Re: Conservancy as potential home for OPW (was Re: Mission Statement)
Was interesting to hear about the Outreachy announcement at FOSDEM are looking forward to learn the details. On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 4:53 PM, Bradley M. Kuhn bk...@ebb.org wrote: [ I want to be clear that I'm here primarily as an individual member of the GNOME Foundation. However, this particular post is primarily on behalf on Conservancy -- since Oliver called out Conservancy explicitly as a possible home for OPW. I'm the President, on the Board of Directors, and an employee of Conservancy. ] Oliver Propst wrote at 05:58 (EDT): I know an organization [1] that have administrative and legal expertise, maybe they would be interested in govern the program? 1 https://sfconservancy.org/overview/ Conservancy would of course welcome an application by OPW to join Conservancy, and Oliver is correct that Conservancy's primary daily activities are handling the types of administrative tasks that GF has struggled to handle for OPW. OPW is somewhat different from our usual member project, which are primarily Free Software projects themselves. However, Conservancy has established in the past some projects that are primarily services to advance and/or protect the adoption of Free Software. Thus, an OPW application to Conservancy is not unprecedented. Conservancy's evaluation committee would need to consider OPW as an applicant to Conservancy and decide. (Conservancy's eval committee meets monthly.) However, one useful component of any application from a project with an existing affiliation to a Free Software 501(c)(3) non-profit is a definitive statement from the governing body of that non-profit (in this case, likely, from GF's Board) which indicates the existing org has no objection to the application. Particularly in this case, Conservancy has an excellent relationship with GF; thus, Conservancy would certainly seek a joint decision for a relocation of OPW to Conservancy. If this change is really something GF wants to pursue and Conservancy can make an impact here helping OPW flourish, I'm prepared personally to prioritize such a transition to make sure it's smooth and easy. Máirín Duffy wrote at 12:55 (EDT) on Wednesday: Red Hat and the Software Freedom Conservancy are funding Marina and Karen's time spent on administering it respectively Regardless of anything that happens about the issue raised above, Conservancy remains very supportive of OPW. Conservancy's employment policy in fact allows use of some resources to do some volunteer work for other charities. I use that to do volunteer work for the FSF myself, and Karen has done so to help OPW and GF, so I don't expect Karen will cease involvement with OPW in any event. (IIUC, Karen also volunteers further on nights/weekends for OPW and GF as well.) Finally, I personally remain very supportive of OPW. I've been urging existing Conservancy member projects for years to participate more in OPW. Sadly, I haven't been as successful as I'd like, but both Karen and I actively have been working on that since she came to work at Conservancy, and hopefully we'll see more Conservancy member projects sponsoring OPW slots in the future! -- Bradley M. Kuhn President Distinguished Technologist of Software Freedom Conservancy ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list -- -mvh Oliver Propst ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Mission Statement
On Aug 7, 2014, at 10:35 PM, Richard Stallman r...@gnu.org wrote: 2. If the extent of your involvement in the GNOME Foundation's life is going to be something that a bot can replace, can we please have the bot instead? If someone can design a bot smart enough to find and express new specific ethical points, such as highlighting the similarity in values between the free software movement and OPW, I would be glad to let the bot take over from me. I have a lot of other work to do. I must have missed that highlighting similarities in values stuff, but I do have a lot of other work to do. I think what Bastien is saying — and I’d concur — is that the bulk of your communications here could be replaced by a very tiny shell script that searched for occurrences of “Linux” and sent a canned response demanding that “GNU/Linux” be used instead; it could do the same thing with “open source” and “free software”. I’m sure you’d save significant time with some arrangement of this sort. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Mission Statement
