Re: Really professional GNOME videos

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On Mar 28, 2016 9:20 AM, "Michael Catanzaro"  wrote:
>
> On Sun, 2016-03-27 at 07:53 +, Florian Müllner wrote:
> > Distributions appear in the video in the order of when 3.20 is
> > expected to
> > be included in the distribution.
>
> It's hard to believe that's what's intended. If so, it's very wrong.
> The order depicted in the video is:
>
> Arch -> Debian -> Fedora -> openSUSE
>
> which is correct under no interpretation I can think of.

Alphabetic.

> How could
> Debian possibly be depicted prior to Fedora? If we are counting stable
> distros, then Debian should be towards the end of the list, after even
> Ubuntu. Same for openSUSE:
>
> Arch (April) -> Fedora (June) -> (Ubuntu, October) -> openSUSE?
> (November?) -> Debian (2017) -> openSUSE? (November 2017?)
>
> I do not know where openSUSE goes in relation to Debian, because they
> have the new enterprise base thing going on, and I am not sure what
> their GNOME plans are for the next release. If they release in November
> with GNOME 3.20, then they belong in front of Debian; if they release
> with 3.18 or perhaps 3.16 again, then they belong behind Debian.
>
> Now, if we are counting unstable distros (which I do not think we
> should do), then the order would be:
>
> Fedora rawhide (immediate) -> Arch Gnome-Unstable (already has it) ->
> openSUSE Tumbleweed (probably early April) -> Debian sid (probably this
> spring) -> Ubuntu (probably this summer)
>
> I don't see any way that Arch -> Debian -> Fedora -> openSUSE could
> possibly be interpreted as the correct order, if that graphic is really
> intended to signify the real order.
>
> Michael
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Re: Yorba Foundation looking to pass on copyrights

[Behdad Esfahbod]

Hi Adam,

Thanks for Yorba.

It occurs to me that while GNOME Foundation does not currently own any
copyright, there is no reason why it can't accept a donation such as this.

behdad
On Mar 24, 2016 6:41 PM, "Adam Dingle"  wrote:

> I think an existing free software organization feels like the best home
> for these copyrights.  The organizations that others have mentioned here
> are great leads - I will be in touch with some of them soon.  If none of
> those pan out, I may repost asking if any individual people would be
> interested.  thanks -
>
> adam
>
> On Thu, Mar 24, 2016 at 8:19 PM, Daniel Espinosa  wrote:
>
> Should be an organization or individuals can step up too?
> El mar. 24, 2016 3:14 PM, "Josh Triplett" 
> escribió:
>
>> On Thu, Mar 24, 2016 at 04:55:49PM -0400, Adam Dingle wrote:
>> > As some of you know, I founded Yorba, a free software non-profit based
>> in
>> > San Francisco that was active from 2009-2015 and developed a few popular
>> > programs for GNOME including the Shotwell photo manager and the Geary
>> email
>> > client, both of which now live in GNOME git.  These programs are
>> copyrighted
>> > by Yorba and a few external contributors and are licensed under the
>> LGPL.
>> >
>> > Yorba has run out of funding and is winding down - in fact nobody has
>> worked
>> > there since around April 2015.  We now need to shut down the foundation
>> > (which is a California non-profit corporation), but legally we can't do
>> so
>> > while it still holds any assets including the copyrights on its
>> software,
>> > which are considered intellectual property.
>> >
>> > We'd love to find some other free software organization that we can
>> pass our
>> > copyrights on to.  We would sell them for a nominal fee.  In theory the
>> > copyright recipient could defend the LGPL licensing of these programs if
>> > necessary (though I think the likelihood of such a necessity is low).
>> >
>> > My understanding is that GNOME itself does not hold copyrights.  Is
>> anyone
>> > aware of any other free software organization that might be willing and
>> able
>> > to receive our copyrights?  Thanks -
>>
>> You might consider the Free Software Foundation (FSF), Software in the
>> Public
>> Interest (SPI), or the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC).
>>
>> - Josh Triplett
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Re: Affiliation change and stepping down

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 15-11-05 10:08 AM, Benjamin Berg wrote:
> Actually, the way I read section 8.2.4 combined with 8.4.1 right now it
> seems perfectly sane to argue that Christian could have finished his
> term in office despite the change of affiliation.

Would the board and Christian consider doing this, and also establish
precedent that in the future, only affiliation at the time of candidacy is
relevant to the 40% rule?

b
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Re: Affiliation change and stepping down

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 15-11-03 03:30 AM, Andreas Nilsson wrote:
> On 10/28/2015 09:22 AM, Tobias Mueller wrote:
> 
>> I take that as a "yes" to the question asked "Does the Board intend to
>> follow a different strategy than to follow the membership's opinion
>> expressed in the election results".
>> Please correct me if I'm wrong, there.
> 
> Since this also came up in a blog post of yours the other day.
> 
> If I recall correctly, it's not a rule for the board to pick someone based on
> election results. It did work like that when Jorge Castro replaced Lucas Rocha
> in 2009.
> However, the very same year Paul Cutler replaced Behdad Esfahbod, even though
> Paul never ran for those elections.

That's correct, but it also was before STV voting was implemented, so it's not
exactly apples to aplles.

> I have no idea who they're picking, but trust the board to select a good
> candidate to fill the vacant seat.
> 
> https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/History
> https://vote.gnome.org/
> - Andreas
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Re: You logo

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 15-04-03 12:49 PM, Konstantin Falin wrote:
> all right. i got it. I do not know the terminology. try to fix this gap. I'm 
> sorry for taking the time to talk with me.

Sorry Konstantin.  This was not to pick on you.  I apologize if it sounded
that way.

behdad

>> 3 апр. 2015 г., в 19:40, Behdad Esfahbod  
>> написал(а):
>>
>> On 15-04-03 04:03 AM, Richard Stallman wrote:
>>>> We will use the distribution Fedora 20 with the environment Gnome 3.12, as
>>>> it is already tested and I like that everything is working as it should.
>>>
>>> Fedora is a GNU/Linux distribution,
>>
>> I thought it's a GNU/Linux/xorg/texmf/PHP/Perl/Python/HarfBuzz/... 
>> distribution.
> 
> 
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Re: You logo

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 15-04-03 04:03 AM, Richard Stallman wrote:
>   > We will use the distribution Fedora 20 with the environment Gnome 3.12, as
>   > it is already tested and I like that everything is working as it should.
> 
> Fedora is a GNU/Linux distribution,

I thought it's a GNU/Linux/xorg/texmf/PHP/Perl/Python/HarfBuzz/... distribution.
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Re: GUADEC videos are available only with nonfree codecs

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 13-08-15 06:39 AM, Andreas Nilsson wrote:
> The most important part of the above message is that GUADEC videos are
> actually available!

Indeed.  As one who couldn't attend GUADEC this year I also want to thank the
team to make them available and so fast!  I've watched about ten of the talks
since this morning and am so glad that I could do.

Cheers,
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Re: Announcing GNOME's official GitHub mirror

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 13-08-15 07:55 AM, Alexandre Franke wrote:
> Ok, I probably misphrased that since English is not my native
> language. What I meant is that my code being mirrored is not something
> I want to push for, it's not something I consider as needed. That was
> an explanation for the fact that I won't be contributing to a
> gitorious mirror. That didn't mean that having the github mirror is a
> non-issue to me.

Good old love/hate sharing complex that comes with GPL thinking...

More seriously, if you can't articulate the "issue" you have with it, please
refrain from generating additional work for the sysadmin team.  "Makes me feel
fuzzy in my stomach" doesn't can't.

My 0.02CAD
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Re: "Boston" Summit 2013?

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 13-04-30 08:58 PM, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote:
> 
> We are a quirky bunch of people. :-)  We're almost like Bostonians except
> maybe a little more weirder.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBt4HlcDUDw

?

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Re: Setting moderation bit for members who consistently hijack topics

[Behdad Esfahbod]

Ok everyone.  Now that both sides had a chance to attack each other and defend
themselves, and as Richard constructively agreed to try to remember to change
subject lines in the future, can we please put an end to this and neighboring
threads?  I mean, don't you all have code to write?

Cheers,
behdad


On 13-01-10 02:39 PM, Richard Stallman wrote:
> Awaiting now the potential "GMail was mentioned, Google is bad!" reply.
> 
> You seem to be attacking me for things you imagine I might say.
> At least it makes your bias clear.
> 
> And since you just raised the issue of GMail, shouldn't you have
> changed the Subject field?  Remember, the thread you're posting in
> started with the accusation that I "hijacked a topic" by posting
> a single sentence about Ubuntu without changing the Subject field.
> If that makes me a nasty topic hijacker, are you one also?
> 
> Perhaps neither of us deserves that accusation.
> 
> About GMail I have nothing to say.
> 

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Re: Reaching out to Amazon for credit?

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 13-01-06 08:49 AM, Alex Launi wrote:
> 
> Indeed, we are discussing using proprietary Amazon services here, and yet you
> chose to attack Ubuntu. Please at least keep your zeal relevant.

What's a proprietary service?

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Re: GNOME on Github - Tomboy

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 13-01-01 05:32 PM, Alberto Ruiz wrote:
> The URL is: http://github.com/GNOME
> 
> And I am the owner, I've been working with the github guys to try to come up
> with self-hosted mirror that does not need me or anyone running scripts, it
> was meant to be a surprise but the github guys have been really busy lately.

+1.  Please also do for freedesktop.org repos!


> 
> 2013/1/1 Andre Klapper mailto:ak...@gmx.net>>
> 
> On Tue, 2013-01-01 at 16:27 -0600, Jared Jennings wrote:
> > Today I found that GNOME is an organization on Github with several
> > repp's.
> 
> What's the URL?
> 
> andre
> --
> Andre Klapper  |  ak...@gmx.net 
> http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/
> 
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> 
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Re: Announcing GUADEC 2013 and 2014

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 12-11-21 03:32 PM, Karen Sandler wrote:
> 
> During the bidding process, the GNOME Foundation received a second
> outstanding proposal. As a result, the Board of Directors is also pleased
> to announce that GUADEC 2014 will be held in Strasbourg, France. Selecting
> the venue earlier will give the Strasbourg local team more time to prepare
> the conference, which has been asked for by previous organizing teams.

This I think is a great idea.  Congrats to both team, and the directors!

Cheers,
behdad


> 
> Have a good holiday to those who celebrate it!
> best,
> Karen
> 
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Re: A few observations about GIMPNET

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 12-10-15 06:24 AM, Frederic Peters wrote:
> 
>> > In the past I've joined the #opers channel multiple times asking why
>> > there was no intention to improve the GIMPNET network but I alwais
>> > received no answer and as of today I still don't know the real reason
>> > behind that decision.
> On the opposite I've always had a fast and helpful reaction time on
> #opers, while I joined #freenode last week to ask for my seemingly
> unused nick to be dropped from NickServ, so I could claim it for
> myself, and left after non-helpful comments.

Good point.  Reminds me that I lost my #harfbuzz channel a while ago and my
multiple attempts to reclaim it has been unsuccessful.  Freenode seems to be
seriously understaffed (see for example [1]).  Definitely would be a
regression in terms of support.

behdad

[1] http://freenode.net/group_registration.shtml
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Re: A few observations about GIMPNET

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 12-10-15 05:23 AM, Andrea Veri wrote:
> I said *many* people gave their consensus about a possible move but I
> didn't see a *single* mail saying we should stay on GIMPNET for the X,
> Y, Z reason.

Sure, many of us avoid replying "+1" to something that someone else has
already said very well.  In this case, to ebassi's messages for example.
Remember, in many discussions there may be a silent majority and a vocal
minority.  That definitely was the case when we were discussing git vs bzr.  A
survey helped there.  For this discussion, I don't see what major benefit this
will have to the project, but on the downside: it's a lot of work, dilutes
identity, and we would lose some if not all of our sense of community.

behdad
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Re: Changes to the GNOME Foundation Bylaws from 2002

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 10/02/2012 01:16 AM, Chris Leonard wrote:
> Posting and announcing a diff on bugzilla, waiting about two weeks for
> comment (only a few on the ticket), then asking to move forward.  I am
> not sure I see the procedural issue, what specifically should have
> been done differently?  I'm new here, so I am curious.

