Re: Minutes of the Board Meeting of November, 3rd, 2015
Le mardi 10 novembre 2015 à 09:07 +, Debarshi Ray a écrit : > On Sat, Nov 07, 2015 at 04:38:56PM +0100, Andrea Veri wrote: > > Deferred: > > * Instagram filters in GNOME: see email thread by the same name > > Where is this thread? This was referring to the one on the board's mailing list (we often refer to the precise titles of relevant mail threads, so board members can, in advance, find them in the mountain of emails on that list :) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Agenda for board meeting on October 26th
Hm, the subject line in my previous message is wrong, I meant to say "October 27th", obviously. Still calibrating that DeLorean I found last Wednesday. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Agenda for board meeting on October 26th
Hello Foundation members! The board will be having its weekly meeting this Tuesday at 19h UTC. Like last week, I will be serving as interim vice-vice-chairperson. Here's an overview of some of the topics for this meeting: * Trademark renewals * Replacing Christian Hergert (and choosing a new vice-chairperson) * Sysadmin sponsorship brochure & pitch * Trademark/legal requests backlog * Other pending financial items in the backlog (Other topics may be brewing in the backlog but not included in the meeting agenda until they have reached the required threshold of information or discussion on the board list) If you would like the board to discuss any particular issues at the next meeting, you are welcome to request additions to the agenda here. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: gnomes collecting pants nominations
Le samedi 18 juillet 2015 à 22:03 -0500, Michael Catanzaro a écrit : Quick question: does this rule exclude current board members, incoming board members, or both? Both the new (incoming) and last (outgoing) board members are excluded from this, as far as I understand it, since those present at the GUADEC board meeting make the decision. Those who have been board members in the more distant past (ie: prior to the currently outgoing board) are eligible though, board service does not disqualify you for life for that award ;) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Agenda for board meeting on July 20th
Hello Foundation members! The board will be having a meeting this Monday at 17h UTC. Here's an overview of some of the topics for this meeting: * GUADEC adboard meeting agenda * Trademark-infringing swag? (mousepads on Amazon) * GIMP expenses (tent, camera, LGM 2015 attendance) * Pants Award 1. Start collecting pants nominees 2. ??? 3. PROFIT!!! * Annual Report plan of action timeline (Other topics may be brewing in the backlog but not included in the meeting agenda until they have reached the required threshold of information or discussion on the board list) If you would like the board to discuss any particular issues at the next meeting, you are welcome to request additions to the agenda here. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
gnomes collecting pants nominations
Hi folks, in preparation for GUADEC the board meeting this Monday, we'd like to collect nominations for the traditional Pants Award. The criteria for people you'd like to nominate are: * Must go above and beyond in his or her contributions to GNOME. This should be outside (or in addition to) any responsibilities to an employer for work on GNOME. * Is not a board member (since the board decides who the winner is). * Is attending GUADEC (ideally) to receive the award in person. The award can be for any work on GNOME—documents, design, translation, marketing, sysadmin, code, bug triaging—anything! Got someone in mind? Send your suggestions to board-list@ to let us know! ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Agenda for board meeting on July 7th
Le mardi 07 juillet 2015 à 09:46 +0200, Jens Georg a écrit : * https://kickstarter.com/projects/technoruninc/stratos/ Apart from the massive annoying marketing speech in the kickstarter, what's the exact purpose of this point? No particular purpose other than to bring it up for discussion in the meeting and simultaneously bring its existence to the attention of foundation members if they wanted to comment on it. For the record, this did not actually end up being discussed in the meeting, as we were already running half an hour overtime. My 2¢ on the matter: it seems just a little fishy for this thing to show up out of blue and try to raise 150K, with no visible community around the product, no downloads (and no source code provided?) to verify its existence, and a claim to support Windows and Android applications in the StratOS Pro version. So I was wondering if anyone had heard of them before.___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Agenda for board meeting on July 7th
Hello Foundation members! The board will be having a meeting this Tuesday at 16h UTC. Here's an overview of some of the topics for this meeting: * Desktop Summit 2011 taxes * Travel committee budget applications status update * Vote on a travel subsidy for keynote at Open Source Hong Kong * General Foundation budget update? * https://kickstarter.com/projects/technoruninc/stratos/ * New standard meeting time (for the new board) * GUADEC, varia (as time allows) (Other topics may be brewing in the backlog but not included in the meeting agenda until they have reached the required threshold of information or discussion on the board list) If you would like the board to discuss any particular issues at the next meeting, you are welcome to request additions to the agenda here. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Agenda for board meeting on June 19th
Hello Foundation members! The board will be having a meeting this Friday at 16h UTC. Here's an overview of some of the topics for this meeting: * GUADEC 2015 * Tradeoff for one potential sponsor * Last minute efforts to secure additional GUADEC sponsors * Venue and hostel money * Sponsorship for party night event * Travel committee/budget update? * Desktop Summit 2011 taxes * Trademark license agreement - Hellotux (Other topics may be brewing in the backlog but not included in the meeting agenda until they have reached the required threshold of information or discussion on the board list) If you would like the board to discuss any particular issues at the next meeting, you are welcome to request additions to the agenda here. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Agenda for board meeting on June 5th
Hello Foundation members! The board will be having a meeting this Friday at 14h UTC. (We could not have a meeting last week due to time constraints, and can't have one at the regular time this week due to other scheduling constraints.) Here's an overview of some of the topics for this meeting: * GUADEC 2015 visa/sponsorship letters * Outreachy transfer wrap-up * WHS press release * ED search status update * Brainstorming ideas for the next adboard meeting (Other topics may be brewing in the backlog but not included in the meeting agenda until they have reached the required threshold of information or discussion on the board list) If you would like the board to discuss any particular issues at the next meeting, you are welcome to request additions to the agenda here. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to the candidates (what is a complete desktop?)
