Re: Looking for community managers or enthusiasts!
Hi, On 11/14/2012 01:07 AM, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: I'm looking for some charismatic, happy GNOME folks who can help engage with our community. We've had a bad run of late with a lot of folks getting the wrong idea of what we're trying to do. I'm looking for some talented folks who can help us engage with the press, on blogs, on mailing lists and explain our vision. Send me some email, I want to hear from you! While I don't quite like the title community managers, I appreciate the role and the sentiment. Would love to see people working inside and outside the GNOME community to do better at communicating our goals, vision, and work. I would hope that this doesn't end up being sit on Google+, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and send happy messages to anyone complaining about GNOME. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary, Lyon, France Email: dne...@gnome.org Jabber: nea...@gmail.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Looking for community managers or enthusiasts!
Hey Sri, On Tue, 2012-11-13 at 16:07 -0800, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: I'm looking for some charismatic, happy GNOME folks who can help engage with our community. We've had a bad run of late with a lot of folks getting the wrong idea of what we're trying to do. Which is? I'm looking for some talented folks who can help us engage with the press, on blogs, on mailing lists and explain our vision. I hope it's slightly better handled than Emily last 2 posts, which managed to say that the removal of fallback was badly communicated (!) without details of what was done wrong, and used a blog post by a troll to make false assertions about GTK+ 3.x's API stability. You might want to vouch for your community managers before you let them loose... ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Looking for community managers or enthusiasts!
On 11/14/2012 11:38 AM, Bastien Nocera wrote: On Tue, 2012-11-13 at 16:07 -0800, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: I'm looking for some talented folks who can help us engage with the press, on blogs, on mailing lists and explain our vision. I hope it's slightly better handled than Emily last 2 posts, which managed to say that the removal of fallback was badly communicated (!) without details of what was done wrong, and used a blog post by a troll to make false assertions about GTK+ 3.x's API stability. You might want to vouch for your community managers before you let them loose... Really? Your solution to we have a PR problem is criticise the only people trying to address that problem by publicly saying they suck at it? Sheesh. Dave. -- Dave Neary, Lyon, France Email: dne...@gnome.org Jabber: nea...@gmail.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Looking for community managers or enthusiasts!
On Wed, 2012-11-14 at 11:50 +0100, Dave Neary wrote: On 11/14/2012 11:38 AM, Bastien Nocera wrote: On Tue, 2012-11-13 at 16:07 -0800, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: I'm looking for some talented folks who can help us engage with the press, on blogs, on mailing lists and explain our vision. I hope it's slightly better handled than Emily last 2 posts, which managed to say that the removal of fallback was badly communicated (!) without details of what was done wrong, and used a blog post by a troll to make false assertions about GTK+ 3.x's API stability. You might want to vouch for your community managers before you let them loose... Really? Your solution to we have a PR problem is criticise the only people trying to address that problem by publicly saying they suck at it? Telling X you'll teach them how to communicate with Y and then creating a problem with X because of the way you communicated with Y. Tell me how exactly I should have brought this up privately. We have very few private mailing-lists in GNOME, and it wasn't discussed on any of those I would be on [1]. Sheesh. Yeah, me too. [1]: Not a cabal, it's Board-related lists. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Looking for community managers or enthusiasts!
Hi, On 11/14/2012 01:52 PM, Bastien Nocera wrote: Telling X you'll teach them how to communicate with Y and then creating a problem with X because of the way you communicated with Y. I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at here. What are X and Y? Tell me how exactly I should have brought this up privately. We have very few private mailing-lists in GNOME, and it wasn't discussed on any of those I would be on [1]. Maybe private email? Maybe bringing it up in a different way? Sri's initial email didn't mention Emily at all - were you just waiting for an opportunity to bring up your discontent? Dave. -- Dave Neary, Lyon, France Email: dne...@gnome.org Jabber: nea...@gmail.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Looking for community managers or enthusiasts!