It's just missing context.  Would have helped if Tobi's mail included a
reference to his earlier message:

  https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2012-August/msg00047.html

b
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Re: Changes to the GNOME Foundation Bylaws from 2002

[Behdad Esfahbod]

I think Tobias's message missed out some context, so I'll try to fill in from
what I've been hearing as a foundation member.  Note that I'm not on the board
right now and have not been for over two years, and this is my personal
understanding of the situation.

So, I *think* Tobias is not proposing any significant changes to the bylaws.
He's proposing to change the canonical source of the bylaws to the
ReStructured-Text document that he sent, which includes all the amendments to
the original bylaws and minor modifications to adapt to the new format.  See:

 http://people.gnome.org/~tobiasmue/bylaws2012/bylaws-2002-2012.diff

One comment below:

On 10/01/2012 10:00 PM, Germán Póo-Caamaño wrote:
> 
> I wonder what is the rationale behind the following change:
> 
> @@ -458,7 +522,7 @@
>  Election and Term of Office of Directors 
>  -
>  
> -1.  Each of the directors shall hold office for one (1) year.
> +1.  Each of the directors shall hold office for one (1) year, or a
> period of up to two (2) years as determined by the Board and announced
> prior to an election being called.

Back in the days, Board terms were aligned to calendar years.  Ie. a new board
was running January to December.  Around 2008ish(?) board decided that it
would be much easier if a new board could take sit at GUADEC instead.  So we
wanted to change the term of one board to shift the phase.  This was against
the bylaws and needed an amendment.  Our lawyers (James Vasile?) recommended
that while changing the bylaws, we change it in a way that would accommodate
similar changes in the future.  Hence the wording that you see.  This is not
new.  This was voted on IIRC and approved, and used, years ago.

behdad
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Re: GNOME Foundation Board Elections Spring 2012 - Preliminary Results

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 06/11/2012 08:56 AM, Bastien Nocera wrote:

> First, congratulations to all the new Board members, and many thanks to
> all the candidates that didn't make the cut.

Nice list.  Congrats new board, and everyone else who ran.

> Reading the results[1], I saw in round 3:
> "Candidate Bastien Nocera was chosen by breaking the tie randomly."
> 
> How was this done randomly? What would the results have been if
> Emmanuele was selected as the tie-breaker instead?

It wouldn't have made any difference in this case at all.  In fact, from what
I understand it can never make any difference when breaking ties choosing a
winner.  It *does*, however, when breaking ties eliminating candidates.  See
this short paper for an overview of how it can matter (and why not use
randomness to break ties!):

  http://www.votingmatters.org.uk/ISSUE18/I18P6.PDF

Cheers,
behdad



> Cheers
> 
> [1]: http://vote.gnome.org/results.php?election_id=17
> 
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Re: GNOME Board of Directors Elections 2012 - Voting Instructions sent

[Behdad Esfahbod]

After entering my creds I get:

"""
2012 Spring Board of Directors Election
The election is not properly set up.

If you don't understand the error, you should probably contact the Membership
and Elections Committee, which can be reached at electi...@gnome.org.
"""

On 05/27/2012 04:48 PM, Tobias Mueller wrote:
> 
> Dear Foundation Members,
> 
> we have just sent the ballots to the registered email addresses of the 
> electorate.
> 
> If you have not received your voting instructions, have a look on the list of 
> eligible voters on
>  and check the email account 
> that is associated with you.
> Also check the SPAM folder.
> 
> In case you are not on the list of eligible voters but think you should be, 
> write us an email (see below).
> 
> If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask them at
> membership-commit...@gnome.org or electi...@gnome.org
> 
> Happy Voting,
>   Tobias Mueller
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Re: Facilitating the Integration of Free Software into Academic Courses (was Re: Questions for the board election candidates)

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 05/24/2012 06:59 PM, Luis Villa wrote:
>>
>> FWIW, Software Carpentry is one of the more successful experiment I've seen 
>> in
>> the "Free Software meets Academic Courses" experiments.  Thought I share the 
>> link:
>>
>>  http://software-carpentry.org/
> 
> Seneca College's collaboration with Mozilla has also, by all accounts,
> been a raging success:
> 
> http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Right.  In fact, it seems like Mozilla Foundation is the place to go...  Greg
Wilson (Software Carpentry's lead) works from the Toronto Mozilla offices...

This one too:

http://www.thestar.com/business/article/1116533--girls-only-code-writing-camp-hits-toronto


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Re: Facilitating the Integration of Free Software into Academic Courses (was Re: Questions for the board election candidates)

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 05/24/2012 06:49 PM, Joanmarie Diggs wrote:
> * They are not familiar with -- and thus not comfortable teaching --
>   all the tools we use.
> * They want certainty in terms of assignments and projects.
> * They want predictability with respect to a schedule.
> * They want a curriculum they can follow.
> * They do not want to be pioneers.
> 
> BUT, they seem to truly dig the idea other than that.

FWIW, Software Carpentry is one of the more successful experiment I've seen in
the "Free Software meets Academic Courses" experiments.  Thought I share the 
link:

  http://software-carpentry.org/

behdad
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Re: Brian Cameron - Stepping down from the board

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 05/22/2012 09:53 PM, Luis Villa wrote:
> Brian-
> Thanks for your selfless service the past few years. Your dedication,
> including to some of the board's most thankless tasks, has been
> admirable and will be very difficult for the board to replace.

I want to second that.  Having been on the board for a few terms with Brian, I
too fully appreciate all the leadership he has shown over the years lifting
where no one else wanted to.

behdad

> Luis
> 
> On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 6:15 PM, Brian Cameron  
> wrote:
>>
>> Friends in the GNOME community:
>>
>> After serving 4 terms on The GNOME Foundation board of directors, I will
>> be stepping down at the end of this term.
>>
>> I would like to thank everyone in the community who has supported me
>> and allowed me to represent them on this board.  It has been a
>> profoundly rewarding and truly inspirational experience to help The
>> GNOME Foundation and GNOME community to grow.
>>
>> The years that I have served on the board have been exciting and
>> productive times.  I am proud to have served as president and secretary;
>> to have been involved with the development, release and celebration
>> surrounding the GNOME 3 release; and to have helped with the
>> development of successful GNOME programs like the Outreach Program for
>> Women.  In my time on the board, I have witnessed so much growth within
>> the community.  Since then, the GNOME Foundation has hired two executive
>> directors, started having successful annual summits in Asia, and has
>> more than doubled the number of hackfests held each year.  Just to
>> mention a few highlights.
>>
>> My stepping down should not be viewed as me becoming less involved
>> with GNOME.  I plan to continue working on GNOME for Oracle and expect
>> that I will continue helping the GNOME Foundation and community in
>> many ways.  I mostly feel that it is just time for me to step down to
>> reclaim some of my life back.  4.5 years (including one 18-month term
>> in 2008-2009) is a long time to serve on The GNOME Foundation board of
>> directors.  I believe that only Jonathan Blandford served as a board
>> member for a longer period of time (5 years).
>>
>> With the two most senior board members (Germán and myself) both
>> stepping down at the end of this term, it is especially important for
>> passionate people to serve the community.  So I again encourage people
>> who are considering to run for the board to step forward.  It is a great
>> way to increase one's involvement with GNOME and free software and to
>> help make sure that GNOME continues to rock.
>>
>> Brian
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Re: Boston Summit?

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 04/27/2012 02:18 PM, Joanmarie Diggs wrote:
> On 04/27/2012 12:25 PM, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:
> 
>> I was thinking, size permitting, we may even be able to do at Mozilla 
>> offices?
> 
> What were you thinking about the date? Is Columbus Day weekend ideal,
> inconvenient, or irrelevant?

Eventually that's the board's call.  Personally, I can help for any time
before mid October, but late October is Unicode Conference time for me.

behdad

> --joanie
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Re: Boston Summit?

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 04/27/2012 11:49 AM, Andreas Nilsson wrote:
> On 04/27/2012 05:35 PM, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:
>> On 04/27/2012 07:30 AM, Joanmarie Diggs wrote:
>>> So I realize it's still quite early, but are we planning on having
>>> the Boston Summit in Boston and over Columbus Day weekend?
>> Can we have in Toronto please?
> Are there any University locations or such we could make use of in Toronto?
> The Montreal one was pretty good and felt like it was a pretty good size for
> the bunch of us.

I was thinking, size permitting, we may even be able to do at Mozilla offices?
 Other than that, yes, there's university space.  York University is
definitely workable, thanks to Chris Tyler.  There's been FUDCon's there.  But
University of Toronto is possible too, and that's downtown.

behdad
(currently hanging out with Lucas, Chris Lord, JP, and others in the Mozilla
Office)

> - Andreas
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Re: Boston Summit?

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 04/27/2012 07:30 AM, Joanmarie Diggs wrote:
> So I realize it's still quite early, but are we planning on having
> the Boston Summit in Boston and over Columbus Day weekend?

Can we have in Toronto please?

behdad
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Re: Could a few influential GNOME develoers join gnu-prog-disc...@gnu.org?

[Behdad Esfahbod]

I know I used to be on that mailing list. I don't remember
unsubscribing from it, but I haven't seen communications in quite a
while. But then again, maybe I unsubscribed and I dont remember.

behdad

On 2012-01-17, at 9:36 PM, Richard Stallman  wrote:

>Can't these be brought up on proper GNOME lists then? Especially
>seeing as there is no public archive for your GNU list.
>
> We use this list for private discussions about GNU in general.
> Sometimes the issues relate to GNOME, but that doesn't mean
> they're specifically about GNOME.  It would be useful for
> some GNOME developers with responsibility and influence
> to be included.
>
> In the middle of a broader discussion about internationalization, not
> specifically about GNOME, someone mentioned this:
>
>Another problem I stumbled upon is the new habit of software like
>Gnome and/or desktop handlers to use localized names for
>directories such as ~/Desktop.  This is a pure nuisance, depending
>on my locale ~/Desktop becomes ~/Bureau or ~/Labortablo.
>
> A GNOME developer in the list would have seen this and could have
> responded, raises the issue in the appropriate GNOME list, or whatever
> is TRT.  It isn't feasible for me, and I don't know who to ask.
>
> (I think that person was right: learning one English word `Desktop' is
> not much of a burden, and on the other hand, this feature can cause a
> real nuisance for users that use multiple locales.)
>
> --
> Dr Richard Stallman
> President, Free Software Foundation
> 51 Franklin St
> Boston MA 02110
> USA
> www.fsf.org  www.gnu.org
> Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
>  Use free telephony http://directory.fsf.org/category/tel/
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Re: Desktop Summit Planning

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 12/14/2011 09:34 AM, Richard Hughes wrote:
> First things first, I'll be happy if we have a GUADEC or a desktop
> summit, both events rocked hard. My preference would be for the
> former, just on the personal belief that I end up doing so much extra
> work for the KDE desktop and get virtually nothing back. It seems to
> me that low level gnome hackers end up doing all the infrastructure
> grunt work in the name of cross-desktop compatibility and then KDE
> either does something different or abstracts it one layer higher. I
> can't think of one system service we use in the GNOME stack that's
> maintained by a KDE person. I can name a dozen GNOME maintainers doing
> the opposite.

Yeah.  That's the sad reality.  To add my perspective on the text rendering
side, I finally got Jiang Jiang's attention to start porting Qt to
HarfBuzz-ng, but in general there's really no attention from the Qt side on
Linux.  Not anymore.

behdad
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Re: Boston Summit logistics (was Re: Desktop Summit Planning)

[Behdad Esfahbod]

Can we have next one in Toronto please? :D
I can run.

