Re: Free Desktop Communities come together at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit
On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 4:43 AM, john palmierijohn.j5.palmi...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 4:08 PM, Quim Gil quim...@gmail.com wrote: So I guess there is no way back. 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. For me that was a huge part of it (though I was not part of the final vote). Some parts felt hijacked and need thought on how to avoid it in the future. I still think there is value to co-locate but I personally felt some of the pitfalls I wanted to avoid, such as identity issues got steamrolled by those who had other agendas. Thanks, this helps understanding. The decision of putting Qt in the badge was made in little else than 2 lines of an email thread with the organizers, where GNOME, KDE and local representatives were involved. At that time I couldn't care less since sponsors logos in GUADEC badges hadn't ever been an issue. Can you recall whether there were sponsors logos in the badges you wore in previous GUADECs? I don't. The only discussion had been about the logo(s) to be put there. Nokia was deemed as too corporate. maemo.org is actually the logo of the Maemo (independent) community, as Maemo-the-platform has no logo currently. Having all three was not even proposed by us because it looked like willing to abuse with triple branding. This is why Qt was left. That logo in the badge was actually the most visible difference in the sponsors packs between cornerstone and Gold. Qt paid more than half of the Nokia bill so it actually made sense in those days. The problem was visible only when the conference had started and we were getting our badges, and we were just as unhappy that the little detail turned out to be an unforeseen problem. Solutions: design a badge according to your identity needs (e.g. one side GNOME and one side KDE, double paper people can fold to the side they will...) and share the samples on PDF among the organizers and sponsors with time to get feedback and make modifications. You can also make more prominent the conference projects branding, and less prominent the sponsors branding since the average GUADEC / aKademy / Summit sponsor is quite flexibke compared to the sponsored packs detailed to the millimetre available in commercial fairs. Then there was the towel, which I found a funny surprise myself. If people has more problems of identity with a Qt beach towel than with a Google plastic bottle, that's another thing. :) Also people told me that they were expecting more Maemo iconography present. Well, if I tell you that we sent 3 roll-ups that the organization could only find few days after finishing the event, you will see that we are even less happy about that. Actually I found that gold and silver sponsors shouldn't have many reasons to be happy since their roll-ups were quite spread and relatively not-visible here and there. Solution: put all those banners and roll-ups in the entrance where the Qt developer roll-up was and everybody happy. Again, the average GUADEC/aKademy/Summit sponsor would be just as happy since we are all used to be more in the mood of collaboration and co-presence than in brand product location battles. Have a floor plan where all the locations of banners can be seen. have drafts of the banners shared in advance so organizers and sponsors can get an idea and have a say. Nothing that could not be fixed in a second Summit and nothing a successful single GUADEC shouldn't do anyway. All this makes me think: have the sponsors of the Summit and the GNOME Foundation advisory board members been asked their opinions about col-location vs single conferences? I don't know for companies like Novell, Canonical or Google, but at least for Nokia it was easier to put up a bigger sponsorship budget having one bigger desktop conference in one go. Also why the Linux Foundation (Gold in GUADEC 2008) didn't come back in the Summit? Was this a consequence of the co-location or would have happened anyway with the Global Crisis? And Intel, and ARM...? Are there chances to get them back? And if so, would a co-location help or not? If GNOME and KDE are going to have a more united front it needs to happen slowly in an organic manner, not abruptly with agendas. Speaking for myself and not the board I felt there was an arrogance in some peoples thought that a co-located event was going to happen again next year even before this year's was over. It made some of the important details, such as the badges, fall by the wayside. I had specifically stated in the initial meetings that I felt badges went a long way to preserving the identity of each conference. Arrogance? To me the convergence of free desktop events makes a lot of sense... since the days I knew how hard
Re: Proposal: Desktop Search hackfest
On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 2:28 PM, Dave Neary [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, Vincent Untz wrote: Btw, we need people to help organize the event, especially some local help to find a good place for this. Is there any volunteer? Didn't Quim offer sharing the CCC facility with the Maemo Summit? That seems like a good idea to me. Place to hack is not a problem but place to sleep is. Please forward this message to the relevant people: fill https://wiki.maemo.org/Desktop_Search_Hackfest#Expected_Arrivals and departures asap. If people don't know for sure yet, guessing is ok. If some people want to arrive earlier and leave later this is also ok (as far as they do some hacking and not pure tourism). There are some apartments available some days and we need to figure out the exact need and availability. I will know tomorrow the plan of available apartments. -- Quim Gil /// http://flors.wordpress.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Proposal: Desktop Search hackfest
Hi, On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 6:07 PM, Quim Gil [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Proposal: Desktop Search Hackfest. Only a note to say that the proposal goes forward, more projects are willing to join (Strigi, Nepomuk) and http://wiki.maemo.org/Desktop_Search_Hackfest is the place to watch and ask more information. Thanks to everybody. Now we _just_ need to make it happen... -- Quim Gil /// http://flors.wordpress.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Proposal: Desktop Search hackfest
Good, we seem to have a rough consensus. I have reposted the proposal to http://flors.wordpress.com/2008/07/22/proposal-desktop-search-hackfest/ for those not in the foundation-list. Since the people is spread in several mailing lists, you can use the comments or the wiki page proposed for coordination. Or whatever space you prefer. Quim ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Proposal: Desktop Search hackfest
Proposal: Desktop Search Hackfest. Calling to: Xesam, Beagle, Tracker projects and whoever else is involved. When: September 19 + the days the developers decide before after. Where: Berlin. Why: The Board made a call to organize hackfest around events and the Maemo Summit has answered. Budget: Funded by Nokia within reasonable terms. But why? Ok, let me explain. We have some budget to sponsor participants to https://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo_Summit_2008 . We want to find a balance between Maemo community contributors, related upstream developers and core developers of the Maemo SW team at Nokia. We think organizing a GNOME hackfest is a win-win. Desktop search is an interesting area. Federico explained in GUADEC the problems of Oralia finding her stuff and there are many more things unsolved. It is becoming a critical area, considering that users are getting more volumes of data, more types of files and they have them spread through several devices and the Internet. We also find interesting to support areas that are not seen as mobile only. There are many, and in fact mobile companies like Nokia are supporting the development of features and components that many people don't even see as mobile related since they find them in their PCs and laptops. Desktop search affects everybody, even if it's perhaps more demanding in mobile devices (less processing power, different form factors, probably different input methods, surely less patience from the user on-the-go --- higher chances to FAIL). In the GNOME family this is a delicate topic: ask the Beagle, Tracker or Xesam hackers why. Yet there must be a possibility to find a common mission and specific objectives for a Hackfest. The first Desktop Search Hackfest ever? Each project can find also the time to meet and get some progress in their own areas. It is up to the developers to define the goals of the hackfest. Maemo has some developers working on Tracker and they like the idea. It has been discussed briefly in the gnome-movile-devel list and at least Behdad and Vincent agree (in fact this was their idea, I was proposing a Tracker hackfest but the Desktop Search idea is cooler). We are looking for more opinions and support for a consensus. The time runs fast and September is around the corner. Feedback welcome NOW! -- Quim Gil /// http://flors.wordpress.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Proposal: Desktop Search hackfest
Thanks all for the quick answers! On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 6:52 PM, Jamie McCracken [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I would prefer it if it was Desktop search and *Metadata* as the search aspect is already well covered in Xesam but the use of a centralised metadata is critical to having a well integrated desktop. The details are up to you guys. I have driven the idea until the point of proposing one broad topic and having some budget to cover it. I'm almost done. ;) To tell you the truth, now I'm more worried about the finantial details. Once the hackfest is confirmed with a rough estimation of the budget I will be able to make decisions on other Maemo Summit related costs. You could agree on a broad idea about the mission and objectives. This would help the right people to decide to come. Then we know more or less how many people from which origins we have, and we can make a rough estimation (by Friday?) -- Quim Gil /// http://flors.wordpress.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME and KDE to Co-locate Flagship Conferences on Gran Canaria in 2009
On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 2:22 PM, Paul Cooper [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi John, On Tue, 2008-07-15 at 07:05 -0400, john palmieri wrote: The idea is that they are two separate events with the exception of a room reserved for freedesktop.org and other crossover talks. Also keynotes should most likely be joint as well as the after parties. Everything else should remain separate as to not drastically change the culture of each event. When it comes to the program, in fact we are talking about joint bug sessions + specific tracks. The sensible approach is: some keynotes to be decided in common (Like e.g. Linus Torvalds in the opening session and Richard Stallman in the closure). Some other chosen by each side. Track owners could work out their own selection process. freedesktop.org tracks don't necessarely mean all together since they might be just as technical and focused to especialized audiences. On the other hand, you might have tracks based on topics like location, touchscreen UI, widgets and etc interesting for both audiences regardless of the specific technologies underneath. Then surely you have many topics interesting only to GNOME or KDE members, but still you will find an aKademy attendee interesting in that specific GUADEC session at that time of the day and the other way round. In practice this means that participants will have access to almost all areas and sessions, having probably the same fee scheme. Which means a common registration process, something really boring to setup that brings more or less the same critical work for 400 or 1000 people. Accounting. You definitely want a single professional accountant service and a single bank account, independent from the GNOME and aKademy foundations. At the end of the event the result should be 0, or have a revenue to be split as agreed (see below). Social events, they tend to be better with more people. In some cases there are obvious limitations (you don't want a boat to sink with a representation of the best free desktop hackers inside). Call it The Cute KDE Love Boat or The GNOME BareFoot Tanga Contest and you will choose your audience. There is plenty of nights for everything. Sponsors. GUADEC has the initiative here moving much more support and budget than aKademy (which doesn't mean that they don't do amazing stuff with the budget they get). Looking at the names the answer is clear: Nokia, Linux Foundation, Novell, HP, Canonical, Google, Mandriva... You want a common pool. Increase the numbers for cornestone and gold since at the end most of the companies at that level are working with both events and likely will want to get the visibility of both communities. Keep the affordable Silver level as it is for those companies that have been silver until now in any of the events. My only serious concern about sponsors is how to make the back of the shirts not-ugly. ;) One delicate aspect might be how to share the resources for sponsoring participants and revenue, if any. Of course losses should be considered but a conservative business approach should prevent that due to the reasonable expecations to get sponsors. A solution could be that both organizers of GUADEC and aKademy in 2008 share the information on what have they got from sponsors and how much from that did they invest inviting participants. Find how the numbers correlate between both events and find the right % that would correspond to each. 50/50 is a nice number and something to consider, but at least until now the numbers have been (I believe) different and bigger in the GUADEC side. I'm sure the right peoplefrom both projects can agree on the right terms pretty easily. PS: Now I see Dave has sent an email getting into more details on separate sponsored participants etc. Yes, this is just common sense. -- Quim Gil /// http://flors.wordpress.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME and KDE to Co-locate Flagship Conferences on Gran Canaria in 2009
On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 8:41 PM, john palmieri [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The one thing we have made clear to our Advisory Board is we do not want this to be an excuse for companies to invest less in either events. That would be disastrous. Sure, but who talked about getting less corporate money? In fact it would be reasonable to get more since in terms of marketing and awareness (GUADEC + aKademy) GUADEC + aKademy Let's look at the numbers. GUADEC and aKademy have very similar sponsorship schemes, which is unsurprising considering that both marketing teams have been collaborating on this topic since 2006. See http://dot.kde.org/1205342263/ (I could only find GUADEC 2008 brochure in an attachment). GUADEC Cornerstone = aKademy Platinum = 25.000€ Gold is same in both = 15.000€ Silver is same in both = 5.000€ aKademy has also Bronze = 1.000€ Do the math and put 3 levels at 50.000€, 30.000€ and... 5.000€ Looking at the past editions of both events, reasonable candidates for a Gold are Nokia, Novell, Canonical the Linux Foundation and perhaps Google. One of them to be pushed to the top level. There are some GUADEC silvers that could be tempted to upgrade to gold. The current Silvers come mainly from the GNOME side, which makes sense due to the decentralized corporate nature of the GNOME project. This is why I'm suggsting to keep Silver at 5000€ or do an upgrade to 6000€ at most in exchange of a much higher visibility. In fact many of these companies work on components compatible with KDE technologies and/or in the freedesktop.org domain. It would be also reasonable to think that more silvers might appear since we are getting more new ones in every GUADEC and most of the current sponsors repeat. The whole mobile stuff might bring new names e.g. those around the LiMo foundation. Conclusion: same or more money to be invested with less organizational costs (thanks to sharing instead of doubling overheads) -- more money to sponsor contributors from more remote places and work better on the social side of the events. This is not a joint event. The GNOME Board and KDE eV agreed on this with the understanding that we are co-located, not one conference. Some details can be shared but most of it should be treated as we just happen to show up at the same time and place. Its buisness as usual for the most part. If we wanted a joint conference we would have just thrown a Freedesktop.org event. For what we have seen in this thread there are some coincident opinions among the coordinators of GUADEC 2006 and 2007 + the main hunter of sponsors and keynotes in the past years (Baris is excused for being afk). There must be something to consider here. -- Quim Gil /// http://flors.wordpress.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Akademy+GUADEC *2009* Hosting Proposals