Replying inline to your reply (stripping my own previous text): [...] I'm not asking you to be technical, but to be managers. (Not saying here that manager can/should/must be non-technical) [...] Being a director of the board for me, means having the power to allocate resources to make GNOME better, gather the community consensus and improve HDPi support the way we did once, for instance. [...] So far, you've tell me what you want, not how to accomplish it. And I know, we as community provide a huge pools of ideas and discussion, but I would love to know how each candidate thinks about it. I would like a board of directors to be strong leaders of the project, with clears views on what to improve and how. As others have indicated in the original thread, the Foundation Board is not a technical body, it is a legal/financial/policymaking entity. We can express a vision (as I did in my message and blog post, for example) and communicate with teams (ex: the release team) individuals to encourage the adoption of that vision, but apart from, say, sponsoring hackfests for competent parties interested in making it happen, the board can't do much. And even if it _was_ part of its mission to oversee technical direction, as things stand it wouldn't happen because there's already way too many legal/financial/etc. tasks in the backlog that the board needs to solve before getting down to technical matters. Your vision of managers is one that would work in a corporate setting with project/team managers that get to decide what people do on a day to day basis. It doesn't work that way in a community, we're not people's bosses. Allocating (financial) resources beyond supporting events doesn't magically solve things. Unless we had a multi-million dollars budget to hire full-time hackers like the Linux Foundation, that is ;) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to the candidates (what is a complete desktop?)
Hi Erick, This is such a large question, and possibly a fairly technical one, I'm not sure it is within the scope of board candidates to debate this. Unless you clearly define what you mean by complete, fully integrated desktop environment… as everyone is going to have a different opinion on what that means. Besides, plenty of people are going to disagree and say that Free desktops like GNOME are already technically better (or equal to) OS X (or Windows) and inherently better by definition of being different and Free. On a UX level, some people can't stand using Windows or OS X after seeing what GNOME has to offer (ie: using other platforms then feels like stepping back ten years and swimming through molasse). Not to say that our app ecosystem is perfect. We have yet to have something to counter the infamous Creative Suite on a professional level when it comes to video/multimedia (non-linear and/or node-based video and audio editors and compositors come to mind). But hey, part of that puzzle is just something I've been working on for a decade! Besides the multimedia-specific area above, make GNOME a creativity workhorse platform is the global goal we should be aiming for. And by that, I include stuff like mindmapping, annotating documents (with easily typed or handwritten notes in PDF or ODF documents for example) or filling dynamic PDF forms. By the way, LibreOffice is making fantastic progress lately. I can really feel the improvements with each release (couldn't say that from its predecessor), and it seems that we will soon have something very solid on the office productivity front. Additionally, LibLibreOffice (semi-official nickname?) could be an interesting opportunity for developing a LibreOffice-based GNOME Office Suite as a simplified set of frontends (think: alternative to Apple iWork), providing a more GNOMEish UX for simpler everyday office work needs (closer to the simplicity of Google Documents, for example). There has to be a significant amount of interest in the community for people to step up and do that work though. Personally, I want our desktop to have incredible performance and be *solid as a mountain's bedrock*. The core/shell experience must not ever slow down or freeze. It must gracefully handle driver bugs, apps deployments and upgrades, and system resources (we need watchdogs, everywhere). I've lost count of the times I had to hard-reset my system (or quickly kill things through SSH, with some luck) because of some random pointer grab deadlock, because of a network IO deadlock preventing my mail client from exiting, because the system can't cope with a browser having too many tabs open, opening too big of an image in EOG (which kills the X server!), opening too many images in GIMP without shutting down my web browser first, etc. We can do better. There's lots of work to do in this area, but it's a vast metaproject to undertake and it will take a concerted effort (ie: making one or two GNOME release cycles all about performance, or some desktop-wide performance reliability hackfests, maybe). In theory, the browser story is probably best solved by the combination of sandboxing with improvements to Epiphany (aka Web). Epiphany is our window into the biggest information application market out there, the World Wide Web; it needs to have a much better UX and performance for handling tons of active and inactive tabs, and transient information in general, such as a way to painlessly manage reading lists and bookmarks. You'd be shocked if you saw how many (groups of) tabs I have stashed in Firefox's Panorama feature. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: More questions for Board candidates