On 12/16/2011 12:45 PM, john palmieri wrote:
> 2011/12/16 Máirín Duffy :
>> On Fri, 2011-12-16 at 10:39 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote:
>>> Thanks so much for offering to look into this, Richard! I hear that the
>>> Stata Center was a better location in the past than the Economics 
>>> Building
>>> if we have the choice...
>>>
>>> When it was in the Stata Center, which rooms were they?  If I get the
>>> room numbers, I will know exactly what to ask for.
>>
>> From what I can tell from the wiki, we were in the Stata center most
>> recently in 2005 and haven't been since.
>>
>> Stata Center rooms:
>> - Kirsch Auditorium
>> - Room 124
>> - Room 144
>> - Room 154
>> - Hallway between those rooms for a registration + food table
>>
>> (more details https://live.gnome.org/Boston2005/TheSchedule)
>>
>> Alternatively, in 2006 we were in the Media Lab:
>> - Bartos Theatre
>> - Rothschild Room
>> - Wiesner Room
>> - Room 235
>> - Room 135
>> - Room 483A
>> - Room 443A
>> - "Cool Hangout Room"
>>
>> (more details https://live.gnome.org/Boston2006)
>>
>> In 2008, 2009, & 2010 we were at the MIT Sloan Tang Center / E51
>> Building:
>> - E51-315
>> - E51-325
>> - E51-335
>> - E51-345
>> - E51-372
>> - E51-376
>> - Hallway between those rooms for a registration + food table
>>
>> (more details https://live.gnome.org/Boston2010)
>>
>> I'm not sure which is the economics building (I guess E51?)
>>
>> Anyway I hope this list helps.
>>
>> ~m
> 
> The problem with the Stata Center is it costs money, is harder to book
> and the rooms do not hold as much and usually we need an extra room
> outside the main hall.  The Tang center is usually given to us gratis,
> have huge rooms with AV equipment, no AV setup charges and is usually
> easy to book during the columbus day weekend.  It isn't as sexy as the
> Stata Center but it fits our needs much better.  Also I have to note
> that I think booking for next year doesn't start until February or
> March.
> 
> --
> John (J5) Palmieri
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Re: Readability publisher sign-up for *.gnome.org

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 08/26/11 20:36, Alan Cox wrote:
>> I suspect the most likely sub-domain to be read via Readability is
>> blogs.gnome.org, which would raise the question of whether it's right
>> for the Gnome Foundation to accept the money from people reading
>> Foundation-hosted blog posts. I think it's probably reasonable, but I'm
>> just one person writing mundane things. ;)
> 
> I would be surprised if the Gnome Foundation had legal authority and
> ownership rights to authorise any redesign of such material as it isn't
> the rightsholder in question.

Well, we are reformating and republishing already.  How's that different?
Just wondering.

behdad

> Alan
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Re: [Fwd: GNOME Developer Survey]

[Behdad Esfahbod]

+1.

We already have survey infrastructures setup for foundation use.  Maybe next
time someone comes along we can use their time to run a survey that the board
approved and is conducted on our own infrastructure, under our own terms.

behdad

On 01/31/11 05:05, Michael Meeks wrote:
> 
>   These people are irritating ... three spams from the same group. They
> shot themselves in the foot in the third paragraph with the "twenty
> minutes" IMHO.
> 
>   Can I suggest that the Board complains to these guys for hassling our
> contributors - and/or is this sanctioned - I assume it must be since
> they use the trademark in their 'GNOME developer survey' title.
> 
>   Furthermore - since these surveys are at least somewhat frequent, can I
> suggest that in future, the foundation acts as an intermediary:
> 
>   * to review the content of these surveys pwrt. brevity
>   * to normalise some questions such that we have a consistent
> set of questions over time we can graph.
>   * to broker and publish the complete raw data under some
> suitable open license.
>   * provide some financial incentive to the foundation per
> respondant, rather than some uncertain prize
>   * to do the mailing of questions themselves - and do this
> only once.
> 
>   HTH,
> 
>   Michael.
> 
> 
> 
> 
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Re: GNOME trademarks

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 12/08/10 05:34, Andy Wingo wrote:
> On Wed 08 Dec 2010 10:00, Murray Cumming  writes:
> 
>> If we ever try to sell nuts then we may have a problem.
> 
> Presumably we may however offer nuts at an event, though without perhaps
> labelling them as GNOME nuts.
> 
> We may feel free to label the attendees as such though, as it is a
> different use of the word.

Just to clarify, label the attendees nuts or GNOME? :)

behdad


> Andy
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Re: Tee-Shirt Contest & Countries Eligibility

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 11/18/10 02:11, Richard Stallman wrote:
> It is better than excluding them.

Agreed.

b
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Re: Tee-Shirt Contest & Countries Eligibility

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 11/17/10 13:35, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:

> For what it's worth, GNOME pretty much ignores such regulations in all its
> other dealings.  Doesn't necessarily mean that it's violating any law.  It
> just doesn't bother checking.  Doing it for such a small contest sounds
> overkill to me.

Plus, if not paying the winners cash means that we can get away with it, I
suggest we just give them ten tshirts instead of $100.

> behdad
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Re: Tee-Shirt Contest & Countries Eligibility

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 11/17/10 13:20, Tristan Van Berkom wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 2:48 AM, Baptiste Mille-Mathias
>  wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I've seen the foundation will organize a contest to design a tee-shirt
>> for the GNOME 3 release [1], and while reading the terms of the rules
>> [2], I found the first part of paragraph 4 particularly unfair to
>> people living in some countries.
>> GNOME being based on people and openness, I wonder how a Free Software
>> & Non-profit organisation wouldcomply with such US embargo related
>> laws.
>> How it could make sense to refuse a proposal for a contest, but coding
>> contribution and translations are accepted everyday?
>>
>> If there's no way around such restrictions, could it be possible for
>> the foundation to look for some way to avoid them in the future (by
>> creating a delegation in another country perhaps) ?
> 
> For what it's worth, motion strongly seconded.

For what it's worth, GNOME pretty much ignores such regulations in all its
other dealings.  Doesn't necessarily mean that it's violating any law.  It
just doesn't bother checking.  Doing it for such a small contest sounds
overkill to me.

behdad


> These rules sound outright offensive to residents of some countries,
> furthermore they make the GNOME foundation publicly appear to be
> actively supporting US embargo laws.
> 
> If it's impossible to change the rules for the term of this contest, we should
> at least include a statement at http://www.gnome.org/contest/ explaining
> why we are bound by law etc, etc, to enforce these particular biased rules...
> and hopefully promising to do better the next time around.
> 
> Best regards,
>  -Tristan
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Re: Meeting Minutes Published - August 19, 2010

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 09/03/10 04:48, Dave Neary wrote:
> While I was on the board, I worked with James Vasile on a trademark
> license contract, which should be part of the material the board has,
> for that jeweller, and James tried to make something modular that could
> be reused. That contract has no automatic renewal clause, and ran for an
> X year term (X=2 is set in a prefix). I have the last revision we came
> up with (Stormy should have it too, and it's in board-list archives).
> Let me know if you want me to send it on.

When I was last on board I had started gathering such documents here:

  http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoardPrivate/Documents

But can't find them anymore.  Either someone removed that page or I'm not
allowed to see it (which I assumed as a previous board member I would be).

behdad
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Re: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 06/01/2010 01:08 PM, Lefty (石鏡 ) wrote:
> On 6/1/10 10:01 AM, "Xavier Bestel"  wrote:
>>
>> Err .. nothing, except my extraordinary ability to mix their names ? :)
> 
> You're displaying quite a host of "extraordinary abilities" this morning.

Can we please stop this subthread now?

behdad
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Re: FW: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 06/01/2010 12:18 PM, Xavier Bestel wrote:
> User-Agent: Microsoft-Entourage/12.24.0.100205
> Date: Tue, 01 Jun 2010 08:41:19 -0700
> Subject: FW: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy
> From: "Lefty (=?ISO-2022-JP?B?GyRCQFA2QBsoQg==?= )" 
> 
> I find it quite amusing that you're using a Microsoft client on an Apple
> pc to defend your GNOME candidacy.

Wait a second.  What does Lefty's email client has to do with Seif's candidacy?

behdad


> Kudos for your sense of humor (or is it just plain provocation ?).
> 
>   Xav
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Re: Providing previously missing board meeting minutes

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 04/14/2010 07:20 PM, Brian Cameron wrote:
> So she asked me to flesh out the Wiki
> so it includes links to all meeting minutes back to the year 2000.

This is great Brian.  Thanks!

behdad

> I have done this, refer here:
> 
>   http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes
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Re: release-announce-list?

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 03/23/2010 02:59 PM, Vincent Untz wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Le mardi 23 mars 2010, à 14:49 -0400, Behdad Esfahbod a écrit :
>> Hi,
>>
>> I want to suggest creating a release-announce-list and use that for new
>> package release announcements instead of gnome-announce-list. That would
>> significantly reduce the "noise" on gnome-announce-list for people who are 
>> not
>> interested in individual package releases.
> 
> Stupid question, but what would be left on gnome-announce-list? :-)

Announcement of GNOME releases and press releases, not individual modules.  A
list that a person casually interested in GNOME can hang around on to stay up
to date with GNOME in general.

> Also, do we really need a release-announce-list when we have
> ftp-release-list?

That's what I wonder also.  I stopped sending email announcements long time
ago.  Checking ftp-release-list, I think we should simply move over to that.
Except also advertise external modules to send their release announcements 
there?

behdad

> Vincent
> 
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release-announce-list?

[Behdad Esfahbod]

Hi,

I want to suggest creating a release-announce-list and use that for new
package release announcements instead of gnome-announce-list. That would
significantly reduce the "noise" on gnome-announce-list for people who are not
interested in individual package releases.

behdad
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Re: Stepping down from the board

[Behdad Esfahbod]

Thank you all for the nice words.  I hope to remain an approachable member of
the community.  Feel free to drop me a line if I can help with anything.

behdad

On 03/12/2010 07:42 PM, john palmieri wrote:
> Sorry to see you leave Behdad.  You have been a machine on the board. 
> Paul has his work cut out to fill your shoes but knowing Paul and the
> amount of energy he has put into GNOME I have no doubt he is up to the
> challenge.  I'm looking forward to the continuing good works coming out
> of the Board.
> 
> On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 6:19 PM, Behdad Esfahbod  <mailto:beh...@behdad.org>> wrote:
> 
>     On 03/12/2010 03:54 PM, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:
> 
> > The board has decided to appoint Paul Cutler to take the seat.
> 
> Oops, seems like I misspelled Paul's name.  Fixed now.
> 
> behdad
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Re: Stepping down from the board

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 03/12/2010 03:54 PM, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:

> The board has decided to appoint Paul Cutler to take the seat.

Oops, seems like I misspelled Paul's name.  Fixed now.

behdad
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Stepping down from the board

[Behdad Esfahbod]

Hi,

When I decided to run for the foundation board in 2006, many of the old timers
where not running again and there was the feeling that new people are needed
on the board.  The board work has been very educational and rewarding for me,
but given other engagements and all the new, capable, people on the board this
year, I think it's time for me to step down so I can focus on hacking.

The board has decided to appoint Paul Culter to take the seat.  Paul has been
doing wonders on the marketing team, GNOME Journal, and the sysadmin team.
I'm sure this opportunity gives him more ways to contribute to GNOME even more.

Cheers,
behdad
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Re: Resigning from the Board

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 02/17/2010 12:36 PM, Alberto Ruiz wrote:
> I hope we can find someone as cheerful and dedicated as you are.

Alberto!  Looks like you didn't read his email completely.  We already found
someone as cheerful and dedicated: Jorge Castro :).

behdad
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Re: [adboard] GNOME Q4 2009 Quarterly report

[Behdad Esfahbod]

The correct links:

http://foundation.gnome.org/reports/gnome-report-2009-Q4.pdf
http://foundation.gnome.org/reports/gnome-report-2009-Q4.html

behdad

On 02/03/2010 01:27 PM, Stormy Peters wrote:
> Corrected links:
> [1] http://foundation.gnome.org/reports/gnome-report-2009-Q4.pdf
> 
> [2] http://foundation.gnome.org/reports/gnome-report-2009-Q4.html
> 
> 
> On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 10:49 AM, Stormy Peters  > wrote:
> 
> The GNOME Foundation would like to present the Q4 2009 Quarterly
> report
> [1]
> (HTML version
> [2]).
> Q4 is normally a quiet quarter — but not for GNOME! During Q4 we had
> our annual GNOME Asia, GNOME Forum Brazil and Boston Summit events
> as well as a record four hackfests! The Marketing, Zeitgeist, Video
> and WebKitGTK+ teams all made good progress on their goals during
> their hackfests. Next quarter we'll continue the good work with
> hackfests planned in areas like usability and accessibility. GNOME
> will also be represented at a number of events like FOSDEM, SCALE,
> FOSS 2010 Workshop, Open Mobility, Libre Planet and more! In
> addition to events, teams like the System Administration team have
> made a lot of progress — they've installed Piwik, Plone, Splinter,
> and CiviCRM to improve GNOME's infrastructure. This quarter's update
> also includes an update from the GNOME Board of Directors. Read
> on[1] 
> to hear all of the fabulous work that was done on GNOME in Q4 2009!
> 
> If you'd like to receive the report via email in the future, please
> email me with the subject "Subscribe to GNOME Quarterly Report via
> email".
> 
> Best,
> 
> Stormy
> 
> [1] http://foundation.gnome.org/reports/gnome-report-2009-Q3.pdf
> [2] http://foundation.gnome.org/reports/gnome-report-2009-Q3.html
> 
> 
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Re: "Private Foundation-List" Petition for referendum

[Behdad Esfahbod]

Been more than two weeks that the petition has been up and it did not attract 
support of 10% of membership as required by the charter.  The request is 
dropped as far as I'm concerned.  Thanks everyone for the support and/or 
useful discussion.


behdad

On 12/18/2009 09:27 PM, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:

On 12/15/2009 10:58 AM, Vincent Untz wrote:

Le mardi 15 décembre 2009, à 11:57 +0330, Behnam Esfahbod ZWNJ a écrit :

Also, is a referendum really necessary to create a new members-only
mailing list? Noting that becoming membership and participation is
always optional.


