effort to build a working relationship with each organization around their interests and also ask them to budget for the conference sponsorship as early as November of the previous year. > > > 2. What is the top 3 goals for GNOME Foundation in the next year, in your > opinion ? Write great software, promote it to users and potential contributors, manage finances well. > > > 3. How to raise and increase the fund for GNOME Foundation ? We need to engage more with our advisory board members and other organizations that might like to support GNOME and figure out how we can best meet their needs and what activities they are most interested in supporting. We need to report back to our individual donors what their support has enabled and run annual fundraising campaigns. > > > 4. How many hours you work in GNOME Board related work each week? Recently, it has been about 10 hours a week. I can continue contributing 10 hours a week until we have an ED, at which point I would like to scale it down to 5 hours a week. > > Thanks! > > > Emily Chen Thanks, Marina > > > > > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list > ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
- Original Message - > From: "Max" > To: "foundation-list" > Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2014 9:18:33 PM > Subject: Question for candidates > > Hi everyone, > > Thanks for run the board. > This is the most busy time for GNOME.Asia summit(4 days to go). > GNOME.Asia team and Beijing team are busy for the summit. > > My question to all of you: > > * What's your plan for "Promote / Growth GNOME in Asia" > -- GNOME.Asia summit ? The GNOME.Asia team is doing a fantastic job organizing the conference and it will undoubtedly boost the interest in GNOME. It would be great to have meetups of people working on GNOME and free software in Beijing throughout the year, so that more people who learned about GNOME at the conference are interested in travelling to the next year's location. > Central event management system for both GUADEC and GNOME.Asia?( I saw > it last GUADEC but not start to use) I created a new "activities to track" page for the board and added it there. We will find out what is going on with it and encourage development. > Other idea? > > > -- Google Summer of code / Outreach Program for Women > What's your plan for GsoC and OPW in Asia? We should continue to provide materials and encouragement for past OPW and GSoC participants to run introduction to free software / GNOME / GSoC / OPW sessions and host meetups in their cities throughout the year, so that we have more applicants from Asia applying for these programs who have experience contributing to free software. There are materials available for OpenHatch "Open Source Comes to Campus" and GNOME Newcomers Workshop, which can be used for such events. > How many country get GsoC / OPW in Asia? What's your plan for promote it > with more country in Asia? Of 39 interns GNOME has this summer, 14 are from India, 1 from China, and 1 from Philippines. As I mentioned above, we need to encourage these people and other community members to promote the internship programs and help people become contributors before they apply. > > > -- GNOME Foundation member in Asia? > How do we know our other member in Asia?( I suggest tobi last year, if > they want to fill their country when foundation member renew or new ) There is https://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeWorldWide , which we can encourage people to fill out. There are also translators, whose information you can get from Git or on https://l10n.gnome.org/teams/. Also there are localization and regional mailing lists. > How do we get these member / resource together? I think you already do a lot of this by organizing GNOME.Asia! Perhaps you can have a BoF at the conference to figure out what are the resources you want to put together and what are the activities you want to see happen. > -- Are you interesting to involve Asia event? and how do you involve? The GNOME Foundation sponsored Sindhu to go to FOSSASIA this year, where she ran contributing to GNOME workshop, did a talk about documentation, and participated in a panel about women in IT. We should have more people proposing talks and going to FOSSASIA next year. We should also have people proposing talks and going to LinuxCon Japan. Identifying and participating in any other free software conferences in Asia would be great. > > -- Anything you plan with Asia. Thanks for all the great questions! I'm excited about growing our presence in Asia and I'm sure we will succeed. Marina > > > GNOME.Asia team member > > > Max Huang > > > > > > > > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list > ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
On Mon, 2014-05-19 at 11:18 +0100, Ekaterina Gerasimova wrote: > one of the options that I want the board to investigate > is to tie in the executive director's wage and travel budget with > adboard fees in such a way that the executive director will only be > compensated up to a maximum of what the Foundation receives in adboard > fees. This would free up some of the donations to be spent on > sponsoring the Foundation members to attend events and do outreach. I understand the value of performance-based bonuses, but this sounds like it would create the possibility that a new company joins the adboard and its fee goes entirely to the executive director. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
On Mon, 2014-05-19 at 16:55 +0100, David King wrote: > Finally, and only once the financial situation is more clear, the > board > needs to find a new executive director. I anticipate that these > goals, > which in some ways amount to getting the Foundation "back on track" > will be challenging to meet over the next year. I have a follow-up question (for David and incumbents): why do you want (or not want) to hire a new executive director? What responsibilities do you think the executive director role should entail? Can the foundation afford to wait to hire a new executive director? I'm asking because most of Karen's work was not highly-visible. I'm aware that she worked on recruiting new advisory board members and spoke at conferences, both of which seem important. But I'm sure there must be more to the job that I am unaware of, to justify the significant expense. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