On Wed, 2012-11-14 at 13:59 +0100, Dave Neary wrote: Hi, On 11/14/2012 01:52 PM, Bastien Nocera wrote: Telling X you'll teach them how to communicate with Y and then creating a problem with X because of the way you communicated with Y. I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at here. What are X and Y? Developers and the community respectively. Tell me how exactly I should have brought this up privately. We have very few private mailing-lists in GNOME, and it wasn't discussed on any of those I would be on [1]. Maybe private email? Maybe bringing it up in a different way? Sri's initial email didn't mention Emily at all - were you just waiting for an opportunity to bring up your discontent? There's so many things wrong with the above paragraph. - Assume people mean well. Well, seems that I'm not granted the benefit of the doubt. - Sri's initial email made me think that it was an initiative by the marketing team, which Emily is a part of. It seems reasonable to think that she would be involved in this at one point or another. - And discontent. Well, I think that I have reasonable doubts to think that those community managers wouldn't be able to carry the message of developers truthfully if said developers aren't being talked to. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Looking for community managers or enthusiasts!
On Wed, 2012-11-14 at 11:38 +0100, Bastien Nocera wrote: On Tue, 2012-11-13 at 16:07 -0800, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: I'm looking for some charismatic, happy GNOME folks who can help engage with our community. This is a good idea, along with building up resources describing goals. I hope it's slightly better handled than Emily last 2 posts, Communication will need to be both ways - outward from developers and people heavily involved in gnome, and back inwards from the outside. It's usually more important to give a clear and correct message (and to be seen to do so) than to quick to respond. If speed is important, a response on a blog (say) saying, we are aware of these comments and will respond in more detail later can be enough at times. Liam -- Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/ Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/ Ankh: irc.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org freenode/#xml ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Looking for community managers or enthusiasts!
I could go with community enthusiasts if that makes it better. But their stated role is to help communicate to the general public what are goals and visions are, but also take relevant feedback to the community. To some extent, yes it does involve sitting on social networks, or popular blogs and magazines. But more importantly, the idea is to be visible. It doesn't necessarily mean happy messages. We aren't going to apologize for where we are headed. Not everyone can adapt or change to what we want. But we do want to address issues or gaps that maybe we have not taken into account. sri On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 1:03 AM, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote: Hi, On 11/14/2012 01:07 AM, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: I'm looking for some charismatic, happy GNOME folks who can help engage with our community. We've had a bad run of late with a lot of folks getting the wrong idea of what we're trying to do. I'm looking for some talented folks who can help us engage with the press, on blogs, on mailing lists and explain our vision. Send me some email, I want to hear from you! While I don't quite like the title community managers, I appreciate the role and the sentiment. Would love to see people working inside and outside the GNOME community to do better at communicating our goals, vision, and work. I would hope that this doesn't end up being sit on Google+, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and send happy messages to anyone complaining about GNOME. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary, Lyon, France Email: dne...@gnome.org Jabber: nea...@gmail.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Looking for community managers or enthusiasts!
