Re: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy

2010-06-01 Thread Rodrigo Moya
On Tue, 2010-06-01 at 23:19 +0200, Seif Lotfy wrote:


> 
> 
> Yet you think the solution to attracting new developers is to
> wrap the
> processes up in red tape and technical boards or design
> boards? Surely
> Free Software is supposed to be about meritocracy, not about
> boards
> dictating how an individual project should be run.
>  
> 
> 
> Well currently there is a GNOME Shell meritocracy among the RH
> employees. How is that meritocracy for the community.
> Yes I think the solution is setting up boards. It is not a Meritocracy
> as soon as sole responsibilities are given to a group of individuals
> affiliated with the same corporation.
>  
so, we complain that companies don't contribute enough upstream, and
when a big team of developers from one company works on a new project,
we don't like it? So what's the problem, that we want more non-RH people
working on it? Since the development has been open for more than a year,
I don't see anything preventing non-RH people to do so.

As for giving responsibilities to a group of individuals, it is what
happens in all GNOME modules. So, I don't see why we would need a board
for gnome-shell and not for gnome-control-center, nautilus or others, or
are you suggesting to add a huge bureaucracy for every non-trivial
change/development that we do?


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Re: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy

2010-06-01 Thread Seif Lotfy
Dear Iain,

On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 4:38 PM, Iain  wrote:

> > > >Bring up and fix issues with GNOME that are being ignored or shunned.
> > > Can you list these?
> > I will just be frank here...
> > Translation shifting from upstream to downstream ?
> > Development infrastructure limiting upstream contribution.
> > Canonical's Unity development, what does it mean for GNOME ?
> > Red Hat's control over GNOME Shell ?
> > Meego being a competition or a GNOME sister project ?
> > Smaller companies involvement into GNOME decisions
> > How much of GNOME is community driven and how much is company driven
> > Is the GNOME community forced to assimilate with decisions made by those
> companies?
>
> > > >  Work on letting GNOME shell be lead by the community.
> > > Can you expand on what you want changed?
> > Currently all GNOME Shell decisions are taken by Red Hat, thus limiting
> the community's technical as well as design contribution.
>
> It seems to me that your underlying belief is that there is too much
> (large) corporate influence in GNOME. Would you say that you might
> have some conflict of interest here given that your project
> (Zeitgeist) was ignored/shunned by the GNOME Shell developers?
>

I am not singling out any one party, my concern is just that there are
larger parties who don't necessarily seem to be aligned in their technical
approaches. Zeitgeist is doing well downstream and Canonical seem very happy
with it, yet this is not my concern. My concern is for GNOME.

I don't think it is reasonable to get into a Shell / Zeitgeist discussion
here. Although there were some obstacles on the road we did manage to find
common ground with McCann's new designs and Owen's technical review. But I
won't deny that the experience was *also* a "motivating factor" for me. I
will use GNOME Shell however as an example of a corporate driven project:
• The community never intensively evaluated the development and the design.
• The community had very little to say in the decisions of the
aforementioned processes.
Just allowing the community to contribute code does not make it a community
project. Which also makes marketing GNOME 3 harder for the marketing team.


>
> > > > I stand for innovation in GNOME.
> > > What is lacking now, and what do want to do when being part of the
> board?
> > Recently GNOME has not been attracting many new developers. It is because
> its current development state doesn't allow any new innovation to settle in.
> GNOME being run mostly by people representing
> > bigger companies no risks are being taken and thinking out of the box is
> usually categorized as such.
>
> Surely one could argue that GNOME Shell is quite innovative thinking
> outside of the box, and that quite a large risk is being taken with
> it, and most of the suggestions for it that come from the community
> are of requests for uninnovative things; "I want a task bar", "I want
> applets"
> Or is there a potential conflict of interest here as well that
> Zeitgeist has not gained much traction in the community?
>
>
Again I decide not to get into GS vs ZG discussions here since its just
brings up flame-wars, beside the fact that they are not comparable since one
is a UI and the other is a service. But there is an impressive community
uptake for Zeitgeist if its of interest for you.
Sure GNOME Shell might be innovative in a a Usability perspective but it is
the same old desktop. What I meant to say is innovative technologies such as
for example semantic desktop technologies that allow new dimensions of User
Experience are not being deployed.


