Re: Questions for candidates
On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 07:53:42AM -0400, Richard Stallman wrote: > I'd like to ask the candidates, how do you think GNOME should > contribute more to the advance of free software and users' freedom in > general (in addition to being useful free software). GNOME does a great deal to make Free Software more usable, and as a result, it's the "face" of Free Software to many GNU/Linux users. We'd have *far* fewer Free Software users without desktop environments like GNOME. This puts us in the interesting position of maintaining a desktop environment for which one of the primary user groups consists of novice computer users. We need to take those users into account: the new users trying out GNOME, and the satisfied-but-not-blindly-loyal users already using GNOME. So, first and foremost, GNOME needs to continue maintaining not just high quality and usability, but *consistency* as well. Many people who stick to proprietary environments do so because they're used to those environments, and sudden inconsistency can send them running in revolt (sometimes to our benefit). The maintainers of those proprietary environments are discovering that their "loyal" user base can be as much an albatross as an asset. But that same issue can apply to us as well: we must weigh the value of new UI experiments against the cost of making any change at all. Experienced users (https://xkcd.com/627/) have little problem saying "oh, the menu is over here now", and perhaps hopping on IRC or a mailing list to gripe if they feel strongly enough about it; even if they're initially puzzled a bit, they're confident enough to poke at it. Novice users presented with the same UI change may seek help, worry that they've broken something, or seek out another device. Even a well-meaning UI change that makes things better for many users still has a cost. Second, for all the flak GNOME 3 gets sometimes about being a UI that looks like it'd be more at home on a tablet (note: not a sentiment I share), where are the GNOME tablets and convertible/detachable systems? Where is our answer to the users who have partly or entirely given up traditional computers in favor of an only-partly-Free Android device, or a completely proprietary iOS device? Where is our auto-updating appliance to browse/watch/read/play? There are a few nods to touchscreen usability in GNOME, and a few people have demonstrated GNOME on a tablet, but an on-screen keyboard and finger-sized UI elements does not make a sufficiently usable tablet UI. Developers might balk at the idea of a device like that, and certainly most would not want to write code on such a device. But we often talk of making software that Just Works, and many people want the same from a complete hardware/software stack. It's not up to us to tell people what they want and don't want; it's up to us to make sure that whatever they want, it's available in Free Software, and not exclusive to the proprietary world. We could learn some things from Android, or from Chromium OS. That *doesn't* mean I want to see an "app" ecosystem on GNOME, especially not one that encourages proprietary applications; that's one "innovation" we could do without. However, just as early versions of GNOME and KDE took some inspiration from Windows, and later versions of GNOME took some inspiration from OS X (and just as some of those environments have taken inspiration from GNU/Linux), these days we would do well to understand what people seek out from tablets and Chromebooks, and figure out ways to provide those features while retaining and promoting the values of Free Software. Because if we spend our time only fighting against proprietary desktops and laptops, we're fighting on the wrong front; we may wake up to find that many of those desktops and laptops have vanished, in favor of more usable proprietary appliance-like devices rather than in favor of Free Software. - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question on community to the candidates.
On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 09:16:02PM -0700, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: > It is my impression (and I state impression because I am providing no > data) that GNOME has more reliance on people paid to work on GNOME > than community. I do not question the passion and dedication to those > who are paid on GNOME, I know that they would do it as a community > even if they were not paid. > > If you agree with my impression, what actions do you think would help > increase participation in GNOME? Participation in the core parts of > GNOME is not trivial, and requires an enormous amount of time and > dedication to get to become familiar with the huge codebase that we > have, as well as gain the trust of the maintainer of the module you > are interested in. > > If you disagree with my impression, what makes you believe that it is > not the case? How would you change my mind? I did not bring any data > points, so you don't have to either. I'm more interested in giving > you a biased opinion and I want to know how you would react to it. I do agree with your impression, though I don't necessarily consider that a bug. I think it's a feature that many people get paid to work on GNOME. However, I do think one of the incredible strengths of Free Software is that anyone can contribute, regardless of who they work for. And I think it's critical that GNOME retain that property. A project that has an extensive set of paid contributors but alienates its community contributors can rot from the root upward without fresh minds and viewpoints joining in. (If nothing else, where does one hire new paid contributors *from* if not the comunity?) I do not believe GNOME systematically suffers from that problem, but I have seen signs of it here and there. The biggest thing I would suggest that GNOME do: ensure that development, planning, and design of *all* GNOME projects occurs in the open. It's not enough to push commits to a public repository if taking part in a project requires being part of the right private meeting. Projects considered part of GNOME should ensure that the community has visibility into where those projects are going, and an opportunity to influence that direction. That doesn't mean projects need to support incessant bikeshedding, nor does it mean projects must follow a Linux-kernel-style "wherever the contributions may lead us" evolutionary policy, but whatever vision a project follows should be transparent to all prospective contributors. If one or more companies are driving the development of a project and are not interested in participating in an open development process, they can host their periodic-code-drop project on their own site and not call it part of GNOME. Related to that, any project considered part of GNOME is ultimately a collaborative part of the GNOME community, and not the personal fiefdom of an individual maintainer. The primary job of a maintainer is to apply good taste, which *does* mean saying "no" quite often, but there should always be a reason, and it should never be "because we're working on something behind the scenes that we can't tell you about or let you work on, go away". I'm not going to point fingers at any particular project here, but I have heard from many people who have become frustrated trying to contribute to nominally GNOME projects due to problems like those. - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for candidates
