Re: Questions to answer
(After writing this long email I was tempted to cut most part of it. But hey, I'm verbose. I won't fake it here. Now you know.) > 1) Why are you running for Board of Directors? Because the board as a body is in crisis and I think I can contribute to reshape it and make it as useful to the Foundation and the community as it could. Because I'm coordinating the next GUADEC and I'm going to work part time for GNOME anyway (see my affiliation update - http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2005-November/msg00100.html ). Because of this I need to get the big picture anyway and follow the debate about the evolution of the whole GNOME project. Therefore, recycling this time and energies to strengthen the efficiency of the board seems like a reasonable plan. > What will you do more or > better than previous years Boards have done? I will try to improve the current standards of transparency and openess of the bard towards the Foundation membership and the whole GNOME community. I will try to do more on making explicit that the board leads the community by not leading it and directs the foundation by serving the membership and the community. > 2) How familiar are you with the day-to-day happenings of GNOME? How much > do you follow and participate in the main GNOME mailing lists? I'm subscribed, I follow and sometimes I participate in guadec-list, guadec-planning, marketing-list, gnome-web-list, foundation-list and the Planet GNOME, clicking and following most on-topic links. I don't follow directly the release process and the technical stuff, although indirectly I follow the Ubuntu release development and it has a remarkable GNOME accent. > 3) What sources of funds do you as a candiate try do establish? Maybe I'm missing something but I'm surprised that public administrations with large deployments using GNOME are not in the list of sponsors, the advisory board or even the list of Friends of GNOME. In the private sector, every year there are more companies getting revenues thanks to free software projects (not just development, also consultancy, migrations, certification, research...) in which GNOME is an essential part. "If you save or get money thanks to GNOME, you could contribute some resources to the GNOME project so the relation is more reciprocal and sustainable." They should understand, specially if they are involved in mid/long term projects. We should not forget that money is for us just an interface to get other things: events, meetings, travels, software, hardware... The same organisation that can't justify internally a donation of 1.000€ to a US based foundation can set a budget of 10.000€ to organise whatever in their city, allocate people worth 20.000€ for a free and open development It's not about begging. It's about sharing opportunities and problems with organisations that have the will and some resources to face them... with us. > And what > will you spend it on? Not counting revenue from the shop and Friends of > GNOME. Think more like the recent move by Mozilla or a subscription based > bounty system. As a member of the Foundation I could have my say: sponsoring hackers' and speakers' travel and accomodation in meetings and events, bounties to solve everlasting bugs, art & merchandising contests... All this would be my personal opinion in an open debate. As a member of the board I should only answer about expenses related to the board and the core part of the Foundation: 1 or 2 liberated people, cheap VoIP phones or extra bandwidth to improve the internal communication, travel of people representing publicly GNOME... All this should be debated internally in the board AND with the membership. The board as such should not decide what is spent and where. The concretion of the GNOME Foundation budget should be participative. If the release team think it's worth to buy 50 weird devices to test the development versions, it's their duty to ask for budget to cover these purchases. If the marketing team come up with a great idea of producing a TV ad to hit the mainstream, it is their duty to come up with a budget for the creative adventure. Since the board needs to have a global vision of the GNOME project, maybe they could recommend to specific projects or teams actions that would require costs paid with the general budget. The board is also responsible of promoting a cross-project debate and also of getting to a consensus (abut the Foundation's budget in this case). But the board of directors deciding in closed meetings the destination of an unknown budget and reporting once there is no way back... is not what I'd like to see. > 4) Gnome is mostly a european and US based project, but seems to have > some following in Latin America and India. How will you as a candidate > grow the contribution base, especially in Asia, Africa and South America? I like this question. First I would urge the G8 and the WTO to end this parody of free trade and let the developi
Re: Questions to the candidates