On 7 August 2014 09:57, David King amigad...@amigadave.com wrote: Hi On 2014-08-06 20:19, Emmanuele Bassi eba...@gmail.com wrote: On 6 August 2014 19:49, Michael Hill mdhil...@gmail.com wrote: This hasn't only exposed us to substantial financial risks; it has caused actual financial problems for the project. This year, GNOME temporarily ceased funding of hackfests in order to recover from the cashflow problems caused by the size of OPW. -- Ryan Lortie Result: day to day operations of the Foundation disrupted. the disruption has been put in place to recover reserves that we burned through; those reserves were burned through because of a reduction in the cash flow of the Foundation in general — i.e. our finances have been shrinking for the past few years. the OPW was an expenditure to make up for invoices not being paid, but *any* expenditure (hackfest, conferences, travel assistance) could have caused the freeze. I sit on the travel committee, and witness a large part of the Foundation's expenditure on travel assistance and hackfests, as well as approving (together with other members of the committee) those expenses within boundaries set by the Foundation board. To my knowledge, the travel committee has not exceeded its event budgets since I have been a member. While it is possible for any expenditure to trigger an emergency situation (given a sufficiently large amount), it is probably better to concentrate on situations where spending limits have been exceeded, and to reduce the likelihood of those situations occurring in the future. in general, the freeze that has less to do with OPW and more with our own issues in tracking payments and invoices, and handling our own accounting. the whole issue could have just as easily happened if we didn't have OPW, to be fair. in a way, the OPW growth and this whole finance situation has forced the board to get a better handle on the foundation's own funding and processes, to streamline them, document them, and track them. According to the Foundation board's FAQ about the financial situation when it was first announced, the Foundation had to front the costs of OPW: https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/CurrentBudgetFAQ#Why_had_this_happened.3F While the issue could have occurred without the OPW, in this case it happened because of the OPW, and the board put it rather unequivocally: The GNOME Foundation had a temporary lack of reserves due to processing the funds for the Outreach Program for Women (OPW). https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/CurrentBudgetFAQ#What_is_the_situation.3F now that things are tracked properly the remaining effect of the OPW growth is the administrative burden on our own administrative infrastructure; that still needs to be fixed, and it would be good to have ideas on how to increase our volunteer base. Does that mean that all the outstanding invoices for OPW have been paid? If not, there is a financial burden as well as an administrative one. There are still a few invoices which are unpaid for previous rounds, but there are also some invoices which have been paid for the upcoming round. we also still need to build up cash reserves, so that we can unfreeze the expenditures of the foundation. It seems reasonable to expect that OPW is subject to spending freezes just like the rest of the non-essential expenditure of the Foundation, including hackfests, travel and so on. However, there are very few minuted discussions of OPW payments from the board since the freeze. I can find no record of a decision for sending out the second part of the stipend for the current round of OPW: https://wiki.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen/2014/MayAugust#Payments_Schedule I would have expected a decision some time before the 7th July stipend payment, but I can only see an inconclusive discussion and partial vote from the start of June: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2014-June/msg4.html As the payment date has now passed, did the board vote on the expense, and were the payments sent? No, the board did not vote on the expense, but the payments were sent. -- http://amigadave.com/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Mission Statement
On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 1:26 PM, Olav Vitters o...@vitters.nl wrote: I think OPW is great. Having it ran by GNOME is great as well. Lack of status update is bad. Having OPW funds under the same legal entity is IMO questionable. I think it should be a separate legal entity. For as it already caused risks, and I don't see how this is aligned with mission statement. Meaning: A lot of money is being moved via GNOME. GNOME has special status (the donate for free bit), IMO legal entity would be needed. Very wise opinion. Speaking as a member of the Engagement team I think OPW is really really great but that don't necessarily means that GNOME should have the administrative responsibility as it apparently put extra pressure on GNOME's already strained resources (speaking here primarily about the board members time). One must also think one of take into take into account the exceptionally growth of the program, I do not think the original organizers could envision such sucess when the program was started but the questions is now how to best move the program forward. -- -mvh Oliver Propst ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Mission Statement