Hi Richard, Thanks for your question. I'd like to ask the candidates, how do you think GNOME should > contribute more to the advance of free software and users' freedom in > general (in addition to being useful free software). > Too many disabled people still don’t have the luxury of being able to choose useful free software, so I feel quite strongly that GNOME’s accessibility must always strive to provide the most comprehensive free alternative to propriety desktops with features that disabled and non-disabled users alike can all benefit from. I could go on about this but I am getting the vibe this is a snappy thread, so I’ll leave it there for now... ;-) Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for candidates
Hi Richard, On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 4:53 AM, Richard Stallman wrote: > I'd like to ask the candidates, how do you think GNOME should > contribute more to the advance of free software and users' freedom in > general (in addition to being useful free software). > One way that GNOME contributes to the advance of free software is by keeping up with the evolution of hardware platforms; the personal computing hardware that people will buy in the next 10 years is likely going to be increasingly different from what the current user base of GNOME has bought in the past 10 years. We need to ensure our software platform stays capable of delivering meaningful user experiences to all those people, so that the next generation of users will be able to rely on and transmit the same freedoms we have today. Cosimo ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates: transparency and accountability
Hi Fabiana, On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 3:39 AM, Fabiana Simões wrote: > How transparent the work of the Board should be to Foundation members? > What should be communicated and when? Do you think we have been transparent > enough in the last term? If not, how can we improve things and how high in > your priorities would be to do so? > I value transparency a lot, and I think the Board should be as transparent as it can - but not more. That is, I understand that some discussions need to happen first behind closed doors. For instance, when discussing a matter publicly might negatively impact the outcome for the Foundation (legal matters for instance), or when some dispute arises between Foundation members that wish to stay private. I think the board has been transparent enough in the last term, and I much appreciated the minutes being more timely than in the past. I share Allan's feeling that the activities of the Foundation would be naturally perceived as more transparent, among other things, if other teams were more often delegated tasks that are currently the sole responsibility of the Board members. > In terms of accountability, it's been unclear to me since joining the > Foundation how much different Board members contribute to the Board's goals > and tasks. Do you think the meeting notes provide enough visibility and > context to the work being done? By the end of a term, how can the > Foundation have a fair understanding of one's contributions to the Board? > I very much agree with this sentiment; the way information is presented today does not lend itself to that kind of visualization. I wouldn't suggest that a quantitative approach to e.g. tasks completed by a Board member during one term would be a fair assessment of all the work that particular person has done, but I can see how a different presentation of the Foundation activities, where tasks can be easily followed and information found in a single place, would be beneficial to making members feel more engaged. Moving off e-mail and towards publicly accessible tools like kanban boards, among others, is a direction worth exploring IMO. Cosimo ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question on community to the candidates.
Hi Sriram, On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 9:16 PM, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: > It is my impression (and I state impression because I am providing no > data) that GNOME has more reliance on people paid to work on GNOME > than community. I do not question the passion and dedication to those > who are paid on GNOME, I know that they would do it as a community > even if they were not paid. > > If you agree with my impression, what actions do you think would help > increase participation in GNOME? Participation in the core parts of > GNOME is not trivial, and requires an enormous amount of time and > dedication to get to become familiar with the huge codebase that we > have, as well as gain the trust of the maintainer of the module you > are interested in. > > If you disagree with my impression, what makes you believe that it is > not the case? How would you change my mind? I did not bring any data > points, so you don't have to either. I'm more interested in giving > you a biased opinion and I want to know how you would react to it. > I neither agree nor disagree with your impression :-) I think it's true that GNOME has more reliance on paid people in some areas, and the opposite in other areas: in particular, development and design of some specific core parts of the user experience (gnome-shell, gnome-control-center, nautilus among others) is mostly carried out by people paid for that job - but the GNOME community is much wider than that. In other words, I question the assumption that "increasing participation in GNOME" necessarily equals to increasing the number of non-paid people working on those few core modules; to some extent it's only natural that large, important features on those modules will be driven forward by those that are paid to do so, since they're those able to commit to getting them done by release time. A few more thoughts: - the initiatives and hackfests around Developer Experience go in the right direction of lowering the entry barrier to develop for our platform. I believe application development is a great way to attract new people to our community - a better one than core OS development in fact - and I will support efforts in that direction. - the "Every Detail Matters" initiative (and "Gnome Love" before then) has been very successful in bringing new contributors to some of the core areas of the OS. I think we as a community should do more of them and in a more systematic way, but they requires a lot of time and effort to set up. Cosimo ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question on community to the candidates.