It's not necessary to hold a vote to create a list, but I think Behdad's
point by doing this is to see if there's real interest from the
membership.

Behdad, are you fine if we put a time limit for your proposal (2 weeks,
1 month, whatever)? Just to make sure we know when to close the topic in
case there are not enough members signing the petition -- I'd hate to
have someone come again in 2 years and say "hey, we now have 50
signatures for this", while we will have all moved on ;-)


Ok, lets wait till Monday. That would be one week.

behdad


Vincent


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Re: "Private Foundation-List" Petition for referendum

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 12/15/2009 10:58 AM, Vincent Untz wrote:

Le mardi 15 décembre 2009, à 11:57 +0330, Behnam Esfahbod ZWNJ a écrit :

Also, is a referendum really necessary to create a new members-only
mailing list?  Noting that becoming membership and participation is
always optional.


It's not necessary to hold a vote to create a list, but I think Behdad's
point by doing this is to see if there's real interest from the
membership.

Behdad, are you fine if we put a time limit for your proposal (2 weeks,
1 month, whatever)? Just to make sure we know when to close the topic in
case there are not enough members signing the petition -- I'd hate to
have someone come again in 2 years and say "hey, we now have 50
signatures for this", while we will have all moved on ;-)


Ok, lets wait till Monday.  That would be one week.

behdad


Vincent


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Re: "Private Foundation-List" Petition for referendum

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 12/15/2009 08:52 AM, Og Maciel wrote:

Since there isn't a place to do this that I'm aware, here is my vote
against this petition. For the same reasons that many here have
already expressed, I want to keep GNOME open for everyone. And even
though GNOME != GNOME Foundation when it comes down to our code, GNOME
== GNOME Foundation when it comes down to all other aspects, including
openness, tolerance and fairness.


I'll respond to the other posts in the thread later.  Just a quick note on the 
procedure though: we are not voting on the proposal yet.  Right now I'm just 
gathering support to propose voting on the issue.


Given the excellent comments so far, I'm leaning towards retracting the 
proposal.  However, there's quite a few others who support it now.  So I let 
it move forward naturally.


Cheers,
behdad



Cheers,

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Re: "Private Foundation-List" Petition for referendum

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 12/15/2009 02:35 AM, Sergey Panov wrote:

On Tue, 2009-12-15 at 01:56 -0500, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:

As per Code of Conduct, please assume people mean well.  Which both Lefty and
Philip do.


Sorry, if I managed to brake some CoC. I have no idea what you mean by
"mean well", but their attack on RMS was quite tasteless.

>

   Philip is a major developer of many current and emerging GNOME
technologies.


Which technologies? TinyMail?


Tracker for example.



   Lefty represents ACCESS in the Advisory board and is a regular
contributor to the adboard meetings as well as being a regular at GUADEC and
other GNOME conferences.


Nothing personal, but I never trusted those corporate "Open Source
Advocates" ... . Besides,  Lefty does not work for ACCESS Inc. anymore
-- he is a director of the "Open Source Technologies"
http://www.blogger.com/profile/08971976622291862537.


Whether you trust him or not is irrelevant.  You asked for his contributions 
to GNOME in the past year, and I enumerated those.




   FWIW, just being a regular at GUADEC is enough
contribution to apply for Foundation membership.  We have that in our rules
and we have accepted members just passing that criteria.


I did not know the threshold was dropped that low.


It has been that "low" for years.  Foundation is not a developers-only league. 
 Writing code is not the only way to contribute to GNOME.  Plus, for all the 
"engage the community" talk, doesn't it make more sense to push the threshold 
rather low?



behdad



-Sergey Panov

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Re: "Private Foundation-List" Petition for referendum

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 12/15/2009 01:50 AM, Sergey Panov wrote:


  Politics aside, what was  "Lefty"(Open source advocate for ACCESS Co.,
Ltd.) and Philip Van Hoof (self-appointed propitiatory software
advocate) contribution to GNOME in the last year? Are those two still
members of the foundation?


As per Code of Conduct, please assume people mean well.  Which both Lefty and 
Philip do.  Philip is a major developer of many current and emerging GNOME 
technologies.  Lefty represents ACCESS in the Advisory board and is a regular 
contributor to the adboard meetings as well as being a regular at GUADEC and 
other GNOME conferences.  FWIW, just being a regular at GUADEC is enough 
contribution to apply for Foundation membership.  We have that in our rules 
and we have accepted members just passing that criteria.


behdad
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Re: "Private Foundation-List" Petition for referendum

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 12/15/2009 12:23 AM, Lefty (石鏡 ) wrote:


In any case, journalist-impersonators like Mr. Varghese are going to write a
load of smack, no matter what, even if they have to simply invent it. After
all, they have in the past.


Given that all the past incidents I can think of involve that same person, I 
tend to agree that this may be a non-issue.


behdad
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Re: "Private Foundation-List" Petition for referendum

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 12/14/2009 10:51 PM, brendan wrote:

Doesn't this undermines the values of the open source community? While
where at making a private list for discussions, why not make the whole
gnome project, closed source. The news we generate from such
discussions, gives the gnome project public visibility that is needed
for gnome to grow.

The reason I love open source is that it open for ___anyone___ to
participate in the community and allows for people to come up with ideas
that "Foundation Members" never would of thought of. It's the whole
point of open source.


Brendan,

I understand your stance and appreciate it.  But note that GNOME != GNOME 
Foundation.  We are not talking about closing GNOME to contributions from 
non-members, neither there is anything here about changing the licensing 
scheme.  My proposal is mostly about recognizing that some discussions are 
better done among contributors only, and not the public.  And only if a 
reasonable part of the community thinks that it's a good idea.


behdad



Thanks


Brendan



On Mon, 2009-12-14 at 20:49 -0500, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:

[/me removes board hat]

Hi everyone,

I like to ask for your support in my petition for referendum to make
foundation-list archives private and membership limited to actual Foundation
members.  If we make that change we would be able to discuss matters freely
without making lots of news that more often than not are harmful to our image
to the world in general.

Please sign here:  http://live.gnome.org/PrivateFoundationListPetition

We would need 35 to 40 signatures to put this to vote.


Cheers,
behdad






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Re: "Private Foundation-List" Petition for referendum

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 12/14/2009 10:20 PM, Jonathan Corbet wrote:


As long as GNOME is a project that matters, there will always be bozos
who will post uneducated articles about what you are doing.  If your
discussions are in the open, people who really care can see what was
*really* said and help to keep those bozos (people like me) honest.  If
you hide behind closed doors, the bozos get the last word.  Articles
about GNOME will be less frequent, less accurate, and less likely to be
corrected.  Is that really what you want?


When you put it that way, no, that's not what I want :).  I understand that 
there is value in keeping most discussions in the open.  I still see 
legitimate uses for a foundation-private list though.  For meta-discussions 
mostly.


behdad


jon


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Re: "Private Foundation-List" Petition for referendum

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 12/14/2009 10:14 PM, Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier wrote:

2009/12/14 Stormy Peters:

Are there people on this list that are not GNOME Foundation members? If so,
can you speak up? It would be good for everyone to know why you subscribe to
foundation-list and the value you see in it.


Yes.

I'm not a Foundation member, but I am on the advisory board. Obviously
the discussions are still of interest, even though I'm not a member.


Any reason you do not become a member?  You qualify for.

behdad


Best,

Zonker

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Re: "Private Foundation-List" Petition for referendum

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 12/14/2009 10:08 PM, Glynn Foster wrote:


The net effect of that perceived transparency is that many discussions
happen on private IRC messages or direct mail and never make it to
foundation-list in fear of long threads and negative publicity.


I would submit that they would happen regardless of whether the thread
was open or closed to be honest.


While I agree, part of my point was that discussions and decision-making may 
not be as transparent as it looks like from the outside.  So I don't see any 
reason to keep the transparency that we know is not really there.  I'm more 
interested in being responsible than being transparent.  And I think Stormy 
and Germán have been doing a great job in that front.


behdad


Glynn


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Re: "Private Foundation-List" Petition for referendum

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 12/14/2009 09:04 PM, Stormy Peters wrote:

Are there people on this list that are not GNOME Foundation members? If
so, can you speak up? It would be good for everyone to know why you
subscribe to foundation-list and the value you see in it.


I understand that it may seem disrespectful to ask people to leave.  An 
alternative would be to introduce a foundation-private list.  One way or the 
other, maybe that's a better idea.  Humm.  Yes, that is better.  I'll amend my 
request (it has three other signatures already.  Hope those people don't mind).


behdad
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Re: "Private Foundation-List" Petition for referendum

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 12/14/2009 09:28 PM, Glynn Foster wrote:


On 15/12/2009, at 2:49 PM, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:


[/me removes board hat]

Hi everyone,

I like to ask for your support in my petition for referendum to make
foundation-list archives private and membership limited to actual
Foundation members. If we make that change we would be able to discuss
matters freely without making lots of news that more often than not
are harmful to our image to the world in general.


Remember gnome-hackers? Mails get leaked all the time, and I doubt
moving foundation-list private would make any difference.


Sure.  But at least someone needs to leak it.  Currently any heated discussion 
is like a goldmine begging the trolls to dip into it.


FWIW, that's what KDE does.  And we hardly hear about internal KDE issues in 
the news.



GNOME needs to
continue to promote itself as a transparent and welcoming community,
which we do very very well for the most part. Let's be careful not to
throw all that progress away.


The net effect of that perceived transparency is that many discussions happen 
on private IRC messages or direct mail and never make it to foundation-list in 
fear of long threads and negative publicity.




Glynn

(Yes, I'm still alive and regularly reading the Planet GNOME and the
lists - I still consider myself a GNOME member for as long as I feel
welcome, though not as active as I'd like to be with other committments)


That's what I like not kicking people out of PGO, so we can keep track of 
people like you.


Cheers,
behdad
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Re: "Private Foundation-List" Petition for referendum

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 12/14/2009 08:54 PM, Gregory Leblanc wrote:

On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 8:49 PM, Behdad Esfahbod  wrote:

[/me removes board hat]

Hi everyone,

I like to ask for your support in my petition for referendum to make
foundation-list archives private and membership limited to actual Foundation
members.  If we make that change we would be able to discuss matters freely
without making lots of news that more often than not are harmful to our
image to the world in general.


Can you cite a few examples of where this has been a problem in the
past?


Don't have to look much back.  Sam Varghese have been making a living churning 
news out of f-l traffic.  About the recent thread:


  http://www.itwire.com/content/view/29995/1090/1/0/

Which then made OSNews:

  http://www.osnews.com/story/22610/GNOME_To_Split_from_GNU_Project_/

And I hear it hit slashdot too.  The OSnews article alone drew 203 comments so 
far.  If you check the comments, they are mostly uninformed and out of 
context.  For example the ITWire article suggests that a blog post by Miguel 
was the trigger for Lucas starting the thread in f-l.  I can assure you (as a 
board member) that this is not the case.  Yet half the comments are around 
that blog post by Miguel now.


Another example, I read a comment in one of those articles yesterday.  It 
started like: "GNOME people is into a lot of name calling."  Now I think we 
should be able to discuss our own stuff without the outside make an 
out-of-context fuss about it.



I think that our transparency is one of our greatest assets.


I know.  But there is a cost to it.  Transparency doesn't necessarily mean 
open to the world.  Being open to all our members is transparent-enough for me.


behdad


Thanks,
  Greg

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"Private Foundation-List" Petition for referendum

[Behdad Esfahbod]

[/me removes board hat]

Hi everyone,

I like to ask for your support in my petition for referendum to make 
foundation-list archives private and membership limited to actual Foundation 
members.  If we make that change we would be able to discuss matters freely 
without making lots of news that more often than not are harmful to our image 
to the world in general.