On 08/07/2014 12:06 AM, Mathieu Duponchelle wrote: Women do represent a pretty significant portion of the general public, no? I think for men by men probably doesn't meet the general public qualifier there. Standalone OPW is different from from men by men, I'm afraid I don't understand your argument here? I am happy to clarify. Here is my argument: - There are financial concerns / problems. - There are concerns about OPW's alignment with GNOME's mission statement If there are financial concerns, let's continue to go through the actual data and see if there is a way to solve them. Let's not conflate whether or not OPW has anything to do with the mission statement or not; if there was a problem with alignment to the mission statement I would have expected that to be brought up quite some time ago, and would hope it would be brought up without the added issue of financial concerns if it was truly a sincere concern. In the absence of a program like OPW, sadly, it is for men by men, we have historical figures to demonstrate this. If you want to take a project that is successfully increasing the number of female participants in GNOME and open source in general and disassociate it from the project while, at the same time, talking about how there are financial issues and not enough money to hire more help then you are essentially killing the program. If the program cannot continue to operate without the help from the GNOME foundation that it is currently getting (whether or not that is sustainable long-term,) you are setting the program back. You can not just say, let's take OPW out of this GNOME box and give it its owm box and believe that it won't negatively impact the broader program and its ability to continue its success while you are also bringing up financial issues that would make the program impossible to run outside of GNOME's box. I hope this clarifies my point and I hope the discussion can continue to focus around the financial issues and work through potential solutions to those and put aside the 'mission statement' argument. I do not see any conflict with the current mission statement, and changing the mission statement appears to not solve the real issue at hand anyway. ~m ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Mission Statement
On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 3:43 PM, Máirín Duffy du...@fedoraproject.org wrote: Let's not conflate whether or not OPW has anything to do with the mission statement or not; if there was a problem with alignment to the mission statement I would have expected that to be brought up quite some time ago, and would hope it would be brought up without the added issue of financial concerns if it was truly a sincere concern. Saying that because nobody raised concerns earlier there's no issue is a pretty poor argument. I see people raising concerns now, so why dismiss them by saying that they should have done so earlier? -- Alexandre Franke ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Mission Statement
On 08/07/2014 09:50 AM, Pascal Terjan wrote: The discussion is not about the absence of OPW, but about not providing the service of managing OPW for other organisations. I haven't seen anyone saying GNOME shouldn'tparticipate in OPW. Let me try to explain this another way... A couple of years ago my neighbor's house went on fire. As a result of the fire, the copper pipes providing water to my house melted. My house had no running water. Some other neighbors ended up running a hose into our house to provide us with water from their home for 3 months while various city departments and lawyers pointed fingers the other way to fix the pipes. My neighbors did not have to provide us water. But they knew if they took the water away before we were able to address the various issues involved in fixing the pipe, we would be without running water. It was not their problem, but if they did not help in this way, they would have been leaving a pregnant woman (me) without running water. Hope that further illustrates the point. ~m ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Mission Statement
On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 8:54 AM, Mathieu Duponchelle mduponchel...@gmail.com wrote: It seems I'm far from being the only one to think OPW should be abstracted away from GNOME. The subject of this thread clearly is GNOME's mission statement, and I'm interested in further discussion / opinions on that subject. I don't think it's relevant. GSoC is also outside of the mission statement, though as I said before I think there are allusions to outreach in the Charter. I think the discussion should focus on what is relevant, which is how the Foundation should deal with the financial and administrative aspects of the program. Otherwise we can also lump in any other outreach we do to new contributors, which I think would be odd, since FOSS does rely on contributors and internship programs are a good way to recruit them. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Mission Statement
GSoC is also outside of the mission statement Why do you mention that? GSoC is organized by Google, not by GNOME. I think the discussion should focus on what is relevant I agree, but as I just said the subject of the thread is GNOME's mission statement, not financial and administrative aspects of the OPW program. On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 5:18 PM, meg ford meg...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 8:54 AM, Mathieu Duponchelle mduponchel...@gmail.com wrote: It seems I'm far from being the only one to think OPW should be abstracted away from GNOME. The subject of this thread clearly is GNOME's mission statement, and I'm interested in further discussion / opinions on that subject. I don't think it's relevant. GSoC is also outside of the mission statement, though as I said before I think there are allusions to outreach in the Charter. I think the discussion should focus on what is relevant, which is how the Foundation should deal with the financial and administrative aspects of the program. Otherwise we can also lump in any other outreach we do to new contributors, which I think would be odd, since FOSS does rely on contributors and internship programs are a good way to recruit them. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Mission Statement