> > [Redhat or Ubuntu] could start off with a design board combining
>  selected and competent representatives from community and companies, whose
> first objective is to rewrite the HIG.
>  ...
> > I suggest starting a technical board with equal amounts of
>  representatives of companies as and community whose members are
> significantly competent for the roles.
> ...
> > Recently GNOME has not been attracting many new developers.
>
> Yet you think the solution to attracting new developers is to wrap the
> processes up in red tape and technical boards or design boards? Surely
> Free Software is supposed to be about meritocracy, not about boards
> dictating how an individual project should be run.



Well currently there is a GNOME Shell meritocracy among the RH employees.
How is that meritocracy for the community.
Yes I think the solution is setting up boards. It is not a Meritocracy as
soon as sole responsibilities are given to a group of individuals affiliated
with the same corporation.


> iain
>

Cheers,
Seif
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Re: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy

2010-06-01 Thread Seif Lotfy
On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 10:40 PM, Johannes Schmid  wrote:

> Hi!
>
> > AFAIK there  are quite a few standing issues with GNOME arabic
> > support.
> >
> > http://wiki.arabeyes.org/Gnome
> > http://wiki.arabeyes.org/%D8%AC%D9%86%D9%88%D9%85
> > https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=420964
> >
> > These are slightly out of date though.
>
> Hmm, the bugs seem mostly fixed and I don't see what this has to do with
> upstream vs. downstream.
>
> > * Why do you think our infrastructure is limiting?
> >
> >
> > The development happening on Launchpad (not bazaar) really beats what
> > GNOME provides in several aspects, starting bug management,
> > blueprinting and linking with branches. There are a lot of nice
> > projects there that are not part of GNOME because of the GNOME
> > Infrastructure: GNOME Do, Docky, Getting Things GNOME... These
> > projects are in their own rights very successful and used by the
> > community. And by allowing them to deploy per default with GNOME would
> > just benefit the GNOME community...
> > The Project leads don't care since they are being deployed downstream
> > now which is more or less skipping the middle man which is GNOME, who
> > seem to be conservative in some of these aspects.
> > I am not saying we should switch to Lauchpad or so. But we need to
> > study and make an effort into compromising. Having major projects work
> > downstream will kill GNOME, and pointing fingers will not help.
>
> Well, I see your point while I disagree.
>
>
> > * For the company statements IMHO despite I don't know
> > anything about
> > the Unity plans I think those arent' true. Could you explain?
> >
> >
> >
> > I am not saying its true but sooner or later RH will want to deploy
> > GNOME Shell on the netbooks just like Unity will at some point put an
> > eye on the desktop... Its naive to asssume both will not try to assume
> > positions in the netbook and desktop market...
>
> It's getting off-topic but would it be wrong to say that one company is
> working upstream while the other company is working downstream? Wouldn't
> the point be to have everyone work upstream? Seems like the new board
> should participate in this discussion regardless who is in the new
> board.
>

I would love to have the whole community discuss this issue... please wait
for my next mail


>
> Regards,
> Johannes
>
>
>
Cheers
Seif
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Re: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy

2010-06-01 Thread Johannes Schmid
Hi!

> AFAIK there  are quite a few standing issues with GNOME arabic
> support.
> 
> http://wiki.arabeyes.org/Gnome
> http://wiki.arabeyes.org/%D8%AC%D9%86%D9%88%D9%85
> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=420964
> 
> These are slightly out of date though. 

Hmm, the bugs seem mostly fixed and I don't see what this has to do with
upstream vs. downstream.

> * Why do you think our infrastructure is limiting?
> 
> 
> The development happening on Launchpad (not bazaar) really beats what
> GNOME provides in several aspects, starting bug management,
> blueprinting and linking with branches. There are a lot of nice
> projects there that are not part of GNOME because of the GNOME
> Infrastructure: GNOME Do, Docky, Getting Things GNOME... These
> projects are in their own rights very successful and used by the
> community. And by allowing them to deploy per default with GNOME would
> just benefit the GNOME community...
> The Project leads don't care since they are being deployed downstream
> now which is more or less skipping the middle man which is GNOME, who
> seem to be conservative in some of these aspects.
> I am not saying we should switch to Lauchpad or so. But we need to
> study and make an effort into compromising. Having major projects work
> downstream will kill GNOME, and pointing fingers will not help.