Please sign here:  http://live.gnome.org/PrivateFoundationListPetition

We would need 35 to 40 signatures to put this to vote.


Cheers,
behdad
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Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership (Summary)

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 12/14/2009 07:41 PM, Lucas Rocha wrote:

- Learn to agree to disagree.
- Criticize ideas, not people presenting them.

Pierre suggested that both items are added to the list of example
behaviours under "Be respectful and considerate". This is something
that should be officially proposed for general consideration. Behdad,
maybe you could do that? :-)


I will, except that I don't know what the process to do that is.  Just post to 
f-l?  How would we make a decision?  Or gather 10% to put it to vote?


behdad
noticing that we don't have much process in place, and that may or may not be 
a good thing

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Re: Addition to the Code of Conduct (was Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership)

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 12/14/2009 05:26 PM, Pierre-Luc Beaudoin wrote:

On Mon, 2009-12-14 at 22:56 +0100, Vincent Untz wrote:

Should we just version the Code of Conduct? Or is this
a non-issue?


I believe we don't need to update the Code since those 2 additions are
expected behaviours from the existing "Be respectful and considerate"
element.

Maybe should these 2 additions be added to a list of example behaviours
that serve the code?


Makes more sense.

behdad


Pierre-Luc

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Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 12/14/2009 05:26 PM, Philip Van Hoof wrote:

But what if advocating free software means that the minimal support
GNOME should do for GNU, is to claim that proprietary is illegitimate?


Exactly.

I have been supporting Free Software for over ten years, and will probably do 
for the rest of my life.  But, as an Iranian witnessing what's going on in 
Iran right now, I can't agree to any kind of anti-something or 
against-something or death-to-something.  Tolerance is key.  When someone asks 
me "so why should I use GNOME instead of KDE", or "why should I use Linux 
instead of Windows", my only reply is "use whatever works better for you". 
I'm sick of fanaticism, and my friends in Iran are being beaten and killed 
because of it.  I can't justify being a fanatic when it comes to software freedom.


These days, Free Software does many things better than the alternatives.  Many 
of my friends use it because they find it better.  And that simply makes me 
happy.  But when someone chooses to use OS X, I respect their freedom of choice.


behdad
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Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 12/14/2009 04:34 PM, Vincent Untz wrote:


Also, the GNU project is not the FSF. When reading the thread, I have
the feeling that some people want the GNOME project to not be part of
the FSF, or to disagree with the FSF. The GNOME Foundation is part of
the FSF, and we sometimes disagree with the FSF, and we're all fine this
way.


Humm, *now* I'm confused.  What does it mean that "The GNOME Foundation is 
part of the FSF"?


As for "GNOME being a GNU project", what that means is explained here:

  http://www.gnu.org/help/evaluation.html

behdad

 (Note that the FSF is an advisory board member of the GNOME

Foundation, though, and it's valuable one that we're happy to have). I
think Andy wrote more on this [1], but I didn't take the time to read
his post so I won't put words in his mouth :-)

Cheers,

Vincent

[1] http://wingolog.org/archives/2009/12/13/gnu-gnome-and-the-fsf


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Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 12/13/2009 06:04 PM, Lefty (石鏡 ) wrote:

In the interests of a broader collection of data, I've shelled out of my own
pocket to set up a professional-level SurveyMonkey account (the use of which
I will happily share with the Foundation, at least until the annual
subscription runs out, if it wishes to conduct surveys of its own).


Err.  Next time just let me know!

If people remember, I set up a survey system (LimeSurvey; Free Software) on my 
GNOME account to run the DVCS survey.  We later used that to do the Desktop 
Summit survey.  I'm offering it to all Foundation members now: if you need 
something surveyed Foundation-wide, just ask and I'll set you up with an account.


At some point I may hook it up to LDAP and let people freely use it.  But 
we're currently far from having a single "gnome.org account"...


Cheers,
behdad
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Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 12/11/2009 01:14 PM, Stormy Peters wrote:



On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 11:12 AM, Dave Neary mailto:dne...@gnome.org>> wrote:


There is precedent for a membership petition for an election. I ran one
to have the board size reduced some years ago:
http://live.gnome.org/BoardSizePetition

At the time I was told I needed 10% of the membership:

http://foundation.gnome.org/about/charter/ says 10%. I couldn't find a
reference to either number in the bylaws.


You're right.  My bad.  I was misremembering.  The bylaws say 5% is needed to 
call for a meeting, something like that.


behdad



Stormy

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Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 12/11/2009 11:32 AM, Lefty (石鏡 ) wrote:

Philip van Hoof writes


I propose to have a vote on GNOME's membership to the GNU project.


I'd second this.


Quick procedural note: If you really want to pursue this, according to the 
bylaws you need support of 5% of the membership IIRC to put something to vote. 
 I'm not sure the vote would be binding though.


I thought I point that out since that's your rights as members of the 
foundation.  That said, I agree with Dave.


behdad
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Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 12/09/2009 08:48 AM, Lionel Dricot wrote:


I don't agree at all with the current direction of the discussion. For me,
pgo is about people.

Yes, I'm interested to learn that Nat will soon get married. Yes, I'm
interested to hear about Mandriva on Frédéric's posts because I don't use
it at all but at least I keep an eye on it thanks to his blog. Even the
mono-bashism of Miguel is sometimes interesting : it allows me to know what
is happening when I want to know. I like to practise my Dutch by reading
Reinout's post and to see if UTF-8 works correctly when seeing Indian's
poems.

I'm happy to meet a fellow GNOME developer at FOSDEM and saying : "So, you
like Karaté/Running/Vegan Cooking ?".

I know some planets that choose to have a "code of conduct" about what
should be posted or not (like planet Ubuntu-f or planet-libre.org). They
all ended by not selecting the people on a quality basis but selecting
posts that "respect the subject of the planet". It results in very-low
quality planet, not interesting and, more importantly, without any soul,
any spirit.

Planet.gnome has a spirit. There's something (called it "soul" if you
want). Don't break it. Remember planet.climate-change joke? That was huge
and enjoyable.


EXACTLY.  EXACTLY.  EXACTLY.



My solution is the following :

- Each GNOME member should be able to add his feed to pgo. He might want
to change his feed whenever he wants to take a more specialized one or not.

- Each year, a mail is sent to those member asking if they want to stay on
pgo and if they consider themselves still on-topic.


Lets limit it to a reminder that "you're on PGO.  if you want to be removed, 
email xxx" if we have to do something like that.


behdad


But don't clean whiter than white. There's always off-topic stuffs or
stuff you don't want to read. Just don't read them. Richard don't want to
read stuffs about Mono? I understand, it's his choice and I respect it.
He's not forced to read them. GNOME is about people. Sometimes, people are
doing other stuffs than free software coding (aren't you?). When I'm at
work, I often talk with co-worker about sports, about what I will eat
tonight. When I go to #gnome-hackers, often the discussion is completely
off-topic. Last night, on #gtg, I discussed about chocolates with someone
arguing that there's good chocolate in Italy (can you believe that?). It
was fun. I'm in GNOME because it's fun. GNOME is fun. PGO is fun.

Please, please, please, keep the fun. World is collapsing? It's doing that
for 2.000.000 years already! So, keep the fun…

Lionel


On Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:27:43 +0100, Frederic Crozat
wrote:

Le 08/12/2009 16:08, sankarshan a écrit :

2009/12/8 Pierre-Luc Beaudoin:

On Tue, 2009-12-08 at 03:23 -0500, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:

But I find it interesting to know, say, what Miguel is up to these
days. I don't think it's just me...


I don't believe Frederic was pointing at Miguel.  There are people who
have left the Gnome community working on products that don't use any
Gnome technology posting blog post/ads for said product on PGO.


[0] Unless specific names are pointed out to the Board or, on this
list, the shadow boxing will be more harmful


So, let's start (this is list done quickly by me and I haven't contacted



anybody from it), as basis:

- Robert Love
- Christopher Blizzard
- Miguel De Icaza
- Nat Friedman
- Daniel Veillard
- Edd Dumbill
- Glynn Foster
- James Henstridge
- Jeff Waugh
- Mark McLoughlin
- Scott James Remnant



[1] How does one define that they have "left the GNOME community" ?


this list is based on people either no longer blogging at all or not
blogging about GNOME and not being active in GNOME. I don't have any
problem about people who blogs about non-political oriented things in
their life, as long as GNOME is one of those things...

I'm not even sure I should still be on Planet GNOME (even if I'm release



team member), since most of my posts aren't about GNOME but about the
distribution I work on. And I sometime feels those posts could be seen
as propaganda for my distribution.

Regarding what bedhad said, nothing prevent people to read those people
blog outside Planet GNOME (like Planet Mono or anything else).

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Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 12/09/2009 09:07 AM, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:



about their work and appear on Planet GNOME. There's nothing wrong with
that. Same goes for Nokia and many other companies involved.


I wonder if there's a misunderstanding here.  No one said that companies
shouldn't be allowed to post.

Richard said that Planet GNOME shouldn't be used to promote non-free
software (i.e. software that denies freedom by witholding source code or
witholding permission to use/modify/distribute).


But mono *is* Free Software according to the FSF definition!

behdad
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Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 12/09/2009 02:25 AM, sankarshan wrote:

On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 12:44 PM, Behdad Esfahbod  wrote:


Coming back to the starting point - what is the problem to which the
solution is being discussed ?


Read the thread?


I have been following the thread since the inception. The intent of
the (rhetorical ?) question was to bring forth the fact that we are
discussing solutions of myriad variety without looking at whether it
can be solved non-programmatically. Hence, the question.


The immediate question I was responding to was whethere/how blog posts of 
people not involved with GNOME anymore / not part of the GNOME community 
should be removed from PGO.  I think what I proposed is an adequate solution 
to that.


Sure it doesn't fix many other problems raised in the thread.

behdad
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Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 12/09/2009 01:56 AM, sankarshan wrote:

On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 12:23 PM, Behdad Esfahbod  wrote:

On 12/09/2009 01:37 AM, Sankar P wrote:


Say, any viewer of p.g.o can vote a post +1 or -1.  Then we can gather
two
metrics per poster: 1) how impactful his/her posts are (avg / median /
max
number of votes).  2) how interested are readers in his/her posts (avg /
median / min/max score.

We can then have threshold to hide / collapse unpopular posts.  That part
can even be done using JavaScript and you can the threshold on the page
and
more posts will collapse/uncollapse...



Really ? Most people read posts in Google reader (offline) and may not
even be interested to vote for every author.


No one *has* to vote.  And we can have different feeds for different
thresholds.


Coming back to the starting point - what is the problem to which the
solution is being discussed ?


Read the thread?

behdad
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Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 12/09/2009 01:37 AM, Sankar P wrote:


Say, any viewer of p.g.o can vote a post +1 or -1.  Then we can gather two
metrics per poster: 1) how impactful his/her posts are (avg / median / max
number of votes).  2) how interested are readers in his/her posts (avg /
median / min/max score.

We can then have threshold to hide / collapse unpopular posts.  That part
can even be done using JavaScript and you can the threshold on the page and
more posts will collapse/uncollapse...



Really ? Most people read posts in Google reader (offline) and may not
even be interested to vote for every author.


No one *has* to vote.  And we can have different feeds for different thresholds.

behdad
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Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 12/08/2009 10:08 AM, sankarshan wrote:

2009/12/8 Pierre-Luc Beaudoin:

On Tue, 2009-12-08 at 03:23 -0500, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:

But I find it interesting to know, say, what Miguel is up to these
days. I don't think it's just me...


I don't believe Frederic was pointing at Miguel.  There are people who
have left the Gnome community working on products that don't use any
Gnome technology posting blog post/ads for said product on PGO.


[0] Unless specific names are pointed out to the Board or, on this
list, the shadow boxing will be more harmful

[1] How does one define that they have "left the GNOME community" ?


Exactly.  The more I think about the issues raised in this thread, the more I 
believe a voting system (similar to what maemo is doing perhaps) may be all we 
need.


Say, any viewer of p.g.o can vote a post +1 or -1.  Then we can gather two 
metrics per poster: 1) how impactful his/her posts are (avg / median / max 
number of votes).  2) how interested are readers in his/her posts (avg / 
median / min/max score.