The wrong idea of course is that people think we're just removing features for no apparent reason even though for instance fallback mode was never guarantee. We need to correct those misconceptions. Having a good relationship with the general public is more important now than it was in the past thanks to social media. For example, with Ubuntu (who holds the largest share of users right now), GNOME is no longer the default and so it takes a conscious effort to change to GNOME. If they do the research, I don't want them to see a pile of ridiculous blog postings that aren't challenged by calm and simple rhetoric. Regarding, Emily's post. You need to look at the overall message there. Not everyone is on the same page, and the fact that we are having this discussion with other people who clearly have the same concerns is indicative that we do have a problem. If you think there is no problem, we an drop this whole thing. Community enthusiasts won't go out there using the 'royal we' without some training. This stuff isn't easy, and it is important that our volunteers understand how to engage in both the GNOME community and the community at large. They will need training on GNOME's vision and purpose. That means, release team, designers, and relevant parties will need to help these volunteers in understanding it before going out there and speaking in our name. I'm having Karen be in charge of us. The end goal is to reduce the signal to noise ratio and get real feedback without hyperbole and let developers and designers be able to produce awesome stuff without feeling buried in undue negativity. The only thing I ask in return is that you consider the feedback that is being provided to you. If the feedback is negative, help us engage with the community with the right approach. If the feedback is positive, then I hope you will take that as encourage and motivation to keep doing it. sri On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 2:38 AM, Bastien Nocera had...@hadess.net wrote: Hey Sri, On Tue, 2012-11-13 at 16:07 -0800, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: I'm looking for some charismatic, happy GNOME folks who can help engage with our community. We've had a bad run of late with a lot of folks getting the wrong idea of what we're trying to do. Which is? I'm looking for some talented folks who can help us engage with the press, on blogs, on mailing lists and explain our vision. I hope it's slightly better handled than Emily last 2 posts, which managed to say that the removal of fallback was badly communicated (!) without details of what was done wrong, and used a blog post by a troll to make false assertions about GTK+ 3.x's API stability. You might want to vouch for your community managers before you let them loose... ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Looking for community managers or enthusiasts!
Hi, On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 1:08 PM, Sriram Ramkrishna s...@ramkrishna.mewrote: The wrong idea of course is that people think we're just removing features for no apparent reason even though for instance fallback mode was never guarantee. We need to correct those misconceptions. Having a good relationship with the general public is more important now than it was in the past thanks to social media. For example, with Ubuntu (who holds the largest share of users right now), GNOME is no longer the default and so it takes a conscious effort to change to GNOME. If they do the research, I don't want them to see a pile of ridiculous blog postings that aren't challenged by calm and simple rhetoric. Regarding, Emily's post. You need to look at the overall message there. Not everyone is on the same page, and the fact that we are having this discussion with other people who clearly have the same concerns is indicative that we do have a problem. If you think there is no problem, we an drop this whole thing. Community enthusiasts won't go out there using the 'royal we' without some training. This stuff isn't easy, and it is important that our volunteers understand how to engage in both the GNOME community and the community at large. They will need training on GNOME's vision and purpose. That means, release team, designers, and relevant parties will need to help these volunteers in understanding it before going out there and speaking in our name. I'm having Karen be in charge of us. I'd like to request that Karen also provide the members of the board with the information she shares with the volunteers. It's demoralizing to see members of the board arguing about GNOME's vision and purpose. If we are going to present a positive image of ourselves to the public, I think we need to at least have the board members agreeing on the basic message. I hope this doesn't offend anyone; I'm just saying this because, as a member of the foundation, I would really appreciate it if the board members could present a united front. Meg Ford The end goal is to reduce the signal to noise ratio and get real feedback without hyperbole and let developers and designers be able to produce awesome stuff without feeling buried in undue negativity. The only thing I ask in return is that you consider the feedback that is being provided to you. If the feedback is negative, help us engage with the community with the right approach. If the feedback is positive, then I hope you will take that as encourage and motivation to keep doing it. sri On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 2:38 AM, Bastien Nocera had...@hadess.net wrote: Hey Sri, On Tue, 2012-11-13 at 16:07 -0800, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: I'm looking for some charismatic, happy GNOME folks who can help engage with our community. We've had a bad run of late with a lot of folks getting the wrong idea of what we're trying to do. Which is? I'm looking for some talented folks who can help us engage with the press, on blogs, on mailing lists and explain our vision. I hope it's slightly better handled than Emily last 2 posts, which managed to say that the removal of fallback was badly communicated (!) without details of what was done wrong, and used a blog post by a troll to make false assertions about GTK+ 3.x's API stability. You might want to vouch for your community managers before you let them loose... ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Looking for community managers or enthusiasts!