Are you reading the (very good!) materials the three candidates have prepared? What makes the Boston Summit expensive is the travel (for Europeans) and accommodation (for everybody), but this is well covered by the three candidates. On Thu, Jul 3, 2008 at 6:30 PM, Lennart Poettering [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Are there even any direct flights to Tampere, except from HEL? Ryanair in Tampere operates to Frankfurt, London, Bremen, Dublin, Milan and to Riga. Blue 1 operates to Stockholm and Copenhagen. http://www.finavia.fi/airport_tampere-pirkkala?pg=5375 Food, at http://www.gnome.org/~behdad/akademy+guadec-2009-bids/finland/ there is a list of restaurants with many options starting from meals at 5€. Remember that Tampere is a city full of (public) university students, including Erasmus from all Europe. 5€ is a competitive price in the Spanish Summer, specially in the coast. Coping with parties every night is a problem for the economy of many. This was raised in previous editions and should be taken into account next year, no matter where. 3 sponsored social events with drinks reasonably covered + a couple of nights covered by a visit to the supermarket + a couple of nights actually sleeping well and drinking very healty water... Sounds like a plan? -- Quim Gil /// http://flors.wordpress.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Akademy+GUADEC *2009* Hosting Proposals
On Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 4:29 PM, Murray Cumming [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'd want some reassurance about the accommodation. It can be insanely expensive in Helsinki. Is there some place where lots of people can stay cheaply. From the materials available at http://www.gnome.org/~behdad/akademy+guadec-2009-bids/finland/ 7 Accommodation and food There are numerous accommodation options near the meeting area. Accommodation in a nearby school will be arranged and this will be the lowest cost option. The Tampere Student Housing Foundation (TOAS) provides rentable student housing. In the summertime some of these houses work as a summer hostels. TOAS is able to provide us around 200 beds in the student houses. There houses will also be in the walking distance. The costs for these rooms will be low. Hotel Omenahotelli is one of the most cost-effective choices, there is accommodation for 400 people and it is within walking distance. The Sokos Hotel Villa can be found nearest to University of Tampere. Many other hotels are within a short walking distance. Please see the list of the hotels and the map of the area. Hotel prices in Tampere are availabe in the materials, ranging from Room from 71 €/night (1-4 people) to Single from 129 €/night if you are that type of guy. ;) Finland is not a cheap country but is not the crazy e.g. Norwegian thing. :) Tampere has average prices compared to the more expensive Helsinki. Food, beer, restaurants and stuff are also cheaper in Tampere for the same products. -- Quim Gil /// http://flors.wordpress.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Call for hosts for GUADEC 2009
On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 12:42 AM, Dave Neary [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Amsterdam Frankfurt Paris Brussels Geneva Milan Helsinki, anyone? -- Quim Gil /// http://flors.wordpress.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Call for hosts for GUADEC 2009
On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 5:30 PM, Dave Neary [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Quim Gil wrote: On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 12:42 AM, Dave Neary [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Amsterdam Frankfurt Paris Brussels Geneva Milan Helsinki, anyone? Are you feeling like becoming our first recidivist? I wouldn't be the first one helping out in more than one GUADEC and I'm definitely not proposing to coordinate a second one. Helsinki is not a bad place for a joint GUADEC/aKademy. Being in Summer, you can hack during the day (and that's about 20h) and sleep all night long. ;) It would be nice to have some local guy i.e. Linus Torvalds for the opening keynote... -- Quim Gil /// http://flors.wordpress.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Call for hosts for GUADEC 2009
Cool! Proposed location for the first joint GUADEC/aKademy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_Center_of_the_Earth ;) (Alternative, sunny locations come to mind though) On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 9:43 PM, Hubert Figuiere [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Note also that Summer is probably the worst period to get cheaper travel, so all in all it seems to be made to prevent people out of Europe from attending en masse. Note also that Summer is probably the best period to get one week off for students, and also for professionals. There are other possible gaps in the calendar (Christmas, Easter) but you would get the same high season prices. -- Quim Gil /// http://flors.wordpress.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Re-considering expectnation web service
Sorry, I understood Expectnation solved the issue of the registration payments and related accounting. This is one of the main pita and critical areas organizing GUADEC. For Vilanove we developed a custom made application that made the trick at some extent but was really hard to be reused in further events. If the registration payments are problematic to handle in Turkey a possibility would be to handle them in the USA directly through the Foundation, perhaps with the exception of Turkish participants that could use an internal channel to avoid moving money accross the borders. The event organization relies mostly on the money from sponsors and the registratioon bit hasn't been critical in the past years afaik. If this bit is solved then all the rest can be solved either improving the current Drupal website or interfacing with preexisting modules/apps used by linux.conf.au or whoever willing to collaborate (in Vilanova there was some discussion about using the soft developed for the W3C activities but after some mails nothing happened at the end. Baris, your list of features can we accomplished with Drupal alone. Some of them might require some extra work but as someone said perhaps it can be contracted if you don't find any volunteers. Or you can always drop the extra improvements that are not that essential and concentrate on the couple of things that really matter. -- Quim Gil /// http://flors.wordpress.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Re-considering expectnation web service
On 12/29/07, Edd Dumbill [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It's all proprietary right now. Open sourcing is a possibility for the future, but it's not likely to happen in 2008. Is expectnation then more or less as proprietary as the software powering Sourceforge, Launchpad, the Google or Yahoo! services? Fine with me, specially if it's good and by using it we might be helping Edd getting a sustainable business model and eventually opensourcing it. GUADEC organizers need to concentrate in the event organization and the content and communication. This is complex enough. Developing conference software is out of scope. The website itself shouldn't bring much time nor hassle. -- Quim Gil /// http://flors.wordpress.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Executive director [was: Re: OOXML]
On 11/6/07, David Bolter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It is perhaps of interest to some that the Mozilla Foundation has not found it easy to find a new Executive Director I believe the GNOME project needs more an executer than a director. Looking for the perfect candidate can be a long, expensive race that perhaps brings no result. We have tried this, didn't work, don't think it will work. Note that in most cases you need a strong professional context to hire a strong professional. The Mozilla Foundation can offer that strong professional context. GNOME can't, and I'd even say doesn't want to. There are some people in our community that would make wonders executing and directing in the GNOME Foundation, if we would set humble objectives, humble approach and pay a decent salary for that. Hint: if that person hired among us is a good team player able to engage the community, after 1-2 years the results obtained in total wouldn't be humble at all. -- Quim Gil /// http://flors.wordpress.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Who would be a good member? [Was: About the coming election]
My 2 cents That in effect perhaps raises the important question So who would be a good member of the Board?. - Avoid the 'popularity contest' syndrome. Popular contributors tend to be busy and you don't want a board of busy members. - Give a chance to newcomers. I'm planning to vote for something like 3 or less 'sure bets' and 4 or more 'surprises' if there are enough candidates to choose from. I'm no expert in statistics but I bet it can be proved that 4 surprises multiplied by hundred voters results in something not that surprising anyway. If everybody assures the bet then the result tend to be even more conservative than most people wanted. - Don't trust much the introduction written by the candidates when running for election. It's not that they are lying, they just might be too optimistic on that moment - and they are marketing themselves. Trust their path in GNOME, their actions and contributions. - Don't fear voting wrong. There are no wrong candidates because all Foundation members have proved a dose of GNOME love. Even a wrong board could not do much more wrong things than a right board. In reality the margins of power and action are not that big. I insist the wrongest mistake is to vote people that is going to be extremely busy next year. But there is no easy way to predict that, so relax and vote. - Shall I add 'trust your feelings'? PS: I won't run for (re)election this year. I feel I haven't been able to respond to the great backing I got from the last election, mainly due to... being busy and not dedicating enough time to my GNOME duties. I feel bad about this and I apologize to those who put any expectations on me. You see, I'm a good example of someone running for election with time available and optimistic perspectives, then something happens and you end up in a very different situation. -- Quim Gil /// http://flors.wordpress.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Executive director [was: Re: OOXML]
fwiw I also think that an executive director would be good for the GNOME project, more needed than a business developer. At least GNOME gets the resources that needs for doing what is capable to do. This was not clear a year ago but as Jeff points out things evolve and we learn in the process. The profile could be someone already in the GNOME community with an open professional career a love for GNOME and open source, community development skills, good communication, able to travel and somewhat interested and skilled in money related stuff. I'm sure this person exists already in GNOME, and is reading these lines (or at least would read then in Planet GNOME). The secret is to start humble and small, and improving something every quarter. The problem is _only_ to find the name and surname, sending the offer on the right time. Perhaps opening the position publicly without a pressure of time, waiting for candidates? Anyway, stuff for the brains of the next board. -- Quim Gil /// http://flors.wordpress.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: board [was Re: OOXML [was Re: GNOME Foundation Board Meeting Minutes :: 7/6/07]]
Hi, Things I have learned during this time at the board: 1 - Voting busy candidates is risky if not counterproductive. 2 - Running for election when you are busy is risky if not counterproductive. 3 - Seven members is what you need to run efficiently a board. 4 - Even a board of busy members can be a good board, but needs to concentrate on the essentials. 5 - You concentrate on the essentials by *not doing* other things, either because you delegate, you drop or you don't even start new things. 6 - It is difficult to point out publicly and even internally when something/someone is wrong concentrating on the essentials, delegating, dropping, starting new things. We are (too?) respectful with each other. In fact 6 is more complex: you can point when you are not inside, if you are inside you can't point. Because you are outside you don't have all facts, which makes difficult to point accurately, effectively. Because you are inside you have more facts, but this makes difficult to point issues because you put someone and yourself in evidence. Breaking respect in exchange of efficiency isn't easy - probably not even appropriate in an organization of volunteers. Full stop. If Luis runs for election I'll vote him, no doubt about this. He has been pinging and pushing on legal matters as a champion. I feel that we at the board have failed integrating his voluntarism in a delegation. I still wonder what has failed and why though. All the elements were in place: a Legal area in the board with 2 people responsible, public and private mailing list, relatively regular contact with lawyers and people around legal matters, regular presence of legal related topics in the board meetings and agenda... Should I make a conclusion I would probably end up thinking that personal differences had more weight than they should, but who knows. The board hasn't been proactive enough delegating again, that's my feeling. Because we don't want to delegate? I don't think so. The problem starts when people is lacking time to assume the most basic responsibilities and feels overwhelmed only to follow the basic routines. If you have been into the Art of Delegating before you know the paradox: in theory delegating will let you do more things in less time, in practice the process of delegating takes time in itself - which is a trap when people feel like not having time. Is the 7 member board the root of the problem? I strongly disagree. I think the current board of 7 has been extremely efficient in the first half of the year considering the total amount of personal time invested. I bet a board of more people couldn't beat that. The second half is being more dramatic,. and it is painful to reckon that many deep issues could have been avoided or at least dealt with more properly if all the board members could have been around with some time available for collaboration and quick response. Also, looking backwards we also see that our time and issues could have been invested much better. What is left from the 10th anniversary? Imagine if some of that time would have been put in a Boston Summit planning. How much time did we put in aligning the election period with GUADEC? Imagine if instead we had been dealing with this poisoned OOXML discussion. Of course this is easy to say now, the problem is always to foresee things before they happen. This is an art that can be better performed having more time and calm in our minds, btw. And even if you foresee issues there is still that problem of being difficult to point them out without being not as respectful as we use to be. -- Quim Gil /// http://flors.wordpress.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Suggestion for coming elections
After more thinking... On 10/16/07, Dave Neary [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Picking 11 from 12 is a farce. Picking N from N+1 or anything closer to N than to 2N is going to be a farce or a light decision no matter what election procedure you design. I agree with Vincent: the current system already allows to vote 6 or less candidates, no need to change a tool that we know it works. I'm not even sure we want to promote people to vote just for 3 candidates instead of a broader number i.e. 6-7. In the way we are organized it doesn't matter how many votes you got once you are in the board: every board member counts as one. I don't see where does it help to have bigger differences in votes received between elected board members. About the specific case of not reaching 7 people, the situation is of total crisis: elected board members should choose people for the remaining seats either from candidates with 0 votes or GNOME contributors that didn't even run for election. So in fact I would recommend otherwise: picking 3 candidates is generally easy for everybody, but make the effort to find 7 names from, the candidates because at the end this is the number of people that will run the Foundation board. In fact the dubious votes pointing to newcomers or not so popular contributors can make a bigger change than the sure bets to the well know rock stars that get elected ijn the first 3 choices. What needs improvement is the fact of getting at least 14 candidates, so there is really variety to choose from. -- Quim Gil /// http://flors.wordpress.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Suggestion for coming elections