Well, I see your point while I disagree.


> * For the company statements IMHO despite I don't know
> anything about
> the Unity plans I think those arent' true. Could you explain?
> 
> 
> 
> I am not saying its true but sooner or later RH will want to deploy
> GNOME Shell on the netbooks just like Unity will at some point put an
> eye on the desktop... Its naive to asssume both will not try to assume
> positions in the netbook and desktop market...

It's getting off-topic but would it be wrong to say that one company is
working upstream while the other company is working downstream? Wouldn't
the point be to have everyone work upstream? Seems like the new board
should participate in this discussion regardless who is in the new
board.

Regards,
Johannes




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Re: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy

2010-06-01 Thread Vincent Untz
Hi,

Le mardi 01 juin 2010, à 22:16 +0200, Seif Lotfy a écrit :
> On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 5:37 PM, Johannes Schmid  wrote:
> * Why do you think our infrastructure is limiting?
> 
> The development happening on Launchpad (not bazaar) really beats what GNOME
> provides in several aspects, starting bug management, blueprinting and
> linking with branches. There are a lot of nice projects there that are not
> part of GNOME because of the GNOME Infrastructure: GNOME Do, Docky, Getting
> Things GNOME... These projects are in their own rights very successful and
> used by the community. And by allowing them to deploy per default with GNOME
> would just benefit the GNOME community...

FWIW, there's an imminent announcement from the release team about
moduleset reorganization that will have an impact on this. Hopefully,
Lucas will send the mail tonight if I write this here ;-)

> > * For the company statements IMHO despite I don't know anything about
> > the Unity plans I think those arent' true. Could you explain?
> >
> >
> I am not saying its true but sooner or later RH will want to deploy GNOME
> Shell on the netbooks just like Unity will at some point put an eye on the
> desktop... Its naive to asssume both will not try to assume positions in the
> netbook and desktop market...

I don't know if Red Hat will want to deploy GNOME Shell on netbooks, but
GNOME will certainly want to have GNOME Shell work fine on netbooks. And
as far as I know (and please correct me if I'm wrong) GNOME Shell is
designed to have a UI that works for netbooks.

FWIW, in your answers, you make it sound like GNOME Shell is just a Red
Hat project. Red Hat is certainly a driving force behind it,
contributing a lot, but it's a GNOME project, with many other
contributors.

Cheers,

Vincent

-- 
Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés.
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Re: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy

2010-06-01 Thread Seif Lotfy
On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 5:37 PM, Johannes Schmid  wrote:

> Hi!
>
> >  I will just be frank here...
> > • Translation shifting from upstream to downstream ?
> > • Development infrastructure limiting upstream contribution.
> > • Canonical's Unity development, what does it mean for GNOME ?
> > • Red Hat's control over GNOME Shell ?
> > • Meego being a competition or a GNOME sister project ?
> > • Smaller companies involvement into GNOME decisions
> > • How much of GNOME is community driven and how much is company driven
> > • Is the GNOME community forced to assimilate with decisions made by
> > those companies?
> > • More...
>
> OK, you were asked to list them. Anyway, why do you think there are
> true?
>
> * From my point of view as part of the gtp coordination team I think
> translations are not shifting downstream, we rather solved most of these
> problems and have high-quality upstream translations.
>

AFAIK there  are quite a few standing issues with GNOME arabic support.

http://wiki.arabeyes.org/Gnome
http://wiki.arabeyes.org/%D8%AC%D9%86%D9%88%D9%85
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=420964

These are slightly out of date though.

* Why do you think our infrastructure is limiting?
>

The development happening on Launchpad (not bazaar) really beats what GNOME
provides in several aspects, starting bug management, blueprinting and
linking with branches. There are a lot of nice projects there that are not
part of GNOME because of the GNOME Infrastructure: GNOME Do, Docky, Getting
Things GNOME... These projects are in their own rights very successful and
used by the community. And by allowing them to deploy per default with GNOME
would just benefit the GNOME community...
The Project leads don't care since they are being deployed downstream now
which is more or less skipping the middle man which is GNOME, who seem to be
conservative in some of these aspects.
I am not saying we should switch to Lauchpad or so. But we need to study and
make an effort into compromising. Having major projects work downstream will
kill GNOME, and pointing fingers will not help.