El sáb, 19-11-2005 a las 09:04 -0500, Curtis Hovey escribió: > 1. How much time can you dedicate to the board each week? 5 or 6 hours a week. I'm thinking 1 hour each day and a extra hour any time is needed. According to Glynn Foster[1] between 4 or 5 hours a week should be needed. > 2. How flexible is your time; can you dedicate extra time one week and > less the next? It normally happens to me; so I can. But, to be honest, sometimes it doesn't happen at the same time is needed. For instance, my schedule doesn't fit very well with the release schedule; when I have more time is when GNOME is frozen, and viceversa. But I guess the Board is not ruled by the release time. But any clue or information from people who has been in the board would be nice to know. There is an exception: in my holidays I've been completely out of network the last years, so probably at that time I won't be able to do anything. (February). > 3. Please rank your interests: > a. GNOME evangelizing to government, enterprise, small > business, and individuals > b. GNOME marketing and merchandising of branded items > nationally and internationally > c. GNOME legal issues like copyright and patents > d. GNOME finances and fund raising > e. Alliance with other organizations. a. GNOME evangelizing to government, enterprise, small business, and individuals d. GNOME finances and fund raising e. Alliance with other organizations. b. GNOME marketing and merchandising of branded items nationally and internationally c. GNOME legal issues like copyright and patents IMHO, letter 'c' it is quite important, but I have no competence there because I'm not a lawyer and I can help better in any other instance described above. Letter 'a' is to wide; probably it could be divided in different parts, each one with different priority. > 4. Explain how you expect to meet you goals. Certainly, I wonder how to accomplish my goals. In my opinion, it should be easy to make more transparent the way the board works; announcing each task as soon is possible through the foundation-list and also through blogs, wiki, etc. But not waiting much time in write about that. In many cases, the minutes are ok. But, sometimes there are news that should be spread as soon as possible. For instance, ask to extend the candidacy deadline; to avoid confuse to anyone. I'd been in the other side of local communities, and I'd try to be a point of communication with different communities to work coordinated. > 5. Name one of your accomplishments if you have ever served on the > board. I've never being part of the board. > 6. Please assess GNOME: > a. What are its strengths As a organisation: It has a strong community. It has a successful release process that has been consolidated through the years and it proved that was possible to do in a Free Software project. It has a big deployment. It has a good support from companies. > b. What are its weaknesses Besides it has a strong community, there is a feeling that is hard to get involved and being part. IMHO, It is harder to get new blood nowadays than it was in the past. People who have been working in ISV's usually complains about how unfriendly is GNOME as platform with them. It's much better than in the past; but still is shown as a weakness. > c. What are its opportunities As usual, change the world through innovation and simpleness. > d. What are its threats (Some of) Big deployments depends strongly on the current policy party (in places such as Brazil). Any change of their leadership could affect directly on any deployment. That happened in some parts Brazil. There is nothing we can do except to continue improving our desktop and innovating to make their decisions harder each time. > 7. Name the best album you purchased in the last year. Pink Moon (Nick Drake). [1] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2005-October/msg00149.html -- Germán Poó Caamaño http://www.ubiobio.cl/~gpoo/ Concepción - Chile ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to answer
On Mon, 2005-11-21 at 20:26 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Hi, > > 1) Why are you running for Board of Directors? What will you do more or > better than previous years Boards have done? Because I can, and of course (or at least, we'll try to!). > 2) How familiar are you with the day-to-day happenings of GNOME? How much > do you follow and participate in the main GNOME mailing lists? I am a regular contributor to GNOME, and have had my hands in the dirt (ie. de facto maintainership) for a couple of modules. > 3) What sources of funds do you as a candiate try do establish? And what > will you spend it on? Not counting revenue from the shop and Friends of > GNOME. Think more like the recent move by Mozilla or a subscription based > bounty system. > (olafura from gnomedesktop.org) I'm not sure a subscription-based bounty system is the best way to get more participation in the project. I would rather than the people who need features propose them, as a member of the community with skills other than programming. But I must say that my personal "will implement cool features for films" system has worked decently well in the past. As for the source of funds, I am sure there is an untapped resource called local governments. This could be a source of revenue to investigate. > 4) Gnome is mostly a european and US based project, but seems to have > some following in Latin America and India. How will you as a candidate > grow the contribution base, especially in Asia, Africa and South America? > (olafura from gnomedesktop.org) > Or in general what would you do to increase community participation in the > GNOME community and GNOME elections? I'm afraid that I have no knowledge in that