Le jeudi 21 mai 2015 à 17:25 -0400, Karen Sandler a écrit : I have a few questions for the candidates too. I agree with what has been said by Jeff and Josh that it's important that people on the board have a diverse skillset, so I wouldn't expect all board members to answer yes on these, but I think it's good to know if at least a few people on the board have some background in these areas... Have you ever done any fundraising? Are you comfortable asking sponsors for money? Have you ever been in a manager role? Do you have any experience talking to reporters? Have you ever talked to a group of people about why software freedom is important? Short answer: [x] Yes to all Fundraising includes: preparing the campaign for Pitivi, shooting and editing videos for local non-profits (including the Québec equivalent of the FSF+EFF, and a professional symphonic orchestra run by a foundation), possibly some others I'm forgetting (besides everyday business advice, that is). I've also been talking to adboard members and possible sponsors for specific GNOME initiatives, over email/by phone/in person. Talking with reporters: dealt with them on a few occasions, from afar and up close. Co-wrote various press releases. Did press review work for a client where I would monitor what is being said about an entire industry—locally and worldwide—across a few hundred news sources and provide a digest everyday by 7 AM (remember when I had to excuse myself from one of the sessions at GUADEC last year? That was why…). Been in a TV newsroom twice, though not as the one being interviewed in front of the cameras. The rest is pretty much visible on my personal homepage :) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Board of Directors Elections 2015 - Candidacy - Jeff Fortin Tam
Name: Jean-François Fortin Tam Email: nekohayo at gmail Affiliation: unaffiliated Web/bio/blog/etc.: http://jeff.ecchi.ca Hi everybody, I am offering my candidacy to serve on the Foundation Board for a second term. I have been involved in various areas of GNOME since 2004 or so, including testing, triaging, marketing, mentoring, coding, public speaking and advocacy, user interaction UX design, etc. I am a business developer and manager. Besides running my branding management consulting company, I have been serving you as president of the board since last year. A report on activities accomplished during that time can be found here: http://jeff.ecchi.ca/blog/2015/05/07/presidents-report-the-state-of-the-gnome-foundation/ With the experience gained throughout the years, I hope to continue serving GNOME to the best of my abilities. You can learn more about me on my personal website above. Thank you for your consideration, Jean-François Jeff Fortin Tam ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Agenda for board meeting on May 15th
Hello Foundation members! The board will be having a meeting this Friday at 16h UTC. Here's an overview of some of the topics for this meeting: * Cosigning a letter/statement against backdoors * GUADEC 2015: FFKP agreement * Brainstorming ideas for the next adboard meeting * Adboard outreach * WHS Outreachy press release * etc. (Other topics may be brewing in the backlog but not included in the meeting agenda until they have reached the required threshold of information or discussion on the board list) If you would like the board to discuss any particular issues at the next meeting, you are welcome to request additions to the agenda here. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Summary of work done throughout 2014-2015
Dear Foundation Members, In case you missed it with the flurry of activity on Planet GNOME lately, you might be interested in this report: http://jeff.ecchi.ca/blog/2015/05/07/presidents-report-the-state-of-the-gnome-foundation/ Among other things, it summarizes what your elected board of directors has been up to these past twelve months. Thanks, Jean-François ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Agenda for board meeting on April 30th
Hello Foundation members! The board will be having a meeting this Thursday at 16 or 18h UTC. (We could not have a meeting last week due to time constraints and having had an advisory board meeting the day before.) Here's an overview of some of the topics for this meeting: * GUADEC 2015 update * GUADEC 2016 call for bids * Clearance for usage in feature film * GNOME Peru Fest 2015 expenses * Desktop Summit 2011 taxes * Adboard outreach * etc. (Other topics may be brewing in the backlog but not included in the meeting agenda until they have reached the required threshold of information or discussion on the board list) If you would like the board to discuss any particular issues at the next meeting, you are welcome to request additions to the agenda here. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Agenda for board meeting on March 27th
Hello Foundation members! The board will be having its regular meeting this Friday at 17h UTC. Here's an overview of some of the topics for this meeting: * Partnerships sitrep: adboard outreach, conferences * GNOME.Asia summit budget * Steps for getting into agreement with Conservancy about Outreachy, due by April 28 * Review action items * etc. (Other topics may be brewing in the backlog but not included in the meeting agenda until they have reached the required threshold of information or discussion on the board list) If you would like the board to discuss any particular issues at the next meeting, you are welcome to request additions to the agenda here. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Agenda for board meeting on March 27th
Le vendredi 27 mars 2015 à 17:19 +0100, Alexandre Franke a écrit : Hi, On Fri, Mar 27, 2015 at 4:48 PM, Jeff Fortin Tam nekoh...@gmail.com wrote: If you would like the board to discuss any particular issues at the next meeting, you are welcome to request additions to the agenda here. Two hours to do that seems like a really short amount of time. Could you please send the agenda earlier next time? Sure thing—you might have noticed that's what I normally do (1-2 days in advance), it just didn't happen yesterday as I was held by work business obligations until midnight, sorry! ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Agenda for board meeting on March 13th