On Wed, November 14, 2012 2:28 pm, meg ford wrote: Hi, On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 1:08 PM, Sriram Ramkrishna s...@ramkrishna.mewrote: The wrong idea of course is that people think we're just removing features for no apparent reason even though for instance fallback mode was never guarantee. We need to correct those misconceptions. Having a good relationship with the general public is more important now than it was in the past thanks to social media. For example, with Ubuntu (who holds the largest share of users right now), GNOME is no longer the default and so it takes a conscious effort to change to GNOME. If they do the research, I don't want them to see a pile of ridiculous blog postings that aren't challenged by calm and simple rhetoric. Regarding, Emily's post. You need to look at the overall message there. Not everyone is on the same page, and the fact that we are having this discussion with other people who clearly have the same concerns is indicative that we do have a problem. If you think there is no problem, we an drop this whole thing. Community enthusiasts won't go out there using the 'royal we' without some training. This stuff isn't easy, and it is important that our volunteers understand how to engage in both the GNOME community and the community at large. They will need training on GNOME's vision and purpose. That means, release team, designers, and relevant parties will need to help these volunteers in understanding it before going out there and speaking in our name. I'm having Karen be in charge of us. I'd like to request that Karen also provide the members of the board with the information she shares with the volunteers. It's demoralizing to see members of the board arguing about GNOME's vision and purpose. If we are going to present a positive image of ourselves to the public, I think we need to at least have the board members agreeing on the basic message. I hope this doesn't offend anyone; I'm just saying this because, as a member of the foundation, I would really appreciate it if the board members could present a united front. Great point, Meg. I think the board should definitely be involved in this process, as they are our elected representatives. I of course commit to doing everything I can to help make that happen. In any event, I agree with you that a coordinated basic message (with flexibility for individual perspectives) should be of the utmost importance. I'm glad we're undertaking this effort - I hope it will help drive us to be more coordinated all around. karen Meg Ford The end goal is to reduce the signal to noise ratio and get real feedback without hyperbole and let developers and designers be able to produce awesome stuff without feeling buried in undue negativity. The only thing I ask in return is that you consider the feedback that is being provided to you. If the feedback is negative, help us engage with the community with the right approach. If the feedback is positive, then I hope you will take that as encourage and motivation to keep doing it. sri On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 2:38 AM, Bastien Nocera had...@hadess.net wrote: Hey Sri, On Tue, 2012-11-13 at 16:07 -0800, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: I'm looking for some charismatic, happy GNOME folks who can help engage with our community. We've had a bad run of late with a lot of folks getting the wrong idea of what we're trying to do. Which is? I'm looking for some talented folks who can help us engage with the press, on blogs, on mailing lists and explain our vision. I hope it's slightly better handled than Emily last 2 posts, which managed to say that the removal of fallback was badly communicated (!) without details of what was done wrong, and used a blog post by a troll to make false assertions about GTK+ 3.x's API stability. You might want to vouch for your community managers before you let them loose... ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Looking for community managers or enthusiasts!
On Wed, 2012-11-14 at 11:50 +0100, Dave Neary wrote: Sheesh. Seems an over-reaction, Dave. We've had some abysmal press lately, and I agree with Bastien; a number of the things generating headlines have little to do with facts or with what people who are in GNOME are actually doing. But we still look bad all the same. I'm not sure how creating a community manager position is going to change that. Ubuntu has a community manager. The job description seems to be slavishly saying how great everything is. Admittedly, that *is* PR, but I ended up unsubscribing/unfollowing/uncircling him from all my networks because the banging-the-drum was incessant. So how can we communicate effectively without making it seem we're being slavish? AfC Sydney ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME now
Lets Call all questions as: [1] Where’s the product going? [2] What problem are we trying to solve? [3] How are we going to do that? Then lets answer as my ones: [1] Merge Mobility user interface with the desktop. Making Easy and Productivity to your work and life style. Create a productive platform for your creativity. [2] Keep you getting things done, productive and in contact with your live. Empower creativity people to produce solutions. [3] Know our users, take care about details, deep user interface testing, empower our user interface to getting things done through easy to use jet productive user interface Note. First part of all sentences points to user experience, while the last points to creative people (developers, designers, QAers) 2012/11/14 Seif Lotfy s...@lotfy.com Quoting Stormy Peters comment on a recent blog post concerning GNOME: We haven’t shared our vision or our roadmap for the future. Where’s the product going? What problem are we trying to solve? How are we going to do that? Good question. As a member of the board of directors I can't really answer this question at the moment either, without having to organize my thoughts. So many different point of views and ideas in the community that are not well discussed. The first thing that pops up in my head is GNOME OS. But then I am kinda lost. Maybe this is something we need to discuss here on the mailing list. Lets try to answer those 3 questions. What about one sentence per question for a start? I am avoiding a blog post since I am not sure its the best way to reach most of our contributors. Cheers Seif ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list -- Trabajar, la mejor arma para tu superación de grano en grano, se hace la arena (R) (en trámite, pero para los cuates: LIBRE) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Looking for community managers or enthusiasts!