field, but I know that GNOME Hispano has a life of its own, bringing people to GNOME from mainland Spain and South America. > 5) The board meets for one hour every two weeks to discuss a handful of > issues. Thus, it is very important that the board can very quickly and > concisely discuss each topic and come to consensus on each item for > discussion. Are you good at working with others, who sometimes have very > differing opinions than you do, to reach consensus and agree on actions? > How flexible is your time; can you dedicate extra time one week and > less the next? If I think that one way isn't the right way, I can take ownership of the problem, and do it my way. Problem is obviously different if we are asking for policy decisions, in which case, it's good ol' politics. I don't think that any of us are inexperienced enough to not be able to drive a problem to a solution from start to finish, and the person that owns this problem should be the one coming up with the plan of action. Even though the rest of the board should have their say on the bigger scale, the owner should be the one in charge, and taking responsability. See my mail to Curtis for the time available [1]. > 6) Do you consider yourself diplomatic? Would you make a good > representative for the GNOME Foundation to the Membership, media, public, > and organizations and corporations the GNOME Foundation works with? I can be two-faced, like every politician :) > 7) What do you see as current threats to the future of a complete Free > Software desktop? And what would you like the GNOME Foundation to be doing > to address these issues? Patents, in my opinion. See [1] for how I plan on helping counter that threat. > 8) What one problem could you hope to solve this year? > 9) Please rank your interests: See above, and below, and in the other mail. > 10) One of the ingredient for success in Free Software project such as GNOME > is committed and dedicated memberships. How would you propose to promote new > membership, and encourage commitment of existing membership to make the > GNOME desktop the desktop of choice? [ Hints: the number of Foundation > members have reduced from 460 in 2001 to approximately 300 in 2002 ] > (this question is taken from questions of year 2002. I wanted to include > this because our member count is around 350 today) I don't think that Foundation membership is that big an issue, as long as the numbers stay this healthy. We already have one incentive for @gnome.org e-mail addresses requiring Foundation membership. I don't see the point in forcing people who don't want to be in the Foundation to be, but it would still be a very good idea to let people know about the foundation when their GNOME accounts are created, and, as a one-off, to let active contributors who aren't part of it know about. > 11) (only to those who are running for reelection) Name one of your N/A Cheers [1]: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2005-November/msg00103.html --- Bastien Nocera <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The sex scenes are just a job, but I enjoyed them. -- Anthony Hopkins ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to the candidates
Hey Curtis, Funny that people are answering an e-mail sent after yours, before yours ;) Anyway, here's my answers. On Sat, 2005-11-19 at 09:04 -0500, Curtis Hovey wrote: > 1. How much time can you dedicate to the board each week? About 5 hours, obviously, a bit more flexible than that in reality. > 2. How flexible is your time; can you dedicate extra time one week and > less the next? See above. > 3. Please rank your interests: > a. GNOME evangelizing to government, enterprise, small > business, and individuals > b. GNOME marketing and merchandising of branded items > nationally and internationally > c. GNOME legal issues like copyright and patents > d. GNOME finances and fund raising > e. Alliance with other organizations. a. is definitely not the job of the board, the marketing list is doing a good job at that, but we would certainly do a good job at selling GNOME if the question was raised to us. b. is a one-off problem (or rather, a problem that could short-term every year, as we would need to assess long-running previous decisions like this one), and as far as I know, research was already pretty advanced in finding a company that would handle all the hard bits for us. c. and e. are connected, in my opinion, as I would like the GNOME foundation to join the Open Invention Network, as a way for GNOME and other free desktops to allow us to counter advances and patents put in place by Apple,Microsoft and other desktop application players. I don't like patents, but, in some countries they exist, and we should fight fire with fire on that ground: http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/press.html > 4. Explain how you expect to meet you goals. Through connections. My employer is one of the members of that consortium, and I hope to be able to get the community access to patent filing via GNOME Foundation. > 5. Name one of your accomplishments if you have ever served on the > board. N/A, I guess. > 6. Please assess GNOME: > a. What are its strengths Openness. > b. What are its weaknesses Seeing the big picture, in some cases, and the lack of maintainership and/or drive on some projects. > c. What are its opportunities Plentiful, if... > d. What are its threats Complacency. > 7. Name the best album you purchased in the last year. Hard one, so I'll name 2 instead: Kaiser Chiefs - Employment and Raw as f**k (remixed) - Freestylers Cheers --- Bastien Nocera <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to answer