On Mon, 2015-05-25 at 21:16 -0700, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: > It is my impression (and I state impression because I am providing no > data) that GNOME has more reliance on people paid to work on GNOME > than community. I do not question the passion and dedication to those > who are paid on GNOME, I know that they would do it as a community > even if they were not paid. I'll echo Alexandre's response. The reason we have so many paid contributors is because people get jobs as a result of their work as volunteers. This is a Good Thing(TM). I don't think we have a problem, but I do think we need to be aware of the situation to ensure we don't have a problem. We need to make sure that decisions aren't made around the water cooler, that things are communicated on mailing lists, and that we have a welcoming environment for new contributors. One of the best uses of the Foundation's funds, in my opinion, is paying for volunteer contributors to attend hackfests. Hackfests are more than just working sessions. They're where decisions are made and community is built. People should not be locked out of them just because they can't afford to attend. -- Shaun ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: Best use of Trademark Fundraiser money?
On Sun, 2015-05-24 at 19:23 +0200, Andreas Nilsson wrote: > Dear candidates. Thank you all for running! > > As part of the GNOME Trademark Fundraiser [1], the Foundation raised > $102 608 USD. > Since the trademark claims from the other part in the issue was > withdrawn, it was never taken to court and the money was never spent on > that. > What, in your mind, is the best use of these funds now? Kept as a War > Chest [2] or spent on something specific? We should allocate at least some of that money towards hiring a new Executive Director. An ED is expensive, easily the largest single line item in the budget. But a good ED will help us bring in more money, allowing us to run more campaigns and more hackfests. -- Shaun ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates: transparency and accountability
On Mon, 2015-05-25 at 12:39 +0200, Fabiana Simões wrote: > Hi everyone, > > I'd like to hear your thoughts on implementing transparency and > accountability on the Board. > > How transparent the work of the Board should be to Foundation members? > What should be communicated and when? Do you think we have been > transparent enough in the last term? If not, how can we improve things > and how high in your priorities would be to do so? > > In terms of accountability, it's been unclear to me since joining the > Foundation how much different Board members contribute to the Board's > goals and tasks. Do you think the meeting notes provide enough > visibility and context to the work being done? By the end of a term, > how can the Foundation have a fair understanding of one's > contributions to the Board? Having served on the board, I do think the board is transparent about its activities. The meeting minutes that get published have everything that the board is able to disclose. Sometimes there are things that can't be disclosed. As for accountability, I know in the past some people have asked for a list of who voted how on issues. But the board generally works toward consensus whenever possible, so dissenting votes aren't common. When a board member wishes to have his or her objection noted for the public, that shows up in the minutes. Now, I do think we could do a better job of making this information more digestible. Keeping up with meeting minutes isn't fun. Minutes are full of mundane activities, and it's hard to get the story in your head if you don't read them all and pay close attention. A long time ago, we used to publish reports. We had an annual report and quarterly reports. The reports had synopses from various teams in GNOME, as well as from the board. They were a lot more fun to read than minutes and made it easier to see what's happening at a glance. Getting back to doing reports would be nice, but they are a lot of work. -- Shaun ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: code of conduct question for Board candidates
- Original Message - > From: "Josh Triplett" > To: "Marina Zhurakhinskaya" > Cc: "foundation-list" > Sent: Saturday, May 23, 2015 1:06:49 PM > Subject: Re: code of conduct question for Board candidates > > On Sat, May 23, 2015 at 11:41:06AM -0400, Marina Zhurakhinskaya wrote: > > Thanks to all the candidates for stepping up to run for the board and > > for all the work you already do for the Foundation! > > > > Many free software organizations have adopted codes of conduct for > > their events [1] and some for their communities [2]. Detailed codes of > > conduct with specific enforcement guidelines signal to newcomers that > > the community has high standards of behavior. They give participants > > who observe or are subject to inappropriate behavior something to > > point to that shows that such behavior is outside of what is expected > > and guidelines on how to proceed in getting it addressed. > > > > What do you think about adopting a detailed code of conduct, similar > > to the one used for GUADEC 2014 [3], for all GNOME events and creating > > a similarly detailed code of conduct for the GNOME community? > > I'm entirely in favor of an improved code of conduct, both for events > and in general. And thank you for raising this issue. > > Some searching turned up https://wiki.gnome.org/Foundation/CodeOfConduct > , but that's definitely insufficient. (It's a nice set of sentiments, > but not a functional code of conduct.) By contrast, the GUADEC 2014 > code of conduct you linked to sets the higher standard I would expect, > and that I've come to expect from other conferences as well. I'm in > favor of improving the general code of conduct to the same standard. > > Would you consider putting forth a concrete proposal along those lines, > taking into account the models and requirements for an effective code of > conduct? Yes, I'd be interested in working on a proposal for an events and community codes of conduct. Thanks to the candidates who shared their thoughts on this so far! Marina > In the process, I'd also suggest extending the "Applies to" > for the code of conduct to include not just lists, bugzilla, and > specific individuals, but also conferences (such as GUADEC), IRC and > other communication, and members of the Foundation and the Board. > > - Josh Triplett > ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question on community to the candidates.