- Original Message - > From: "Dave Neary" > To: "Foundation-List" > Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2014 12:58:21 PM > Subject: Question for candidates > > Hi everyone, > > For me, the defining thing the next board will do is hire a successor to > Karen Sandler as executive director of the foundation. > > So my question to all of you is: what are the main characteristics you > will be looking for in the next executive director? > > when looking for a profile, there are a number of dials to twiddle: > * Technical proficiency & reputation in the community, including free > software cultural alignment > * Strategy experience - the ability to formulate and communicate a > direction for GNOME > * Administrative and organizational experience > * Business acumen and experience growing a commercial ecosystem > * Communication/marketing/evangelism experience > * Cost > > Of these, which do you feel are the most important for GNOME right now, > and why? Are there other criteria which you think are important that I > didn't list? Two additional desirable characteristics for an ED are the ability to fundraise and legal knowledge. The board and community members can fulfill many functions of an ED, which is something that is evident now when we don't have an ED. So I think this gives us some flexibility in what are the strengths of the person we hire. I think the two essential characteristics are free software cultural alignment and organizational abilities. It's important that the ED is able to keep track of all the activities that need to happen for the GNOME project to be stable and grow, seek input, and delegate effectively. Thanks, Marina > > Thanks! > Dave. > -- > Dave Neary, Lyon, France > Email: dne...@gnome.org > Jabber: nea...@gmail.com > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list > ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
Hi, On 05/19/2014 04:31 AM, David King wrote: > Right now (taking into account the poor financial situation that the > Foundation is facing), I think that a candidate for the executive > director position would be someone who has experience of raising funds > for not-for-profit organisations. For GNOME, the board does not exert > strong control over the project, but tries to steer it in the right > direction by ensuring that funding is directed appropriately, making the > executive director role particularly challenging. My follow-on question, then: raising money for what? > I do not think that > technical proficiency is an essential quality for an executive director, > if by that you mean ability to code. I meant "understanding of the technology, ability to explain it, and ability to be articulate about what the GNOME project needs to do to stay relevant". Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary, Lyon, France Email: dne...@gnome.org Jabber: nea...@gmail.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
Hi Oliver, On 05/18/2014 06:08 PM, Oliver Propst wrote: > On Sun, May 18, 2014 at 6:58 PM, Dave Neary wrote: >> when looking for a profile, there are a number of dials to twiddle: >> * Technical proficiency & reputation in the community, including free >> software cultural alignment >> * Strategy experience - the ability to formulate and communicate a >> direction for GNOME >> * Administrative and organizational experience >> * Business acumen and experience growing a commercial ecosystem >> * Communication/marketing/evangelism experience >> * Cost >> >> Of these, which do you feel are the most important for GNOME right now, >> and why? Are there other criteria which you think are important that I >> didn't list? > > I personally believe a future executive director should have all the > skills/experiences you describe and there is really no single skill > that are more importent then ohter I am afraid that "all of the above" is not realistic. You may be able to get someone with a small base salary plus aggressive bonus plan if they have a history of boosting revenue for organizations like GNOME but that will come at a cost - a lack of focus on the direction of the project and cultural alignment with free software and open source principles, for example. You might get a great organizer who is not a very loud mouthpiece. You might get someone who does a lot of evangelism (with a resulting high travel budget) but a lot of travel will result in a lack of focus on revenue and organization. You might get someone who is great at process, getting invoices out and ensuring no future cashflow issues, but will that personality type be an effusive communicator? let me put it another way - if I give you 25 pebbles, and you can put 0-10 pebbles in each of the 6 boxes above, which ones do you want to optimise for? We might get lucky and get someone great in all areas, and also cheap. We might also have Microsoft and Apple decide that desktop software isn't really interesting and see them discontinue their products. But I think that's pretty unlikely. > With that said, for me its very important that a future executive > director are able to form, communicate and execute a direction for > GNOME. Thanks - that's a better answer, I think. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary, Lyon, France Email: dne...@gnome.org Jabber: nea...@gmail.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
On Mon, 19 May 2014, Max wrote: > Hi everyone, Hey Max! > My question to all of you: > > * What's your plan for "Promote / Growth GNOME in Asia" > -- GNOME.Asia summit ? > Central event management system for both GUADEC and GNOME.Asia?( I > saw it last GUADEC but not start to use) > Other idea? Two OPW interns have been working for several months to provide a valid event management system for all the major GNOME events. The software is currently based on OSEM (the Open Source Event Manager [1]) and a test-bed is privately available on one of our testing machines at OSUOSL. Part of the upcoming GUADEC organizers have been granted access to the istance, if you are missing access to it please let me know. We should definitely find out what has gone wrong with it and why it has not been declared ready for production yet. I will make sure to follow-up on this as one of my goals for the next term if elected. > -- Google Summer of code / Outreach Program for Women > What's your plan for GsoC and OPW in Asia? > How many country get GsoC / OPW in Asia? What's your plan for promote > it with more country in Asia? While OPW has had a great success in India (thanks to english being widely spoken there) it did not have the same success on other Asia regions probably because of the language barrier. What we can probably do is localizing the content of the OPW flyer so that more women can be aware of the Outreach Program for Women and apply for it. (I will make sure to discuss about this with Marina if elected and propose the idea to the relevant localization team) That would hit another language barrier though which mainly relates to the fact none of the current mentors are Chinese speakers. Max, did you try interacting with any local university already? if yes, is there anyone (both english and chinese speaker) who might be willing to mentor a chinese-speaking student during one of the next OPW rounds? > -- GNOME Foundation member in Asia? > How do we know our other member in Asia?