> * For the company statements IMHO despite I don't know anything about
> the Unity plans I think those arent' true. Could you explain?
>
>
I am not saying its true but sooner or later RH will want to deploy GNOME
Shell on the netbooks just like Unity will at some point put an eye on the
desktop... Its naive to asssume both will not try to assume positions in the
netbook and desktop market...


> Thanks,
> Johannes
>
>
>


-- 
This is me doing some advertisement for my blog http://seilo.geekyogre.com
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Re: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy

2010-06-01 Thread Xavier Bestel
Le mardi 01 juin 2010 à 22:37 +0300, Claudio Saavedra a écrit :
> On Tue, 2010-06-01 at 10:07 -0700, Lefty (石鏡 ) wrote:
> > On 6/1/10 9:49 AM, "Claudio Saavedra"  wrote:
> > >
> > > I wouldn't 
> > > be happy to see this kind of sarcasm being used by people
> > running the
> > > Foundation, if they happen to disagree with other
> > > members.
> > 
> > Happily for everyone, I'm not one of the people "running the Foundation",
> > I'm just another member.
> 
> Fair enough. I had the wrong impression that you were running for the
> Foundation board. Sorry for the mistake.

The mistake was mine. I apologize for that.

Xav



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Re: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy

2010-06-01 Thread Claudio Saavedra
On Tue, 2010-06-01 at 10:07 -0700, Lefty (石鏡 ) wrote:
> On 6/1/10 9:49 AM, "Claudio Saavedra"  wrote:
> >
> > I wouldn't 
> > be happy to see this kind of sarcasm being used by people
> running the
> > Foundation, if they happen to disagree with other
> > members.
> 
> Happily for everyone, I'm not one of the people "running the Foundation",
> I'm just another member.

Fair enough. I had the wrong impression that you were running for the
Foundation board. Sorry for the mistake.

Claudio

-- 
Claudio Saavedra 

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Re: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy

2010-06-01 Thread Juanjo Marin
On Tue, 2010-06-01 at 15:39 +0200, Seif Lotfy wrote:


> >  • Encourage more cooperation on design between RH and
> Canonical.
> 
> What do you mean concretely (design of what)? Why RH and
> Canonical
> specifically?
> 
> 
>  I left out Intel, Nokia, Novell and others because their main focus
> now is on Meego which on a design level I do not consider a GNOME
> project.
I think that cooperation must be improved at all levels, not only at
design.

> Currently RH and Canonical both have started their own design & user
> experience to improve the usability of GNOME. Both however seem to be
> heading to the same goal but with different designs that could on a
> shallow level end up leaving GNOME in an diverging state (Shell vs
> Unity). Both should start cooperating on the design level. One could
> start off with a design board combining  selected and competent
> representatives from community and companies, whose first objective is
> to rewrite the HIG. 

gnome-shell is working upstream, _is_ a GNOME project, and Unity isn't.
Moreover, I wasn't realised of their existence since very lately, and
GNOME shell is been working from about a year. Sincerely, I have no idea
of their motivation for this "fork".

Reading a post from Tomeu Vizoso [1] I noticed that Ubuntu people
doesn't have too much idea of GNOME GObject introspection. This sounds
strange to me. Maybe they should have done better for been informed of
this, but I'm sure we can do better too. What I want to mean is that we
can problem like this at all levels, not only at design level. 

It seems that GNOME needs to improve the communication channels with
downstreams (Red Hat, Canonical, Intel, Nokia, Novell, etc). We need
active actions for this, it seems that transparency on GNOME project is
not enough. And I know that we have the Advisory Board for that, but
this model is not working neither. Maybe we need some periodical
meetings with technical staff of downstream projects. Maybe we can
organize this sort of meeting at GUADEC or we can organize hackfest for
this.

-- Juanjo marin


[1]
http://blog.tomeuvizoso.net/2010/05/ubuntu-and-gobject-introspection.html  




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Re: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy

2010-06-01 Thread Behdad Esfahbod
On 06/01/2010 01:08 PM, Lefty (石鏡 ) wrote:
> On 6/1/10 10:01 AM, "Xavier Bestel"  wrote:
>>
>> Err .. nothing, except my extraordinary ability to mix their names ? :)
> 
> You're displaying quite a host of "extraordinary abilities" this morning.