hi meg, On Thu, Aug 7, 2014, at 11:18, meg ford wrote: I don't think it's relevant. GSoC is also outside of the mission statement, though as I said before I think there are allusions to outreach in the Charter. I think the discussion should focus on what is relevant, which is how the Foundation should deal with the financial and administrative aspects of the program. Otherwise we can also lump in any other outreach we do to new contributors, which I think would be odd, since FOSS does rely on contributors and internship programs are a good way to recruit them. I certainly agree that attracting new contributors is an absolutely essential part of ensuring the survival of any free software project, and I even believe that in terms of how the program is structured, OPW's format is more effective at creating long-term community members than is GSoC (due to the more 'internship' nature rather than the 'complete a project' nature of GSoC). I think there are two fundamental differences between GNOME's involvement in GSoC and GNOME's administration of OPW, which make all the difference: The first is that we are not handling the sending of payments to students in GSoC, so the amount of work we do here is much smaller. The second (and more important) is that our participation with GSoC is limited to interaction with students who are all directly contributing to furthering our own goals of creating GNOME: people who will (hopefully) become members of our community. Cheers ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Mission Statement
Hi Ryan, On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 10:57 AM, Ryan Lortie de...@desrt.ca wrote: On Thu, Aug 7, 2014, at 11:18, meg ford wrote: I don't think it's relevant. GSoC is also outside of the mission statement, though as I said before I think there are allusions to outreach in the Charter. I think the discussion should focus on what is relevant, which is how the Foundation should deal with the financial and administrative aspects of the program. Otherwise we can also lump in any other outreach we do to new contributors, which I think would be odd, since FOSS does rely on contributors and internship programs are a good way to recruit them. I certainly agree that attracting new contributors is an absolutely essential part of ensuring the survival of any free software project, and I even believe that in terms of how the program is structured, OPW's format is more effective at creating long-term community members than is GSoC (due to the more 'internship' nature rather than the 'complete a project' nature of GSoC). I think there are two fundamental differences between GNOME's involvement in GSoC and GNOME's administration of OPW, which make all the difference: The first is that we are not handling the sending of payments to students in GSoC, so the amount of work we do here is much smaller. I agree, I was just pointing out that the discussion should focus on how to balance the workload and finances of OPW so that it is manageable, since we are involved in outreach, even if it isn't explicitly mentioned in our mission statement. The difference is a matter of scale, and I think it makes sense for us to discuss how to adjust the program's administration so it isn't a burden. It might be that Oliver's suggestion that it move to the Software Freedom Conservancy is the best way forward. I think it deserves consideration. There might also be other ways, and if there are then hopefully we can discuss those as well. The second (and more important) is that our participation with GSoC is limited to interaction with students who are all directly contributing to furthering our own goals of creating GNOME: people who will (hopefully) become members of our community. Also a fine point, and I think the community is doing a good job of having a balanced discussion of how we can improve our relationship to OPW. Cheers ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Mission Statement
On Thu, 2014-08-07 at 18:34 +0100, Allan Day wrote: Second, OPW has been beneficial for GNOME. It has raised our profile and further established our role as leaders in the Free Software world. Our sponsors are enthusiastic about OPW (conversely, moving OPW out of GNOME would give them one less reason to support us). While that was true when it was limited to participation in GNOME itself, that's not the case anymore. All of the branding is now FossOPW: https://wiki.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen And reading a blog post like this: http://sarah.thesharps.us/2013/05/23/%EF%BB%BF%EF%BB%BFopw-update/ it feels like it wasn't people in GNOME that came up with programme, but that GNOME was just the first organisation to benefit from it (see What is the FOSS Outreach Program for Women). ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Mission Statement