( I suggest tobi last year, if > they want to fill their country when foundation member renew or new ) > How do we get these member / resource together? I'm not sure whether adding a "country" field on the foundation database would be enough to achieve the proposed goal given someone might just decide to not specify that information at all (for protecting the privacy for example), additionally there is no real need for the Membership Committee (and the Foundation generally) to know where a contributor is based. But that's not all the Committee is very busy lately and increasing the information to manage for each single member would not be ideal. (I'm also sure the "country" field would become inconsistent within a few months from it being introduced for the simple fact someone might just forget to send an update to the committee specifying he just moved to a new country) What we can probably do is populating the "apply" form some more including more information about how new or existing members can reach their localized communities. (by suggesting the new member to subscribe to gnome-cc-l...@gnome.org (Country Code) for example or if missing to ask the creation of a new list in case that specific community is growing in number) > -- Are you interesting to involve Asia event? and how do you involve? > > -- Anything you plan with Asia. I've not been following very closely what the current situation for GNOME.Asia is but Dave and Kat's emails clearly state the Foundation is totally oriented on improving the current situation for the next term and they will be personally there at the upcoming event to instruct participants on the multiple ways to be engaged to the GNOME project as contributors. Max, how much the events that were organized and sponsored by the GNOME Foundation did benefit the Asia region as a whole? how many new contributors joined your ranks? what do you think could help you improve the organization of the GNOME.Asia event? During the past GUADEC we discussed the creation of an additional planet to aggregate all the chinese-speaking feeds to help non-english-speaking contributors to be aware of what's going on behind the scenes of events like GNOME.Asia but generally any other initiative happening in that area (the Planet GNOME rules currently disallow localized content to be posted and while that keeps the planet polished from mixed content to be published it also restricts non-english-speakers to read it), do you think such addition would still make sense? if yes, do you have a list of feeds to aggregate there already? is a planet really needed or would a news feed on the GNOME.Asia website be enough for the goal? It's just awesome how deeply you care about GNOME and expanding its horizons to Asia. Thanks for your contributions Max! [1] https://github.com/openSUSE/osem -- Cheers, Andrea Debian Developer, Fedora / EPEL packager, GNO
Re: Question for candidates
Hi Emily On 2014-05-19 23:16, Emily Chen wrote: I would like to ask below questions to future board: 1. For GNOME big event, call for sponsor is really important, what is your plan to call for more sponsors for conference like GUADEC and GNOME.Asia ? The advisory board has seen a shrinking membership over the last few years, and it has traditionally been the source of a large proportion of sponsorship for bigger events. The board could seek to grow the advisory board membership, which provides funding for GNOME as a whole. Alternatively, the board could seek out sponsors from organisations external to the advisory board, such as local sponsors which might have a connection to a location, but less of a connection to GNOME. This would be most effective if done by the local organising team, but the board should make sure that appropriate assistance is in place, so that the local team is not overburdened. As you (and many of the GNOME.Asia team) are long-term local organiser, I would appreciate your input in acquiring and retaining sponsors. 2. What is the top 3 goals for GNOME Foundation in the next year, in your opinion ? Firstly, the board needs to return the Foundation to a state of financial security, by increasing the cash reserves to a comfortable level. Secondly, the board needs to grow the revenues of the Foundation, such as by acquiring new sponsors and examining new sources of revenue. Finally, and only once the financial situation is more clear, the board needs to find a new executive director. I anticipate that these goals, which in some ways amount to getting the Foundation "back on track" will be challenging to meet over the next year. 3. How to raise and increase the fund for GNOME Foundation ? I think increasing the value of being an advisory board member, with a view to getting more long-term sponsorship, would be a priority. The board may find it possible to seek out some one-off sponsorship opportunities over the next year, but I think that the biggest challenge will be retaining those sponsors over the coming year, and the advisory board is a good mechanism for that. 4. How many hours you work in GNOME Board related work each week? Given the current lack of executive director, I would expect at least 10 hours per week at the moment, dropping to 5-10 hours per week when an executive director is found to reduce the workload. -- http://amigadave.com/ signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