We can then have threshold to hide / collapse unpopular posts.  That part can 
even be done using JavaScript and you can the threshold on the page and more 
posts will collapse/uncollapse...


behdad
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Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 12/07/2009 01:32 PM, Frederic Crozat wrote:

Le 27/11/2009 10:53, Murray Cumming a écrit :

On Wed, 2009-11-25 at 16:50 -0200, Tristan Van Berkom wrote:

Alternative proposal: lets deal with the problem at hand and get our
story straight about what is planet.gnome.org, what can be posted
there (i.e. no porn and vulgar language etc.) and how we can help
to enforce a reasonably exact policy on an exact resource which
is planet.gnome.org.


planet.gnome.org is hard to moderate. Editors can only remove an entire
blog. It would be easier if the software allowed the existing editors to
remove a single blog post.


Let's be honest too : there are a bunch of people which used to be
active GNOME members, who changed their focus to other projects and are
still in Planet GNOME for no reason. Maybe PGO editors should start
cleaning "the old cruft" (no offense intended)..


But I find it interesting to know, say, what Miguel is up to these days.
I don't think it's just me...

behdad
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Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 11/25/2009 02:07 PM, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:


To make the discussion more practical, lets take one real incident of
the past: Murray's blog re Jeff. It did not include vulgar language. It
did include exaggerations that turned into libel. Now how does any
proposed solution deal with that?


It was pointed out to me that I may come across as taking sides here and 
accusing one side of wrong-doing.  I want to clarify that I did not intend 
that.  My sole purpose of bringing this up was for the sake of driving the 
discussion.  I did not want to get into who's right or who's wrong, and hence 
this correction.


behdad
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Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 11/26/2009 03:18 AM, Dave Neary wrote:

Hi,

Jason D. Clinton wrote:

Well, I withdraw my proposed amendment to the CoC as there has been no
support for it and I'm not entirely happy with it as written, either.
But, while I agree that the above would be welcome additions to the CoC,
I don't think this helps us answer what to do when the board is contacted.


I refer the honorable gentleman to the statement Behdad made some
moments ago:

Behdad said:

   3. Most of the time, a vocal minority does not speak for the majority.


The issue is working out whether someone is part of a vocal minority, or
a spokesperson for a silent majority.


I need to clarify the context of that statement.  I think we can easily assume 
that a rude deterring vocal minority (typically just one person in any given 
instance) definitely does not speak for majority.  And that's what I wanted to 
emphasize.  You're right though, that it may well be the other way around.


behdad


Cheers,
Dave.


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Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 11/25/2009 05:57 PM, Jason D. Clinton wrote:


Well, I withdraw my proposed amendment to the CoC as there has been no
support for it and I'm not entirely happy with it as written, either.
But, while I agree that the above would be welcome additions to the CoC,
I don't think this helps us answer what to do when the board is contacted.


What I'm suggesting is that when the board is contacted, it would respond: 
"Not our job.   We won't intervene."


behdad
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Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 11/25/2009 02:33 PM, Jason D. Clinton wrote:


I understand your point but I do think it would have made Jeff feel a
little better, even if it were someone else that referred the event to
the MC.

In any case, I think we are straying slight from what we actually want:
to prevent such attacks from happening in the first place; by explicitly
stating that all GNOME communication forums come with this implicit
terms of use, we decrease the probability of bad behaviour before it
ever happens.


Well, what we want is really:

  1. Our communication channels maintaining a upbeat tune and high 
signal-to-noise,


  2. Attract people and not lose many.

Now one way to achieve this is policing, but that's hardly the only way.

What I want to propose / see instead is to make it more clear that:

  1. People speak on their own behalf, not on behalf of GNOME.  Unless they 
ARE talking on behalf of GNOME (say, board, release team, etc),


  2. Like it or not, there exist people out there who are rude, can be 
offensive, etc.  They are out there in real life, and they are there in 
cyberspace.  Just know who they are and ignore them.


  3. Most of the time, a vocal minority does not speak for the majority.

  4. In any kind of discussion and/or medium, one should learn who's words 
matter.  "Is he the maintainer of the module?  Is he a developer?  Does he 
generally offer useful insight?  Does he know what he's talking about?  Do 
others take this person seriously?"  When you learn to ignore the noise, life 
is beautiful again.



I also like to see two more ideas added to CoC:

  - Learn to agree to disagree.

  - Criticize ideas, not people presenting them.


Back to the Murray case, with my recommendation, everything would have 
happened the way it did.  Only that we'd try to make it more clear (on PGO in 
this case) that his views do not represent GNOME's or the majority of GNOME 
contributors.  Just need to accept that it sometimes happens.  What I found 
more disappointing in that particular incident was the flow of "+1" and 
"Thanks you" messages Murray received on PGO.  If that's really who we are, 
well, why police it?  Like what I read once: "Please be a dick if that's who 
you are".



Anyway, that's my feeling about the subject.

behdad




That's not to mention never having to have this thread come up again. :)


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Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 11/25/2009 05:13 PM, Andy Wingo wrote:

It's only IRC and DDL that are really the outliers, it seems, and there
there is enough social pressure, combined with ignore/kill lists, that I
don't really see all the fuss.


And foundation list?  Just saying each maintainer should solve this on their 
own does not make the problem go away, it just puts the burden on multiple 
people.  And then when those maintainers fail to react, the issue typically 
escalates to the board, and we're back to square 1 again.  So, however we 
solve this, it's good to solve it on the foundation level once.


behdad
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Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 11/25/2009 02:18 PM, Jason D. Clinton wrote:

On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 1:07 PM, Behdad Esfahbod mailto:beh...@behdad.org>> wrote:

To make the discussion more practical, lets take one real incident
of the past:  Murray's blog re Jeff.  It did not include vulgar
language.  It did include exaggerations that turned into libel.  Now
how does any proposed solution deal with that?

...

I like specific answer to "how would your proposed solution would
address this past incident, if it happened again?" from anyone
proposing a solution.


Action: Jeff refers his complaint to the membership committee, MC agrees
it was out of bounds, and sends a warning to Murray (first offence).

End result: Jeff feels vindicated in his belief that he was wronged and
is feels that any further attacks are unlikely as the Foundation (via
MC) makes it clear, publicly, that this attack was out of bounds and
that any further attack of that time will result in actual suspension of
privileges.

How does this not improve on what we have now?


I'm guessing that Jeff would not have bothered to play cop and the end result 
would have been as it is today, plus a "first offence" for Murray.  I'm not 
sure the end result would have been much different.


behdad
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Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 11/25/2009 01:50 PM, Tristan Van Berkom wrote:


Alternative proposal: lets deal with the problem at hand and get our
story straight about what is planet.gnome.org, what can be posted
there (i.e. no porn and vulgar language etc.) and how we can help
to enforce a reasonably exact policy on an exact resource which
is planet.gnome.org.


Well, that misses the main issue.  Spam and p0rn are easy, and need no writing 
down.  Where it gets though is criticism, expression of frustration, those 
kind of stuff.  Those have most impact on the community and have caused people 
leave the project for.


To make the discussion more practical, lets take one real incident of the 
past:  Murray's blog re Jeff.  It did not include vulgar language.  It did 
include exaggerations that turned into libel.  Now how does any proposed 
solution deal with that?


If you propose CoC should be enforceable (which I personally strictly oppose: 
when there *is* a law, someone will eventually abuse it.) how do you define 
what "be nice" means?  Does it mean I shouldn't offend anyone?  Or is it that 
the majority should not find my action was offensive?  Or foundation members 
not find it offensive?  Or general public?  etc etc etc.


I like specific answer to "how would your proposed solution would address this 
past incident, if it happened again?" from anyone proposing a solution.


And for those who just keep saying again and again that "there should be an 
enforcement" without ever offering how to get there, well, thanks, we heard 
you many times :).


behdad



Cheers,
   -Tristan


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Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership

[Behdad Esfahbod]

I'm trying to stay out of the discussion at least today.  But:

On 11/25/2009 12:49 PM, Dave Neary wrote:

Hi,

Lionel Dricot wrote:

Do you think that many people were turned out of the GNOME community
because of an hostile experience? I don't think so.  (I might be wrong, I
just never met anybody that has a bad experience).


Some names of good contributors who have drifted away from GNOME, at
least partly because of the tone of discourse:


This is entirely misleading.  "at least partly" doesn't mean anything.  Is 
this the ten people you said you can name off the top of your head?   Other 
than Telsa and partially Ross, have any other ones expressed to you or 
publicly that they left GNOME "at least partly because of the tone of 
discourse"?  And when did Jorge drifted away from GNOME?  Last I checked he 
was around just fine.  And Google blackhole had no part?




Dave Camp
Seth Nickell
Alex Graveley
Telsa Gwynne
Jacob Berkmann
Ross Golder
Daniel Veillard
Joe Shaw
Jorge Castro

Another bunch of people who are still around the free software world,
but who no longer consider themselves GNOME community members - I can't
speak to their motivations, of course:

Nat Friedman
Miguel de Icaza
Glynn Foster
Jeff Waugh
Jody Goldberg
Bill Hanneman
Malcolm Tredinnick
Mark McLoughlin
George Lebl

Some of these people are still members of the foundation, but none of
them have been seen around for a long while.


You have an assumption that when in, people are supposed to stay in for the 
rest of their life.  That assumption is wrong.  People come and go all the 
time.  People move away and work on different things.  Either because of their 
job changes or changing personal interest, or for a whole variety of other 
reasons.  If you want to count all the hackers who once hacked on GNOME but 
don't anymore go ahead, but don't use that to wrongly justify your point.



Cheers,
behdad


Acceptable collateral damage for having unfettered freedom of speech?

Cheers,
Dave.

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Re: Presenting the 2009 Q2 GNOME Quarterly Report

[Behdad Esfahbod]

Stormy,

This is great!  Thanks for everyone involved in preparing it.

Cheers,
behdad

On 09/11/2009 11:51 AM, Stormy Peters wrote:

Hi GNOME Foundation members and fans,

This is our first quarterly report[1]. Please let us know if you find it
useful!

In these quarterly reports we want to focus on what the GNOME Foundation
and its members are doing, so most of the reporting is done by the teams
doing the work. (If you would like to contribute an update in the
future, please let me know.) For example, in the quarterly report, you
can learn how:

* our new system administration team is already hard at work on
  projects like switching the version control system to git,
* the bugsquad team closed 12,549 bugs in Q2,
* the release team put out 2.26.0 and announced GNOME 3.0,
* the marketing team announced plans for a GNOME store, a press team
  and a GNOME 3.0 campaign, and
* our extended community raised $12,392 through Friends of GNOME!

Read about all this and more - our members have been busy working on a
free desktop accessible for everyone!

A big thanks to all the GNOME Foundation members, GNOME contributors and
our Friends of GNOME for a successful second quarter of 2009!

Best,

Stormy

[1] Attached and at
http://foundation.gnome.org/reports/gnome-report-2009-Q2.pdf

--
Stormy Peters
Executive Director
GNOME Foundation




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Re: Free Desktop Communities come together at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 08/12/2009 04:08 PM, Quim Gil wrote:
>
> Speaking clearly, I wonder what weight in people's opinions (in the
> polls and the board meembers) had the Qt branding in badge, towel,
> roll-up ad in the main entrance, etc. Many GNOME people said they
> didn't felt 'at home' in such context. But that is something easy to
> solve in future editions.

It didn't help, but at least for me, it wasn't a huge factor.  I'm clearly in 
favor of colocated event, but I think GUADEC would suffer if we do it again 
next year.



On 08/12/2009 04:22 PM, Og Maciel wrote:

On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 4:08 PM, Quim Gil  wrote:

Actually many GNOME people that was not enthusiastic about a second
joint summit mentioned that one of the problems was that the agenda
didn't help meeting peers with similar interests from the other side.
Something that could be achieved with a better organization of the
agenda, based on this year's experience.


That was exactly my feeling as well. Even though we had both GNOME and
KDE people in attendance in the same place, all sessions were
segregated. I believe someone else mentioned that having
desktop-agnostic tracks would have allowed everyone to see what is
going on with banshee, amarok, etc and allow for some much needed
information sharing.


Agreed.  The scheduling was suboptimal for a number of reasons.  One being 
that early on we decided to have two separate program committees.  This is 
because we wanted to keep the conferences separate.  We did allocate twenty 
slots for XD talks to be selected by both committees, but that was compressed 
in one morning.  Another reason being that we didn't have a definite list of 
available rooms and sizes until very last minute (move to the university, etc).