> 1) Why are you running for Board of Directors? What will you do more or > better than previous years Boards have done? > > 2) How familiar are you with the day-to-day happenings of GNOME? How much > do you follow and participate in the main GNOME mailing lists? I follow GNOME pretty good, both through reading some of the main mailing lists and through reading planet gnome and gnomedesktop. > 3) What sources of funds do you as a candiate try do establish? And what > will you spend it on? Not counting revenue from the shop and Friends of > GNOME. Think more like the recent move by Mozilla or a subscription based > bounty system. I believe there is untapped potential for more corporate sponsorship and getting more corporations to start funding the GNOME foundation is one of my major goals. > 4) Gnome is mostly a european and US based project, but seems to have > some following in Latin America and India. How will you as a candidate > grow the contribution base, especially in Asia, Africa and South America? > (olafura from gnomedesktop.org) > Or in general what would you do to increase community participation in the > GNOME community and GNOME elections? Apart from trying to help us get more funding which in turn can be used by GNOME-related activities all over the world I will do very little in this respect. Getting people in South America or Asia involved is not my area of expertise. I think the current level of participation in the GNOME elections are ok, they reflect that the GNOME board is mostly a purely administrative function, which needs to be responsible towards the community, but who aren't important in the day to day activities of the project. > 5) The board meets for one hour every two weeks to discuss a handful of > issues. Thus, it is very important that the board can very quickly and > concisely discuss each topic and come to consensus on each item for > discussion. Are you good at working with others, who sometimes have very > differing opinions than you do, to reach consensus and agree on actions? > How flexible is your time; can you dedicate extra time one week and > less the next? I have no problems working with others who have differing opinions than me, and maybe more importantly I have no problem letting people decide how things are done themselves. My policy for board calls over the last year has been. a) If I don't plan on doing the work discussed myself I don't offer an opinion unasked on how the work should be done. And b) if asked I support the viewpoint of the person doing the actual work. In decisions which are pure policy based I tend to state my opinion if differing strongly from the resolution I end up supporting, and then move on and support the solution I feel would resolve the issue the quickest. > 6) Do you consider yourself diplomatic? Would you make a good > representative for the GNOME Foundation to the Membership, media, public, > and organizations and corporations the GNOME Foundation works with? Yes, I like to think myself both diplomatic when needed and able to communicate well with people not intimate with GNOME and free software. > 7) What do you see as current threats to the future of a complete Free > Software desktop? And what would you like the GNOME Foundation to be doing > to address these issues? The GNOME Foundation should focus on taking care of the core tasks assigned to it. a) raise money b) give outside organisations an initial point of contact when wanting to interact with GNOME c) empower other groups in GNOME to do help move the project forward There are many potential legal, political and technical threats facing the desktop and apart from giving public support to the groups working on those issues the board can and should not be expected to be able to solve such issues. Maybe if we can increase our funding substantially the board would have resources to truly play an active part in influencing political decisions etc., but at this point in time the board should limit itself to getting the GNOME Foundation listed as a member or supporting organization of organizations for instance fighting software patents. > 8) What one problem could you hope to solve this year? More funds maybe the problem that people expect the board to be the solution to all problems :) > 9) Please rank your interests: > a. GNOME evangelizing to government, enterprise, small > business, and individuals > b. GNOME marketing and merchandising of branded items > nationally and internationally > c. GNOME legal issues like copyright and patents > d. GNOME finances and fund raising > e. Alliance with other organizations. d, e, c, b, a > 10) One of the ingredient for success in Free Software project such as GNOME > is committed and dedicated memberships. How would you propose to promote new > membership, and encourage commitment of existing membership to make the > GNOME desktop the desktop of choice? [ Hin
Re: Questions to answer