Hi Emily, On 19 May 2014 16:16, Emily Chen wrote: > Hi, > > I would like to ask below questions to future board: > > 1. For GNOME big event, call for sponsor is really important, what is your > plan to call for more sponsors for conference like GUADEC and GNOME.Asia ? Firstly, I think that reliable sponsors need to be contacted much earlier, when they set the budget rather than closer to the event. Last year, I had a chance to talk to our sponsors and advisory board members to find out when they needed to receive the sponsorship information to be able to allocate the conference budgets appropriately. I encouraged the production of the sponsorship brochures for GUADEC earlier in the cycle and asked our executive director to contact the potential sponsors at the most convenient times for them. In the upcoming year, I plan to propose that the advisory board should be recognised for their support and should be offered additional value with an exclusive discounted sponsorship package which can be paid at the start of the year, at the same time as paying the advisory board fees. I am also keen to revisit the advisory board charges structure and to assess whether we can improve that to entice smaller companies into joining. > 2. What is the top 3 goals for GNOME Foundation in the next year, in your > opinion ? Financial stability is by far the highest priority, which I think will involve hiring an executive director to help with fundraising. The board should also focus more on supporting outreach efforts by our community members and I have worked on making it easier to track where we have done this previously. > 3. How to raise and increase the fund for GNOME Foundation ? Most of our funding comes from the advisory board fees. The Foundation needs to seek out corporate support from more users of GNOME in corporate environments, but also to make it easier for contributors to donate by offering donation methods other than what is currently available. The board has been working in this direction for the last year, with the effort being led by Tobi. > 4. How many hours you work in GNOME Board related work each week? The least that I have worked has been 2 hours per week and the most has been over 60 hours per week. I think that under normal operational conditions, I would be spending up to 10 hours per week on board work, but I expect that it will continue to be closer to 25 hours per week for the next two months or so. > Thanks! > > Emily Chen > > > > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list > ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
On Mon, 2014-05-19 at 15:20 +0100, Ekaterina Gerasimova wrote: > Many of the applicants for GSoC and OPW are already from Asia and > especially from India. I think that the split is largely related to > English being a commonly spoken language in India, but not so > prominent in other Asian countries. [This comment is not targeted to anybody specifically.] Apart from knowledge of English language I'm curious how much cultural dimensions come into play (see [1] for a short intro). For those who don't know, some examples: * Uncertainty avoidance - I need to join this IRC chat thingy and talk to a room full of strangers? That's scary! * Individualism - I'm supposed to actively apply for this competition instead of being asked by recruiters at my university, as usual? * Power distance - I expect my mentor to tell me what to do vs. I discuss and argue with mentors/devs about potential solutions. * High-level communication - telling me in public (mailing list, IRC) that my proposed solution could be improved makes me feel like being criticized and losing my face/reputation. And probably more. I believe some of our workflows and communications we are used to feel very uncomfortable to some cultures. andre [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede%27s_cultural_dimensions_theory -- Andre Klapper | ak...@gmx.net http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Question for candidates
Hi, I would like to ask below questions to future board: 1. For GNOME big event, call for sponsor is really important, what is your plan to call for more sponsors for conference like GUADEC and GNOME.Asia ? 2. What is the top 3 goals for GNOME Foundation in the next year, in your opinion ? 3. How to raise and increase the fund for GNOME Foundation ? 4. How many hours you work in GNOME Board related work each week? Thanks! Emily Chen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
Hi Max! On 19 May 2014 02:18, Max wrote: > Hi everyone, > > Thanks for run the board. > This is the most busy time for GNOME.Asia summit(4 days to go). > GNOME.Asia team and Beijing team are busy for the summit. > > My question to all of you: > > * What's your plan for "Promote / Growth GNOME in Asia" > -- GNOME.Asia summit ? > Central event management system for both GUADEC and GNOME.Asia?( I saw > it last GUADEC but not start to use) > Other idea? One of the core duties of the board is to enable our members to promote GNOME. To this effect, I will aim to ensure that the Foundation has more to spend on events and outreach in the upcoming year and to make sure that funding for our conferences is secured as early as possible, making it easier for organisers to plan ahead and maximise attendance. The latter is something that I already started to work on in 2013 through my involvement in GUADEC organisation and this is something that the local teams can help with. With this in mind, if the community is not aware that the board can offer them support in promoting GNOME in their local areas, then this is something that the Foundation should improve on. I will cover what I do personally in the rest of my reply as I feel that that is more relevant to the questions. > -- Google Summer of code / Outreach Program for Women > What's your plan for GsoC and OPW in Asia? > How many country get GsoC / OPW in Asia? What's your plan for promote > it with more country in Asia? Many of the applicants for GSoC and OPW are already from Asia and especially from India. I think that the split is largely related to English being a commonly spoken language in India, but not so prominent in other Asian countries. While many of the GNOME core developers are located in Europe and North America, the number of contributors in Asia is on a par with those in Europe and North America as we have many translators there. I have mentored in a number of OPW rounds, taking on interns from Asia, who have gone on to do outreach in their local areas. This has helped raise awareness of the contribution opportunities in GNOME and the documentation team have seen people come to the team saying that that was how they found out about us. I think that helping past interns become part of the community and encouraging them to reach out to others in their areas and in turn to mentor future interns is essential for the programs to succeed in the long term. Everyone is welcome to promote both internship opportunities in their local areas and the organising teams would be happy to help with information. Incidentally, the OPW organising team is looking for more people to join it right now, which is a good way to become involved in outreach. > -- GNOME Foundation member in Asia? > How do we know our other member in Asia?