Re: One other question for the candidates
On Tue, 2009-06-09 at 22:34 -0400, Richard Stallman wrote: > Here's a question that I would like the candidates to answer. > > What do you think GNOME should do to support the > broader cause of free/libre software, > and the freedom of computer users? On the technical front, GNOME should work/continue/improve on the current GOALS, GNOME 3, User experience etc. In general, GNOME should work towards free desktop standards and should continue/aim at providing a free software based complete-desktop-stack for the users. -Srini. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Minutes from the board meetings
2009/6/8 Stormy Peters : > The minutes from most of the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors' meetings > have now been posted at: > > http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoardPublic/Minutes Excellent, thank you. Does that mean the board has only held three meetings this year as only 3 MOMs are listed for 2009? > The rest will be posted tomorrow. Please feel free to post any questions > here for discussion. (I am debating posting the contents of the minutes to > the list one-by-one for discussion/transparency but I don't really want to > spam the list either ...) Sounds like a good idea to me. -- mvh Björn ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Minutes from the board meetings
Le mercredi 10 juin 2009, à 11:50 +0200, BJörn Lindqvist a écrit : > 2009/6/8 Stormy Peters : > > The minutes from most of the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors' meetings > > have now been posted at: > > > > http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoardPublic/Minutes > > Excellent, thank you. Does that mean the board has only held three > meetings this year as only 3 MOMs are listed for 2009? No, we have a meeting every two weeks (module some exceptions), so I think that the other minutes will come soon (which is what Stormy meant with "The rest will be posted tomorrow", I guess) Vincent -- Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: One other question for the candidates
Hi Richard, Le mardi 09 juin 2009, à 22:34 -0400, Richard Stallman a écrit : > Here's a question that I would like the candidates to answer. > > What do you think GNOME should do to support the > broader cause of free/libre software, > and the freedom of computer users? I'll skip the part where I say we should keep rocking on making our software (which plays an essential role for computer users, since we're making a desktop with good accessibility, localization, usability, etc.). We also try to support other groups doing software whenever we can (the Foundation is sponsoring the Libre Graphics Meeting, eg). I think it's quite important to note that the GNOME Foundation is mainly an organization about free software, where freedom is essential, but where our "talent" is still software. So what does that mean for me? We're leading (or trying to lead) on the stuff we know how to do (software, specifications, etc.), and that's where we focus our energy. It'd be great to also be able to promote and defend freedom in other ways, but we can't afford to focus our efforts on that, so we're not leading there. (I'd love if we were able to do so, though, but it's not reasonable) It doesn't mean we can't support efforts done by other organizations or individuals, though, quite the contrary: I think we're willing to support efforts there. Oh, and something I like in these web days is what the tomboy people are doing with Snowy [1]: a real free web application for Tomboy Online. Coming to think about it, I guess it'd be nice to have the Foundation endorse the Franklin Street Statement [2]. That wouldn't mean that we shouldn't support non-free web services, since we obviously want users to be able to access their data wherever it is. But we should encourage free services when possible. Vincent [1] http://live.gnome.org/Snowy [2] http://autonomo.us/2008/07/franklin-street-statement/ -- Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for the candidates
Hi, (just want to start by thanking the membership & elections committee for the organization of the elections! Make sure to hug them when you meet them) Apologies for the length of some answers ;-) And more apologies for sending this late (it was stuck in my drafts folder for way too long) Le vendredi 29 mai 2009, à 18:17 +0100, Susana Pereira a écrit : > 1. For outgoing board members: what have been the upsides/good things > from your previous stint at the Board which you would like to see > carried forward into this term ? This is so a hard question because it's hard to remember what I did as a board member ;-) (not because I didn't do anything, nor because I did so many things -- simply because I don't remember everything) I think helping some hackfests happen is probably one of the best things. I'm also happy about some background work that was done around the GNOME infrastructure, although I'm not sure I should get credited for this. > 2. If you are a new candidate: what specific SMART > (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_(project_management)) goals would > you like to put for yourself? Or, in other words, how would you like > to measure yourself and, let others know how you are doing ? (not a new candidate) > 3. What part of being a board member do you think will be most > difficult for you? How do you plan to compensate for that? The most difficult thing would probably be that it will drain my energy at some times. Ice cream can help, I heard. (or being less active for a few days) > 4. Do you have any experience