All these will improve over time, but my personal opinion, having been 
involved in the last two GUADEC organization teams, is that we can't do a 
*much* better job for next year.  When you go from GUADEC alone to co-located, 
it goes from one entity (GUADEC organizers have been GNOME contributors with 
interests aligned with that of GNOME in general) to three entities: GNOME, 
KDE, local team, each with differing interests.




behdad
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Re: Free Desktop Communities come together at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 08/12/2009 09:22 AM, Philip Van Hoof wrote:

Maybe if the foundation's board would more clearly articulate why
exactly we can't do a co-located event*next*  year, they'll convince the
community about their decision? Why didn't they?


My personal view as a board member:

Individual board members talked to various people to get a sense of what 
people are concerned about.  For me, for example, I was personally very 
excited about the event and almost everyone I talked to wanted to see us doing 
it again next year.  Given the survey results, seems like I'm only connected 
to about 55% of the community ;-).


So, we knew that a slight majority of the community wants to do it again next 
year, but there is also a non-negligible part that prefers to not do it again 
next year, perhaps do again the year after or whenever else it seems appropriate.


Then we have to consider the logistics of doing it.  It's no unknown fact that 
running GUADEC is a HARD task.  What's not very widely known is running a 
co-located event is *even* harder.  If we keep doing it, we eventually will 
gain from learning by doing and only then can start to see positive returns to 
scale, but in the short term, say next year, the total experience would have 
been inferior to a non-colocated event.


Let me rephrase it.  This is what I said on the board call:  I don't see us 
(on the GNOME side) putting a lot more effort on the event next year, so I 
don't think we will fix most issues with this year's event.  So I'd rather we 
do a Rocking GUADEC instead, give us some more time to get closer to KDE by 
doing smaller events, and hopefully do a joint event later when we have a 
closer working relationship.


It's not to say that the event this year didn't really rock.  It did.  But the 
GNOME scheduling for example, was inferior to any GUADEC I've seen.

(Yes, I can be blamed for that.)


behdad
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GNOME Foundation AGM time and location

[Behdad Esfahbod]

Hi everyone,

The GNOME Foundation annual general meeting will be held on Thursday July 9th, 
at 10 AM at the GUADEC venue:


  http://www.grancanariadesktopsummit.org/node/272

And you are invited.  If you are not a foundation member, this is a great time 
to become one.



Regards,

behdad
on behalf of the board
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Re: GNOME Board of Directors Foundation Elections Spring 2009 - Preliminary results

[Behdad Esfahbod]

Is it just not a good year to have elections? :)

behdad

On 06/25/2009 12:30 PM, john palmieri wrote:



On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 10:15 AM, Dave Neary mailto:dne...@gnome.org>> wrote:

Hi,


The way forward seems clear to me - the membership committee decides
what counting method will be used, announces it, and we count the
election according to that means. There doesn't need to be a crisis
here.


Deciding on the correct method after the elections seems a bit off to
me.  A member who voted should know exactly how their vote is going to
be counted before the ballot is cast.  If different methods reach
different conclusions then that is a crisis because the membership
committee would be free to choose the one which fits their agenda the
most (not that I feel there is an agenda but the possibility leaves
doubt on the validity of the results).

If in fact it is a bug in OpenSTV and not a disagreement on how votes
should be counted then that is an acceptable reason to move forward with
certifying the vote.

If it is a disagreement on how votes should be counted then the vote is
flawed and I propose we have a runoff between the candidates who were on
one list but not the other.

Going forward we must make sure to document the complete procedure used
in detail and make sure it doesn't fluctuate from election to election.
I do suggest having test cases we can run through any software used to
guarantee results stay consistent from year to year.

--
John




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Re: irc board meetings?

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 06/11/2009 04:16 PM, Pierre-Luc Beaudoin wrote:

On Thu, 2009-06-11 at 11:12 -0500, Brian Cameron wrote:

I understand it every

other board meeting is held in public-but-moderated IRC; transcripts
are cleaned up and made available later.

That sounds like a good idea to me, if people in the Foundation
community would be interested in participating.


Moderated would mean only the board members would be able to talk in
that channel ;-) so they wouldn't be able to participate but only
attend.


In such setups, there's typically a separate channel that other can talk and 
ask questions and comment, and a moderator reflects those in the meeting channel.


b
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Re: Questions for the candidates

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 06/09/2009 11:31 PM, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:


What do you think GNOME should do to support the
broader cause of free/libre software,
and the freedom of computer users?


I think the "look, our source code is Free Software" argument has lost a
lot of appeal in where GNOME has headed in the past and continues to
head. Free-ness is just one of the multiple reasons why GNOME is "Good".
Usability, a11y, i18n, etc are equally important. So I don't think GNOME
can afford supporting the free/libre software cause more than, say, FSF
does.


Reading this after a good night's sleep, I think I didn't exactly write what I 
mean.  What I mean is:


While freedom is not our only selling point from a marketing point of view, 
it's perhaps the most important ingredient of how GNOME works, and we should 
embrace it where we can.  I support GNOME's involvement with the broader cause 
of software freedom.  I like us get more involved in issues like software 
patents or DRM, perhaps by partnering with FSF.  Thinking about it with my 
board hat on though, chances of that happening will be much much higher if FSF 
just asked us.  We never got any request, and well, been busy enough with 
other stuff.


behdad


On the freedom side however, that's where GNOME cares. A lot. Open
standards, open formats, no lock-in, etc, are *very* important to
achieve our goals of usability, a11y, etc, and I like to see GNOME work
more closely with FSF and other parties on fighting against free
standards issues as well as freedom of owning one's data.

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Re: Questions for the candidates

[Behdad Esfahbod]

Hi Everyone,

I'm late to the party; man, did I ever know elections can be so exhausting? 
And so much fun?!  Oh wait, I don't mean this one.  I mean the Iran 
presidential elections on Friday later this week...   Normally that even 
doesn't change my schedule, but for reasons that are better postponed to a PGO 
blogpost, it ate ALL of my weekend and is still giving me a fuzzy feeling this 
week.


Anyway, I apologize for replying so late.  I was counting the number of people 
who have replied to da Q's and it always looked like "a couple or so".  Time 
flies...  So here we go.



Questions
-

  1. For outgoing board members: what have been the upsides/good things
from your previous stint at the Board which you would  like to see
carried forward into this term ?


As I noted in the previous threads, I think the current board had a very 
productive balance.  Things where not falling on the floor anymore, no one 
felt burned out, and I personally felt very happy being on the board.  Now, 
that's mostly because of all the trouble Stormy took off the board's shoulder, 
but also because as a board we developed simple rules and tricks to improve 
our own productivity, and that's what I like to see carried forward into this 
term.  I give three examples:


  - In previous boards (specially when there were 11 seats), there was this 
problem where decisions couldn't be made on time because not enough directors 
replied to a proposal.  Durin the 2007 board we developed, and during 2008 we 
perfected, this protocol of replying with whatever comments we may have, but 
include one of "+1", "-1", or "+0" as our binding vote.  When a decision 
receives four "+1"'s, the proposer automatically takes that as an approval and 
moves on.  More recently we even started replying "+1=1", then next person 
would do "+1=2", etc.  You get the idea.  Problem solved.


  - Da board typically meets every other week.  In the past there have been 
times where people misremembered which week we were in "is it the off week or 
the on?", or totally forgot the meeting, or had the wrong week in their 
calendar because we ended up canceling a meeting because only two people 
called in...  Anyway, to solve that, in one such meeting, we decided that I'll 
send a meeting reminder on the Monday of the week we are supposed to meet.  I 
added a reminder to my calendar and have been sending the reminders, asking 
"Meeting this week.  Who'll be there?  New agenda items?"  And that simple 
one-line email every other week did it.  Now when we meet we know who is 
supposed to be there and who can't make it.  Problem solved.


  - I understand that it has been accepted for a board member to be away from 
board happenings for an extended period of time.  But in the recent while, 
we've developed an expectation of people notifying the other board members if 
they cannot commit their fair share to the board for a period of weeks, and 
that has been very helpful not blocking on individuals and getting things 
done.  Again, problem solved.


To summarize, while it feels so good to think "oh great, seven of these 10 
slaves^Wcandidates will become directors and then everything is their problem 
to fix", it's simply not how it happens.  We don't have any superpowers.  At 
least I dont :-).  What I can offer however is 1) keeping the board functional 
no matter how busy I am, and 2) offering my judgment.




  2. If you are a new candidate: what specific SMART
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_(project_management)) goals would
you like to put for yourself? Or, in other words, how would you like
to measure yourself and, let others know how you are doing ?


Haha, don't have to answer this one :-D.  Poor new guys.



  3. What part of being a board member do you think will be most
difficult for you? How do you plan to compensate for that?


I've only been on the board for 2.5 years now, but when you think about it: I 
started as a first-timer in a board that had decision-making problems, 6 
months in the treasurer resigned, and two months later the president.  Same 
year I guess, I dropped the ball on the ECMA34 press release thing.  And while 
jdub and other directors saved my a** by never pointing fingers at me, it left 
a deep mark on my mind.  I like to think that I've learned a lot from that 
experience.  And then, the board work is simply much lighter these days, 
thanks to Rosanna and Stormy taking over most of the non-hacker-friendly 
tasks.  So I find the actual work quite pleasing these days.  The biggest 
problem is still finding time for it.


I recently started a part-time MBA program on the side.  So my *free* time is 
definitely nonexistent.  However, in the 6 weeks that I've been in the 
program, I find myself Getting more Things Done.  And when I look at it, it's 
obvious why: when I don't have much time at my hand, I actually weight things 
first before committing time to them.  That has resulted in *way* less 
procrastinating.  And

Re: What do you think of the foundation?

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 06/02/2009 05:56 AM, Olav Vitters wrote:

- just doing something (infrastructure) is*way*  better than trying to
   discuss it on d-d-l. No idea why, maybe because I explain it badly,
   but I view discussing things on d-d-l as a waste of time.


Which is not quite surprising.  You wouldn't get a better response if you go 
the main town market on a weekend and ask people what color you should paint 
your house.  The trick to asking questions in any forum is to filter 
informative, insightful, and relevant responses from the noise and act 
accordingly.  You *don't* need to make everyone happy or answer to everyone.


behdad
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Re: So what do people *except* me want from the foundation?

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 06/02/2009 12:57 PM, Ruben Vermeersch wrote:

On di, 2009-06-02 at 14:25 +0200, Dave Neary wrote:

 What do you expect from the foundation?


Last year at GUADEC during the Foundation BOF, the question was raised
as to why the GNOME Foundation keeps its entire finances in a US bank
account (and thus in US Dollars). This also means that quite a lot of
money gets lost due to currency conversions (especially now that the
Euro is growing stronger again). Especially because some of the sponsors
are based in Europe, as well as GUADEC, this amount can be quite
substantial. The proposal was to have a second bank account in Euros, to
avoid this.

Has any action being taken on looking into this and if not, could this
become a task for the next board? If the economy is as bad as the news
wants us to believe, squeezing out every penny will help, so it might be
worthwhile to investigate if this is worth doing.


I remember bringing this up in a board meeting after GUADEC with Rosanna to 
see if our current bank allows opening a Euros account.  I don't remember the 
exact situation.  I have a vague memory that we were in the process of 
changing banks then.


This is something we should still consider, but it doesn't affect this year's 
GUADEC since GUADEC funds are not going through Foundation account right now.


behdad



Ruben


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Re: What do you think of the foundation?

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 05/31/2009 07:17 PM, Olav Vitters wrote:


You mean how someone should behave? What is socially acceptable
somewhere is totally not acceptable elsewhere (eating with mouth open
and making noises).


Every time I'm in major airports, can't help but notice the HSBC 'Your Point 
of View' ads.  Check a few of them out, they are truly brilliant:


  http://www.yourpointofview.com/page03.html

Every time it makes me wonder, why can't all of us understand something that 
simple?


Cheers,
behdad
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Re: What do you think of the foundation?

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 05/31/2009 04:27 AM, Dave Neary wrote:


It's not. But over the past year, we've got one or two such
complaints. And we have not ignored them. I don't think I have to
disclose the details. I don't see any benefits in making them public
either. Or do you mean the punishment should include public
embarrassment? What if the person complaining is found to be guilty?