( I suggest tobi last year, if > they want to fill their country when foundation member renew or new ) > How do we get these member / resource together? > > -- Are you interesting to involve Asia event? and how do you involve? > > -- Anything you plan with Asia. I will be attending GNOME.Asia this weekend where the documentation team will be running a training session to teach newcomers how to make a contribution. I will make sure that all of the materials are publicly available for others to learn from them. I have also encouraged a number of the translation teams to organise hackfests when there was funding available last year, and to involve newcomers as well as to take on interns. I am hoping to be able to talk to GNOME contributors at GNOME.Asia and to encourage those who are not Foundation members to apply for membership. Looking forward to GNOME.Asia, Kat > GNOME.Asia team member > > > Max Huang > > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
Hi Dave, On 18 May 2014 17:58, Dave Neary wrote: > Hi everyone, > > For me, the defining thing the next board will do is hire a successor to > Karen Sandler as executive director of the foundation. > > So my question to all of you is: what are the main characteristics you > will be looking for in the next executive director? > > when looking for a profile, there are a number of dials to twiddle: > * Technical proficiency & reputation in the community, including free > software cultural alignment > * Strategy experience - the ability to formulate and communicate a > direction for GNOME > * Administrative and organizational experience > * Business acumen and experience growing a commercial ecosystem > * Communication/marketing/evangelism experience > * Cost > > Of these, which do you feel are the most important for GNOME right now, > and why? Are there other criteria which you think are important that I > didn't list? In recent years, the executive director has been our highest expense which is partially covered by adboard fees and also by individual donations. You will be able to see this more clearly on the 990 tax return form for the 2013 financial year once it becomes available, as the 2013 tax return also lists "compensation" such as reimbursements for travel, which previous tax returns did not. I think that the Foundation should not have to rely on personal donations to cover the cost of an executive director, so it is very important that we are confident that any candidate can do a good job at fundraising. To be an effective fundraiser, the applicant would also need to be aligned with GNOME's goals and interests and have some technical overview of the project so that they are able to talk to potential sponsors about the project but also to be able to do some organisational tasks. Growing our income would also involve exploring potential new sources which will include promoting GNOME at events. I realise that it is very unlikely that a candidate who excels in all areas will come along and the Foundation is unlikely to be able to offer a wage which will be on a par with similar positions in larger projects, so one of the options that I want the board to investigate is to tie in the executive director's wage and travel budget with adboard fees in such a way that the executive director will only be compensated up to a maximum of what the Foundation receives in adboard fees. This would free up some of the donations to be spent on sponsoring the Foundation members to attend events and do outreach. It has also become more difficult to find GUADEC and GNOME.Asia sponsorship in recent years, so it is important that an executive director is able to work towards acquiring more long term partners in the future. It is also vital that any employee that the Foundation was to hire would be able to do some administrative work as well. This is something that I have been helping Rosanna with over the last couple of months, but it's not sustainable for me to keep doing this in the long term. Hiring a new employee is a complex task, which the board members in general do not have much experience with. As a result, I have proposed that the board should draw on the experience of our community and form a committee to handle of people who are involved with GNOME and have overseen hiring processes before. This will also provide continuity between the current board and the next board as it is unlikely that the Foundation will be able to hire someone before the changeover. > Thanks! > Dave. > -- > Dave Neary, Lyon, France > Email: dne...@gnome.org > Jabber: nea...@gmail.com > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
Hi Max On 2014-05-19 09:18, Max wrote: * What's your plan for "Promote / Growth GNOME in Asia" -- GNOME.Asia summit ? Central event management system for both GUADEC and GNOME.Asia?( I saw it last GUADEC but not start to use) Other idea? I will be attending GNOME.Asia this year (as long as my visa is accepted, which I will find out today), and giving a training session for newcomers as well as a talk for more experienced developers. I hope to make an impression on the attendees by demonstrating the GNOME developer experience, and hope that this helps in attracting new developers. -- Google Summer of code / Outreach Program for Women What's your plan for GsoC and OPW in Asia? How many country get GsoC / OPW in Asia? What's your plan for promote it with more country in Asia? I am mentoring a GSoC student from India this summer, but it is evident that there are not many GSoC applicants from students in south-east Asia. Is this because the GSoC timeline does not align well with universities in those areas, or are we simply doing a bad job at attracting those students? I do not know the answer, but I would like to hear any thoughts from Foundation members in Asia about what they see as a problem, and how the Foundation can work to solve any problems. -- GNOME Foundation member in Asia? How do we know our other member in Asia?