Hi Sri, Thanks for your questions! It is my impression (and I state impression because I am providing no > data) that GNOME has more reliance on people paid to work on GNOME > than community. I do not question the passion and dedication to those > who are paid on GNOME, I know that they would do it as a community > even if they were not paid. > Anyone who seriously expects volunteers to put just as much time and dedication into working on GNOME as full time paid employees might be able to do, probably needs to check their privilege... Most people are forced to pay for stuff (e.g. food and rent) by this cruel world, so we probably ought to try and avoid expecting volunteers to contribute to GNOME as though it were a full or (dare I say it) even a part time job, given that many people simply may really want to, but simply not be able to financially afford to do that. A contributor's socio-economic status ought not indirectly exclude them from being valued by the community, in my view. If you agree with my impression, what actions do you think would help > increase participation in GNOME? I think making a concerted effort to explore a wider variety of income sources with a view to increasing our income significantly, is probably the way forward ;-) An ideal situation, would be one where we are able to offer some financial support towards the important work our volunteers, wherever possible. I also reckon that volunteers are much more likely to stay engaged where they feel meaningfully involved and that their contributions are valued: If we consciously strive to take more members to more events, be receptive to new ideas and feedback, encourage contributors to apply for membership and advertise whenever new opportunities pop up then I suspect this could help us increase, diversify and engage our pool of contributors too. Thanks again, Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to the candidates.
Hi Erick First, thanks to all of you for running as directors. > Thanks for your question! Currently, GNOME is a strong platform for development, but it's lacking > integration and features to be a complete, fully integrated desktop > environment like Mac OS X, for instance. My question is: > > "What plans do you have to make GNOME a more complete, fully working > solution as desktop environment." > As others have suggested this may be beyond the remit for this board, but one thing I have been fairly keen on is the idea of raising a debate about the merits of establishing a technical board of directors who could lead the way on these sorts of matters... I suspect that having a democratic selection process for such a proposed set of technical directors, could help improve communication between teams and make the decision making process a bit more transparent and accountable, in the long run. Thanks again, Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: code of conduct question for Board candidates
On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 05:05:30PM +0200, Alexandre Franke wrote: > On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 7:42 PM, Josh Triplett wrote: > > Nobody is asking anyone to sign anything. A CoC would simply be a > > stated policy for expected behavior on community resources, such as > > mailing lists, IRC, Bugzilla, wikis, email, etc. > > Except the board did ask the GUADEC 2014 attendees to sign something. > There was a box that needed to be checked to register for the > conference. I was talking about a hypothetical improvement to the community code of conduct, not to the conference code of conduct. For a conference code of conduct, it makes sense to require explicit assent, not least of which because when people have spent money getting to and attending an event, and they then do something sufficiently severe to warrant being excluded from that event, explicit assent helps protect the conference from further trouble that they might try to stir up as a result. That doesn't apply as much to free online communication and community resources. - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Question to board candidates: privacy funds
In 2013 we raised $20,000 to improve security and privacy in GNOME. I am aware that the current board has finally formed a committee to determine how to use the funds, but I would have expected this process to have been completed by now, since it has been nearly two years since the conclusion of the fundraising campaign. Question for candidates currently on the board: do you believe you handled this process appropriately, and if so, why? If not, what should have been done better? Michael ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for candidates
Hi. On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 07:53:42AM -0400, Richard Stallman wrote: > I'd like to ask the candidates, how do you think GNOME should > contribute more to the advance of free software and users' freedom in > general (in addition to being useful free software). As I've stated already, I think GNOME is in a very good position to not only guarantee the users' computational freedoms, but also their freedoms to use their computers in a secure manner. I think that GNOME should build a story around how Free Software is a prerequisite for being able to trust your software and that GNOME tries to bring safe and secure computing to everyone. While we have few resources to work on that, we need some people to actually execute some strategies. I think we should work on that. Cheers, Tobi ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: code of conduct question for Board candidates
Hi! On Sa, 2015-05-23 at 11:41 -0400, Marina Zhurakhinskaya wrote: > What do you think about adopting a detailed code of conduct, similar > to the one used for GUADEC 2014 [3], for all GNOME events and creating > a similarly detailed code of conduct for the GNOME community? It's a complicated subject, but I echo pretty much was Alexandre said. I appreciate that we want to make people feel welcome and safe at our events. And I support that goal. I'm not convinced a detailed list of offenses, such as the GUADEC 2014 one, achieves that goal, though. Cheers, Tobi ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: code of conduct question for Board candidates
On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 7:42 PM, Josh Triplett wrote: > Nobody is asking anyone to sign anything. A CoC would simply be a > stated policy for expected behavior on community resources, such as > mailing lists, IRC, Bugzilla, wikis, email, etc. Except the board did ask the GUADEC 2014 attendees to sign something. There was a box that needed to be checked to register for the conference. -- Alexandre Franke ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question on community to the candidates.