What happens when you get less than 7 people with votes? On 10/16/07, Dave Neary [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, I have a suggestion for the coming board elections which I think might make things more interesting (and, coincidentally, better). We've always proceded by giving members N votes, where N is the number of seats available. What this results in is a very strong yes vote for one, two, maybe three people, and a tepid meh, why not for another few candidates. At least, that's my experience. I suggest that forcing people to choose more tightly who they're voting for would be a good thing. If there are 10 candidates, picking 7 from 10 is no good. A few years ago, we had 12 candidates for 11 places. Picking 11 from 12 is a farce. Members could be limited to 3 votes, a nice balance between first-past-the-post and preferential voting. The number of seats stays the same, the election mode stays the same, from my reading of things, there is no need for any change to by-laws, all that's needed is a decision from the board as to how the election will be run. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list -- Quim Gil /// http://flors.wordpress.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
About Planet GNOME
Hello everybody, The board received a request from Valek Filippov about the administration of http://planet.gnome.org . We accepted it for discussion and this is the conclusion we have got: - Planet GNOME is an official GNOME subsite and for that reason it is good to have more than one person administering it. - The content of Planet GNOME is good and it reflects the good editorial work that Jeff has been doing accepting feeds. The board is happy with any improvement on the current situation keeping Jeff's editorial leadership. - The more mundane administration of the Planet is less critical from an editorial point of view and is in fact the cause of most criticism. The board thinks that these administrative tasks will be better handled by a team, and probably also through better channels than private emails. - Although some board members had several ideas to improve the current management of Planet GNOME in more transparent and decentralized ways. board-list is not the place to discuss or agree on those. We recommend Jeff and anybody interested in this topic to discuss and get to conclusions openly in gnome-web-list. Thanks, -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Proposal: Shift election cycle back six months
The current board was elected for one year and there is no exceptional reason to change this. The next board can be elected for an extended period and then voters and electors know what is going on beforehand. On 8/10/07, Jeff Waugh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: quote who=Andy Tai OK, simply, the stated reason for the extraordinary measure (face to face meeting timing) is not a strong one to justify touching the term limit of the board. In that case -- let's try for productive input here, if possible -- how do you suggest we solve the problem? (Or describe why it's not a problem that needs to be solved.) - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Proposal: Shift election cycle back six months
First things first: 1. Make sure that from a legal point of view we can have board mandate not coinciding with budget terms. If legally we can't do it the rest is pointless. 2. Check if the current board members would be willing to continue for an extended period. If the current board members are not willing to go further the rest is pointless. 3. If 1 and 2 are met then we can talking about something as exceptional as a referendum. Really, the GNOME Foundation doesn't *need* urgently that change. We are used to plan and execute changes that have a mid term impact. The newly elected board would have to wait until Istanbul to meet. What is the so big issue with that? Until now this has been the rule and we seem to have survived. I don't understand really why all this hurry now. On 8/10/07, Jeff Waugh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: quote who=Vincent Untz Sorry, I'm going to dive into boring details... Is this something from the by-laws (I couldn't find a reference to the 10 days notice there, but I only gave a quick look), or something you are suggesting? Yes. See under VII: 3-8. And by vote, do you mean referendum or something else (the only other type of vote I know is elections :-))? Just a vote of the membership. - Jeff -- Open Source in Mobile 2007: Madrid, Spain http://www.osimconference.com/ The Unix Way: Everything is a file. The Linux Way: Everything is a filesystem. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Idea: GNOME event in Beijing 2008
This is a call for volunteers and interested GNOME lovers in Beijing / China / East Asia. Please forward to friends and contacts that might be interested. There is this initial idea of organizing a GNOME event in Beijing next year. Emily Chen and other developers of the Sun Desktop in Beijing have started pushing the idea and now they are in the task of having an initial organization team with volunteers from other organizations, companies and individuals. There is a lot of GNOME related development going on in Beijing, China and East Asia in general. This conference could be a great opportunity to provide more visibility to the ideas, people, teams etc. We are starting the discussion in the GNOME marketing-list. More: GNOME calling to Beijing / China / East Asia http://desdeamericaconamor.org/blog/node/384 -- Quim Gil ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct on foundation-list
The foundation-list is a channel of communication of the GNOME Foundation membership and therefore is ruled by the charter and by-laws of the foundation. See http://foundation.gnome.org/about/charter/ and http://foundation.gnome.org/about/bylaws.pdf There you have established rules agreed by all of us, some of them referring to measures to take when members of the Foundation show a poor conduct. The board has authority to decide in such cases. In this context, and in the foundation related lists, an additional code of conduct is just redundant. On 7/31/07, Behdad Esfahbod [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, I want to suggest opting in for Code of Conduct [1] on foundation-list. See the Applies to section of CoC for what this means in practical terms. [1] http://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Foundation Board Meeting Minutes :: 7/6/07
About the KDE GNOME event, probably the best way to progress is by doing progressive approaches. Jumping from the current situation to a joint conference sounds a bit like going from self-esteem to the 32nd position of the Kama Sutra in one go. As others have suggested, a successful combined room in FOSDEM would be already a big (and useful) step. Trying to put together GUADEC and aKademy befor trying smaller challenges in save contexts would be very risky. And combining both events is complicated only from the organizational point of view. The KDE and GNOME community don't meet in random places, or where the software/events industry decides to organize something. The organization of each event rlies on local communities. It is not that easy for each project to find brave teams and good venues every year (how many candidates for GUADEC 2008 have we got?). Now think about the challenge of searching for a place with GNOME KDE critical mass I wouldn't spend much time discussing about mixing/approaching GUADEC aKademy. Steps towards combined sessions and programs in the main free (and also non-free) software events is probably more fruitful. -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Towards more collaboration between the academic world and the GNOME community
On 4/25/07, Ted Gould [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: They'd prefer to say that they have a project from Novell/Redhat/Intel/etc. This shouldn't be a problem for GNOME. Sounds like there is an opportunity for collaboration with the companies in the advisory board at the GNOME Foundation. The big ones have surely university programs, and people working (full time?) on them. They might find interesting ways to play at a GNOME level. Once the doors are open and the branding is in place finding projects for GNOME research might be easier. Co-branding with GNOME logos too, these projects love logos! Nobody i.e. in a university department wants to help kicking off this initiative? This looks like one of these projects progressing once someone decides to pull it firmly. -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Special GNOME event in California next week
To Dan and the rest of GNOME lovers. Some privacy (not secrecy) has been needed to bring this idea into a reality. Trust the promoters 5 days more and you will most probably agree. Look the topic of the conference. If you are into this topic you probably know what's going on, or know who will be most probably involved. All the main GNOME players in this topic were invited sinnce the very beginning and have been active since then. If you are not into this topic you can probably wait these 5 days. :) Like I wait fir whatever novelties about GNOME projects I can't follow other beyond Planet GNOME Really, I understand your concerns today but there is nothing to be concerned about. Can we resume this debate in 6 days and save some burnt energies? You won't regret. Trust us. Quim ___ foundation-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: an open-audit voting system for GNOME elections
Interesting, thanks for your interest in the GNOME democratic space. Is your project based in a specific voting system or can it integrate different ones? For instance, now we are using in GNOME a simple system of most-voted-get-elected, although there have been discussions about integrating a preferential voting system. If we were going to think of using better voting tools, it would be worth to discuss and agree whether we are happy with the current voting system or we prefer to go for another one. Not big deal, but I think that a preferential system would respond better to our will and needs. Perhaps too much for a chance if we need to do the implementation, but if someone if offering his expertise willing to develop a great voting tool... On 3/12/07, Ben Adida [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi all, My name is Ben Adida, I'm a postdoc fellow at Harvard working on crypto and public policy. I spend a bunch of my time on voting systems, -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Our annual meeting at GUADEC
Your idea sounds good but I wonder how efficient is the average human being after 8h meeting in a day. What about: - 10h-15h board meeting with a sandwich break in between (at 12h30 or so) - 15 - 16h real break - 16 - 18/19h AGM And then 2h board wrap up another day i.e. after the Core days to get common conclusions and assign tasks. I like the idea of a dinner+discussion after the AGM but why not doing it informally with other attendants. :) Last year we were so tired at the end of the all-day meeting that it wasn't clear who had to do what, which IMO affected the output of that meeting. For example, we spent a long time discussing issues and elaborating possible alternatives that weren't discussed again anymore after the GUADEC summer. PS: the main point here at foundation-list is that we would be going for a 2-3h AGM the afternoon before the Core days, non-board opinions are needed. On 1/9/07, Dave Neary [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: One note of caution - the all-day board meeting generally does need to be all-day. -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Our annual meeting at GUADEC
The GUADEC2007 team is working on a very first draft schedule for the Core days. Maybe it's a good time to start discussing how we want to celebrate the GNOME Foundation annual general meeting. I've been only in the last two editions and therefore I have a strong lack of perspective. However, both meetings at Stuttgart and Vilanova could be improved. THE THEORY GUADEC Core days is when more GNOME Foundation members are around, therefore it's the best time to meet. IN PRACTICE Because it's the Core days the schedule is very busy, there are lots of talks and everybody is finding ol' friends in the corridors. Night life is also intense specially these days. The AGM is located in a whole in the schedule, 1h at midday. The result is that just a few people come by, there is not much time for participation after the board has reported what needs to report in an AGM and not much energies anyway. At the end of the AGM everybody leaves the room going to the next talk with a kind of unsatisfactory feeling. SUGGESTION - Let's schedule the AGM the afternoon or even early evening before the Core days start. - Let's have at least 2h scheduled with a possibility to extend the time for those enjoying the conversation. - Let's work together the agenda, forwarding to this mailing list most of the information that can be better delivered here in order to discuss more and better those topics that can better approached live life. PS: this is a personal proposal, not something agreed or discussed previously by the board. -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Free call board meetings (was Re: Board Member Application Mini-HOWTO)
On Fri, 2006-11-10 at 13:29 -0600, Federico Mena Quintero wrote: * The Foundation will not reimburse you for the conference calls. The calls are invariable hosted in the USA, so you may have to do long-distance calls every two weeks. We haven't done any work to make the calls through VOIP or anything. We had our first 2007 meeting last Thursday. Every board member was able to call to a free phone number in her country and the conference happened somewhere in telecom space. This will be the system for the rest of meetings this year. Thanks Glynn Sun for the service. Also thanks to RedHat for the conferencing infrastructure provided in previous years. -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of conduct (bis)
I forgot to say that I can be arrogant myself. Arrogance is always better perceive by the others. -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: membership
Could you describe your philosophy and your computer usage? It would help seeing where are we changing and perhaps failing. A description of the candidate profile you were expecting might help other people present candidacy next year. Thank you 2006/12/5, Andreas J. Guelzow [EMAIL PROTECTED]: I don't mind at all. The reason is really a combination of many. Primarily, over the last years the philosophy of the GNOME community has shown itself to be incompatible with my philosophy. As a side effect, the GNOME desktop has become, in many instances, inappropriate for our usage. -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions
On Tue, 2006-11-28 at 14:26 +0100, Robert Staudinger wrote: (i) Concerns can be heard throughout the community every now and then, that the increasing corporate interest and investment makes it harder and harder to contribute code for volunteers. Q: What is your feeling about that? I don't have the technical background to judge this, since I'm not in the CVS side of GNOME. Of course I have heard about patches being queued for ages but I have also heard different reasons for that, not only corporate vs volunteering interests. My feeling as board candidate is that if this is a concern in the community and the ground of this concern goes beyond technical aspects, it should be raised up and discussed here in the foundation-list. Or perhaps someone wants to address directly a question or complaint to the board. This is how issues hit the agenda. (ii) Are you interested in working on making it easier for people willing to contribute code? Oh yes, I'm interested. A lot of my time invested in GNOME goes to tasks related to attract new people and make it easier to contribute. If code contributors want to discuss issues beyond technical aspects, I'll be happy to help finding solutions - no matter if I'm in the board or not (I think the board should be a last resort) (iii) What measures will you conduct to make contribution of code easier for volunteers. (E.g. it can be rather frustrating having an unreviewed patch in bugzilla for months.) It looks like you have in mind a specific problem (I'm not aware of). If so, I recommend you to air it up so we (community) can find specific solutions to it. I think the board needs to make sure the channels of contribution are open and functioning well. That they are properly documented and actions to bring new contributors to the project are open. There are teams working on this under their capacity. If there are issues, probably these teams can help. If the issue is big and controversial it can scale up to the board. (iv) The GNOME Advisory has been formed to handle communication between partys with commercial interest and the GNOME project. Q: Do you think that a similar institution should be formed to handle community feedback in an organised manner or will community contributors have to communicate back using mailing lists and IRC as it always was? Isn't the Foundation the institution to get the community organized? What are you suggesting exactly? What channels of communication are you missing to provide feedback? As a community contributor I think a quite open and non-moderated foundation-list is perfect to raise an issue hitting the core of the community with a single email. -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME and the free software movement