Can we please stop this subthread now?

behdad
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Re: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy

2010-06-01 Thread Lefty (石鏡 )
On 6/1/10 10:01 AM, "Xavier Bestel"  wrote:
> 
> Err .. nothing, except my extraordinary ability to mix their names ? :)

You're displaying quite a host of "extraordinary abilities" this morning.


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Re: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy

2010-06-01 Thread Lefty (石鏡 )
On 6/1/10 9:49 AM, "Claudio Saavedra"  wrote:
>
> I wouldn't 
> be happy to see this kind of sarcasm being used by people
running the
> Foundation, if they happen to disagree with other
> members.

Happily for everyone, I'm not one of the people "running the Foundation",
I'm just another member. Are you happy to see irrelevant header checks being
publicly performed in order to apparently attempt to invalidate, solely on
that basis, the comments of other GNOME members?

I'm not, as should be fairly clear.

See, I have a this thing called a "job". My job involves video editing,
among a variety of other things. I do my video editing in Final Cut Pro,
which runs solely on OS X. The notion that I'm going to go and start up a
completely different system in order to send my comments from a Linux
(pardon me: _GNU_/Linux) box, using an approved, "free" email client, to
satisfy the sensibilities of Xav and those like him, is rather absurd.

I'm sorry, but in the world I live in, people learn to coexist with all
sorts of things that might be less than ideal. I find the fact that there's
no "free" equivalent for Final Cut Pro less than ideal, but there it is. I'm
not about to stop editing video and wait around for some more "appropriate"
program to arrive.

And no, I wasn't "waiting" for this. I'm disturbed that we're continuing to
play this childish game, frankly, and especially in this context. I simply
sent an email message using the client I typically use on the system which I
am currently using. Xav's suggestion that he was somehow "set up" is as
absurd as his harping on message headers here.


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Re: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy

2010-06-01 Thread Xavier Bestel
On Tue, 2010-06-01 at 09:38 -0700, Lefty (=?ISO-2022-JP?B?GyRCQFA2QBsoQg==?= ) 
wrote:
> Xav apparently needs to examine the headers
> first for evidence of lurking "shill"-hood or something of that sort.

Sometimes the apparences are wrong.
Evolution just shows me the mailer along with the From, To and Subject
headers. I don't dig in headers of random people's mail.
Your subject + mailer-agent just caught my eye.

> Well played, Xav. Well played.

Apparently you were waiting for it. I'm happy if I've been useful to
you. You're welcome.

Xav

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Re: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy

2010-06-01 Thread Claudio Saavedra
On Tue, 2010-06-01 at 09:38 -0700, Lefty (石鏡 ) wrote:
> 
> 
> The purity of the GNOME community is at risk! I'd call for the
> immediate
> institution of filters on the mailing list so as to dump any messages
> which
> someone might have had the temerity to send from an unapproved email
> client,
> or via an unapproved operating system right in the bit bucket so as to
> spare
> Xav, and others who feel similarly, any future agonies of this sort. 

I wouldn't be happy to see this kind of sarcasm being used by people
running the Foundation, if they happen to disagree with other members.

Claudio


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Re: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy

2010-06-01 Thread Lefty (石鏡 )
On 6/1/10 9:18 AM, "Xavier Bestel"  wrote:

> User-Agent: Microsoft-Entourage/12.24.0.100205
> Date: Tue, 01 Jun 2010 08:41:19 -0700
> Subject: FW: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy
> From: "Lefty (=?ISO-2022-JP?B?GyRCQFA2QBsoQg==?= )" 
> 
> I find it quite amusing that you're using a Microsoft client on an Apple
> pc to defend your GNOME candidacy.
> Kudos for your sense of humor (or is it just plain provocation ?).
> 
> Xav
> 

For my part, I find it quite funny (not "funny ha-ha", but "funny weird")
the way that people subject others to pointless litmus tests, something
we're unfortunately way to prone to do in this community. Rather than judge
the content of an email message, Xav apparently needs to examine the headers
first for evidence of lurking "shill"-hood or something of that sort.

By doing so, we ensure that GNOME can become as insular and inwardly-looking
as possible. After all, we certainly wouldn't want to let just _anyone_ into
our little club here! They might use OS X on occasion or even _Windows_!
They might have an iPhone, or be unable to run sed from the command line or
something, and _then_ where would we be?