Hi, On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 6:16 AM, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: > It is my impression (and I state impression because I am providing no > data) that GNOME has more reliance on people paid to work on GNOME > than community. I do not question the passion and dedication to those > who are paid on GNOME, I know that they would do it as a community > even if they were not paid. It is my impression (and I state impression because I am providing no data) that most people who do get paid to work on GNOME have been hired exactly because they were part of the community. > If you agree with my impression, what actions do you think would help > increase participation in GNOME? Participation in the core parts of > GNOME is not trivial, and requires an enormous amount of time and > dedication to get to become familiar with the huge codebase that we > have, as well as gain the trust of the maintainer of the module you > are interested in. Following my previous statement, I think people get involved first and then get hired to continue working on what they were already working on (or something close). Therefore I don't think that the "enormous amount of time and dedication" is that difficult to overcome. Of course that doesn't mean there's no room for improvement, and I'm happy that we had such events as the DX hackfests. I think we should have more of them and I'd certainly vote in favour if there were requests for budget to hold them. > If you disagree with my impression, what makes you believe that it is > not the case? How would you change my mind? I did not bring any data > points, so you don't have to either. I'm more interested in giving > you a biased opinion and I want to know how you would react to it. I hope my reply will satisfy you. I'd like to add that I think it's a good thing that people manage to make a living working on our project, and that I actually wish there were more companies hiring them. I don't know how to solve this issue though. -- Alexandre Franke ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to the candidates (what is a "complete" desktop?)
Replying inline to your reply (stripping my own previous text): [...] > I'm not asking you to be technical, but to be managers. (Not saying > here that manager can/should/must be non-technical) [...] > Being a director of the board for me, means having the power to > allocate resources to make GNOME better, gather the community > consensus and improve HDPi support the way we did once, for instance. [...] > So far, you've tell me what you want, not how to accomplish it. And I > know, we as community provide a huge pools of ideas and discussion, > but I would love to know how each candidate thinks about it. I would > like a board of directors to be strong leaders of the project, with > clears views on what to improve and how. As others have indicated in the original thread, the Foundation Board is not a technical body, it is a legal/financial/policymaking entity. We can express a vision (as I did in my message and blog post, for example) and communicate with teams (ex: the release team) & individuals to encourage the adoption of that vision, but apart from, say, sponsoring hackfests for competent parties interested in making it happen, the board can't do much. And even if it _was_ part of its mission to oversee technical direction, as things stand it wouldn't happen because there's already way too many legal/financial/etc. tasks in the backlog that the board needs to solve before getting down to technical matters. Your vision of "managers" is one that would work in a corporate setting with project/team managers that get to decide what people do on a day to day basis. It doesn't work that way in a community, we're not people's bosses. Allocating (financial) resources beyond supporting events doesn't magically solve things. Unless we had a multi-million dollars budget to hire full-time hackers like the "Linux Foundation", that is ;) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to the candidates.
Hi Erick, This is a little difficult to answer, since is a very wide question that resembles "how can we make GNOME better?" which is what all of we try to do, and I'm not sure most part of it is directly fixable by the board, but instead indirectly. Said that, as we know by the nature of GNOME being open source works like that, people works on what they want to work, on something that is fun to work, that's why i.e. Nautilus doesn't have lot of contributors, because it's not a fun app (for me it is fun though =D) to work with, because is old code and it's not new. Then on the other hand, companies pay to work on some GNOME modules, and people work on that even if they are not fun to work with, and that fixes part of the problem. So now I guess the question is, what to do with those specific issues that makes GNOME not "complete" and that free time contributors doesn't work on them because it's not fun, and companies doesn't pay people to work on them? In my candidacy email I stated some of those ideas, the more prominent and known is BountySource, which seems sometimes works, sometimes not (there is a 1000$ bounty for GtkSourceView for a few years now), so that makes me think that BountySource doesn't work for big issues. But then I had the idea of the "GNOME excellency program", inspired on GSOC, which makes a person work on something big and that we consider top priority, paying a little more than GSOC and selecting candidates only if they provide a strong background to complete the task (since as we know GSOC rate of fully completion of tasks are rather small...). In this way we can fix specific long standing issues that could help a lot to reach the "complete" desktop solution we all want. Cheers, Carlos Soriano - Original Message - | Hi: | | First, thanks to all of you for running as directors. | | Currently, GNOME is a strong platform for development, but it's lacking | integration and features to be a complete, fully integrated desktop | environment like Mac OS X, for instance. My question is: | | "What plans do you have to make GNOME a more complete, fully working solution | as desktop environment." | | Cheers, and good luck! | | ___ | 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
Questions for candidates
I'd like to ask the candidates, how do you think GNOME should contribute more to the advance of free software and users' freedom in general (in addition to being useful free software). -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates: transparency and accountability