on management teams or boards at > non-profits? If so, can you give an example of a change you affected > in that role? If not, what makes you think that you will be a good > board member? What single change do you want to affect during your > term? I've been on the Foundation Board since 2006, and I would think it's my main experience here. But I've also chaired some teams in GNOME (membership committee and release team, mainly). Not quite sure what to reply here: it's a bit like the first question, where I don't remember a specific example. However, I believe I can be a good board member because I'm full of love for our project and I'm dedicated to it. Also because it seems some friends of mine think I'm doing a good job there (but then, maybe they don't want to hurt me :-)) (The "What single change..." question sounds like question 5 below, so not replying here) > 5. What are the specific areas of the Foundation's focus and strategy > where you think you can contribute as a change agent ? Change agent? Hrm. Honestly, it's hard to say what I can contribute as a change agent since I've been in the board in the past few years and I don't plan any big focus change in what I'd do. (not saying things have been perfect -- changes should certainly happen, but I'd find it weird to start playing that role only now, for the elections and not earlier) > 6. Do you think we need to make the being a member of the Foundation > feel more valuable, and how do you think we should do that? What would > you change about the Foundation to make it more useful to members. I think I used to think "yes". And I'm now not so sure. I mean, there are things that might make sense (in the way we spend our money, like for travel sponsorship, as Germán mentions) and things that we already do (like gnome.org address, blog on blogs.gnome.org, and possibly various other things) But on the other hand... I saw some people apply for membership only because they wanted a gnome.org address, and not because they care about the Foundation. And this makes me a bit sad (not blaming the people, though: I can understand why you'd want to have a gnome.org address after contributing for 5 years...). Going back to the travel sponsorship example: I'd very much prefer to have the best-qualified person for a specific topic getting sponsored even if he's not a member, than a "random" member. Because in the end, it's better for the project that this best-qualified person goes to the event. Being a member of the Foundation is about wanting to be part of an organization that helps the GNOME project achieve its goals, and in some way, it's about publicly showing your love for the project. Or something like this ;-) It's not about expecting to receive something. And we don't require anything in exchange: membership is free, you only have to fill a form with details once, and then quickly fill it every two years. So, in general, I would reply no. But there are cases where the membership is a criteria that helps decide if people can access some resources because we need a criteria for this and we have no other objective criteria (eg, to have a blog on blogs.gnome.org). And there might be cases where we can offer things to members which just make sense for members (eg, some automatically generated PDF for GNOME business cards, if anybody feels like working on something like this). > 7. Do you have any plans on how
Re: New GNOME Foundation Members
Based on the email thread going, I thought I'd do a quick introduction. I was recently added to Planet GNOME too, where I did a similar introduction. Anyway, I'm Paul, I've been using GNOME for about 10 years, and started contributing in 2007, becoming much more active this year. I've helped write documentation for Tomboy and the User Guide, currently helping out with Marketing and the gnome.org revamp, recently joined the Sysadmin team and also serve as the release manager for GNOME Journal. I'll be attending my first GUADEC this year thanks to the help of the Foundation, and look forward to meeting people in person. Paul On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 7:30 PM, Bruno Boaventura wrote: > Hello everybody! > > The GNOME Foundation Membership Committee is proud to present the new > members: > > - Brad Taylor > - Nils Faerber > - Paul Cutler > - Pockey Lam > > If your name is on the list above, you're welcome!!! Feel embraced! > Being part of GNOME Foundation you're contributing more with GNOME. > > If you aren't on the list, and you are close of one of them, please > say "Welcome to GNOME Foundation" and embrace them. > > At your service, > > GNOME Foundation Membership Committee > ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Found another bug in the budget 2009
>> You might also want to check the "Wages and Travel" sheet. I think >> Payroll taxes and Concrete goals are costs. So they should be >> negative. Let's hope I'm wrong here because that would mean around >> 8600$ more cost > > That is $8600 more cost. It's what I estimated for US payroll taxes. (There > are other things that will balance it out now - for example, my travel will > not be $20K this year.) I corrected that and pushed a new version to the foundation web >> >> >> Can you also elaborate on what the "Discretionary bonus" and the >> "Concrete goals" are? Furthermore for what was the 1750$ Discretionary >> bonus payed? > > I have goals and get a quarterly performance review and bonus based on > performance. Perhaps those should be shared publicly. > I believe it's important to be as transparent as possible in a non profit organisation. So yes I think these goals should be public. In that case we can even help you achieve the goals ;-) So if the "Concrete Goals" are your quarterly bonuses what is the "Extra Budget" > A couple of notes on the budget. > > Starting next fiscal year (which starts Oct 1st) we'll be doing the budget > by the fiscal year. > Starting next fiscal year, Rosanna will be doing the budget in gnucash. > (Which is where we currently keep all of our actual information.) Hopefully > we'll also have figured out how to easily take out the confidential > information by then too so we can just share that. > That would be good. Jaap ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Minutes from the board meetings