I'm not sure if these questions are closely related to board responsibilities, but anyway. It's probably good to know what candidates think about colateral aspects as well. On Tue, 2006-11-28 at 18:23 +, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote: To build awareness among GNOME _users_, what do candidates think about putting an About free software button, by default, in the Help memu? Honestly, I think this would be almost futile. Isn't that Help menu being customized radically by each GNOME-based distribution? In my laptop the System Help menu have 5 links, all of them pointing to Ubuntu stuff. No trace of what GNOME/upstream is offering there. Any better ideas? Introducing free software in www.gnome.org . Considering users not aware about software freedom in our wgo target audience. Already working on this. -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Endorsement for Joachim Norieko
However big and central the philosofical gap might be, I don't see it's affecting Joachim's passionate contributions to GNOME in important aspects of the project where others just don't go through. Besides, he is always open to discussion, active search of agreement and acceptance of well founded arguments. I strongly disagree with his recent opinions about software freedom. Still, I think he can be a good board member if elected, being as useful and efficient as he is in the doc and web teams (two areas that several candidates have identified as very important). Jeff, I understand your will of having a well integrated board. Personally I'm also tempted of posting my opinions about the candidates, since I have been working with most of them. But being so transparent and pushy might have a counterproductive effect the day the board is elected and I'm there together with some members that were not in my recommendations. Willing to favour a strong and united board, I might seed unconfidence and mistrust since the first day. It looks like we candidates have in effect less freedom to express ourselves than the average Foundation members, and current board members have even less freedom than the new candidates. Being a fan of productive and explicit (self)critique, I'm not that happy with this situation but I can't find a better negotiation between freedom, responsibility and the stability board members are supposed to provide at the end of their exercise. Ideas are welcome. Quim ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME and the free software movement
On Sat, 2006-11-25 at 01:58 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote: I would like to ask the candidates for the board to state their views on how GNOME can work with the broader free software movement for the advance of computer users' freedom. Thinking out loud... Even considering all our problems and imperfections, GNOME is one of the big, strong and consolidated projects in the free software community. A leading player with a wide and diverse representation of interests and stakeholders that go from social liberation to fair business, from individual volunteers to transnational corporations. In this position, GNOME should keep helping free software becoming mainstream. We need to work on quality, standards, documentation and good integration with other projects/products needed by GNOME that need GNOME themselves in order to offer a rock solid and competitive free desktop covering efficiently all the basic functionality users demand. We need to be wise cooperating with our competition in the free software community (other desktop environments, other applications) keeping in mind that we are still in the catacombs and that no free project alone can probably beat the non-free competition nowadays. We need to become a essential player offering the best alternative to individuals and social organizations (we are almost there), to the public sector (doing great advances as well) and also the business world, starting by the companies that have software development integrated in their production and services (we have a good collection of precedents and we are starting to be seen as a serious-serious option). This trend should increase exponentially the quantity of free software users, probably not-100% aware of the freedom component and surely not using 100%-free software (codecs, drivers etc). Strategically I prefer this approach. I think that more quantity of users will bring easier a wider awareness of the beauty and advantages of Freedom and will make easier the liberation of code or the development of 100% alternatives to non-free code. I'm not sure if I'm answering your question, but this is what you message made me write. :) -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
multi-culti board
How nice would be to have Asian, American and African candidates! Quim signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Potential candidates to the board
Responses from the 7 persons I had invited to run for election: - Busy / Short of time but thinking seriously on becoming candidate. - Already invited to be part of the release team, better not combine both responsibilities. - Getting top involvement in GNOME local group, better not to combine both responsibilities. - I don't think I fit, I better contribute hacking. FAQ: Q - How much time does this require? A - I think someone can be a good board member investing 2h for board meetings every 2 weeks + 2h a week for tasks assigned to you + following foundation-list, which has sometimes more and sometimes less traffic, but generally low-traffic. You generally work on stuff you are interested in anyway. Q - What does exactly the board? A - http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/2006ActivityWatch The board mainly acts in the areas where there are no technical teams, or in transversal issues that involve several teams or in issues that are not being (properly) pushed and are considered important. The board itself doesn't get into technical tasks, but can assign GNOME contributors to do so. Concerns: - I'm not known in GNOME Although this is an exaggeration (the people I contacted have visibility in their areas) it is clear that most people don't want to run for election unless they see a probability of being elected. It would be good that rock stars and vets in general insist (as Federico did) that the board elections are not a popularity contest but an exercise to find the people that can work better for the board and the Foundation. Fopr instance, time and hands-on attitude are probably more important than years in GNOME or Planet karma. - I want to enjoy GUADEC Me too! The elected board should work in collaboration with Birmingham 2007 in order to find a way to combine agendas. It is possible. -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Board Member Application Mini-HOWTO
On Fri, 2006-11-10 at 13:29 -0600, Federico Mena Quintero wrote: We haven't done any work to make the calls through VOIP or anything. On the other hand, VoIP conference calls imply broadband, which depending on countries and personal economies can be a higher barrier than a cheap call with a normal phone and one of those prefixes. This is probably an issue each new board should consider ad hoc to see if there are issues with the elected members. This year this was not an issue afaik. It would be a good incentive to offer broadband sponsorship for one year to those needing it to perform properly their board tasks. In any case the bottom line is that money or technology shouldn't be a barrier to become a board member. -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Candidacy: Quim Gil
Name: Quim Gil E-mail: qgil AT desdeamericaconamor DOT org Corporate affiliation: currently none (but see below) Why: I joined the board in June in substitution of Luis Villa. It took me a while to know the basics of boarding and now that I kind of feel comfortable comes the end of the year... I think I can do more and better in 2007. There are some things I would like to help improving from the board: - Transparency of the board activities. Yeah, the old topic. After being outside and inside a pre-diagnose could be made and some measures could start being applied in 2007. I'm obsessed about transparency. - Delegation and collaboration with non-board contributors. Another old topic, connected to the previous one. We keep discussing and some progress is done, but there is still a long way to go. I enjoy team-working. - Areas and board members responsible of each area. Although there is some specialization in board tasks, the areas are not well defined. A lot of discussion and work could be optimized if there would be i.e. a responsible for legal stuff, responsible of events, responsible of local groups etc. - Advisory Board. We can get a lot more (from both sides). Also, the advisory board activity is totally unknown by the membership. Of course there is a concern about confidentiality but probable we all can find a productive way in between. - In general... Plan less and do more. There are some many good ideas around... But we better put just some in the agenda and make sure they are completed at the end of the year. Otherwise we get overwhelmed by dozens of intense debates that at the end come up with... almost no concrete result. I'm a doer, discussion without action keep my interest lower as I grow older. There are other issues or tasks that go across several GNOME teams where the board might help (and is helping). My preferred one is the GNOME websites: what comes after the wgo revamp. Web integration and also a better dialog between web team, sysadmin/infrastructure and all the subsites webmasters around. That's it. There are other things where I could... but I'd rather stay concentrated with the topics mentioned. It's more than enough to keep more than one board member entertained during the whole year. IMPORTANT: I'm actively looking for work and I could get an affiliation before the election comes. I will keep you updated. MORE IMPORTANT: I'm a candidate for the position of business development director of the GNOME Foundation. I think that Foundation employees shouldn't be Foundation board members simultaneously and I wouldn't make an exception with myself. I will resign as board candidate or member if I get this position. More at http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2006-November/msg2.html -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
A good moment to promote the GNOME Foundation
-- The GNOME Foundation is better with more members -- All we are surrounded by GNOME contributors that aren't members of the Foundation. They probably don't know much about it, don't think it's for them, don't dare to ask, leave it for next year (again?)... Bring them on board! The Foundation members are the first and best resources to get new members. In principle everybody investing time, brain and sweat in GNOME should be part of the Foundation, this is why it was created. Please help convince your projects neighbors, your mailing list colleagues, your IRC mates, your blog readers... As an example here is an attempt: A good moment to join the GNOME Foundation http://desdeamericaconamor.org/blog/node/310 -- The Board of Directors Election is better with more candidates -- All we have thought once that contributor X could be a great board member. Tell him/her! It's so easy to send an email saying I think you could be a good board member, have you considered running for election? As an example, I received one of these a year ago from someone I highly respect, which was a strong reason to be a candidate weeks later. I have sent already a couple of emails, and will send some more. There is so many great people around. Try it! It feels good. PS: Just to make things clear, I'm sending this email personally, not as an initiative of the board. Of course the board invites everybody to promote the Foundation and the elections. -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Foundation Board Activity Watch
If you ever thought the board needs more transparency you should have a look at http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/2006ActivityWatch Hopefully this page will help communicating better the board activities. All the information is taken from the publicly available meeting minutes. There is no additional data, just the same data packaged in a different way. Feel free to suggest and apply improvements. Anybody can edit the page. In principle a Board Watch should be maintained better by non-board members - this is how watching normally works... I will tune this page with the minutes of the meeting held today as soon as they are sent to foundation-list. From that point every update based on new minutes shouldn't take more than 15 minutes. An optional exercise, a bit more time consuming, is to dig in the minutes and mail archives in the search of more decisions and completed tasks that went off the minutes. -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Substituting Linux with GNU/Linux or GNU
The decision of the board was reported in the last minutes - http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2006-October/msg00016.html (at the end): * Where Linux is mentioned on the GNOME site, try to rephrase to avoid mentioning any specific operating system. Where we refer to platforms on which GNOME is available, replace with GNU/Linux (commonly called Linux) Expanded: - There are very few reasons to mention a specific operative system in the GNOME documentation, program strings or GNOME websites. As someone proved back in August, most current references are wrong since GNOME is compatible with several operative systems, including GNU/Linux (commonly called Linux), Solaris, HP-UX, BSD and Apple's Darwin (ref: http://www.gnome.org/start/2.16/ ) - GNOME is not a GNU/Linux desktop or a Linux desktop. It is a free desktop. Make sure everybody writing documentation, news or other texts about GNOME understand this clearly. - In the very few cases where the operative systems need to be enumerated, we recommend the use of the formula GNU/Linux (commonly called Linux), that has already been used i.e. in the release notes. Amen :) On Fri, 2006-08-04 at 23:19 +0300, Yavor Doganov wrote: This is a request to the the GNOME Foundation Board for action/decision regarding this matter. There are some strings in some GNOME programs and very few in the GNOME documentaion that refer to the operating system as Linux. We would like the Board to vote and decide for a policy to substitute all these references to GNU/Linux or GNU, where appropriate. -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org | http://pinguino.tv signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Substituting Linux with GNU/Linux or GNU
Sorry for my Spanglish. The conclusions are the same, though. If you refer 'operative system' as 'operating system', it has only one name: Linux. Others differ and we don't want to get into this old debate. See i.e. the beginning of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux If you find a real example in the GNOME software, documentation or websites where the recommendations of the board would be wrong or not applicable please let us know. Quim ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Local user groups
El dv 11 de 08 del 2006 a les 13:46 +0200, en/na Rodrigo Moya va escriure: My question is: how we can have marketing materials easily? that is also my question :) What do you have in mind when you talk about 'marketing materials'? The answer possibly differs depending on the materials. Stickers, t-shirts, banners etc have different problematics. The starting point is http://live.gnome.org/MarketingTeam/MarketingMaterial . Any help updating/improving this list is appreciated. We plan to work at least with Killermundi to have a GNOME shop. That said, the problem is not just to pay the production of, say, t-shirts but also the transport to, say, Chile. In your case self-production is an important part of the strategy, as previously discussed. or is possible for the invited Rock Star to bring some gift below his arm? ;) If the rock star can afford them and they are easy to carry... -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org | http://guadec.org signature.asc Description: Això és una part d'un missatge, signada digitalment ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Content and Intent [Was: Code of Conduct final draft?]