Hi, Answering these questions is a lot harder than what I had expected :-) Please ask for clarifications if I'm not clear (which is quite possible), or tell me I'm wrong if it's the case. On Tue, November 22, 2005 02:26, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > 1) Why are you running for Board of Directors? I'm running because I care about GNOME and about the Foundation and I believe I can be useful on the board. As a Foundation member, I'd like to know more about the Foundation and what's happening in there. As a member of a local group, I'd like to see the Foundation as a central point of contact for GNOME that would help lots of local groups. As a user, I'd like to see that GNOME users are not forgotten. As a contributor, I would like to see more effort going into making GNOME even more known than it is. Those are the points that are important to me. A quick summary is: + making the Foundation more open + developing local groups + showing how important our users are + making our project more known > What will you do more or better than previous years Boards have done? I'm not sure I can say I'll do something more/better than what was done before since I don't know exactly how hard the job is. But I can give two concrete examples of what I think we can easily do: + having more discussion on foundation-list. This will make the Foundation more open, but also will make it possible for members to get more involved in the Foundation. + having someone who's responsible for making sure everything is fine for the events where there'll be a GNOME booth. This person could help find some materials (hardware, posters, stickers, etc.) for a booth, but also would provide some useful tips. This will help new local groups developing even more quickly. Maybe in the end a simple checklist would be useful, but when you do your first booth, you sometimes want more :-) I'd like to note that the GNOME Event Box that Murray launched is really a wonderful step in this direction. > 2) How familiar are you with the day-to-day happenings of GNOME? How much > do you follow and participate in the main GNOME mailing lists? I'm on many mailing lists (although I'm not always participating), I'm reading the archives of some others lists, I'm hanging on IRC, etc. I'm also following the development of the GNOME releases, so I know what's happening from a technical point of view, but also as a "what's new in this release" point of view. So I think it's safe to say I'm fairly familiar with the day-to-day happenings. > 3) What sources of funds do you as a candiate try do establish? And what > will you spend it on? Not counting revenue from the shop and Friends of > GNOME. Think more like the recent move by Mozilla or a subscription based > bounty system. > (olafura from gnomedesktop.org) I'm not that interested in raising funds (see question 9), but one thing I think we can do is tell companies and people: "here's a list of projects we want to do, you can see the money needed for each project. If you're interested in helping for one of these projects, consider joining the Friends of GNOME". That is, clearly state where the money will go. Where should this money be spent? Where the best ideas are :-) Some ideas: global and local marketing materials (where global is for everyone and local is for some local groups), hardware for developers who might need it, travels to present GNOME at events, etc. I'm sure there are better ideas out there. And if you have one, please share it on this list. There's no need to be on the board to have ideas! > 4) Gnome is mostly a european and US based project, but seems to have > some following in Latin America and India. How will you as a candidate > grow the contribution base, especially in Asia, Africa and South America? > (olafura from gnomedesktop.org) As a candidate, I'm afraid I won't directly grow the contribution base. However, I'd like to help local groups doing so: it's important to explain and show that GNOME welcomes all the contributions and that starting to contribute is easy. For example, on the GNOME booth we had at the RMLL (in France, four months ago), we made some mini-conferences: "GNOME Love, how to contribute to GNOME?", "Coding a new feature, let's do it", etc. Some users were interested in this because from outside, it looks really difficult to start contributing. I'm glad to see that at least two of the people who assisted at those mini-conf are making some patches, have helped for translation and are probably contributing in some other ways too. So, to attract new contributors, we need to show them that it's really easy to contribute and to guide them (by making some list of tasks, eg). Another important point is to make people more aware of GNOME than they are right now. This means making more noise about our project :-) This is something we're trying to do in GNOME-FR, and I'd like to push all the local groups who have some time t
Re: Candidacy: Quim Gil
En/na Quim Gil ha escrit: > Corporate affiliation is interactors s.coop. - http://interactors.coop/en/ My affiliation has changed. I am a freelancer now, with two main activities, both related to GNOME: - I have been hired by the Catalan government for a part-time position to coordinate the GUADEC7 - http://mail.gnome.org/archives/guadec-list/2005-November/msg00024.html - I am being comissioned to write a printed manual of Guadalinex, the Ubuntu & GNOME based distribution to be used widely in Andalusia (Spain) - http://desdeamericaconamor.org/blog/en/node/154 I am no longer partner of interactors, as I was when I sent my candidacy. May I request an update at http://foundation.gnome.org/elections/2005/candidates.html ? Maybe the easiest way to put it would be Affiliation: none. or Affiliation: freelancer, hired by the Generalitat de Catalunya to coordinate GUADEC7. As you prefer. -- Quim Gil http://desdeamericaconamor.org signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to answer