2009 Minutes are now up too. Thanks. On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 6:46 AM, Vincent Untz wrote: > Le mercredi 10 juin 2009, à 11:50 +0200, BJörn Lindqvist a écrit : > > 2009/6/8 Stormy Peters : > > > The minutes from most of the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors' > meetings > > > have now been posted at: > > > > > > http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoardPublic/Minutes > > > > Excellent, thank you. Does that mean the board has only held three > > meetings this year as only 3 MOMs are listed for 2009? > > No, we have a meeting every two weeks (module some exceptions), so I > think that the other minutes will come soon (which is what Stormy meant > with "The rest will be posted tomorrow", I guess) > > Vincent > > -- > Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés. > ___ > 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: Found another bug in the budget 2009
On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 23:56, Stormy Peters wrote: > > > On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 12:35 AM, Jaap A. Haitsma wrote: >> >> Hi Stormy, >> >> I was making the budget spreadsheet a bit less error prone by using >> named cells and found another bug. >> >> If you look at the "Corporate Contributions" sheet the total for >> programs in 22K$ on the "Programs" sheet it's 35K$ >> >> I notice the following differences >> 1) Canonical: 2K for Programs on "Corporate Contributions" sheet and >> 0K on the "Programs" sheet >> 2) Intel: 5K for Programs on "Corporate Contributions" sheet and 15K >> on the "Programs" sheet >> 3) Mozilla 0K for Programs on "Corporate Contributions" sheet and 5K >> on the "Programs" sheet Oops I made mistake here 2 should be 2) Intel: 5K for Programs on "Corporate Contributions" sheet and 0K on the "Programs" sheet And there should be a 4) 4) IBM: 0K on Programs on "Corporate Contributions" sheet and 15K on the "Programs" sheet > I don't believe the program column on the corporate contributions sheet and > the programs sheet were necessarily tracking the same thing. At least things > like a usability study were never added to the programs sheet. > > This is what I've been meaning to redo for a while ... I think we should > have a tab for each program, especially programs where the money is > earmarked for a specific purpose and needs to be kept just for that. We can > also have a tab just for annual donations or any general purpose donations. > Then we can have a tab that summarizes all the corporate contributions by > company so we can see it all in one place. I think having the seperate tabs like you are proposing is a good idea. Can you do this. I wouldn't mind doing it but I don't know for what the money is actually planned to be used. > I'm not sure if gnucash will take care of all this for us or not, but in the > meantime we can do it in the spreadsheet ... These programs are usually very good in doing standard stuff but if you are not standard or want to do something none standard a spreadsheet is a lot more flexible > As for the specifics. Intel gave us $30K for the year. They agreed $10K was > a general purpose donation but they wanted some say over how the other $20K > was used - so for example, with their agreement, we used some of it to > sponsor the Documentation hackfest. But we have the $30K. > > Google gave us $5K towards a sys admin and committed to the Summer of Code > funding. (In addition to the annual $10K.) > > Most of the others (above the annual dues) are not collected yet and were > more of an estimate of what they thought they'd do, not a firm commitment so > I didn't roll them all up into the total. (Companies do their budget > planning in the fall, so we provided them with an estimate of all the things > we'd be asking for over the year. However, they declined to pay in advance > and since all companies are cutting budgets, I don't think we can count on > that money until we see it. Another reason premium and bundled sponsorships > would be good.) I understand that these are estimates because you never know you really get the money. However it would be nice to have the spreadsheet correct, otherwise you do not have a good reference if you want to see how you are doing during the year. Jaap ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Found another bug in the budget 2009
On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 2:31 PM, Jaap A. Haitsma wrote: > > So if the "Concrete Goals" are your quarterly bonuses what is the "Extra > Budget" > Goals are broken down into concrete goals, things you can say "yes, that happened" and "discretionary" which is things the board will have to make a subjective call on whether or not it's done. Most of the concrete goals are tied to fundraising. They aren't all fundraising but they don't pay out unless we raise substantially more funds. Stormy ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
irc board meetings?