El dv 04 de 08 del 2006 a les 08:49 +0200, en/na Murray Cumming va escriure: * be firm, but lighthearted - I didn't suggest Be Excellent To Each Other Yes. My only objection to that phrase (which I tried in the draft before people complained about it) is that it's a cultural reference that isn't fully understood by many eople whose first language is not English. There is a deeper cultural problem this sentence has that goes beyond language or film background: in many cultural contexts excellent people is not supposed to request others to be excellent. If you do, you are somehow failing at being excellent yourself. I believe nobody thinking in English and having seen Bill Ted's Excellent Adventure will get this feeling at all. Translate the sentence to your language, link it to your own background of Be ... recommendations and you probably get a result pretty different from what Jeff or Glynn would like to express with their best intentions. We better concentrate on pragmatic recommendations where we are more likely to get univoque meanings, even if this is not as funny as building cool rhetoric. -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org | http://guadec.org signature.asc Description: Això és una part d'un missatge, signada digitalment ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct final draft?
El dv 04 de 08 del 2006 a les 22:11 +1000, en/na Jeff Waugh va escriure: Hold on... You're suggesting that instead of creating a document with this content, we should update another document with this content. Not with this content i.e. adding an extra chapter, but making sure the principles and recommendation we are missing in the current documents appear there. My basic point is: the GNOME Foundation charter has already everything we need to behave, be respectful and productive. It is not a coincidence that the community that came up with that charter and this Foundation is doing well behaving, being respectful and productive. It is possible that after these years the charter needs updating to keep being a valid referent for the GNOME project nowadays. If this is the case, let's update it. Doing the process of updating the charter would be a failure? I don't see why, this process could be healthy for the community, and the result would be stronger and more sounded. In the meantime the list of recommendations could be discussed, tested, improved, applied (it was being applied before being written in a wiki page anyway). Interesting idea [1], and certainly food for thought, but... totally dodging the point of the discussion! I tried to nail precisely the point of the discussion: it is the backbone of the GNOME Foundation that needs to be healthy, adding a rib doesn't solve the problem (if there is a problem). Can we stop arguing about *where to put it* and *what to call it*, and go back to talking about what should go in it, and the shared values we want to express? :-) Jeff, it is normal that people wonders what is this box and what you want to do it in order to help providing the content you want for that box. To me these principles can stay at http://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct , they are fine. But since you are asking for acceptance from the Foundation and blessing of the board I think the content and the label needs to be diferent. And the idea of integrating these principles to the current principles of the Foundation is pertinent and sensible, I think. But it seems I keep missing the point. Sorry for making you waste extra time, all we have better things to do than reading long threads leading nowhere. I give up. Good luck with the document. Really. -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org | http://guadec.org signature.asc Description: Això és una part d'un missatge, signada digitalment ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct final draft?
Bypassing the wording thing and also the content of the CoC, two questions I think we should agree on in order to move forward: - Do we aim to have an official GNOME list of behavior principles approved and assumed by the GNOME Foundation or is it enough with a list of behavior principles people can point to if needed? - In a worst case scenario, do we expect the GNOME Foundation board to arbitrate if someone violates the list of behavior principles or do we think that one thing is not related to the other and the board should refer only to the GNOME Foundation charter and by-laws. I'm in favor of improving the existing tools of the GNOME Foundation to enforce dialog, diversity and respect, and to prevent abuse and act effectively against it. I'm against adopting an official netiquette-alike set of behavior principles at a GNOME Foundation level. I'm not against producing a list of useful recommendations like Murray is doing, to be as accepted as the community wants to accept it. El dj 03 de 08 del 2006 a les 12:12 +1000, en/na Jeff Waugh va escriure: I haven't really answered the rest of your mail, because it all comes down to Code of Conduct vs let's write a document that demonstrates our shared vision and expectations to ourselves and others. -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org | http://guadec.org signature.asc Description: Això és una part d'un missatge, signada digitalment ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct final draft?
El dj 03 de 08 del 2006 a les 12:06 +0100, en/na Alan Cox va escriure: You are the caveman arguing that since it was ok to whack people on the head with a club during disagreements last month, its clearly a good idea to continue that way. Not at all. I am a GNOME contributor thinking that real principles are not written, and writing down behavior recommendations doesn't make them stronger. I didn't come up with this idea myself, this is a fact for many psychologists, anthropologists and sociologists analyzing human communities. Different things: behaving well -- writing down that we must behave well. Different things: not wanting to write down a list of principles to follow -- not following principles. I haven't seen cave(wo)men in this debate, nor I find them usually in the GNOME community. I see people following principles. I see people behaving, and asking others to behave when there is an exception. Some would accept this CoC, some wouldn't. Most share already a form-less set of unwritten principles. Where is the club whacking in GNOME? There is this (recursive) suggestion that people against the proposed CoC are against principles. I think we are open to a broader, wider and more diverse collection of principles than the ones you can get by writing down a list. Also, there is this association of people against the proposed CoC with anarchism. If It Works, Don't Fix It is perhaps a most common denominator, which has to do with efficiency and not ideology. For what I have read, people against the CoC agree that it is probably not going to serve the purpose for what it is being created, and it will surely add trouble where there was no trouble. GNOME needs to standarize software, development processes, interfaces... but do we need to standarize behaviors? I joined a free software project with a common goal, not a country or a civilization. Every time a GNOME contributor is performing an action in this community has already on the shoulders several layers of adopted and accepted moral principles and legal rules, written and unwritten, different from the principles and rules of others. Do we really need to add a written GNOME layer? Are we in such a crisis or menace that we need to create and agree upon an additional ethical layer to behave? Do you really think that writing down Be nice makes us nicer and makes us look nicer to the outsiders? -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org | http://guadec.org signature.asc Description: Això és una part d'un missatge, signada digitalment ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct final draft?
El dc 02 de 08 del 2006 a les 21:07 -0500, en/na Jonathon Jongsma va escriure: On 8/2/06, Quim Gil [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In that context, I don't believe it's aggressive or inappropriate in the way that you interpreted it. You are right, now I see. Thank you. Sorry for providing a bad example, and specially sorry to Telsa and Anne for my misinterpretation. It is clear that If something seems outrageous, check that you did not misinterpret it. Ask for clarification, but do not assume the worst. Although this gives me a somewhat better impression about the CoC debate, it doesn't affect my positioning about the CoC itself and my proposal to rely on the GNOME Foundation charter instead. -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org | http://guadec.org signature.asc Description: Això és una part d'un missatge, signada digitalment ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Local user groups
El dv 28 de 07 del 2006 a les 09:45 +0200, en/na Dave Neary va escriure: Hi, Felipe Barros S. wrote: 3. To resolve in part the expenses of the meetings that we make. We can sell some stuffs like a stickers, mugs, pencils or whatever, using GNOME logos and fonts? 1. In general, no. The foundation has a couple of agreements with vendors selling GNOME merchandise (and more on the way). Selling GNOME merchandise for-profit (even as a fundraiser) is explicitly forbidden in the user group agreement I referred to earlier. Also my personal take, not knowing most of the legal stuff implied. Conceptually, I think self-sustainability of GNOME user groups must be a principle stronger than the commitments and dependencies of the GNOME Foundation with merchandising vendors. In case of conflict we should look first after the GNOME user groups. With this concept clear, coherent practices could be: - If we can have agreements with several vendors because we sell no exclusivity, we could set something like vendor agreements with GNOME user groups. - These agreements would make sense specially in countries with strong problems of distribution, where buying a t-shirt to an official vendor would imply paying more for the transport than for the t-shirt itself. Reasonable vendors should understand this. - In places with no distribution problems i.e. with a vendor and a user group in the same country we would enforce coordination instead, requesting vendors to offer special prices to user groups. Reasonable vendors should be interested on this deal with a good customer. - Note that an agreement with the GNOME Foundation implies that the user group has a legal entity. This makes sense: a group wanting to move money needs to account their finances legally. This is what i.e. GNOME Hispano is doing. The same issue applies if you want to get money from sponsors, apply to public funds, and so on. If you don't want to go through the process of creating an association you probably don't want to go either through the process of getting serious on fundraising. - If you are out of the main GNOME distribution channels, your group has no legal entity and you still want to raise some money selling GNOME merchandising... as Dave says we can't really stop you from doing this. Just make sure what you do is fully compliant to the first principle of GNOME user group self-sustainability. Don't do anything that could upset the GNOME Foundation (community or board) and, please, don't get in competition with our vendors. If the latter is your case don't except much more official help from us... but bring some t-shirts to the next GUADEC / GNOME event because we GNOME merchandise collectors will pay for them as anybody else. ;) -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org | http://guadec.org signature.asc Description: Això és una part d'un missatge, signada digitalment ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Local user groups
El dc 26 de 07 del 2006 a les 07:36 +0200, en/na David Neary va escriure: You mean like live.gnome.org/UserGroups? Definitely, this is a very good start. I searched local by title (no relevant results) and by text (too much results) and din't find this page. A first step into certification would be to agree a name for these groups. :) Another step could be to agree on a checklist of required + desirable points. Some of them are already there as recommendations. - Active mailing list for coordination - Website up to date - Responsive IRC channel - GNOME Foundation members in the group - Agreed contact with the GNOME Foundation - Local press contact - Democratic and non-profit structure (legal existence desirable) Perhaps a first question would be whether we need to have something like an official list of GNOME groups and a checklist to know if your group is official or not. I think some kind of certification is needed to avoid conflicts like i.e. which is the real Russian GNOME website (or are both as real?) or risks like some guys linked to a profit company weaving the GNOME flag for selfish interests in a part of the planet where it is difficult to us to check what's going on. In the new www.gnome.org we want to map all the official GNOME subsites, and the local groups are related to a big percentage of them: http://live.gnome.org/GnomeWeb/GnomeSubsites . This one reason to have an official list with some kind of control from the GNOME Foundation. And one more thing that perhaps could help in the coordination Fernando was requesting. Since organization of meetings, participation in events and fundraising for such activities are a common and primary mission of the local groups, I wonder if it would be useful to have a gnome-local or gnome-events mailing list to exchange ideas and experiences. Now this is supposed to go to marketing-list but, really, I think many people very active in local activities can be not interested in many discussions going on in marketing-list. -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org | http://guadec.org signature.asc Description: Això és una part d'un missatge, signada digitalment ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Local user groups