Hey Fabiana, Fabiana Simões wrote: ... > I'd like to hear your thoughts on implementing transparency and > accountability on the Board. > > How transparent the work of the Board should be to Foundation members? What > should be communicated and when? Do you think we have been transparent > enough in the last term? If not, how can we improve things and how high in > your priorities would be to do so? > > In terms of accountability, it's been unclear to me since joining the > Foundation how much different Board members contribute to the Board's goals > and tasks. Do you think the meeting notes provide enough visibility and > context to the work being done? By the end of a term, how can the Foundation > have a fair understanding of one's contributions to the Board? I agree with the general thrust of the question: Foundation members should feel that their votes count, and that they have a stake in the Foundation. More than that: I think we need a Foundation that is more visible, and more integrated with the rest of the project. This is something that I would like to help improve, and have ideas about (although I also expect there to be constraints and pressures that limit what we can do in this area). We need to recognise that transparency isn't always simple or straightforward. It takes work to make things transparent (such as writing reports or blog posts), and we all know that Board members are busy and have limited time. Additionally, more transparency wouldn't necessarily make the Foundation easier to understand or more engaging: posting the transcript of every meeting, or making all the finances public, wouldn't make the Foundation more engaging. Likewise, many of the matters that the Board deals with probably aren't that interesting to the membership, and more transparency around them might not make people more active within the Foundation. So I think we need to be smart: we need to identify opportunities where information about the Board will be interesting and meaningful; we need to figure out how to produce that information efficiently, and we need to present it in a way that is easy to digest. It's not a question of more transparency, but when and how to be transparent. I would like us to keep this issue in mind during the day-to-day running of the Board. Also, I do have some ideas for increasing transparency: First, we need to regularly review the Board's communications. Ensuring that agendas and minutes are sent out in a timely fashion and are meaningful is an obvious thing to keep an eye on. Second, I think that there needs to be more information about the performance of individual board members. Right now, when Board members run for re-election, there is very little information about how they have performed in the past year. This risks turning the elections into a popularity contest, and doesn't help us to ensure that we have an effective Board. One thing we could do is keep a record of how board members have voted over the year, as well as the tasks that they have successfully completed. These records could be published ahead of the elections. Third, I'm interested in trying to break down the barrier between the Board and other teams, so that Foundation business is spread out more widely. It would be great if the Engagement Team could be more involved in campaigns that are run by the Board, for example. If I am elected to the Board, I'd be interested in hearing peoples' ideas for increasing transparency, and would be happy to pursue them when possible. Thanks, Allan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: More questions for Board candidates
Karen Sandler wrote: > I have a few questions for the candidates too. I agree with what has been > said by Jeff and Josh that it's important that people on the board have a > diverse skillset, so I wouldn't expect all board members to answer yes on > these, but I think it's good to know if at least a few people on the board > have some background in these areas... > > Have you ever done any fundraising? It depends on what you mean by fundraising. I've worked on the Friends of GNOME through my participation in the Engagement Team, and have ideas in that area that I'd be interested in pursuing if I was elected. There have also been a small number of occasions where I've had to ask around for money, such as trying to get sponsors for events I've organised, or for initiatives I have been involved in. > Are you comfortable asking sponsors for money? I think I could do this in the context of the board. That said, I'm not sure I'd be the best choice, as I probably wouldn't be as assertive as some others. > Have you ever been in a manager role? I do informal project management as a part of my day-to-day work, but I've never formally managed employees or members of a team. That said, while I don't have direct experience, I do have some relevant experience, and this is something that I am interested in and I think I could be good at. > Do you have any experience talking to reporters? Yes - I've given interviews, responded to press queries, and written press releases. > Have you ever talked to a group of people about why software freedom is > important? Yes - this is a subject that I've addressed in talks I've given, and it is also something that I have read and written about a fair bit. Allan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: code of conduct question for Board candidates
Hi Marina! Marina Zhurakhinskaya wrote: ... > Thanks to all the candidates for stepping up to run for the board and for all > the work you already do for the Foundation! > > Many free software organizations have adopted codes of conduct for their > events [1] and some for their communities [2]. Detailed codes of conduct with > specific enforcement guidelines signal to newcomers that the community has > high standards of behavior. They give participants who observe or are subject > to inappropriate behavior something to point to that shows that such behavior > is outside of what is expected and guidelines on how to proceed in getting it > addressed. > > What do you think about adopting a detailed code of conduct, similar to the > one used for GUADEC 2014 [3], for all GNOME events and creating a similarly > detailed code of conduct for the GNOME community? Most of the time, GNOME is a great place to work and have fun, but sometimes conversations can get heated and/or personal, and the GNOME project has a collective responsibility to manage with these situations. It's important to have effective codes of conduct in place, not just to ensure that GNOME is a friendly and welcoming place, but also so that contributors feel safe from attack, and have support when things go wrong. My view is that a code of conduct needs to strike a balance between length and specificity on the one hand, and readability on the other. In the past, I have found the existing general code of conduct [1] to be too general and vague, and I think that we need something that is longer and clearer. At the same time, a code of conduct is a kind of constitutional document, and sends an important signal about the identity and character of the project, so we need to be careful about having something that seems too prescriptive and bureaucratic. It's not just the rules about conduct that are important here. One thing that we really lack are guidelines about how infringements of the code of conduct should be handled. This creates the danger that people feel unfairly treated if they are accused of breaking the code of conduct, and it opens the door to self-appointed judges taking the law into their own hands. We need to be clear about what should happen if someone breaks the code of conduct. (Who will arbitrate? What are the potential outcomes? What can you do if you disagree with the decision?) My view is that these procedures shouldn't be overly bureaucratic, and should have reconciliation and mediation as their goal, rather than punishment or excommunication. Above all, they should be independent, neutral and fair. Allan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: Best use of Trademark Fundraiser money?
