GNOME mobile and Limo Foundation - was (Re: Meeting Minutes Published - February 1st, 2011)
On 02/17/2011 10:50 PM, Andrew Savory wrote: That's a good summary. I worked hard to help prepare the business case to justify continuing involvement, but I was not involved in the final decision making process. I'm personally sorry that our involvement with GNOME was so brief and that we did not have a chance to really fully engage with GNOME. On the plus side, we did manage to secure $10k from LiMo to GNOME for the 6 months we were advisory board members, so it's not all bad! I hope those funds can help GNOME go from strength to strength. Dear Andrew, Did the Limo foundation have any specific expectation? I know that a few of us are definitely into mobile and would like to see GNOME more successful on this front. You're also well aware that most of us are volunteers or paid developers to work on specific tasks. Sometimes clarifying what one expects can wake up hopes and motivations among us (and our employers). Maybe we could work toward some specific goals in the coming 12 months, which could make the Limo foundation reconsider its involvement with the GNOME project. I'm saying that because we are currently trying to get feedback on how to give more satisfaction to organizations using GNOME technologies and getting responses is not always simple. This is of course one of the ideas to explore, we could also try to organize hackfests focused on mobile topics/development. Hackfests work very well with GNOME developers and yeld both interest, relevant crowd and great results. As a side note we're organization a conference in Bangalore[1] (together with a hackfest) for the GNOME 3.0 release. Bangalore is one of the biggest software development of the world and maybe we could try to run a mobile session as well. I believe that with clear objectives we can get both the developers and the local community more involved in the mobile side of GNOME and kick start some of the exciting things the Limo foundation was expecting. I am definitely up to lead the effort (assisted by some of the GNOME mobile gurus) if someone from your side is interested. Thanks a lot. Fred [1] http://www.gnome.asia - March 28 - April 3 ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
SFC, GNOME Foundation (WAS Re: Meeting Minutes Published - February 1st, 2011)
Thanks, Brian, for the additional detail. On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 2:29 PM, Brian Cameron brian.came...@oracle.comwrote: * Orca / Software Freedom Conservancy o Discussions underway. The SFC is working to determine if it is possible for GNOME projects to join the SFC. o ACTION: Bastien will email Joanie about options about whether it makes sense for orca to consider being a FreeDesktop project. What would be the advantage for GNOME projects to join the SFC? I thought the GNOME Foundation provided all the services that SFC does. (I'm not opposed to the idea, just would like to understand why the projects want to.) I think their website explains the benefits: http://sfconservancy.org/overview/ http://sfconservancy.org/members/services/ http://sfconservancy.org/members/apply/ The main benefits seem to be that they will help your project take care of finances/fundraising, and they also provide some protection against liabilities. The above website provides more details. So far, we have just had some discussions with the folks at Conservancy about whether it makes sense for GNOME projects to be a part of Conservancy. That said, it is not yet clear if the Conservancy will accept GNOME projects. We are waiting to find out from them if it is even an option. I believe that the orca project is interested in using Conservancy to accept donations targeting the orca project. There has been some discussion amongst the board about whether it might make sense to allow people to make GNOME a11y donations via Friends of GNOME or otherwise handle this within The GNOME community. However, some people (e.g. the marketing team) has concerns that if we open the door to allowing specific GNOME subgroups or projects to receive earmarked funds that this would or could spiral out of control, or make FoG too complicated. I think we should be willing to do for GNOME projects what the SFC does for their projects. The money issue is probably a tracking issue more than anything else. We could mange that by limiting the number of projects. We could put criteria around what it means to be a project to ensure that it's a long lasting and well managed entity before we agreed to handle its finances. I know the SFC has a process for that. We already manage funds for several projects, including a11y. We could add a few things to make the process easier. Ideas (not necessarily good ones at this point) include creating a private wiki page for each project with accounting of their money so everyone