Hello Foundation members! The board will be having its regular meeting this Friday at 17h UTC. Here's an overview of some of the topics for this meeting: * GIMP funds release request for travel to LGM * Sponsorship for GNOME Asia GUADEC * Various * Review action items * etc. (Other topics may be brewing in the backlog but not included in the meeting agenda until they have reached the required threshold of information or discussion on the board list) If you would like the board to discuss any particular issues at the next meeting, you are welcome to request additions to the agenda here. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Agenda for board meeting on February 13
Hello Foundation members! The board will be having its regular meeting this Friday at 17h UTC. That's actually in 30 minutes, sorry for not being able to announce it earlier this time. This is a normal meeting after the special ED Search meeting we've had this Wednesday. It replaces the meeting that was canceled last Friday. Here's an overview of the proposed agenda/topics for this meeting: * Update about the privacy money progress * Entering an agreement with the WHS * Calling for Sponsors for GNOME.Asia Summit * ED search * Responding to a phone press inquiry that was left on the voicemail * Surprise! Desktop Summit 2011 taxes. * Sysadmin sponsorship * Review action items * Etc. (Other topics may be brewing in the backlog but not included in the meeting agenda until they have reached the required threshold of information or discussion on the board list) If you would like the board to discuss any particular issues at the next meeting, you are welcome to request additions to the agenda here. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Minutes of the Board Meeting of January, 23th, 2015
Emmanuele wrote: [...] arguably, this should have been set up right at the end of the previous board's term/beginning of this board's term, but I suspect that the GroupOn issue threw a massive spanner in everybody's timetable. Yep. Among other things :) By the way, I wanted to let you folks know that while we had to cancel the board meeting last Friday (pretty much everybody was unavailable that day), we held a special meeting dedicated to the ED search topic today (minutes will follow in the upcoming days) and we will also be holding a normal meeting on Friday this week (I need to prepare the agenda for that asap). ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Minutes of the Board Meeting of January, 23th, 2015
Hi Alberto, thanks for bringing this up and keeping us in check. I guess I, for one, can take some blame for the way I've been setting meeting agendas lately. Part of the problem is that we keep having to react to a ton of *time-critical* or sensitive situations (I don't know if it's always like that—2014 has been... quite a year, let's say). But you already know that. Of course, to streamline our interactions (and make our meetings more efficient and meaningful) I try hard to steer the board to solve most topics through the normal mailing list process (including complex ones) as much as possible. Yet, a portion inevitably ends falling through the cracks if we don't bring them up in a meeting (and actually, there is another portion that I purposely let sit in the cracks until it has reached a certain discussion threshold on the mailing list, otherwise the meeting agendas would see no end). Naturally, this means we end up with a pretty loaded agenda each time, with the knowledge that we can't process it all but will try to crunch through as much as possible in our limited time together. Hence, generally speaking, at the end of meetings a lot of items gets deferred, sometimes repeatedly, and that's arguably normal (but it certainly looks bad in minutes :) Arguably normal!? ED Search is a very big item (both in terms of discussion and in terms of actions to be taken) and the course of action has been unclear as the groundwork has been delayed by other Big Items (some are still ongoing, including two of which I cannot talk about here yet). Thus, bringing ED Search as the first item in a meeting can be tricky, as that basically means the other quick-but-numerous items get pushed over to the roadside in favor of a big fuzzy one. For one thing I cannot realistically imagine delaying time-critical items (related to events, reimbursements or deadlines to reach out to partners), in the name of the big complex ED Search item, as we would grind everything to a halt. On other more amenable occasions however, I sometimes brought the ED search topic back up, but the status had not changed at that point in time. So essentially, my decision heuristic has been time/operation-critical first, search second, and the rest third. That has been my appraisal of the situation and resulting judgment call so far, but hey, maybe my I made a bad judgment call. If the majority of the people on the list here tell me Seriously, drop *everything* else, freeze everything until you get the ED, then I can consider that course of action. We are your elected officials after all. Of course, as you can see, this whole catch-22 annoys me as much as it annoys you. You may also have noticed that my usually chatty blog has grown very quiet and my direct source contributions (devving, testing, design, and so on) have been completely on hold in the past few months. As it is now, my life is being consumed by daytime business on one hand and the board on the other, so