The purity of the GNOME community is at risk! I'd call for the immediate
institution of filters on the mailing list so as to dump any messages which
someone might have had the temerity to send from an unapproved email client,
or via an unapproved operating system right in the bit bucket so as to spare
Xav, and others who feel similarly, any future agonies of this sort.

Let me be very frank with you, Xav: this sort of behavior was definitely a
contributing factor to ACCESS' leaving the Advisory Board this past January,
and for our lack of sponsorship for GUADEC this year and last. It was a
directly contributing factor to my rescinding my offer to provide media
training for potential GNOME spokespeople at GUADEC this summer.

Well played, Xav. Well played.


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Re: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy

2010-06-01 Thread Johannes Schmid
Hi!
 
>  I will just be frank here... 
> • Translation shifting from upstream to downstream ?
> • Development infrastructure limiting upstream contribution.
> • Canonical's Unity development, what does it mean for GNOME ?
> • Red Hat's control over GNOME Shell ?
> • Meego being a competition or a GNOME sister project ?
> • Smaller companies involvement into GNOME decisions
> • How much of GNOME is community driven and how much is company driven
> • Is the GNOME community forced to assimilate with decisions made by
> those companies?
> • More... 

OK, you were asked to list them. Anyway, why do you think there are
true?

* From my point of view as part of the gtp coordination team I think
translations are not shifting downstream, we rather solved most of these
problems and have high-quality upstream translations.

* Why do you think our infrastructure is limiting?

* For the company statements IMHO despite I don't know anything about
the Unity plans I think those arent' true. Could you explain?

Thanks,
Johannes




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Re: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy

2010-06-01 Thread Iain
> > >Bring up and fix issues with GNOME that are being ignored or shunned.
> > Can you list these?
> I will just be frank here...
> Translation shifting from upstream to downstream ?
> Development infrastructure limiting upstream contribution.
> Canonical's Unity development, what does it mean for GNOME ?
> Red Hat's control over GNOME Shell ?
> Meego being a competition or a GNOME sister project ?
> Smaller companies involvement into GNOME decisions
> How much of GNOME is community driven and how much is company driven
> Is the GNOME community forced to assimilate with decisions made by those 
> companies?

> > >  Work on letting GNOME shell be lead by the community.
> > Can you expand on what you want changed?
> Currently all GNOME Shell decisions are taken by Red Hat, thus limiting the 
> community's technical as well as design contribution.

It seems to me that your underlying belief is that there is too much
(large) corporate influence in GNOME. Would you say that you might
have some conflict of interest here given that your project
(Zeitgeist) was ignored/shunned by the GNOME Shell developers?

> > > I stand for innovation in GNOME.
> > What is lacking now, and what do want to do when being part of the board?
> Recently GNOME has not been attracting many new developers. It is because its 
> current development state doesn't allow any new innovation to settle in. 
> GNOME being run mostly by people representing
> bigger companies no risks are being taken and thinking out of the box is 
> usually categorized as such.

Surely one could argue that GNOME Shell is quite innovative thinking
outside of the box, and that quite a large risk is being taken with
it, and most of the suggestions for it that come from the community
are of requests for uninnovative things; "I want a task bar", "I want
applets"
Or is there a potential conflict of interest here as well that
Zeitgeist has not gained much traction in the community?

> [Redhat or Ubuntu] could start off with a design board combining  selected 
> and competent representatives from community and companies, whose first 
> objective is to rewrite the HIG.
 ...
> I suggest starting a technical board with equal amounts of  representatives 
> of companies as and community whose members are significantly competent for 
> the roles.
...
> Recently GNOME has not been attracting many new developers.