El dj 06 de 07 del 2006 a les 12:47 -0400, en/na Fernando San Martín Woerner va escriure: On the other hand i would like to hear ideas on how we can coordinate this efforts, and how the board and the foundation can help, having strong user groups it is signal of good health of our community. What about creating a wiki page in order to define: - What is a GNOME local group, including minimal requirements to be recognized as an official local group by the GNOME Foundation. - List of current GNOME local groups. This is important because we want to put more trust and responsibilities on the local groups (inviting new foundation members, press contacts, local web maintainers etc). Therefore we need to know what and who are we talking about. It will also be useful for contributors wanting to create a new local group: what do we request them, what can they expect from us. -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org | http://guadec.org signature.asc Description: Això és una part d'un missatge, signada digitalment ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GUADEC/GNOME build machines
El dl 17 de 07 del 2006 a les 14:04 +0200, en/na Dave Neary va escriure: So, it's complicated, but here's the summary: Taking a decision in this list should be easy. Once the decision is made the administrativia to make the moves legal are not necessarily simple, but they don't need to be done here in the list. Legal aspects apart, we all seem to agree that these 4 boxes will be owned by the GNOME Foundation and will stay in Fluendo's office to do some building work. Once this is confirmed Chema from GNOME Hispano and I will take care of the rest. -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org | http://guadec.org signature.asc Description: Això és una part d'un missatge, signada digitalment ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Required: Administrator for the Foundation
El dg 18 de 06 del 2006 a les 12:26 -0400, en/na Richard Stallman va escriure: (Quim Gil pointed out that it may be necessary to hire someone who isn't GNU/Linux literate, just to get someone soon. Just to avoid confusion, I didn't meant to hire someone who isn't free software literate to use non-free software tools as a GNOME administrator, but come and learn the usage of the free tools the Foundation is already using (detailed by Jonathan). A good administrator knowing the concepts and knowing to use non-free tools is very likely to learn the usage of the free tools easily. That's all. As Dave has pointed out, we have already at least one candidate able to use the current free tools. -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org | http://guadec.org signature.asc Description: Això és una part d'un missatge, signada digitalment ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Temporaray enlargement of the GNOME Board with 2 persons
Hi Dom, El dv 09 de 06 del 2006 a les 11:31 -0400, en/na Dominic Lachowicz va escriure: What problems is the board facing that cannot be handled by the current members plus delegation as appropriate? This is a good question (the other ones as well, but at least I can say something about this one). In the board meeting of last Wednesday we discussed possible and easy to implement ways to improve the communication and collaboration between the board and people willing to have a higher implication and participation in foundation/board tasks. Good communication eases collaboration, and good collaboration eases trust. Trust is the root of many problems of delegation: sharing or delegating a private task to someone you trust and collaborate takes 5 minutes (ok, maybe more). The same action without regular communication-collaboration-trust takes more time, and risk. Jeff is preparing a proposal. I just wanted to provide some informal and personal feedback so you don't think that the board is keeping the temporary enlargement as the only or primary option to consider. IMHO, history now repeats itself.) Another interesting point, that brings an issue... In our current setting it is very unlikely that the current board is going to criticize openly something specific about the last board. I believe the way the board is mounted and unmounted every year makes difficult to make (self)criticism openly. It's not like one party losing an election and a new party coming in (system that has its defects but at least assures criticism and review of the past actions). This is not something unique to the GNOME Foundation, this is a problem intrinsic in any organization voting for individuals that suddenly need to work as a compact team, and then be renewed quite often (like once a year). The problem is clearer when some individuals repeat, and some come in for the first time. Maybe a solution would be that the team leaving the board makes not only a meeting with the new board members, but also a last internal meeting to write up a public report of which things went well and why, and which things went bad and why. And/or a summary of the same questions answered individually by each board member. Hackers know that documenting is the best way to avoid known mistakes. -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org | http://guadec.org signature.asc Description: Això és una part d'un missatge, signada digitalment ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Women in GNOME (Was: Code Of Conduct)
El dj 01 de 06 del 2006 a les 10:51 -0500, en/na Shaun McCance va escriure: there tends to be a reasonably high percentage of women in technical jobs that aren't necessarily programming (though they may involve some programming), such as project management, tech writing, graphic design, and quality assurance. All of these positions tend to be under-represented in the free software world, at least among volunteer efforts. Good point. We can try to find and convince the very few geek women out there for free software hardcore programming. But if we miss people in all the non-programming tasks, wouldn't be easier to find new types of contributors through these gateways? Documentation, marketing, web publishing, graphic design, journalism, project coordination, community management... are tasks that involve both women and men in the professional world. We have difficulties recruiting volunteers, any kind of volunteers, in these tasks and I think the reason is not some kind of gender or minority discrimination but, put simply, the predominant geek culture (which I bet some sociologist has already found out to be based mainly on male and western paradigms). It is probably good to promote geek-ism in those aspects of free software related to programming but... is it useful to promote it in the rest of tasks? I don't think so, unless we want to develop a desktop and a bunch applications successful between geeks only. I bet this geek culture is stopping many women from being interested in the free software phenomena (in fact I asked several computer-friendly women and this is the answer I got). Being myself not a programmer, it stopped me from finding a place to contribute until I learned to be geek-friendly. And this culture is still stopping many of my non-geek colleagues (both women and men) to come and give a hand. Ask your friends. It is clear that women in general are happy investing their personal time in social activities without a monetary or even a clear benefit. Women have been key in any process of social change (even if their names don't appear in the history books). Have a look on social, non-commercial activities around the world and you will find women everywhere, many times challenging the gender percentages or simply having a clear superiority over men. If we fail involving women (and other majority groups in other social, non-commercial organizations and activities) it's because something else, an the geek culture is in the top of the suspicious list. We can work making the geek paradigms more feminine or less gender-determined but changing a paradigm takes time and there is no manual for it. Working on less geek-ish gateways and environments for the non-programming tasks seems to be a more tangible challenge that can make a change in the short term. -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org | http://guadec.org signature.asc Description: Això és una part d'un missatge, signada digitalment ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code Of Conduct
I really like this debate, pity I don't have the time to take part in it properly these days. I think GNOME would be a less exciting place with a Code of Conduct. Sometimes (like probably in the Ubuntu momentum) you need to lose some excitement in order to get some stability but... are we having this problem? Has someone felt abuse? I'm talking about real cases. Then we need to have visible channels to report abuse and have the means to act against it. We have a Foundation (legal identity), a Board, and Advisory Board, webmasters, sysadmins... I mean, we have all the means to respond to abuse when it happens. The mentioned bodies don't need a Code of Conduct to act, they have ways to discuss and agree on actions on each case. The existence of a Code of Conduct doesn't guarantee the diminishing of abuse either. Historically, their existence is due either to an overwhelming situation or a will to difficult the access to an elite. None of this applies to GNOME. The most efficient codes of conducts are those that don't need to be written. El dt 30 de 05 del 2006 a les 13:04 +0200, en/na Murray Cumming va escriure: Here's a simple start: http://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct Isn't this just common sense? I don't see the need to push a long debate to end up having a list of points based on common sense. Common sense (aka the least common of the senses) makes more sense and it's more effective when it's not written. Try to put it in words and you will get power relations, cultural differences, generation gaps, gender issues... The concept itself of Code of Conduct shows IMO a mainstream Western liberal mentality, I'd say with a clear male component as well (Murray, nothing personal :) ). I don't see how the existence of a Code of Conduct encourages the participation of i.e. Eastern traditional women, or any other combination of minority groups. If we want to promote specific sectors or goals, let's promote them. A Code of Conduct is not useful for that, apart from the rhetoric. An officially assumed and signed roadmap, list of priorities or social contract puts an active and tangible compromise to an organization. We could invest our time in such active compromises instead of a passive Code of Conduct we don't really need as for today. -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org | http://guadec.org signature.asc Description: Això és una part d'un missatge, signada digitalment ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code Of Conduct
El dc 31 de 05 del 2006 a les 20:38 +0100, en/na Bill Haneman va escriure: On Wed, 2006-05-31 at 19:25, Tristan Van Berkom wrote: Nobody will be driven away by that, people might be driven away by us stating that you now are part of a community with a code of conduct. I don't agree. Every community has a code of conduct, implied or explicit, IMO. Anyhow, there's no real enforcement mechanism, so I don't see this as a realistic concern. There is a big difference between implied or explicit. Implied allows several personal lectures. Explicit allows only one lecture. In a project where freedom is a key pole of attraction I find really risky to introduce an explicit Code of Conduct. As many have said, it won't probably solve any existing problem and it will probably create new ones. ANY change or statement with a policy feel carries the risk of alienating *somebody*, but that doesn't mean that embracing anarchy is better. Do you think GNOME has been embracing anarchy all these years? I mean, I came here for the freedom but I never found the anarchy. There is a big difference between introducing a Code of Conduct in GNOME or doing the same in, say, Ubuntu. The Ubuntu project introduced a Code of Conduct in their earliest stages and it was quickly accepted and assumed by the almost foundational community. Now it's an intrinsic part of the Ubuntu project. But GNOME has lived many years without a Code of Conduct and it is currently a well consolidated community. With problems, sure. But also with mechanisms available to solve problems. Why not work on improving the current mechanisms? Instead, introducing a Code of Conduct at this stage might create division (as you see) instead of consensus, and consensus is the solid foundation of any real change. Members of a community rarely understand the aspects of their culture that cause others to be alienated or disinterested, even if they understand why they themselves feel included and motivated. This very good sentence you have written about gender issues can be equally applied to the matter of the Code of Conduct as well. You don't know how alienating or disturbing a Code of Conduct can be until you feel alienated or disturbed by one. For instance, have you thought that the sole concept of Code of Conduct might be perceived as 'something normal' more probably in countries/groups/individuals with an English background/influence? A quick survey in my Latin/Mediterranean context shows that the main impression is that a free software community with a written Code of Conduct is almost a contradiction per se. Nobody is wrong, nobody is right. This is how diversity works. I believe Codes of Conduct are more unifiers than diversifiers, and I believe GNOME needs now more diversity than union. What keep us under a same umbrella is not a conduct but a principle (free software) and an objective (a great desktop powered with amazing applications). -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org | http://guadec.org signature.asc Description: Això és una part d'un missatge, signada digitalment ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Event Box for North America