everything else is unfortunately secondary. I feel an immense responsibility for the Foundation and I'm regularly guilt-tripping myself for not being able to do more and get the board out of this situation quicker. I spent most of my xmas holidays thinking about the ED situation and GNOME's partners. Part of what keeps me going is my continued amazement at the fact that the board still manages to plow through so much (including over two thousand board/foundation-related mails in recent months, which sounds like a significant amount to me, but maybe I'm a lazy bastard), frequently dealing with mind-boggling situations, lengthy and sometimes heated debates in meetings... All that in addition to their daily obligations, without going into a collective burnout. I think that's impressive. Dear boardees, you are awesome, please keep going, and let's get the ED topic going again soon! I'm afraid my message here does not give an immediate satisfactory solution, but at least it gives some context that may be hard to see from the outside, and gives me the opportunity to publicly thank this crazy team :) All the best, Jean-François ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Minutes of the Board Meeting of January, 09th, 2015
Le lundi 26 janvier 2015 à 17:25 -0800, Luis Villa a écrit : On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 3:11 PM, Andrea Veri a...@gnome.org wrote: * ED search ? Oh, this was not written down in the minutes, but the last two topics (reviewing tasks, ED search) were not touched upon during the meeting, they were deferred (as it often happens given the big amount of topics that need discussion); we were already well over our allocated meeting time that day and we saw them as being big topics each. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Agenda for board meeting on January 23rd
Hello Foundation members! The board will be having its regular meeting this Friday at 17h UTC. Here's an overview of the proposed agenda/topics for this meeting: * Adboard meeting at FOSDEM 2015 * Next steps for the Outreach Program * Responding to a phone press inquiry asking to reach S. Peters * WHS status * 500$ materials sponsorship request for GNOME Peru Fest 2015 * Sysadmin sponsorship: sitrep, idea for a prospectus? * Review action items for completeness and status * ED search * etc. (Other topics may be brewing in the backlog but not included in the meeting agenda until they have reached the required threshold of information or discussion on the board list) If you would like the board to discuss any particular issues at the next meeting, you are welcome to request additions to the agenda here. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Agenda for board meeting on January 9th
Hello Foundation members! The board will be having its regular meeting this Friday at 17h UTC. Here is an overview of the agenda/topics for this meeting so far: * Funding - quick status check on: Ecosystem (re)mapping Adboard outreach Sysadmin sponsorship * Sitrep on deal with WHS for funds in Europe * Review action items for completeness and status * ED search (Other topics may be brewing in the backlog but not included in the meeting agenda until they have reached the required threshold of information or discussion on the board list) If you would like the board to discuss any particular issues at the meeting, you are welcome to request additions to the agenda here. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Agenda for board meeting on November 14th
Hello Foundation members! The board will be having its regular meeting this Friday at 17h UTC. Here is an overview of the agenda/topics for this meeting: * Groupon followup * NDA for sysadmins (for the privacy policy) * Karen's GUADEC 2014 travel expenses reimbursement (Other topics may be brewing in the backlog but not included in the meeting agenda until they have reached the required threshold of information or discussion on the board list) If you would like the board to discuss any particular issues at the meeting, you are welcome to request additions to the agenda here. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Agenda for board meeting on October 10th
Hello Foundation members! The board will be having its regular meeting this Friday at 16h UTC. Here is an overview of the agenda/topics for this meeting: * Groupon * Thank you for a Philanthropist-level Friends of GNOME donation from Edward Swartz * Vote on applying the GUADEC 2014 code of conduct to the 2014 GNOME Summit (Other topics may be brewing in the backlog but not included in the meeting agenda until they have reached the required threshold of information or discussion on the board list) If you would like the board to discuss any particular issues at the meeting, you are welcome to request additions to the agenda here. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Agenda for board meeting on September 26th
Hello Foundation members! Apologies for the late posting, I was swamped today and this slipped out of my mind. The board will be having its regular meeting this Friday at 16h UTC. Here is an overview of the agenda/topics for this meeting: * Groupon * Bountysource account for the Foundation * Boston summit travel sponsorship * Strategic projects in OPW * Extending the period for June-September 2013 interns travel reimbursement * Timeline for hiring a new Executive Director (Other topics may be brewing in the backlog but not included in the meeting agenda until they have reached the required threshold of information or discussion on the board list) If you would like the board to discuss any particular issues at the meeting, you are welcome to request additions to the agenda here. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: OPW; Where does the 500$ for each GSoC goes?
