Announcement of Thomas Thurman, which is sent to [EMAIL PROTECTED] (#4039) ------------------------------------------------------
Name: Thomas Thurman Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Nick: marnanel Affl: Devon IT, King of Prussia, PA, US Blog: http://marnanel.livejournal.com Biog: http://marnanel.org 75-word summary: I believe in freedom and respect, and that is why I use, create, and maintain free software; the last year as a GNOME developer has been full of new challenges for me, and I wish I had thought to help sooner. I want to find ways to help others find that path. After much thought over whether I should stand, I decided I could, and that the question of "should" was better left to you. The rest: I am passionate about freedom, and I am passionate about respect, and I believe these are two sides of the same coin. I have been using free software near-exclusively for around ten years, but I very much regret not having joined a free software project as large as GNOME sooner than I did. I want to help people become users of free software because it contributes to their autonomy. I want to help users become developers of free software because it contributes further to their autonomy. This is about freedom, and it is about respect. I have thought long and hard over whether to stand. I am acutely aware of how easily time can be squeezed away in volunteer work, and I know Metacity and FUSA can always use more. (Many of you know that I've also lost time in the last year to health issues, which have in the last few months responded well to treatment.) Much of the reason I am teaching my daughter to program-- and for many years when I lived in the UK I worked as a leader on a summer camp doing the same-- is the one I gave above, that a person is freer when they can maintain their own software, and that they become a more productive member of society; I want to encourage all our users to try to improve their software, to see that "free" doesn't mean "for nothing", to be more than just consumers. The Gnome Love programme is an inspiration and a challenge, and the only way we will grow is if people see our work as more than just a way of saving themselves a few quid. However you vote, let's rise to that challenge. As to who I am: Along with Elijah and Havoc, I maintain Metacity; I also maintain FUSA (the user switcher applet), but most of my efforts are directed towards Metacity at present. I also try to help out in small ways with internationalisation (I studied computational linguistics in grad school, for a while) in Britsh English and Welsh. I am a British citizen sharing a rather geeky house in the Philadelphia suburbs with two other grown-ups and one child. I have been fascinated with programming since I was seven, and been paid for doing it for about the last ten years. You can find a slightly out-of-date resume at <http://marnanel.org/resume>. If you want to know anything else, ask here, or come and find me on IRC. _______________________________________________ foundation-announce mailing list foundation-announce@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-announce