Hi, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 1) Why are you running for Board of Directors? What will you do more or better than previous years Boards have done? I believe I've been a good board member this year, and I believe I have a lot to offer the coming board. One thing I have to offer that I didn't have last year is experience and continuity. I don't think the board should do more, I believe we should enable, and communicate. Among the things I've done, or helped do, as a board member this year are: I brought new members on the advisory board (OpenedHand, Fluendo and Imendio so far), which has brought in some revenue, and will hopefully give the advisory board a new drive over the coming year. I worked towards establishing an online GNOME store. Unfortunately, we recently had a setback in getting this up & running, I'd like to complete that task early next year. I co-operated with members of other non-profits and together we have now got a mailing list, a wiki and have had 2 face to face meetings intended to facilitate co-operation at an administrative level between foundations. One concrete example of this co-operation is that the foundation got a very good German lawyer on 2 days notice through a referral from someone on the mailing list in August. I also helped organise GUADEC, but that was as an individual, not as a board member. 2) How familiar are you with the day-to-day happenings of GNOME? How much do you follow and participate in the main GNOME mailing lists? I'm on foundation, guadec and board mailing lists, and on bugmaster, but not on lists like ddl. I do browse the archives every now & again. I am on planet.gnome.org, read it regularly, and also read planet.freedesktop.org and planetkde.org, as well as the GIMP developer lists and gnomedesktop. 3) What sources of funds do you as a candiate try do establish? An online store, I think, is a requirement. I would like us to start producing accessible books for people who want simple introductions to GNOME, and want to help the foundation at the same time. And I would like them to be sold in the GNOME store. And what will you spend it on? There's definitely room for the foundation to have 2 employees. And I believe that we should aim for more. We are already funding conferences like the GNOME developer meetings in South America, I would like to see that spread to Asia and Africa, as well as paying for advocates to go to conferences to speak about GNOME. In principle, we could also be paying for hardware that people need as developers. In practice, no-one has ever asked, and we have no real idea how to find out what people need without that. Not counting revenue from the shop and Friends of GNOME. Why not? These are important and underdevelopped sources of revenue. Why go after other plans, while the low-hanging fruit's just waiting to be picked? 4) Gnome is mostly a european and US based project, but seems to have some following in Latin America and India. How will you as a candidate grow the contribution base, especially in Asia, Africa and South America? We have more than the appearance of some following... Chile and Brazil are hotbeds of free software and GNOME activity. GNOME Bangalore and GNOME India are two growing and active communities. I don't think the foundation needs to go looking for people who love GNOME. Those people exist. What we need is to provide a forum where people can communicate, find each other and get funding. Icreated the UserGroups page in the wiki to help with one part of that, and the MarketingMaterial page to bring together material from diverse sources and make sure that that pool of knowledge wasn't lost. Or in general what would you do to increase community participation in the GNOME community and GNOME elections? Those are two very different things- the GNOME community isn't the group of people who decides the elections. Community participation in the community is a given. Increasing community participation in the elections will come from increasing community participation in the foundation. And that will stem from delegating authority, and making sure that people know that they *are* the GNOME foundation. 5) Are you good at working with others, who sometimes have very differing opinions than you do, to reach consensus and agree on actions? Yes. How flexible is your time; can you dedicate extra time one week and less the next? I manage. This year, I gave up coding. In general, I tend to ask for help a lot. 6) Do you consider yourself diplomatic? Yes. Others may disagree :) Would you make a good representative for the GNOME Foundation to the Membership, media, public, and organizations and corporations the GNOME Foundation works with? I think so. 7) What do you see as current threats to the future of a complete Free Software desktop? And what would you like the GNOME Foundation to be doing to address these issues?