Le samedi 13 septembre 2014 à 14:32 +0200, Sébastien Wilmet a écrit : Hello, I know that money and OPW are sensitive topics, but I would like to better understand, and some transparency shouldn't hurt. For each GSoC student, the mentoring organization receives 500$. How is this money used? - Is the money used for travel sponsorship to GUADEC? What about students that don't go to GUADEC? This is my understanding, yes. Someone can correct me if those funds are used for anything else, but I'm suspecting they are used entirely for covering interns' attendance to GUADEC, taking into account that 500$ is really not a lot of money to get there (unless you're already in Europe). Typically, any transcontinental flight is easily going to be way above 1k$. And you have to add accommodation to that. - Can the mentor receive this money? Or at least choose how the 500$ is used? I don't think mentors have access to that money for their individual use, in the interest of the above — someone can correct me if I'm wrong on that one. - Can the money be stored so that several years later it can be used to pay a developer for working on the same module(s) of the GSoCs? For example the GStreamer project donated 2500€ to the Pitivi fundraising campaign, and this money comes partly from several GSoCs: http://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2014/03/03/pitivi-fundraiser-pass-the-10-000-usd-dollar-mark/ It needs to be clarified that the example you are referring to is special: GStreamer was its own mentoring organisation for GSoC for many years, hence the fact that they have their own earmarked funds. It just happens that those funds were collected and stored by the GNOME Foundation, but the Foundation cannot use them for itself, GStreamer decides what it wishes to do with those funds. A similar situation exists for GIMP and Pitivi. If GStreamer was not a standalone GSoC mentoring org for a particular year but still benefited from having GSoC interns under the umbrella of the GNOME project, then I suspect the mentor money would go to GNOME unless there is a particular agreement about that (which might be the case; if so, I was not aware of it). In theory I don't see a reason why GNOME couldn't store for many years the GNOME project gsoc mentor 500$ stipends it receives, except that in practice they are too little and thus end up being used completely (I think). I think this kind of discussion should be entirely allowed, and should be discussed in the open. Absolutely. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: OPW; Where does the 500$ for each GSoC goes?
Additional thoughts on what I just said in my previous mail: [...] In theory I don't see a reason why GNOME couldn't store for many years the GNOME project gsoc mentor 500$ stipends it receives, except that in practice they are too little and thus end up being used completely (I think). Moreover, if there is a need for a veteran developer to work on a particular module/project, there is also the possibility of doing a public fundraiser to get the exact amount of funds required (or more). The accessibility, privacy or Pitivi campaigns come to my mind as such examples. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Minutes of the Board meeting of August 15th, 2014
Le mardi 26 août 2014 à 20:08 -0700, Germán Poo-Caamaño a écrit : First at all, thanks for the minutes. A couple of questions: [...] * Outstanding brand use requests * need someone to take action/mail Carol Hanson re: Permission request for Personal use of Gnome foot * ACTION: Jeff to reply to her Was this reply positive or negative? Any rationale that could be shared? Positive. It was fine with us as it was for a personal one-time gift for one person. The reason why this was only approved now is that the request fell through the cracks under the avalanche of mails, the events (GUADEC etc.) and the handover between the old and new board. * Andreas to ask Karen and Pam how much we should disclose to the community about the ongoing discussion with Groupon I guess Pam refers to Pamela Chestek. Is this right? BTW, What was the outcome? Shall we assume the outcome was to not disclose anything considering the last minutes only say Groupon? We are not publicly disclosing because it is an ongoing legal matter. Of course, we want to be as transparent as possible, so as soon as our legal counsel advises us it is prudent to discuss publicly, we will. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Agenda for board meeting on August 15th
Hello Foundation members! The board will be having its regular meeting this Friday at 16h UTC. Here is an overview of the agenda for this meeting: * Quick check on accounts receivable * Groupon * Final wording checks for updated Travel Policy * GNOME Privacy project * Varia * Outstanding brand use requests * Pictures of directors for the foundation's website * Review pending action items from previous minutes * Reassign old action items to new board members If you would like the board to discuss any particular issues at the meeting, you are welcome to request additions to the agenda here. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Team Reports on July 26th, GNOME Annual General Meeting on July 28th