I wasn't even aware that there were complaints. That's the kind of thing
which, while keeping names out of it, the membership would be interested
in knowing, I think.


It's tricky.  "Board received complaint from person █ about person ██ 
doing  in project ██." is hardly informative.




I have said that the foundation has a role to enable people to attend
conferences. In the special case of GUADEC, we are very generous in that
role. But I think we've been too generous - just because we are enabling
someone to attend a conference doesn't mean we should pay 100% of their
travel costs.


The newly-formed travel committee is making such offers (accommodation only, 
flight only, 50% flight, etc).



Paying 80% of their travel costs is not a punishment, but
it might indeed test their committment to attend the conference - if
it's not worth covering 20% of the costs from their own pocket, how
committed are they to travelling, really?


The commitment part is where I don't agree.  I'm fine with foundation saying 
"Ok, we can cover 80% of your travel.  Let us know if you can cover the rest."
What I'm not fine with is interpreting someone's decision not to pay for 20% 
of their travel as lack of commitment.



I get the impression from you that a GNOME developer has somehow "paid
his dues" in time spent on the project during the year, and that the
foundation owes him his trip to GUADEC. I absolutely disagree with that
framing of the situation.


That's not my point of view.  My view is that I should be free to choose how I 
contribute to GNOME.  *If* I decide to not spend money when contributing to 
GNOME, that should not be interpreted as lack of commitment to the cause or 
project or conference.  That's all I'm saying.



Back in 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003, when the foundation spent a *lot*
less getting people to GUADEC, there were still hundreds of GNOME
hackers paying their way to get to Paris, Copenhagen, Dublin and Malaga.
What's changed? We had *more* students and young professionals back then
than we do now.


I paid to go to OLS in Ottawa while I was a student in 2003, 2004, and 2005. 
However, after having been there for three years, I found that while it's a 
great conference, it's not worth paying $1500 of my money, so I didn't attend 
in following years.  See my point?


Also, are we attracting enough new students to GNOME?


The foundation is not a charity. We have a little money, which we have a
responsibility to use wisely. We have a core goal of enabling people to
attend a conference. If I was being nasty, I would say that we have an
organisational obligation to choose conference locations which are cheap
to travel to & stay in (unlike, say, Istanbul & Gran Canaria). And so
yes, eating is not free, drinking is not free, and it's not free where
you come from too. So let's ensure that we have a campsite or youth
hostel option for GUADEC, as we did in Stuttgart and Villanova. Let's
not put sponsored participants in a hotel, where they're forced to eat
out every day. But the role of the foundation is not to save people from
poverty or pay their way - we should offer as much as we comforatbly
can, taking into account the trade-offs involved, and then let the
person decide whether they can justify paying the rest or not. As you
said, what are we, 8 year olds?


I fully agree with making cheap accommodation available, and making 
conferences more accessible.  Lets agree on that part.  And I already said I 
the part I don't agree on: interpreting one's financial decisions as their 
commitment.


Now regarding Istanbul vs Gran Canaria, I have a few points to offer though:

  - Previously we have been making location decision based on offers we had 
received.  If we want to have more influence on the location we either need to 
encourage people in desired location to submit a bid, or change the process 
completely and go shopping for hosts.


  - Re Istanbul:

* It was our *only* offer,

* As far as I understand it was both very accessible and relatively 
inexpensive.  Yes, beer was more expensive than in Canada, but food was cheap 
compared to other European locations I've been to.


  - Re Gran Canaria:

* Again, we had two options for the co-hosting (that is, that both GNOME 
and KDE were willing to accept): Gran Canaria and Tampere.  Our assessment at 
the time was that they are equally expensive and hard to get to, but living 
expenses in Gran Canaria are considerably less expensive than in Tampere, and 
that was one of the factors in making the final decision.  To check how 
accurate we were, three weeks ago wh

Re: What do you think of the foundation?

[Behdad Esfahbod]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for the response.

On 05/31/2009 03:42 AM, Dave Neary wrote:

So, I've detailed my vision, with two major changes:

>

- include foundation members in the daily running of the foundation by
having the majority of board business happen in the open on
foundation-list, including having the working version of the accounts in
a publicly accessible place, posting draft minutes straight after
meetings, rather than going through the 2/3 day review period we've had
in the past, posting agendas for meetings to foundation-list, and using
foundation-list as the main board mailing list, only going to board-list
for board-confidential issues.


Ok, I didn't get your previous mail as actually suggesting that board works on 
foundation-list or another publicly accessible list primarily.  This is an 
interesting approach, and I think Fedora does something similar.  I'm not 
opposed to something like this.  What I'm opposed to is adding extra burden to 
board work by requiring a back and force all the time.


Regarding making accounts available, etc, again, I'm not against it, but 
against premature optimization, ie. measuring its burden as well as positive 
effects.  Money matters is a bit harder to deal with because of the legalities 
of the foundation.  It may not be wise to disclose accounts before an 
accountant gets to review their accuracy.  That's my point.




- the foundation, through the board, should be empowered and committed
to maintaining a friendly and productive working environment


I'm not opposed to this.


Cheers,
behdad
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Re: What do you think of the foundation?

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 05/30/2009 08:10 AM, Stormy Peters wrote:


(And we have lost members of our community because we haven't enforced
that Code of Conduct.)


How accurate is that statement?

behdad


Stormy

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Re: What do you think of the foundation?

[Behdad Esfahbod]

/me puts board hat on

Sometimes a little nudge is all we need :).

The story behind the minutes is that when Luis ran for board and was elected 
and named himself secretary, the rest of us were thinking "hurray, we have a 
dedicated person taking notes and publishing them."  But I think we all agree 
that we made better use of the limited time Luis had to spend on board duties 
while working towards graduation.  And the rest of didn't pick it up.  So for 
most meetings, someone took notes and sent them to the others for review.  But 
no one went back to incorporate the comments and publicize them.


For next term, Luis suggests not having a dedicated note-taker, but everyone 
working using gobby or other collaboration tools to take notes during 
meetings, and send it to public immediately after the meetings.  Now that's a 
model that should work.



Cheers,
behdad

On 05/29/2009 02:11 PM, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote:

In this case, how about bringing a foundation member in and have them do
minutes?

sri

On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 5:37 AM, Murray Cumming mailto:murr...@murrayc.com>> wrote:

On Thu, 2009-05-28 at 17:45 -0400, Luis Villa wrote:
 > That's exactly correct. Another term for it is 'volunteer'. :) You're
 > certainly welcome to volunteer to improve it yourself, of course.

It's far beneath her abilities, but can't you delegate the
minutes-taking to our paid employee?

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Re: What do you think of the foundation?

[Behdad Esfahbod]

Note: this is a personal response.  I  may disclose information only available 
to the board, but in no way any line in this message represents board's opinion.



On 05/28/2009 12:25 PM, Dave Neary wrote:


So - this is perhaps not the best time to start this discussion, but
then again maybe it's absolutely the best time. This is a call to
foundation members who are happy, unhappy or disaffected to say what
they think the foundation should be doing that it isn't, shouldn't be
doing that it is, and generally what you've been unhappy & happy with
over the past number of years.


I agree that an check for what foundation is and what we want it to be is long 
overdue.  I don't think this is the best timing though.  Do you expect the 
candidates to speak up and reply?  Shut up?  How does this relate to the 
upcoming election?!




Me first!

I think that the foundation should be more involved in conflict
resolution and policing the tone of the community.


Absolutely disagree.  I think we are doing fine.  Last thing we need is 
censorship.



I have talked to too
many people who don't read pgo, or have turned off individual blogs,
don't use IRC any more, or avoid certain mailing lists, because they are
unhappy with the tone & content of discussions & posts.


Ask them each to write to the board so the board knows.  I'm not a huge fan of 
making decisions based on "there are many, I know, but I can't reveal their 
names", sorry.


I think we're in a very different position now, compared to say, in 2000.  I 
expect we are mostly mature professional people who respect each other and 
expect to be respected in return.  I don't know which lists or channels or 
blogs you read, but those I check are fairly clean, and if there's some bad 
stuff is going on (which I've not seen in a while), well, I can always hit the 
Delete button.  No Big Deal!


Now if that affects the image of GNOME (project or foundation), that's a 
separate issue.  But then it should be discussed separately.




If someone is
behaving in a way which is negatively affecting a significant portion of
the GNOME community, the board should be the place to go where you can
complain, and have your complaint publicly recorded (in the minutes of a
board meeting, for example) with anonymity, investigated and evaluated,
and if necessary, have the guilty party censured and/or punished.
Currently, this social policing role has been completely ignored by the
foundation and its leaders.


It's not.  But over the past year, we've got one or two such complaints.  And 
we have not ignored them.  I don't think I have to disclose the details.  I 
don't see any benefits in making them public either.  Or do you mean the 
punishment should include public embarrassment?  What if the person 
complaining is found to be guilty?


Seriously, what are we, 8yr olds?!



I think that the foundation should be more frugal, and I expect the
board to transmit the frugal values to the membership. I was a supporter
of being much firmer in asking people to pay part of their travel when
being funded by the foundation, or to seek other funding elsewhere (from
conference organisers, for example). I don't think that being funded by
the foundation should be a due or a reward, foundation funds are an
enabler.


You keep repeating this.  And no matter how many times others do not agree 
with you, you keep bringing it up again.  It's becoming annoying.  Let me 
reply with my point of view on this now.


You've said in various places that you think only core contributors should be 
sponsored, and you said you define core contributor as someone who will pay 
out of his pocket to go to the conference if not sponsored.  You have this 
image that someone's contribution to GNOME is directly related to whether they 
can afford paying out of their pocket going to GUADEC.


You're wrong.

Maybe it is the case, if you live in Europe and are a self-employed contractor 
who finds lots of business by going to GUADEC.  But your test fails in each 
and all of the following cases, which mind you, I might offer represents a 
large part of the community:


  - If you're a student with no income, you don't have 2000USD to spend. Period.

  - If you have a wife and a 250,000USD mortgate to pay, it's hard to justify 
a 2000USD trip.  Period.


  - If you have a wife and two kids to raise, it's hard to justify a 2000USD 
trip.  Period.


  - If you have to take time off work to go to GUADEC, it's hard to justify 
paying 2000USD also.  Period.


  - If you work full-time on GNOME as your job, and contribute to it in a 
thousand other ways too, and neither your employer nor the foundation pays for 
you to go to GUADEC, it's hard to justify paying 2000USD.  Period.


  - If you are studying part-time and have to skip three classes you are 
paying 400 each for, it's hard to justify paying 2000USD for the trip.



In other instances, you suggested people paying a minimum 200euros of their 
trip.  Your argument has bee

Re: Questions for the candidates

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 05/29/2009 01:17 PM, Susana Pereira wrote:


  1. For outgoing board members: what have been the upsides/good things


By "outgoing" I assume "current" is meant here, right?  Not those not running 
again.


behdad
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Re: Minutes of board meetings?

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 05/26/2009 02:29 PM, Dave Neary wrote:

Hi,

Behdad Esfahbod wrote:

On 05/26/2009 12:31 PM, Dave Neary wrote:

They haven't been going out to foundation-list or foundation-announce as
they did in the past either. Is there a reason for it, or should I
assume it's because Luis was working hard to graduate and no-one took
minutes at meetings he missed?


We *have* been taking minutes even when Luis was absent from the meeting.


Excuse me - I should have said "publishing minutes". Suggesting that
no-one minuted meetings was unfair.


These are two different issues.  I believe I made it clear that:

  1) Minutes have been taken.

  2) We'll try to publish them before elections.

If minutes hadn't been taken we couldn't publish them now.  So while you may 
reason that unpublished minutes are as good as no minutes, it's not exactly 
like that since unpublished ones *can* be published now.


behdad


Dave.


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Re: Minutes of board meetings?

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 05/26/2009 12:31 PM, Dave Neary wrote:


They haven't been going out to foundation-list or foundation-announce as
they did in the past either. Is there a reason for it, or should I
assume it's because Luis was working hard to graduate and no-one took
minutes at meetings he missed?


We *have* been taking minutes even when Luis was absent from the meeting. 
They are mostly sent to list or put in the private wiki to be sanitized and 
published, and that's where they currently are.  I see some twenty of them at:


  http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoardPrivate/Minutes

As a former board member, I believe you have read access to them.  If Luis 
doesn't get to push them out in the coming weeks, I'll give it a hand.


Cheers,
behdad



Cheers,
Dave.

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