I wonder if GUADEC 2006 could help in any way to the creation of more event boxes contributing some materials. We don't have the time RAM available to think much about it but if someone has ideas we are listening. -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org | http://guadec.org signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Notes from the Desktop Architects Meeting
Some comments with a GUADEC perspective (I'm capable of having other perspectives but apparently these months I'm a one-topic guy) :) On Tue, 2006-05-16 at 08:34 +0200, Vincent Untz wrote: + Portland project Waldo Bastian is going to lead a session about the Portland project in the main venue of GUADEC 2006 on Thursday 29th, during the After Hours Workshops. This is a way to say that we are giving importance to this project and we want to discuss it openly. In fact we had invited Waldo to organize that Desktop Architects Meeting during the GUADEC days, but it was too late to consider any chenge in their schedule. - we should try to send people in asian regional events to show that we're interested in what's happening there (they don't seem to know that we're interested in that) - inviting some managers from asian projects to events such as GUADEC might be a good idea We have a Farsi team very active in GUADEC 2006, we have also a Novell team from Bagalore and Sun is sending 2 developers from Beijing. Iran, India and China have possibly just one common denominator, being Asian countries, but we could have a BOF session lead by them during the AHW to see how an Asian coordinated effort can be addressed. Apart from GUADEC there is at least a GNOME Korea local group, many translation teams and advisory board companies' offices there (you know this much better than me). What is clear to me is that any real move in Asia or wherever needs to be promoted mainly by the local gnomers of these countries, with assistance of the rest of the Foundation. Starting dynamics i.e. dealing directly with the board without counting with the locals or counting with them when everything is arranged and agreed is not a desirable practice. + aKademy will try to have a track on standards. - it's in Dublin, at the end of September. - maybe we should send some people there? We offered free registration to 10 KDE developers (to put a number) and the same travel and accommodation sponsorship options that we were offering to the rest of GUADEC participants. Sadly, we haven't got any affirmative response, although a couple of KDE members apologized for not being able to come. I fear the proposal of having a football match GNOME - Rest Of The World just for fun scared some of them (seriously). Maybe at the end we get at least some of the KDE developers based in Catalonia · Spain... -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org | http://guadec.org signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
overwhelmed board + lack of employees
There was a comment in the minutes about board members being overwhelmed. The Foundation is also looking for an executive director and there seem to be not many responses. The combination of these two factors must be a pain, specially when the GNOME project and Foundation itself seem to be in a good momentum. During the board election and the resize board referendum there was some discussion about what the board members are and aren't supposed to do, and also how much time they should invest in tasks. Can you give a brief feedback of the current situation in the context of those discussions (if you have the time)? ;) About hiring someone, maybe the profile required is just too complex. Not for the complexity of each requirement but the combination of both. Speak on behalf the Foundation, sign checks, send mugs and live in Boston are a fairly diverse set of skills / features. Put that on the top of the fact that the person to be hired needs to be competent but available and you get an equation difficult to solve. Wouldn't be better to hire an accountancy company to deal with all the money tax legal related stuff and then liberate a GNOMEr to do the rest? Thanks to GUADEC I'm being half-liberated and it's being a very interesting experience. Maybe liberating someone with a sysadmin/infrastructure background would be really useful to solve this and more problems. -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org | http://guadec.org signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Minutes of the Board meeting, 2006/Mar/22
On Mon, 2006-04-17 at 10:12 -0500, Federico Mena Quintero wrote: Dave to request Quim for a copy of a contract with the Generalidat describing what they are paying for this GUADEC. Waiting for Vilanova to deliver this copy. The biggest chunk of the costs is clear but they are still refining some details, in part because of the changes in the own GUADEC scenario i.e. needing probably the big marquee the whole week instead of only the Core days as initially expected. This is a Vilanova top priority and I'm visiting them next week. Hopefully I can deliver this copy by then. GUADEC == Need to look for more keynote speakers. Currently the keynotes for the 3 Core days are agreed in guadec-planning. Kathy Sierra, Jim Gettys and Simon Phipps have been already announced in guadec.org. We will announce officially that Federico's talk - How Much Faster http://guadec.org/node/237 - has been chosen as a plenary session. Linex + Guadalinex will have a shared keynote (speakers to be confirmed) and we are looking for a local speaker for the 6th keynote (to be confirmed as well). Other keynotes might be scheduled during WarmUp and After Hours. It's still under discussion but if we go for this the sessions will come very probably from the hundred proposals submitted in the Call for Participation. Decided to wait until GUADEC to request volunteers for helping out. What about an After Hours session to discuss this and work on the delegation of tasks on these potential volunteers. -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org | http://guadec.org signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Summer of Code
Not sure if this is the right place and time to ask this, but I was curious anyway... I haven't followed Glom closely. However, I wonder if you plan to make it like part of the GNOME Office suite. On Tue, 2006-04-18 at 18:56 +0200, Murray Cumming wrote: I have some Glom tasks that are quite involved. They seem suitable because a) They need some investigation and hacking time b) They don't need development of any fundamentally new techniques or technologies. It's not an official part of GNOME, but I wonder if it would be OK to add them to the GNOME list? -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org | http://guadec.org signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: How to get involved and may be train for future board service
On Thu, 2006-03-23 at 15:40 +0100, Anne Østergaard wrote: Some of us on the board are nice persons:) -so don't hisitate to contact us. Agreed. ;) However, it would be helpful a page under http://foundation.gnome.org/ explaining who is currently in the board, who assumes what responsibilities, what are the current tasks being done, for which topics it is good to contact the board, and so on. If there are already pages in live.gnome.org or somewhere else explaining this (i.e. links to the minutes), you could simply link them. This page should be visible from the Foundation homepage i.e. having a link in the right column navigation block. Sometime I also think it would be good for the board to have a ticketing system like the sysadmins have, so sender receiver know that all requests are stored somewhere. But I don't know if it's worth for the amount of requests the board gets (do you receive many? or am I the only spammer?) ;) -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org | http://guadec.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
GUADEC participation and registration fees
Just as a reminder, the GUADEC 2006 Call for Participation is open until March 31st: http://beta.guadec.org/callforpapers Don't leave it for tomorrow trying to write the perfect paper. In order to submit a proposal you just need to explain the raw details of the session you are suggesting. You may edit the details of your session afterward. What we need before the end of this month is a description good enough to help us placing your session in the most appropriate slot of the GUADEC schedule. Also, we have just published the GUADEC 2006 registration fees: http://beta.guadec.org/registrationfees If you are a student/hobbyist GNOME Foundation member you get a 100% discount (free as in beer). If you register as professional you get a 50% discount (75€). The model is sustainable when Foundation members are so passionate and excited about GUADEC that the rest of the World just feel an irresistible desire to meet the gnomites as well. So please, get loudly excited about GUADEC 2006. ;) (seriously) The online registration will be ready hopefully soon and will integrate affordable accommodation in the bungalow-based GNOME Village. Thank you. -- Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org | http://guadec.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Minutes of the Board meeting 2006/Feb/15
The Advisory Board info at http://foundation.gnome.org/about/ needs an update as well. En/na Federico Mena Quintero ha escrit: Advisory Board: * welcome to new members. * Inform about the new board members: names and functions -- Quim Gil - http://desdeamericaconamor.org signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Minutes of the Board meeting 2006/Feb/15
En/na Claudio Saavedra ha escrit: I am looking forward to get one in GUADEC if I can go, so it would be certainly a good idea if they have a stand during the conference. This is doable. The GUADEC organisation can provide a space to sell T-Shirts and merchandising, next to the sponsors stands and the Media Zone. If someone is interested making this happen please go to guadec-list to define the details. -- Quim Gil - http://desdeamericaconamor.org signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Minutes of the Board meeting for 2006/01/18
Some comments on the events related subnotes... En/na Federico Mena Quintero ha escrit: Summit: a small event; Board not very involved in organization (mainly Tim). The Foundation paid USD 5000 for the venue and food, so it was pretty cheap. There were about 100 participants. If we get sponsorship to cover the costs of venues (not food) of +500 people in Europe, perhaps we could get also sponsored venues for 100 people in the US... - Anne thinks we should stretch out to the parts of the world we haven't emphasized. Luis mentions talk of GUADLAC in Latin America. We got a proposal for a Southeast Asia conference, and gnome.conf.au. This is the way to go. - We should probably have Quim on every other board call or so, to keep up with GUADEC organization. No problem. Maybe the recently started GUADEC weekly update (see Planet) is enough in some cases though. 24-25 is Spanish days, Just to start marketing the audience of this list ;) Not only this, it's locale / warm up days. Spanish and Catalan actibities are already planned but i.e. thos talked about the possibility of a UK meeting and this weekend is perfect for that. Maybe fr, de, it and others would also like to take advantage of this opportunity. We are in the process of concretising a Fluendo social event on Saturday or Sunday night. There is also a plan for a GNOME-KDE football match (US: soccer, no helmets nor cheerleaders). 26-28 is GUADEC proper, 29-30 is hackfest. True. - Need to start making reservations, etc. We are about to define packages for the most economic lodgers: youth hostel and camping. More next week. - Web side of things: need update from the sysadmin team. Need to re-setup the registration infrastructure. The sysadmin team is assisting us on most of our requests (there is a PHP server upgrade request, I guess this is more complex). But the website and the registration falls completely into the GUADEC organisation responsibility. More next week as well. -- Quim Gil - http://desdeamericaconamor.org signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Community marketing for the Foundation
Two very small steps you could do to help the GNOME Foundation being more noticeable and alive: - If you use IRC, add #foundation to your list if usual channels. Having lots of people there could make us feel better, isn't it? - If you are registered in the GUADEC website, go to http://beta.guadec.org/user and tick the box I am member of the GNOME Foundation when editing your profile. Having lots of people at http://beta.guadec.org/profile/membership could make us feel better, isn't it? -- Quim Gil - http://desdeamericaconamor.org signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Freunde von, Amigos de (etc) GNOME?