Hi everyone, We would like to invite all GNOME Foundation members to attend the Team Reports session at GUADEC on Saturday (July 26th, 16h45 to 17h45) and the Annual General Meeting on Monday (July 28th, 11h45 to 12h45). If you are not yet a GNOME Foundation member, now is a great time to become one. The Team Reports session will be our traditional série of 5 minute presentations from members of the various teams below, so that the membership can find out what is going on across GNOME: Accessibility Bug squad Design Documentation Engagement (includes web events) Finances Foundation Board GNOME.Asia Internationalisation Members and Elections Committee Outreach Release Team Sysadmin Travel Committee The AGM meeting is where the QA session with the board will be held. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Supporting the free software movement
Le samedi 31 mai 2014 à 6:22 -0400, Richard Stallman a écrit : Would candidates please answer the question, How will you direct the GNOME Foundation to promote the general idea of free software: that software should be free/libre? I mean, beyond just making GNOME a good and useful free program. I'm a bit puzzled* by the question. Beyond the technical aspect of GNOME the community making a Free desktop and eventually a Free operating system, the GNOME Foundation has always been about helping GNOME (as an ecosystem and community) thrive, and to promote Free Software. By raising awareness, Free Software in general benefits from GNOME's recognition. I am not aware of any actions by GNOME (the foundation, the community, the product) that have been detrimental to promotion of Free/Libre Software. On the contrary, as far as I know, everything that has been done so far has been in the interest of promoting the general idea of Free Software, and I don't foresee that changing. *: is there a specific issue that you are concerned with right now and would like to see addressed? Or should I simply interpret that as a request for confirmation that we will continue upholding our Free Software ethos and do our best to continue to raise awareness? The answer to both is obviously yes to me. Best regards, Jean-François ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for the candidates: finances
Le lundi 19 mai 2014 à 11:19 -0700, Jim Nelson a écrit : Aside from corporate sponsorship and personal donations, what area(s) would you investigate to increase and stabilize GNOME's finances? (Or do you feel these two methods are the only or best way to achieve this goal?) I tend to think that corporate donations are desirable for many reasons. I doubt I need to go at length here to point out that a handful of corps with marketing/charity/RD budgets are easier to target and convince than a thousand individuals working hard to earn every penny, that GNOME needs an ecosystem that includes not just hobbyists but also people who are paid to do maintenance professionally, and so on and so forth. I don't yet have a magical answer for an easy new funding model for GNOME (if it was so easy, there wouldn't be any problems to fix), but as part of my duties I would like to brainstorm and explore new venues. Just from the top of my head: - Check the possibility for grants from public institutions and look into corporate sponsors from outside our traditional circles, instead of limiting ourselves to our current corporate ecosystem. - Humble Indie Bundle-style in-app-store donations system, though there was some legal/technical problem with that idea, I forgot which, maybe someone here remembers? Otherwise I ought to ask hughsie again. - Online services for individuals - Out-of-the-box fundraising schemes. We might have some surprises there. However funny that might sound at first glance, I've seen golf tournaments (and other event types) providing massive amounts of funds to some non-profits. - Our somewhat nonexistent OEM story - Untapped potential, like the privacy fundraising initiative - Other fancy ideas that may arise ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question for candidates
With regards to priorities of the GNOME Foundation, Last I heard, the case of the OPW cash flow problems was being taken care of, unlike what news sites would have you believe. It seemed like a matter of time for sponsors follow-up activities to resolve the situation, and AFAICT we're 75% there. It would be easy for me to mention it's my personal priority, but I won't - it would be a lie to say that I can immediately make a difference in an issue that is in the process of being solved as we speak. I'm not sure how urgently a replacement for the ED can be found, given that GNOME needs to be very careful about its expenditures and that the ED would need to be able to offset his/her own salary, which requires a fair amount of flair. See my candidacy application for more, but if I have to pick, among my areas of interest, the one I find the most important: fundraising and financial security, including investigating where we could diversify or where there are untapped resources. This is much easier said than done, obviously. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: question for candidates