is on the same page, creating a more public version of gnucash file, finding a private place we can check the gnucash file in so it doesn't have to be forwarded around, etc. But, even if we supported receiving a11y funds via some GNOME Foundation mechanism, I think Joanie is still interested in having orca join the Conservancy if possible since she has indicated that she is very interested in the liability protection that they offer. There has been some discussion about whether The GNOME Foundation could provide similar protections, but I believe that their liability protection is possible because of the way their organization is structured. For example, they require that all project funds be managed centrally by them. I am not sure it would be practical or possible for The GNOME Foundation to require this of all GNOME modules. Would we have to do it for all GNOME modules or just the projects that had asked us to hold their money for them? Stormy ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: SFC, GNOME Foundation (WAS Re: Meeting Minutes Published - February 1st, 2011)
Le vendredi 18 février 2011, à 10:24 -0700, Stormy Peters a écrit : I think we should be willing to do for GNOME projects what the SFC does for their projects. Big +1. That's one of the goals of the Foundation, imho; and as Stormy points out, we already do that for some projects. 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: Meeting Minutes Published - February 1st, 2011
On Thu, 2011-02-17 at 08:50 -0600, Andrew Savory wrote: Hi, On 16 Feb 2011, at 22:09, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 2:02 PM, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote: LiMo uses GNOME technology. They continue to support the foundation's activities on a case-by-case basis, but their executive director did not consider that the advisory board position was giving the foundation value for money. We have been informing their advisory board representatives of the great stuff we have been doing around hackfests, training programmes, GNOME 3 plans, support for GTK+ on mobile, etc. but Mr. Gillis was not convinced that the foundation was sufficiently focussed on mobile to make the $20K a year worth paying. Obviously, I disagree with him. I know it's a hard time for companies, but, IMHO, from the marketing side it gives the impression that LiMo is an insignificant player in the mobile arena if they don't have the money that other organizations with GNOME products/services have. LiMo needs visibility about their technology approach, and a seat in the Foundation Board really helps. Apart from that, if LiMo wants better GNOME mobile technologies, they need to lead this action and support developers for adding the features they miss and working upstream is the more intelligent action, of course, IMHO. Working this way LiMo could benefit of contributions from the community. Anyway, thanks LiMo for being part of the Advisory Board for some months, and I hope they will show their support to GNOME in any other way. Cheers, -- Juanjo Marin ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Meeting Minutes Published - February 1st, 2011
On Feb 17, 2011, at 6:50 AM, Andrew Savory wrote: By chance is the desktop environment for the Motorola Atrix laptop accessory based on LiMo? The desktop seems to have a strong resemblance to a GNOME desktop. It may be GNOME, but it's not LiMo that I'm aware of. Whatever it's based on, it's not LiMo. Motorola hasn't been active in the LiMo Foundation in probably two years now. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: SFC, GNOME Foundation (WAS Re: Meeting Minutes Published - February 1st, 2011)
Hi, Vincent Untz wrote: Le vendredi 18 février 2011, à 10:24 -0700, Stormy Peters a écrit : I think we should be willing to do for GNOME projects what the SFC does for their projects. Big +1. That's one of the goals of the Foundation, imho; and as Stormy points out, we already do that for some projects. ...including some projects which are not GNOME projects, like GIMP the Libre Graphics Meeting. I concur with the very wise Stormy Vincent. The foundation should be providing services like this to our projects. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Meeting Minutes Published - February 1st, 2011
Hi, Lefty wrote: On Feb 17, 2011, at 6:50 AM, Andrew Savory wrote: By chance is the desktop environment for the Motorola Atrix laptop accessory based on LiMo? The desktop seems to have a strong resemblance to a GNOME desktop. It may be GNOME, but it's not LiMo that I'm aware of. Whatever it's based on, it's not LiMo. Motorola hasn't been active in the LiMo Foundation in probably two years now. Looks like Android to me, if it's the same Atrix Google shows me. Which is in line with Motorola's public strategy. But what I found doesn't look like a laptop. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