On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 1:46 PM, Andrew Cowie and...@operationaldynamics.com wrote: On Wed, 2012-11-14 at 11:50 +0100, Dave Neary wrote: Sheesh. Seems an over-reaction, Dave. We've had some abysmal press lately, and I agree with Bastien; a number of the things generating headlines have little to do with facts or with what people who are in GNOME are actually doing. But we still look bad all the same. This is precisely why you want someone to just engage and state the facts. I'm not sure how creating a community manager position is going to change that. Ubuntu has a community manager. The job description seems to be slavishly saying how great everything is. Admittedly, that *is* PR, but I ended up unsubscribing/unfollowing/uncircling him from all my networks because the banging-the-drum was incessant. I'm not really trying to do PR here. I'm trying to address certain misconceptions that come about constantly every time a GNOME is brought up in a post. There aren't enough positive reactions from users to counterbalance. As I said, I've been doing this since 3.0, engaging members of our community from Linus on down to some random poster on G+. When you do engage you do create a positive outcome. Even if they don't agree with you in the end and you part ways they will leave at least respectful. Tha'ts good enough for me. The idea here is not to be GNOME rah rah rah. If you don't agree with where it is going, then that's fine. But I won't stand to hear the standard FUD about removing features or that GNOME developers are taking over and doing things over the community. It's all a bunch of crap. You have to address it before it becomes common wisdom. So how can we communicate effectively without making it seem we're being slavish? It's simple, you trust that the path you're going on is the right one and then explain, sometime ad nauseum what we're trying to do. Ask them to give it a chance. If you still don't like it then ask them what they didn't like about it. If you have a large number of people saying the same thing then maybe there is something we need to look at. If it is because it is some kind of ego trip or whatever then I'll ignore it. I've done this enough times to figure out what is what. sri AfC Sydney ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Looking for community managers or enthusiasts!
On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 5:37 PM, Debarshi Ray rishi...@lostca.se wrote: Maybe private email? Maybe bringing it up in a different way? Sri's initial email didn't mention Emily at all - were you just waiting for an opportunity to bring up your discontent? The point still remains that people posting on Planet GNOME should be more informed about what they write. Especially when they are writing about a sensitive topic and their words can be interpreted by outsiders as coming from a position of authority. I take some responsibility for the post. Emily ran it by me before posting it and I thought it was fine. She did attempt to get feedback before posting. Maybe I failed her there. There was nothing more damaging than Company's post which is still quoted even today. Benjamin even today said that nobody refuted his staring at the Abyss post. So his Benjamin's post true? Because people are still talking about it and referencing it. It was gift that continues to keep on giving. What Benjamin posted was totally fine by me, he has a right to air his concerns in public. It is a public project after all. I will argue the same for Emily. All most people will get out of Emily's post is that communication is important. Maybe it was a bit inartful, but I think we should forgive that. I can understand that their intentions are noble, but the last time someone took their chances we ended up with: http://en.wikipedia.orgkeeps/wiki/GNOME#cite_note-6http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME#cite_note-6 Again, nobody refuted it. So is it true? Did we have a legion of developers saying otherwise? How many posts did we have refuting that? Two or three? Biting the hand that feeds you [1] is not the answer to effective communication. Is communications both internally and externally not important? sri Happy hacking, Debarshi [1] http://todoentiempo.wordpress.com/2012/11/13/open-communication/#comment-574 -- There are two hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things and off-by-one errors. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME now