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] Do you understand that the many -isms that negatively impact GNOME and open source in general If you want to talk about the larger practice that GNOME is part of, please speak of free software. The free software movement campaigns for a particular aspect of human rights, in the field of computing. OPW campaings for a different aspect of human rights, but is based on the same attitude that human rights are important. The slogan open source was launched so as to reject that attitude. It's not a good fit for OPW or for GNOME. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Mission Statement
On Thu, 2014-08-07 at 14:24 -0400, Richard Stallman wrote: [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] Do you understand that the many -isms that negatively impact GNOME and open source in general If you want to talk about the larger practice that GNOME is part of, please speak of free software. 1. Please get yourself a mailer that doesn't mangle Máirín's name, there are plenty of Free Software ones 2. If the extent of your involvement in the GNOME Foundation's life is going to be something that a bot can replace, can we please have the bot instead? ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Mission Statement
Bastien Nocera had...@hadess.net wrote: Second, OPW has been beneficial for GNOME. It has raised our profile and further established our role as leaders in the Free Software world. Our sponsors are enthusiastic about OPW (conversely, moving OPW out of GNOME would give them one less reason to support us). While that was true when it was limited to participation in GNOME itself, that's not the case anymore. All of the branding is now FossOPW: https://wiki.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen I'm pretty sure that our Ad Board members know that we administer the programme. We also do our own marketing, such as the latest Annual Report, which had a section on OPW, and was distributed to Ad Board members. And reading a blog post like this: http://sarah.thesharps.us/2013/05/23/%EF%BB%BF%EF%BB%BFopw-update/ it feels like it wasn't people in GNOME that came up with programme, but that GNOME was just the first organisation to benefit from it (see What is the FOSS Outreach Program for Women). While the interpretation isn't quite right, that blog post talks about GNOME and does so positively. It's giving us good exposure. Allan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Mission Statement
On 08/07/2014 03:02 PM, Allan Day wrote: While the interpretation isn't quite right, that blog post talks about GNOME and does so positively. It's giving us good exposure. Maybe GNOME's logo should appear under sponsors on gnome.org/opw too. ~m ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Mission Statement
On Thu, 2014-08-07 at 15:13 -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote: On 08/07/2014 03:02 PM, Allan Day wrote: While the interpretation isn't quite right, that blog post talks about GNOME and does so positively. It's giving us good exposure. Maybe GNOME's logo should appear under sponsors on gnome.org/opw too. GNOME appearing under the Sponsors and/or Partners sections would help, so would emphasizing GNOME's role in the About section. (The GNOME Foundation started the Outreach Program for Women[...]. It was inspired by [...]). Ditto for the flyer at https://wiki.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen as well as the similarly worded origins section. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Mission Statement
On 08/07/2014 03:23 PM, Bastien Nocera wrote: Ditto for the flyer at https://wiki.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen as well as the similarly worded origins section. I'm happy to redesign the poster as needed. If anybody wants to help me in reviewing the edits, let me know off-list. ~m ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Mission Statement
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] 1. Please get yourself a mailer that doesn't mangle Máirín's name, there are plenty of Free Software ones It sounds like you think you have seen some sort of problem. I use GNU Emacs for reading and sending mail. Like any nontrivial program, it has bugs. Perhaps you have found one. If you have come across a bug in some GNU program, the constructive response is to report it so it can get fixed. Please report bugs in GNU Emacs to bug-gnu-em...@gnu.org. 2. If the extent of your involvement in the GNOME Foundation's life is going to be something that a bot can replace, can we please have the bot instead? I've been campaigning for computer users' freedom for 30 years. The GNU/Linux system comes out of that campaign. GNOME in particular does, too; it was started specifically to provide a free software way to avoid running the then-proprietary Qt library. People who hold open source views would not have considered this necessary. If someone can design a bot smart enough to find and express new specific ethical points, such as highlighting the similarity in values between the free software movement and OPW, I would be glad to let the bot take over from me. I have a lot of other work to do. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Mission Statement