( I suggest tobi last year, if they want to fill their country when foundation member renew or new ) How do we get these member / resource together? The only way that we have of doing this is by looking at names and email addresses of Foundation members. That gives us a rough idea of the location of members, but we could ask them directly when renewing. There are regional mailing lists hosted at gnome.org, but maybe there is a better way of contacting and organising Asian Foundation members (and potential new members). -- Are you interesting to involve Asia event? and how do you involve? -- Anything you plan with Asia. As an idea, maybe a director could have a role to communicate with Asian Foundation members to drive outreach in those areas. I know that there are representatives who report to the board about GNOME.Asia and GUADEC, but maybe regional outreach could be delegated to members in those regions, and communicated back to the board so that funding could be directed appropriately. The Foundation could direct funding for promotion at Asian events, by sponsoring the travel of Asian Foundation members, or possibly by purchasing a local events box. As I will be attending GNOME.Asia, I hope to engage with many Asian attendees, and to learn their perspectives on GNOME, as well as how we can increase membership and participation in Asia. -- http://amigadave.com/ signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
Hi Dave On 2014-05-18 12:58, Dave Neary wrote: * Technical proficiency & reputation in the community, including free software cultural alignment * Strategy experience - the ability to formulate and communicate a direction for GNOME * Administrative and organizational experience * Business acumen and experience growing a commercial ecosystem * Communication/marketing/evangelism experience * Cost Of these, which do you feel are the most important for GNOME right now, and why? Are there other criteria which you think are important that I didn't list? Right now (taking into account the poor financial situation that the Foundation is facing), I think that a candidate for the executive director position would be someone who has experience of raising funds for not-for-profit organisations. For GNOME, the board does not exert strong control over the project, but tries to steer it in the right direction by ensuring that funding is directed appropriately, making the executive director role particularly challenging. With the increased administrative load that the Outreach Program for Women has brought to GNOME, the Foundation's administrative assistant will need support from the executive director. I do not think that technical proficiency is an essential quality for an executive director, if by that you mean ability to code. For example, I think that a talented hacker with no fundraising experience might be a bad candidate for the executive director role. I think that a more important quality is that of understanding the position of GNOME in Free Software and the wider software community, with the ability to use that knowledge to raise funds effectively. Due to the challenging nature of the executive director role, especially with the declining revenues of the Foundation, it may be difficult to offer a generous salary. I think that the board should investigate offering a lower base salary, which would then be supplemented with performance-related bonuses, such as if more fee-paying advisory board members were acquired. Done correctly, this would help to manage the cost of the executive director position, and encourage good performance. -- http://amigadave.com/ signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Question for candidates
Hi everyone, Thanks for run the board. This is the most busy time for GNOME.Asia summit(4 days to go). GNOME.Asia team and Beijing team are busy for the summit. My question to all of you: * What's your plan for "Promote / Growth GNOME in Asia" -- GNOME.Asia summit ? Central event management system for both GUADEC and GNOME.Asia?( I saw it last GUADEC but not start to use) Other idea? -- Google Summer of code / Outreach Program for Women What's your plan for GsoC and OPW in Asia? How many country get GsoC / OPW in Asia? What's your plan for promote it with more country in Asia? -- GNOME Foundation member in Asia? How do we know our other member in Asia?( I suggest tobi last year, if they want to fill their country when foundation member renew or new ) How do we get these member / resource together? -- Are you interesting to involve Asia event? and how do you involve? -- Anything you plan with Asia. GNOME.Asia team member Max Huang ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
On Sun, May 18, 2014 at 6:58 PM, Dave Neary wrote: > For me, the defining thing the next board will do is hire a successor to > Karen Sandler as executive director of the foundation. > > So my question to all of you is: what are the main characteristics you > will be looking for in the next executive director? Thanks Dave for asking this very important question. > when looking for a profile, there are a number of dials to twiddle: > * Technical proficiency & reputation in the community, including free > software cultural alignment > * Strategy experience - the ability to formulate and communicate a > direction for GNOME > * Administrative and organizational experience > * Business acumen and experience growing a commercial ecosystem > * Communication/marketing/evangelism experience > * Cost > > Of these, which do you feel are the most important for GNOME right now, > and why? Are there other criteria which you think are important that I > didn't list? I personally believe a future executive director should have all the skills/experiences you describe and there is really no single skill that are more importent then ohter What from my experience makes an effective executive director is the ability to balance those skills. With that said, for me its very important that a future executive director are able to form, communicate and execute a direction for GNOME. -- -mvh Oliver Propst ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Question for candidates