Damian Keogh reports [1] from a GNOME desktop localised in German: -- Right-click the horizontal panel Info zu GNOME (About GNOME) GNOMES Freunde (Friends of GNOME) link. Link is in US, is there an equivalent German site to point to? -- In the same bug Claus Schwarm comments: -- The Friends of GNOME Program has no German site but the German GNOME User Group accepts new members and member payments; maybe also donations. However, that is not the same. Somebody needs to find out whether we should localize the link in the about GNOME dialog where possible or internationalize the friends of GNOME program. -- Has this topic been discussed in the past? What is he current status? [1] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=153276 -- Quim Gil - http://desdeamericaconamor.org signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: gnome-logos package
About Ray's package and Luis Villa's post: http://tieguy.org/blog/index.cgi/524 I think the Foundation needs official logos owned by the Foundation to be used by the official GNOME projects in order to give consistancy to the GNOME brand. But I also think that we should make a more extensive use of the right to implement authorised modifications stated in http://live.gnome.org/LogoGuidelines . For instance, the GUADEC needs a logo, the foot is a good starting point but the word GNOME conflicts with GUADEC, and a designer will have a hard time to come up with a cool proposal that fully keeps the original logo. And I definitely think we should encourage the community to express themselves with logo variations that will be clearly unnofficial but respected by the Foundation unless we find they are offensive or something, and then we'll lart you publicly (if you deserve it). I'm not sure about the legal implications of this (is this a lesser trademark license?), but from a marketing perspective sounds like the consistant and useful way to proceed. En/na Ray Strode ha escrit: The reason I'm bringing this up is because gnome-screensaver has recently gained a floaters screensaver that depends on having a scalable version of the gnome-foot logo. -- Quim Gil - http://desdeamericaconamor.org signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: gnome-logos package
En/na Luis Villa ha escrit: * give up the legally enforceable mark and use a political party approach- accept that there will be some uses we don't like and can't control, but use the mechanisms of party (speech, platform creation, etc.) to control the mark as much as possible outside of traditional trademark law. +1 ¡Vota Luis! (starting my 'political party approach') ;) -- Quim Gil - http://desdeamericaconamor.org signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME Foundation Elections - Preliminary results
Following the concerns about these statistics... En/na Federico Mena Quintero ha escrit: So, www and planet *are* our most efficient vehicles for communication. Volume is not necessarely related to efficiency. Look at the most visited pages in November: http://www.gnome.org/stats/usage_200512.html#TOPURLS The first real page is the homepage, this is normal. But then... where do all these users go after hitting the homepage? Strictely in www.gnome.org (the corporate site) they go to three pages we mostly agree they are unnefficient: http://www.gnome.org/start/2.12/ (missing screenshots or the visual tour, mentioned in the marketing and gnome-web lists) http://www.gnome.org/about/ (being discussed in marketing, we agree that this page doesn't reflect what GNOME is about and needs a remake) http://www.gnome.org/softwaremap/ (a gift of hundreds of users to gnome-files) Which is weird is that the own stats page gets more hits than these. This fact makes me think that the whole stats may be altered by non-human processes. The following most visited pages are jdub and seth's blogs. Congratulations to them, but there is no merit for the wgo efficiency here. Most of the other hits come from the projects pages: Dia, Evolution, Gnumeric, Totem... Since there is no easy way to go from the homepage to the projects' subsites (nor to people's blogs) it is feasible to assume that they get their hits by their own merits. Also it is feasible to assume that most people landing in the homepage don't go much further (stats of user tracks page by page would be very useful). -- Quim Gil - http://desdeamericaconamor.org signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to the candidates
Hi there, En/na Curtis Hovey ha escrit: 1. How much time can you dedicate to the board each week? In the first half of 2006 I will be part time dedicated to GUADEC coordination - http://desdeamericaconamor.org/blog/node/164 . Part of this time can drop easily to board related tasks. 2. How flexible is your time; can you dedicate extra time one week and less the next? I'm self-employed and I work from home. I 'only' need to negotiate scheduler with my partner and my son (I take care of him mainly afternoons, so her mother can work also). 3. Please rank your interests: a. GNOME evangelizing to government, enterprise, small business, and individuals b. GNOME marketing and merchandising of branded items nationally and internationally c. GNOME legal issues like copyright and patents d. GNOME finances and fund raising e. Alliance with other organizations. Answered in the 'official' questions. 4. Explain how you expect to meet you goals. Being pragmatical defining the goals. Sometimes an organisation needs to dream in order to move forward. The good thing about GNOME is that the community is full of dreamers. This means the board don't need to dream but to be pragmatical an efficient, finishing what has been started and not starting (yet) what can't be properly finished. 6. Please assess GNOME: a. What are its strengths Products (desktop GTK+ apps), community, vision, philosophy, gnu, brand, art, i18n b. What are its weaknesses identity, dependency of distros, public voice, gnome.org, welcoming newbies, distance from users, opacity, foundation, board, sound, games c. What are its opportunities FOSS reference, public corporate big deployments and migrations, accessibility, multilingüism, triumph of standards, freedesktop.org, P2P, FOAF, Web 2.0. d. What are its threats division, corporativisation, hidden agendas, misuse of resources, patents, winning the empire becoming the empire 7. Name the best album you purchased in the last year. gtk-gnutella -- Quim Gil - http://desdeamericaconamor.org signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Additional questions for the board candidates
How important are desktop standards for you. How will you attempt to let the GNOME developers cooperate even more with the freedesktop.org movement? Or do you dislike that movement? In in general: What should GNOME do with fd.org? Standards are useful for allowing big and distant projects collaborate and complement each other. Standards are useful for industries that move slower but any step they do is a solid step. Following the standards and contributing to building and improving them may be in te short term a pain in the ass and a very expensive investment of time. But in the long term I imagine myself explaining to my grandchildren: piano cello and the best thing I have possibly done to make this a better world is to follow, promote and improve open and public standards /piano cello ;) freedesktop.org is one of our best opportunities, because still nowadays perhaps half od the problems new GNU/Linux users encounter are related to desktop unsolved issues. What will you do to further enhance cooperation with the KDE developers? Will you invite them to our conferences? Will you pay their travel expenses? Will you let them talk on GUADEC? Will you visit their conferences and will you do a talk about cooperation at their conferences? Or will you simply disregard them and think GNOME is superior yadiyada (in which case I wont vote for you, by the way)? From a board perspective I think we should have good relations with the KDE people as well as the Xfce and any other project trying to come up with great ideas about free desktops. The place to meet is freedesktop.org, we have a lot to share and learn from each other. Full stop. From a GUADEC perspective, I'm not going to talk as a board candidate but as a GUADEC coordinator. There is a plan to have three tracks being one of them dedicated to the Toughest Bones Collection - http://desdeamericaconamor.org/blog/node/163 . A good bunch of tough bones in GNOME just happen to be tough bones for the rest of free desktops, and they are also putting efforts on to solving them. Anybody can present any paper for the GUADEC and, yes, since knowing their works and their thoughts would be interesing we could make more explicit this openness in the call for papers. Good idea! Also I was thinking of introducing more formats for sessions apart from the speaker-speaks-to-audience. For instance, round tables and debates. This would be an even more obvious gateway from the outside to GUADEC. Going to their conferences, if they invite us why not. In my opinion, GNOME lacks strong leadership that steers development (...) Yet there's no real leadership telling the GNOME app developers what direction to go. (...) Will the GNOME Foundation fill this gap? Or will the GNOME Foundation create a solution? How will you, provided you become board member, address this. Or isn't this important enough for the Board to discuss? Or isn't it the focus of the Board? If the GNOME project needs leaders they should not be on the board. Leaders tend to be really busy with exciting things and there is a lot of unexciting but necessary work to do in the board. If the GNOME project needs technical discussion and consensus about all the topics you mention, the board is not the body to lead this discussion. Maybe the board should put in on the table if nobody does and this is important for the project. Maybe the board should push for consensus if the debate is dividing dangerously the community or is beating about the bush wasting energies and not getting any result. But definitely it is not the board who decides technical issues, and even a board formed by the most prominent GNOME leaders should shut up on this, and this very prominent leaders should go to the appropriate lists (out of the GNOME Foundation) to discuss and decide. One more thing. Personally I dont think we need a leader here. When a movement has a leader, it is too easy for a strong oppositor to chop of this head and convert the leader into a (passed away) hero, or into a (sold out) traitor, getting as a result a headless community. Call me paranoid or conspirationist, but I expect serious attempts to chop off heads in the free software community, so we'd better don't have any, or have many. Because I can imagine it's going to be an important project for the GNOME desktop and infrastructure, how will you involve yourself in the One Laptop Per Child concept? From a board perspective we should make sure they obtain the best results from using GNOME and they have a good communication with the parts of the GNOME project indirectly involved. As we should do with any big deployment involving GNOME. OT: I have a personal interest in the development of this project, but my main questions about it fall in fact out of the GNOME desktop. If you are interested: http://desdeamericaconamor.org/blog/node/166 -- Quim Gil - http://desdeamericaconamor.org signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital
Re: [Fwd: Re: Beginning of the 2005 GNOME Foundation elections]
If the announce was not clear or if the informations can not be easily found, please send a mail to the committee so it can be improved next year. An improvement would be to include some comments on the campaign. I don't know if it should be about rules or netiquette. For instance: - Recommendation to send a brief email announcing the will to present candidacy. - Allowed use of lists and etc to introduce and promote candidacies. - Access to planet.gnome.org (at least during the eection period) to those candidates with blog. - Cool and uncool (?) ways to introduce and promote your candidacy. This would help disoriented new candidates (like myself) moving appropriately between silence and abuse or offtopic. Not that I'm giving much importance to campaign, nor that I think we should spent much energies campaigning. It's just that there are no comments about this part of the election process, in contrast to other parts that are so well defined. -- Quim Gil http://interactors.coop | http://desdeamericaconamor.org signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [Fwd: Re: Beginning of the 2005 GNOME Foundation elections]
But I would like to say this sooner and not later that I think that you as a candidate yourself should not at the same time be sitting on the election committee- for your own sake as a serious and very skilled candidate to a seat on the board. I didn't comment anything about Vincent's concerns about being a candidate and in the comittee as well because I saw clearly no problem with it. If there is any kind of incompatiblity, I very much prefer Vincent leaving the comittee and staying as a candidate. Gosh, we are not the EU Parliament or the US Congress. Neither have we 28 candidates to choose from. If we keep kicking off candidates for procedural reasons we will end up not needing to vote at all. -- Quim Gil http://interactors.coop | http://desdeamericaconamor.org signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Beginning of the 2005 GNOME Foundation elections
En/na Jeff Waugh ha escrit: So, I'm planning to run again this year, but I'm all caught up in the middle of the BadgerBadgerBadger tour, so haven't had time to sit down and write my candidacy mail. Just for some context. :-) Thanks! Three lines written in a rush like these help *a lot* to the election process and the democratic health of the Foundation. I encourage anyone having in mind to run for election to drop a couple of lines announcing the intention as soon as possible. Then you will have time to write the proper introduction (I understand this, it took me a while to write mine). -- Quim Gil http://interactors.coop | http://desdeamericaconamor.org signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Some perspective on the relative importannce of the board.
How much time do you think a director should dedicate to board tasks in order to be efficient? Please suggest an estimate of [minimum - average] hours par week or month. Humans are not robots and efficiency doesn't rely only in time. But factors related to 'lack of time for the board tasks' have been mentioned as a major problem by many people in this debate. Lack of new candidates in board elections has been also exposed as a major problem. An orientation of the amount of time expected from future board members is one of the factors that could help other members thinking of becoming new candidates. -- Quim Gil http://interactors.coop | http://desdeamericaconamor.org signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What is GUADEC?
Let's be very clear- we have a conference for hackers that interests several hundred people, and we have a separate conference for business and government that interests dozens, and there is very little overlap between those two groups. I'm not clear why we continue to insist that they be done together, when doing them separately would allow us to do each of them much better than we currently do them. I agree with this reasoning in general terms. But referring to the GUADEC7 @ Barcelona it just happen we have an event for business and government going on next to the GUADEC, but not overlapping it. A former weakness convertd in a strength. So please, let's think of a GUADEC track dedicated to business / government / IT managers happening physically in the IGC's heart focused on enlighten / exorcise them. During the weekend Jordi Mas and the local groups are already thinking of activities for the local users, grow their interest and get them involved. This means the 2 outsiders' fronts are covered. The we can feel free to dream about great tracks and activities usefulinteresting to the GNOME community. -- Quim Gil http://interactors.coop | http://desdeamericaconamor.org signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What is GUADEC?
Deciding what GUADEC is for is harder. Changing the name should be easy. As you see is not that easy. :) Also, what is most important about a change is not the fact of being easy or harder, but being useful and worth to change. I don't think it's worth deciding a change for GUADEC's name before deciding the type of event we want. Or need. From a classical marketing perspective, first you find a concept and then you find a name to package it. Although contemporary marketing-for-the-masses is becoming extremely successful starting with the packaging and then finding whatever to fill it and get big profits (after huge investments). Then I would suggest starting with the name and then discussing the concept just if we want a GUADEC for the masses, and we have at least $100M to invest in advertising-for-the-masses. ;) The problem is that lots of people have said that we need to improve GUADEC, and that's much more important than the name. Very few people have actually said what they think GUADEC should be. I think the answer comes mainly through this question: What are the weaknesses of the GNOME project that could be improved by organizing an international event? For some the GUADEC is an opportunity to meet, for others is a way to get new contributors, for others is a way to get some money for the Foundation, for others is a way to enhance a common vision of GNOME, for others No single person have the complete answer, although most of us have parts of it. Therefore, a suggestion could be: 1. Spread this question through the GNOME community, the free software world, the software development industry, the IT sector. Ask for feedback and be prepared to get it. 2. Make a list with the items. 3. Discuss and prioritise the list. 4. Design an event that covers perfectly the top 5 priorities (or so) and is strong in the 6th to 10th (or so). Don't get obsessed about the rest. Save the full list of priorities in a cupboard. 5. Change the GUADEC name if it doesn't fit in the new design and there is a better alternative. 6. Once the event is finished and it's time to get some conclusions, take the list out of the cupboard and check the priorities, its related weaknesses and the impact the event have had on them. -- Quim Gil http://interactors.coop | http://desdeamericaconamor.org signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What is GUADEC?
That's a fair summary of what the board has discussed, as recently as June. Jonathan Blandford once termed GUADEC as GNOME's mothership, an annual place to meet and recharge batteries. This is an insiders' point of view and this is possibly a reason why the GUADEC satisfy generally insiders but attract generally few outsiders. If we want to attract and satisfy outsiders (do we?) I think it would be worth to ask people out there as well: What are the weaknesses of the GNOME project that could be improved by organizing an international event? But I also think that this same question asked in general to the community could give us some good ideas. Asking guadec-list could be a first step. -- Quim Gil http://interactors.coop | http://desdeamericaconamor.org signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