On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 8:10 AM, Seif Lotfy s...@lotfy.com wrote: Quoting Stormy Peters comment on a recent blog post concerning GNOME: We haven’t shared our vision or our roadmap for the future. Where’s the product going? What problem are we trying to solve? How are we going to do that? Good question. As a member of the board of directors I can't really answer this question at the moment either, without having to organize my thoughts. So many different point of views and ideas in the community that are not well discussed. The first thing that pops up in my head is GNOME OS. But then I am kinda lost. Maybe this is something we need to discuss here on the mailing list. Lets try to answer those 3 questions. What about one sentence per question for a start? I am avoiding a blog post since I am not sure its the best way to reach most of our contributors. For me, it's our byline right? A distraction free desktop. Our designs are all based on being able to write a desktop that allows us to get our work done, multi-task with whatever interruptions that we have in our daily life. Where are we going? Are you talking about development or user land? What do other people think? sri Cheers Seif ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME now
I think one of the most significant challenges for any free desktop that is trying to reach the average user is how to deal with the fact that most people like using computers, tablets, smartphones, etc. to interact with non-free multimedia. Not just viewing movies and listening to music, but also creating content in increasingly collaborative ways. Tools that use non-free technologies like Skype or Vonage are not just popular, but a requirement for many people who pay for such services. How many average people would purchase a device that did not support such tools? Proprietary companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft coordinate sophisticated agreements with media companies and often go along with nasty DRM agreements required by those who own the rights to popular media. Even some popular artists, like The Beatles, are very controlling about who can access the media they control. If you avoid DRM, you probably have to avoid such popular artists - including pretty much anything released on a DVD. In certain markets, not being able to access non-free media may not be a problem. The device the FedEx employee uses to collect signatures or a Point-of-Sale system might be good examples of devices that do not need much media support. Such markets might be an ideal focus for a free desktop environment that, perhaps naturally, lacks strong DRM support. But, if the average user is the target, how does GNOME plan to provide access to non-free multimedia that the average user tends to access and create? Is the community working to make GNOME attractive to some big company that can negotiate the expensive licenses needed to provide access? Or is GNOME focusing on users who do not have an interest in using, accessing or creating non-free media? Is GNOME just waiting until relevant patents expire and these issue hopefully just go away? I always thought that GNOME more appealed to hacker types because hackers tend to be more agreeable to figuring out how to work in a DRM-free environment. For example, a hacker would likely be more willing to rip their audio in OGG format. But this advanced UNIX-hacker type does not seem to be the primary user GNOME is focusing on anymore. Brian On 11/14/12 11:08 PM, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 8:10 AM, Seif Lotfy s...@lotfy.com mailto:s...@lotfy.com wrote: Quoting Stormy Peters comment on a recent blog post concerning GNOME: We haven’t shared our vision or our roadmap for the future. Where’s the product going? What problem are we trying to solve? How are we going to do that? Good question. As a member of the board of directors I can't really answer this question at the moment either, without having to organize my thoughts. So many different point of views and ideas in the community that are not well discussed. The first thing that pops up in my head is GNOME OS. But then I am kinda lost. Maybe this is something we need to discuss here on the mailing list. Lets try to answer those 3 questions. What about one sentence per question for a start? I am avoiding a blog post since I am not sure its the best way to reach most of our contributors. For me, it's our byline right? A distraction free desktop. Our designs are all based on being able to write a desktop that allows us to get our work done, multi-task with whatever interruptions that we have in our daily life. Where are we going? Are you talking about development or user land? What do other people think? sri Cheers Seif ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org mailto:foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list