Hi everyone, For me, the defining thing the next board will do is hire a successor to Karen Sandler as executive director of the foundation. So my question to all of you is: what are the main characteristics you will be looking for in the next executive director? when looking for a profile, there are a number of dials to twiddle: * Technical proficiency & reputation in the community, including free software cultural alignment * Strategy experience - the ability to formulate and communicate a direction for GNOME * Administrative and organizational experience * Business acumen and experience growing a commercial ecosystem * Communication/marketing/evangelism experience * Cost Of these, which do you feel are the most important for GNOME right now, and why? Are there other criteria which you think are important that I didn't list? Thanks! Dave. -- Dave Neary, Lyon, France Email: dne...@gnome.org Jabber: nea...@gmail.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
The point I was trying to make is that we *do* have an "inherent advantage" in bringing practical benefits to users and would be sad to relinquish that, as I understood RMS was saying. Someone else pointed out that we have an advantage in bringing practical benefits to minorities. That's true, but my point is different. My point is that we need to talk about our inherent _ethical_ advantage that we respect users' freedom. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/compromise.html. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org, www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use free telephony http://directory.fsf.org/category/tel/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 03:34, Liam R E Quin wrote: > [resent from the right address, sorry] > > On Wed, 2011-06-01 at 15:15 +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote: > [...] >> What about translations, accessibility and other needs of minorities? >> For big companies it's *impossible* to support those needs but for >> community-developed software that's just what we do. > > Large companies often do work to address needs of significant > minorities, either because of market pressures or because of > legislation. Not always, for sure. But we have the "inherent advantage" of minorities being able to cater to their needs because our software is free. > When it comes to accessibility, though, making software easier to use > for people with specific needs often ends up making the software easier > to use for everyone. > >> I think it would be sad to focus just on the ethical argument when we >> have so much practical potential that can help us engage first-time >> users. > > Ethical and Practical do not need to be mutually exclusive. The point I was trying to make is that we *do* have an "inherent advantage" in bringing practical benefits to users and would be sad to relinquish that, as I understood RMS was saying. Regards, Tomeu > Liam > > -- > Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/ > Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/ > > -- > Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/ > Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/ > Ankh: irc.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org www.advogato.org > > ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
On Wed, 2011-06-01 at 15:15 +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote: [...] > What about translations, accessibility and other needs of minorities? > For big companies it's *impossible* to support those needs but for > community-developed software that's just what we do. Large companies often do work to address needs of significant minorities, either because of market pressures or because of legislation. Not always, for sure. When it comes to accessibility, though, making software easier to use for people with specific needs often ends up making the software easier to use for everyone. > I think it would be sad to focus just on the ethical argument when we > have so much practical potential that can help us engage first-time > users. Ethical and Practical do not need to be mutually exclusive. Liam -- Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/ Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
[resent from the right address, sorry] On Wed, 2011-06-01 at 15:15 +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote: [...] > What about translations, accessibility and other needs of minorities? > For big companies it's *impossible* to support those needs but for > community-developed software that's just what we do. Large companies often do work to address needs of significant minorities, either because of market pressures or because of legislation. Not always, for sure. When it comes to accessibility, though, making software easier to use for people with specific needs often ends up making the software easier to use for everyone. > I think it would be sad to focus just on the ethical argument when we > have so much practical potential that can help us engage first-time > users. Ethical and Practical do not need to be mutually exclusive. Liam -- Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/ Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/ -- Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/ Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/ Ankh: irc.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org www.advogato.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
However, I think that in your conversation you are also implying that they have the responsibility to actually make things happen. This is not how the board works IMHO though. In GNOME things happen because someone makes them happen. Looking at the minutes of board meetings, I see that the board does a lot of work and makes many decisions, especially about events. The board also provides leadership about which way to go. So I think it makes perfect sense to consider the board as a body that really makes some decisions, and makes some things happen--even if not everything. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org, www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use free telephony http://directory.fsf.org/category/tel/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