Le mardi 20 mai 2014 à 11:56 -0700, Andy Tai a écrit : What are your views on the participation of the people of these projects, as stake holders in the direction of gtk+, in the GNOME Foundation? Should the GNOME Foundation encourage (reach out to) these people to get them involved in the GNOME Foundation so they also have a say and even contribute to gtk+ so gtk+ can continue to serve their needs well, important for the continuing successes of gtk+ in the free software world? I am unaware of the GTK+ project actively discouraging* participation, and I'm not sure that downstreams are choosing not to fix GTK+ because they specifically don't want to - rather, they're undermanned just the same, and busy enough with their own amount of bugs (just look at how long release cycles are for apps like GIMP, Inkscape, PTV...). It is not a problem easily fixed by marketing/outreach (and I say this from experience as the PTV marketing machine!). I think anyone will agree that GTK+ needs help, but whether or not that happens is a technical matter, heavily dependent on available skilled manpower. GTK+ is, as far as I know, an open meritocracy like any other respectable Free Software project and I'm pretty sure the maintainers are overjoyed when potential new contributors show up, which I suspect is a very rare occurrence. The way I see it (with my downstream/community hat on), GTK+ is a big/complex codebase, with an overloaded infrastructure (in this case, the bug tracker) leading to an unclear course of action, lagging community interaction, somewhat foggy roadmap and maintainers being in survival mode, which is perfectly understandable given the circumstances. The infrastructure (or process) side of things is something I'd like to help address (I touched upon the subject in one of my GUADEC 2013 talks), but it's really not going to happen overnight, especially as we are all volunteers. Related reading: the comments section of https://oli.wordpress.com/2014/03/22/engaging-developers/ *: I posit that it is simply a side-effect of all I've mentioned above, which makes it kind of a chicken-and-egg situation. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Board of Directors Election 2014 - Candidacy - Jean-François Fortin Tam
Name: Jean-François Fortin Tam Email: nekohayo at gmail Affiliation: none (freelance) Web/bio/blog/etc.: http://jeff.ecchi.ca Hi everybody, I would like to offer my candidacy to serve on the Foundation Board. I have been involved in various areas of GNOME since 2004 or so, including testing, triaging, marketing, mentoring, coding, public speaking and advocacy, UI/UX design, etc. I also graduated from business management school, so I would like to put that background to good use. I'm keeping this description short simple (as I suspect many of you will know me); you can learn more about me at http://jeff.ecchi.ca In GNOME's context, my areas of interest include (but are not limited to): * The big picture: becoming a sustainable ecosystem for attracting developers and partners. For example, sustainable bug tracking[0][1] and the revival of a QA team; steering our focus from the initial disruptive innovation phase of GNOME 3.x towards also re-emphasizing the perhaps more boring but essential bits (a renewed effort/focus around performance and robustness); etc. * Organizational processes and tools. From my experience and what I have seen in previous threads (or meeting minutes) here, there probably is room for improvement in the way we handle partnerships, financial operations and policies, etc. I'm not saying I magically have all the answers, but this is something I would like to get more familiar with, evaluate and help streamline if possible. * Financial security: fundraising, diversification and protection against downturns. This is not only the recent events regarding the state of the Foundation's finances, but also about the big picture. I'd like to help ensure the sustainability of GNOME as an organization. * Nurturing our brand. * Major technological shifts (such as Wayland, GTK4, systemd, you name it). I hope to continue serving GNOME to the best of my abilities. The board is one area where I hope to make a difference. Thank you for your consideration, Jean-François Jeff Fortin Tam [0]: http://jeff.ecchi.ca/blog/2012/10/08/reducing-our-core-apps-software-inventory/ [1]: see also my GUADEC 2013 talk ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Boston Summit 2013?
As far as I see, there are 3 different people working on this (or at least 2 plus another one interested in). It might be a good idea if you could coordinate between yourselves if you have not done that yet. Yes, I'll email James and Tristan (are there others?) to try to coordinate something. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Boston Summit 2013?
Hi all, I just wanted to let you know that I'm currently trying to organize this in Montréal, it would be lovely to have you folks here again. I'm researching venues and talking to various local folks right now to see where we could find some free venue. It will take me some time but I'll get back to you, so don't cross Montréal from the list just yet ;) (if you need to reach me, c.c./mail me directly as I'm not subscribed) P.s.: I had someone suggest that we could co-host it with a LibreOffice summit (I don't see a reason not to). ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME now
I don't really have a clear answer for an all-encompassing vision and roadmap, but I may offer my blog post from this summer as a starting point: http://jeff.ecchi.ca/blog/2012/08/05/staring-into-the-axis-abyss-the-railgun-map/ It tries to frame things from an ecosystem standpoint and the possible reason for the GNOME OS to exist in the first place. Historically speaking, the GNOME (and GNOME OS) vision has always been a little bit fuzzy, due to the very diverse composition of the GNOME community. Coming up with a very clear roadmap for something of such a large scale is not an easy thing. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