Some months ago, when we were brining Stormy on board, she asked the board about how she could be more transparent and involved in the community, and IRC came up in that context. One thing I said at the time, which may be worth revisiting if there are general concerns about board transparency, is that maybe maybe we should have Fedora-style public board IRC meetings? They (sort of) describe what they do at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Board/IRC ; as I understand it every other board meeting is held in public-but-moderated IRC; transcripts are cleaned up and made available later. I'm particularly interested to hear from folks who are members of both communities- are these useful/valuable over there? Anything you'd change? Thinking out loud- Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for the candidates
On 06/09/2009 11:31 PM, Behdad Esfahbod wrote: What do you think GNOME should do to support the broader cause of free/libre software, and the freedom of computer users? I think the "look, our source code is Free Software" argument has lost a lot of appeal in where GNOME has headed in the past and continues to head. Free-ness is just one of the multiple reasons why GNOME is "Good". Usability, a11y, i18n, etc are equally important. So I don't think GNOME can afford supporting the free/libre software cause more than, say, FSF does. Reading this after a good night's sleep, I think I didn't exactly write what I mean. What I mean is: While freedom is not our only selling point from a marketing point of view, it's perhaps the most important ingredient of how GNOME works, and we should embrace it where we can. I support GNOME's involvement with the broader cause of software freedom. I like us get more involved in issues like software patents or DRM, perhaps by partnering with FSF. Thinking about it with my board hat on though, chances of that happening will be much much higher if FSF just asked us. We never got any request, and well, been busy enough with other stuff. behdad On the freedom side however, that's where GNOME cares. A lot. Open standards, open formats, no lock-in, etc, are *very* important to achieve our goals of usability, a11y, etc, and I like to see GNOME work more closely with FSF and other parties on fighting against free standards issues as well as freedom of owning one's data. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for the candidates
Hi, Apologies for the delay... 2009/5/29 Susana Pereira : > Hello, > > Here is the updated list of questions. Hopefully, this one will let us > discuss important issues without taking too much time from our > candidates. > > You can find the list of candidates for the upcoming elections here: > > http://foundation.gnome.org/elections/2009/candidates.html > > > Questions > - > > 1. For outgoing board members: what have been the upsides/good things > from your previous stint at the Board which you would like to see > carried forward into this term ? > 2. If you are a new candidate: what specific SMART > (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_(project_management)) goals would > you like to put for yourself? Or, in other words, how would you like > to measure yourself and, let others know how you are doing ? I think the coolest thing I have more actively participated as a Board member is the new Friends of GNOME program. I've helped (and still help) mostly with the production of the gifts (mugs, t-shirts, postcards, etc) and the deployment and maintainance of the website. I helped with a bunch of other things which I can't recall now :-P > 3. What part of being a board member do you think will be most > difficult for you? How do you plan to compensate for that? My end of 2008 and beginning of 2009 were quite tough (changing jobs, moving to another country, etc) so I ended not being as present as I wanted on board activities. This is something not likely to happen during this term. So I expect to be much more present and active. > 4. Do you have any experience on management teams or boards at > non-profits? If so, can you give an example of a change you affected > in that role? If not, what makes you think that you will be a good > board member? What single change do you want to affect during your > term? Yes, I'd say I have some experience on team coordination. Actually, I've been doing it since my school times :-) In GNOME, I've been module maintainer, Board member, release team member, Membership Committee member, release organizer of GNOME Journal, GNOME Brasil coordinator, GNOME Roadmap coordinator, Summer of Code admin, and some other stuff. I'm a good listener and, maybe because of that, GNOME people feel comfortable to talk to me. I always try to keep an eye on the all major activities inside the GNOME community. I think that helps me, as a Board member, to better support the community. > 5. What are the specific areas of the Foundation's focus and strategy > where you think you can contribute as a change agent ? I think I can be helpful with making sure the Board communicates efficiently with the community by talking to the right people depending on the topic at hand. As I said before, the fact that I've worked on different teams inside the community helps a lot in this regard. I'm especially interested in how we can improve our "officlal" communication with Foundation members and the general public. I'm sure there's a lot of things we can do in this area (Dave has made some interesting suggestions). The main question is how to do that without overloading the Board too much. Honestly, I don't have concrete proposals yet but I'll be happy to discuss that with members. I'm now coordinating the development of the new GNOME website. I'm not sure I'm doing this solely with Board hat. Honestly, I don't know which hat I'm using in this case :-P Anyway, as a Board member, I want to make sure we have a clear, consistent, and apealing message about our project and community in our website. > 6. Do you think we need to make the being a member of the Foundation > feel more valuable, and how do you think we should do that? What would > you change about the Foundation to make it more useful to members. I think the Foundation is already quite useful to the community. Especially, through all the people, hackfests, and conferences we sponsor. Foundation membership is taken into account in our decisions for those things. The Foundation is there to support the community. Foundation members should feel comfortable in contacting the Board whenever any support (not necessarily sponsorship) is needed in order to make a GNOME-related activity happen (conference, hackfest, contacts, speakers, people, etc). > 7. Do you have any plans on how can the board help bring the GNOME > platform and desktop in the top of opensource desktop and mobile > application development? For now, I'm trying to focus on our new website in order to present our project, products and community in the most creative, appealing and consistent way. Having a good presentation is an essential step towards wider desktop and platform adoption. This includes having an exciting marketing plan for GNOME 3.0 as well. This is a discussion that is already happening in the marketing list btw (thanks to Paul and Stormy). > 8. Do you think the GNOME Foundation and the GNOME projects get > enough representation at events? If not, how