Hey Andreas, Andreas Nilsson wrote: > Dear candidates. Thank you all for running! > > As part of the GNOME Trademark Fundraiser [1], the Foundation raised $102 > 608 USD. > > Since the trademark claims from the other part in the issue was withdrawn, > it was never taken to court and the money was never spent on that. > What, in your mind, is the best use of these funds now? Kept as a War Chest > [2] or spent on something specific? Really good question. From my perspective, there are two critical issues here: 1. It is important that people who have donated money see that it is being put to good use. If they don't, they might not be willing to donate again in the future. 2. We don't want donors to feel that they have been tricked, or that the money is being spent in a different spirit to how it was donated. Therefore, my view is that we need to speak publicly about the funding as quickly as possible, so people know what is happening with it, and we need to identify a use for the funds that reflects the goals of the fund-raising campaign - defending GNOME. Investing it in ways that strengthens the legal position of the project would make sense here, and we could seek advice on this. That said, I don't have a particularly strong opinion on what the money should be specifically spent on (and we don't have to spend it all on one thing). What I do believe is that we need to act to ensure that people feel that their donation is being put to good use. Allan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to the candidates.
On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 10:52:55PM -0400, Erick Pérez Castellanos wrote: > First, thanks to all of you for running as directors. > > Currently, GNOME is a strong platform for development, but it's lacking > integration and features to be a complete, fully integrated desktop > environment like Mac OS X, for instance. My question is: > > "What plans do you have to make GNOME a more complete, fully working > solution as desktop environment." First of all, I would suggest that the board of directors has little to do with the overall direction of GNOME's development, from either a technical or design point of view. The many GNOME contributors drive that. The board is responsible for ensuring the continued availability of the resources those contributors need, and for helping maintain and grow the community, among various other organizational issues, but the board does not set development directions in that way, nor do I think it should. That said, I'd still be happy to answer the spirit of your question. I think GNOME actually has a huge amount of integration, polish, and cohesiveness. And there are several aspects of other environments that I hope to never see on GNOME; personally, for instance, I don't really want to see desktop environments delving into "app store"-style package management. I like distribution package management just fine. (I *do* find sandboxing mechanisms highly appealing for security; I'd just like to continue installing applications, sandboxed or otherwise, through apt.) There are three areas I do think GNOME could use some additional integration and polish in. First, while I'm extremely impressed by the huge variety of UI design ideas that GNOME has experimented with, and many of them have been quite successful, I think GNOME needs some mechanism to recognize when an idea isn't working or doesn't really appeal to the majority of users, and say "well, that was a fun experiment, but let's drop it". For instance, I rather strongly suspect many GNOME 3 users would sigh with relief if alt-tab went back to "switch windows" and alt-` became a backward-compatibility synonym. As far as I can tell, though, design ideas only really tend to get dropped when they get replaced with some other, newer design idea; for instance, the notification tray gave way to the excellent new notification mechanism in the latest release of GNOME. I think it would make sense to have a convenient way to float design experiments as extensions or branches, rather than as part of mainline GNOME, until they become less experimental. And in the meantime, I think we need a way, as a community, to decide that a UI experiment was unsuccessful and should be reverted. Second, GNOME still needs to improve its support for high-DPI displays. Right now, GNOME has great support for high-DPI displays that are sufficiently high-resolution that scaling everything 2:1 is appropriate; for instance, on a 3840x2160 display, doubling everything and effectively treating it as a 1920x1080 display works quite well. However, *many* laptop and desktop displays still have resolutions for which 1:1 is far too small, but 2:1 is too large, defeating the purpose of purchasing a high-resolution display. Treating a 2560x1440 display as 1280x720 makes things awkwardly large. Treating a 3200x1800 display as 1600x900 is still not quite great. Long-term, ever-increasing resolutions will likely make the integer-scaling approach viable; however, in the meantime, supporting only integer scaling leaves much to be desired. I've heard comments from several different people saying that GNOME seems almost cartoonishly big on their displays, and that if they turn off scaling it's too small. On top of that, GNOME only supports a single scaling factor for all monitors, which doesn't work well when switching between a high-DPI and low-DPI display, or using both and moving windows between both. On that front, I actually am taking a concrete step to help there: I'm donating a high-DPI (2560x1440) laptop to GNOME, to be sent to an appropriate developer or developers. And finally, touching directly on your comment about integration, I don't think GNOME can focus exclusively on its own native applications, without also taking into account that many users will run non-GNOME applications side by side with GNOME applications. As GNOME continues to produce innovations in UI, desktop integration standards, system-level features, and similar, someone needs to take the time to integrate such enhancements into popular third-party applications. For example, there has been a patch for Firefox to work with the GNOME application menu for a year or so, but nobody has stepped up to take responsibility for that code once merged. Empathy has deep integration with GNOME, but Pidgin does not. There's no default desktop integration with third-party music player software; that requires a gnome-shell extension. These aren't necessarily innovative ideas. They're no
Re: Question on community to the candidates.
Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: > It is my impression (and I state impression because I am providing no > data) that GNOME has more reliance on people paid to work on GNOME > than community. I do not question the passion and dedication to those > who are paid on GNOME, I know that they would do it as a community > even if they were not paid. > > If you agree with my impression, what actions do you think would help > increase participation in GNOME? Participation in the core parts of > GNOME is not trivial, and requires an enormous amount of time and > dedication to get to become familiar with the huge codebase that we > have, as well as gain the trust of the maintainer of the module you > are interested in. > > If you disagree with my impression, what makes you believe that it is > not the case? How would you change my mind? I did not bring any data > points, so you don't have to either. I'm more interested in giving > you a biased opinion and I want to know how you would react to it. ... Personally, I do see new contributors getting involved, so I'm wary of making judgments about declining participation. However, encouraging participation is vital whatever the situation, and this is something that I would like the Board to focus on, if it is able. Encouraging participation is a big, complex question, which touches on pretty much everything we do as a project, so it is not something that the Board can address on its own. However, there are areas of Board work that are relevant, and things that the Board could do to help... The Engagement Team is key to enabling participation, since advertising the great things happening in the GNOME project is an important part of attracting contributors. So, the Board needs to ensure that the Engagement Team is doing well. This is traditionally a responsibility of the ED, so this is another reason to make sure that the hiring process moves ahead. Once hired, we will also need to make sure that the ED focuses on the Engagement Team, and if they aren't able to, or we aren't able to hire an ED in a timely fashion, we should think about other measures. The other thing the Board should do is support any community initiatives in this area. Suggesting hackfests and providing funds is an obvious possibility here (we should definitely make sure that the Developer Experience Hackfests continue to be a regular event). It will be vital for the Board to have an awareness of what is happening in the project at large for this to happen, and I think that I can help with that. Finally, as I mentioned in one of my previous emails, I would really like the Board to be more proactive, and this is a good example of a strategic area where it could provide leadership and energy. For example, if we identify a particular area that is lacking or blocking (such as development tools or documentation), the Board could coordinate to ensure that the gap is plugged, or it could even invest funds or do fundraising to help. Allan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to the candidates.
Hey Erick! Erick Pérez Castellanos wrote: ... > First, thanks to all of you for running as directors. > > Currently, GNOME is a strong platform for development, but it's lacking > integration and features to be a complete, fully integrated desktop > environment like Mac OS X, for instance. My question is: > > "What plans do you have to make GNOME a more complete, fully working > solution as desktop environment." I could answer that question from a design perspective. However, the Board doesn't make technical or design decisions, so I don't think that would be appropriate. What I can say is that I'm keen to talk with our Advisory Board members about what they want from GNOME, and to make sure that those conversations are fed into our development activities. This is important in order to ensure that Ad Board members feel that their membership is valuable, and to ensure that the project is responsive to the needs of our supporters. As a designer on the project, I think that I'm in a good position to make sure that this happens. Allan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: code of conduct question for Board candidates
> > People can do as they like on their own systems and resources, but when > participating in the GNOME community, they should do so with respect. > Refusing to exclude anyone is itself an exclusionary policy; it selects > for the kind of people who will put up with absolutely anything, and > excludes people who do not feel comfortable in such an environment. > That creates a kind of community that I would not want to see GNOME > become; there are too many of those already, because there are too many > projects unwilling to kick out awful people. I suspect we might actually agree if we debated this properly, but I think you're right and we should try not to digress too much. Just to say, I probably could have worded that a bit better: An "objectionable a-hole" or "awful person" might not mean the same thing to you as it does to me, so we probably ought to be a bit careful about defining behaviours in those terms. Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question on community to the candidates.
Hi Sri, I think you already know my opinion on this, I completely agree with you, and I think is a serious issue not being able to reach those hobbyist and beginners people that can make the difference in GNOME to stay competitive or vanish. Because now, in my vision, most of new people that wants to participate in a community requires and wants a different set of things than 10 years ago, and if we don't reach those people, GNOME will remain relying on "only" paid people, who were the brave enough at some point to not give up contributing to GNOME, but the usage of GNOME also depends on how hobbyist are attracted to participate and how good our community is, and we need to evolution GNOME contribution platform and community to reach them. The ideas I have in mind to improve the situation are stated in my candidacy email, since as you could observe it is, and has been, a top goal for me. Cheers, Carlos Soriano - Original Message - | It is my impression (and I state impression because I am providing no | data) that GNOME has more reliance on people paid to work on GNOME | than community. I do not question the passion and dedication to those | who are paid on GNOME, I know that they would do it as a community | even if they were not paid. | | If you agree with my impression, what actions do you think would help | increase participation in GNOME? Participation in the core parts of | GNOME is not trivial, and requires an enormous amount of time and | dedication to get to become familiar with the huge codebase that we | have, as well as gain the trust of the maintainer of the module you | are interested in. | | If you disagree with my impression, what makes you believe that it is | not the case? How would you change my mind? I did not bring any data | points, so you don't have to either. I'm more interested in giving | you a biased opinion and I want to know how you would react to it. | | sri | ___ | 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