Yet you think the solution to attracting new developers is to wrap the
processes up in red tape and technical boards or design boards? Surely
Free Software is supposed to be about meritocracy, not about boards
dictating how an individual project should be run.

iain
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Re: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy

2010-06-01 Thread Seif Lotfy
Hi Olav,


> Hello Seif,
>
> Reading your motivation I think I understand what you mean, but would
> like to know for sure. As such, I'd appreciate if you could expand some
> more on your motivation. Further, though I think I understand, I'm
> purposely asking very open ended questions (to avoid suggestive ones).
>
> My goal is not to have a discussion on this with you or others, purely
> to better understand your motivation.
>
>
> On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 10:59:35AM +0200, Seif Lotfy wrote:
> > Motivation:
> >
> >  My reasons for running for GNOME board are as follows:
>
>
> >  • Encourage more cooperation on design between RH and Canonical.
>
> What do you mean concretely (design of what)? Why RH and Canonical
> specifically?
>

 I left out Intel, Nokia, Novell and others because their main focus now is
on Meego which on a design level I do not consider a GNOME project.
Currently RH and Canonical both have started their own design & user
experience to improve the usability of GNOME. Both however seem to be
heading to the same goal but with different designs that could on a shallow
level end up leaving GNOME in an diverging state (Shell vs Unity). Both
should start cooperating on the design level. One could start off with a
design board combining  selected and competent representatives from
community and companies, whose first objective is to rewrite the HIG.


>
> >  • Avoid fragmentation by helping to build consensus around a unified
> > vision for GNOME's future to prevent a GNOME divergence into 2.30 -and
> > GNOME 3 base.
>
> What do you think is lacking now?
>

What is lacking is a vision of what GNOME 3 should be. Where is it heading?
Who is the target of the GNOME 3 desktop? How is the current GNOME accepted
by the community. There seems to be some disagreements on several issues
concerning design and technical aspects, which are leading to frictions
between upstream and downstream development.

>
> >  • Bring up and fix issues with GNOME that are being ignored or
> > shunned.
>
> Can you list these?
>

 I will just be frank here...
• Translation shifting from upstream to downstream ?
• Development infrastructure limiting upstream contribution.
• Canonical's Unity development, what does it mean for GNOME ?
• Red Hat's control over GNOME Shell ?
• Meego being a competition or a GNOME sister project ?
• Smaller companies involvement into GNOME decisions
• How much of GNOME is community driven and how much is company driven
• Is the GNOME community forced to assimilate with decisions made by those
companies?
• More...


> >  • Work on letting GNOME shell be lead by the community.
>
> Can you expand on what you want changed?
>

Currently all GNOME Shell decisions are taken by Red Hat, thus limiting the
community's technical as well as design contribution. I suggest starting a
technical board with equal amounts of  representatives of companies as and
community whose members are significantly competent for the roles. Those
should drive the technical development of GNOME Shell forward.


>
> >  • I stand for innovation in GNOME.
>
> What is lacking now, and what do want to do when being part of the
> board?
>

Recently GNOME has not been attracting many new developers. It is because
its current development state doesn't allow any new innovation to settle in.
GNOME being run mostly by people representing bigger companies no risks are
being taken and thinking out of the box is usually categorized as such.
While understandable it leaves GNOME in a state where a lot of
functionalities are desired but not deployable. Innovations are usually
brought up by smaller companies such as Collabora, Codethink, Landeo, Igalia
and others. We should allow them more responsibilities in decision taking
when it comes to GNOME's emerging technologies.

>
> > Don't hesitate to ask me questions when the lines are open.
>
> done
>

Hope I answered your questions.


>
> --
> Regards,
> Olav
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Re: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy

2010-05-28 Thread Olav Vitters

Hello Seif,

Reading your motivation I think I understand what you mean, but would
like to know for sure. As such, I'd appreciate if you could expand some
more on your motivation. Further, though I think I understand, I'm
purposely asking very open ended questions (to avoid suggestive ones).

My goal is not to have a discussion on this with you or others, purely
to better understand your motivation.


On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 10:59:35AM +0200, Seif Lotfy wrote:
> Motivation:
> 
>  My reasons for running for GNOME board are as follows:


>  • Encourage more cooperation on design between RH and Canonical.

What do you mean concretely (design of what)? Why RH and Canonical
specifically?

>  • Avoid fragmentation by helping to build consensus around a unified
> vision for GNOME's future to prevent a GNOME divergence into 2.30 -and
> GNOME 3 base.

What do you think is lacking now?

>  • Bring up and fix issues with GNOME that are being ignored or
>     shunned.

Can you list these?

>  • Work on letting GNOME shell be lead by the community.

Can you expand on what you want changed?

>  • I stand for innovation in GNOME.

What is lacking now, and what do want to do when being part of the
board?

> Don't hesitate to ask me questions when the lines are open.

done

-- 
Regards,
Olav
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