I completely agree with Máirín. yes, the OPW is imposing on the administration of our finances some strain; the correct solution is not to just get rid of it, but figure out a way to get more resources for handling that side. it's a matter of fundraising, but it can be done. the point Ryan made about engagement and pushback from parts of the larger F/L/OSS community is the one I understand the least. I'd really prefer more people went out defending the OPW program, and all the good that it generates, than have the foundation lose its resolve, and distance itself from one of the most successful things we as a community have achieved in terms of community outreach. ciao, Emmanuele. On 6 August 2014 17:05, Máirín Duffy du...@fedoraproject.org wrote: On 08/06/2014 11:57 AM, Ryan Lortie wrote: I was disappointed (but not completely surprised) to learn that, although OPW has expanded to many projects beyond GNOME, GNOME is left handling all of the money for all participants at all organisations. This hasn't only exposed us to substantial financial risks; it has caused actual financial problems for the project. This year, GNOME temporarily ceased funding of hackfests in order to recover from the cashflow problems caused by the size of OPW. I'm sensing a general lack of information in your post (which should absolutely be provided to you) about the program and its affect on GNOME and its finances, so I thought it would be worth pointing out that GNOME does charge a per-intern administrative fee to each non-GNOME project participating in OPW. So GNOME is far from taking on this extremely helpful and beneficial work without compensation. I also came to appreciate during conversations at GUADEC the amount of time which members of the engagement team, the board, and others are spending fighting against harmful and distracting messaging from various corners of the net, and how much OPW has become involved in some of the stranger criticisms being leveled toward us. It's no secret that OPW is controversial, even within the project. I feel at the very least, it is a distraction from what should be our core goals. Do you understand that the many -isms that negatively impact GNOME and open source in general do not disappear when you sweep them under the rug? These are not problems that can just be washed away from disengaging OPW from GNOME. I think that the time has come to split OPW out from the GNOME foundation. I can't resist saying this: I think GNOME has a lot of problems, and OPW is most certainly NOT one of them. ~m ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list -- http://www.bassi.io [@] ebassi [@gmail.com] ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Mission Statement
hi; On 6 August 2014 19:49, Michael Hill mdhil...@gmail.com wrote: crippling weight [citation needed]. This hasn't only exposed us to substantial financial risks; it has caused actual financial problems for the project. This year, GNOME temporarily ceased funding of hackfests in order to recover from the cashflow problems caused by the size of OPW. -- Ryan Lortie Result: day to day operations of the Foundation disrupted. the disruption has been put in place to recover reserves that we burned through; those reserves were burned through because of a reduction in the cash flow of the Foundation in general — i.e. our finances have been shrinking for the past few years. the OPW was an expenditure to make up for invoices not being paid, but *any* expenditure (hackfest, conferences, travel assistance) could have caused the freeze. in general, the freeze that has less to do with OPW and more with our own issues in tracking payments and invoices, and handling our own accounting. the whole issue could have just as easily happened if we didn't have OPW, to be fair. in a way, the OPW growth and this whole finance situation has forced the board to get a better handle on the foundation's own funding and processes, to streamline them, document them, and track them. now that things are tracked properly the remaining effect of the OPW growth is the administrative burden on our own administrative infrastructure; that still needs to be fixed, and it would be good to have ideas on how to increase our volunteer base. we also still need to build up cash reserves, so that we can unfreeze the expenditures of the foundation. ciao, Emmanuele. -- http://www.bassi.io [@] ebassi [@gmail.com] ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Mission Statement
hi Andre; On 7 August 2014 00:13, Andre Klapper ak...@gmx.net wrote: Currently there seems to be a mismatch between GNOME's mission statement and OPW activities (doing program administration for other projects). if that were the case, then we ought to stop handling funds for all the other projects for which we currently do handle funds: • Gimp • GStreamer • PulseAudio (for GSoC) • PiTiVi (fund raising) so if we want to discuss this perceived discrepancy, then we should frame it in a more general context than the mere OPW. ciao, Emmanuele. -- http://www.bassi.io [@] ebassi [@gmail.com] ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