What about translations, accessibility and other needs of minorities? For big companies it's *impossible* to support those needs but for community-developed software that's just what we do. And free software is what enables communities to get together and do the software they need. For people in minorities, these are practical benefits; we just have to inform them and they will appreciate the benefits. For people not in those minorities, these features are of no direct practical benefit. If we only present them as practical benefits, they are likely to say "Ho hum." But if we present this as part of the importance of freedom, we may be able to convince some of those people that GNOME is more ethical because it respects the freedom that various minorities need. So let's do both. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org, www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use free telephony http://directory.fsf.org/category/tel/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 01:09, Richard Stallman wrote: > On the practical terms, as others stated, we should make sure that > GNOME is great software and has cool features that make people /want/ > to use it. > > It's fine to do that, as much as we can. But if we only do that, we > are competing with Apple on its home territory. We have no inherent > advantage in this; Apple is has contempt for its users, but we can > hardly claim its developers lack ability. > > The one area where we have an inherent advantage is in treating the > users ethically. What about translations, accessibility and other needs of minorities? For big companies it's *impossible* to support those needs but for community-developed software that's just what we do. And free software is what enables communities to get together and do the software they need. I think it would be sad to focus just on the ethical argument when we have so much practical potential that can help us engage first-time users. Regards, Tomeu > Neither Apple nor Microsoft will ever match us in > this. Shall we not make plans to utilize this advantage and increase > it? > > -- > Dr Richard Stallman > President, Free Software Foundation > 51 Franklin St > Boston MA 02110 > USA > www.fsf.org, www.gnu.org > Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. > Use free telephony http://directory.fsf.org/category/tel/ > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list > ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
2011/6/1 Richard Stallman : > This is independent, in practice, of the technical work of improving > GNOME, so there is no obstacle to doing both. However, doing this > does require thought and planning. So I'm asking candidates to think > about this avenue. What would you have GNOME to do grow the subset of > users who will, in five years, choose GNOME because they want the > freedom that proprietary rivals will never give them? Richard, I think it is fair to asks these questions to the board members to see their point of view. However, I think that in your conversation you are also implying that they have the responsibility to actually make things happen. This is not how the board works IMHO though. In GNOME things happen because someone makes them happen. I do not think it is fair to ask the board members specific ways to solve a given problem. Rather than asking them "If I was up to do this and this and this task, would you support me? and how?" I guess that what I'm trying to say is, that it is not the board's job to find solutions to those problems, it's the community's job. All we can ask them is support if we as a community find a way to articulate these goals (using GNOME as a channel to spread awareness of the importance of software freedom is a goal I think we all share) into specific actions or strategies. My 2 cents. -- Cheers, Alberto Ruiz ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
> The one area where we have an inherent advantage is in treating the > users ethically. Neither Apple nor Microsoft will ever match us in > this. Shall we not make plans to utilize this advantage and increase > it? Yes, agree, it's a factor we should highlight. Highlighting this will help GNOME with the users who appreciate the issue. As Stormy said, some users currently appreciate this, and the others don't. What I'm talking about is a related long-term opportunity. Over time, the users who appreciate freedom are not a fixed group; they increase due to the efforts some of us make to explain the issue to other people, many of whom have never seen it before. GNOME has many opportunities to explain this issue to the public. By using them, GNOME can help increase that group of users faster, which over time will increase the benefit that GNOME gets by highlighting this factor. This is independent, in practice, of the technical work of improving GNOME, so there is no obstacle to doing both. However, doing this does require thought and planning. So I'm asking candidates to think about this avenue. What would you have GNOME to do grow the subset of users who will, in five years, choose GNOME because they want the freedom that proprietary rivals will never give them? -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org, www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use free telephony http://directory.fsf.org/category/tel/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
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 ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 6:09 PM, Richard Stallman wrote: > On the practical terms, as others stated, we should make sure that > GNOME is great software and has cool features that make people /want/ > to use it. > > It's fine to do that, as much as we can. But if we only do that, we > are competing with Apple on its home territory. We have no inherent > advantage in this; Apple is has contempt for its users, but we can > hardly claim its developers lack ability. > > The one area where we have an inherent advantage is in treating the > users ethically. Neither Apple nor Microsoft will ever match us in > this. Shall we not make plans to utilize this advantage and increase > it? > Yes, agree, it's a factor we should highlight. Still, I keep my point of view that users are mainly attracted by a great experience. In that sense, what I'm proposing is to use this awesome experience we are building as the main marketing asset to sell to people our goals of software freedom and how it is positive to them and developers in so many ways. I'm sure we have the same goal (promote free software, its ideas and products), it's just that we are trying to engage users with a different "hook". ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
