Re: Question to candidates: eco-friendliness
Hi everyone, I've created an issue for this topic, so we don't forget about it: https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Board/issues/102 Allan On Fri, 14 Jun 2019 at 00:04, Federico Mena Quintero wrote: > > On Mon, 2019-06-03 at 18:10 +0100, Philip Withnall wrote: > > > > What steps do you think the Foundation could take to reduce its > > environmental impact, and the environmental impact of the project as > > a whole? > > All the previous replies have good ideas. We should definitely enable > remote hackfests. Is this "just" about gnome.org hosting a WebRTC > service which we can already use through practically any web browser? > I don't know! > > In terms of engagement, we need conferences on the scale of GUADEC or > Gnome Asia, but in the Americas, and outside the United States, where > travel+visas are problematic. But in terms of environmental impact, I > am not sure whether this would enable fewer people to fly across the > ocean for their yearly "big GNOME conference", or if it would encourage > *more* people to fly cross-continent to the new conference. > > I wonder if it is possible to get reports on power consumption from > things like our CI runners. Maybe even power profiles for individual > runs? Or does the way things run in datacenters, where *our* CI runs > are not the only thing running on a server, make this not entirely > trivial to do? > > Federico > > ___ > 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: Question to candidates: eco-friendliness
On Mon, 2019-06-03 at 18:10 +0100, Philip Withnall wrote: > > What steps do you think the Foundation could take to reduce its > environmental impact, and the environmental impact of the project as > a whole? All the previous replies have good ideas. We should definitely enable remote hackfests. Is this "just" about gnome.org hosting a WebRTC service which we can already use through practically any web browser? I don't know! In terms of engagement, we need conferences on the scale of GUADEC or Gnome Asia, but in the Americas, and outside the United States, where travel+visas are problematic. But in terms of environmental impact, I am not sure whether this would enable fewer people to fly across the ocean for their yearly "big GNOME conference", or if it would encourage *more* people to fly cross-continent to the new conference. I wonder if it is possible to get reports on power consumption from things like our CI runners. Maybe even power profiles for individual runs? Or does the way things run in datacenters, where *our* CI runs are not the only thing running on a server, make this not entirely trivial to do? Federico ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates - Minutes of the board meeting
Hi Britt It's good to hear from you. :) Everyone start with zero -- I think the point is we could see what do you think. Thanks for want to made pubic as timely and reasonable. Thanks again for running the board. Max * Philip Chimento: 2019/6/4 * Christel Dahlskjaer: 2019/6/4 * Benjamin Berg: 2019/6/4 * Allan Day: 2019/6/4 * Tristan Van Berkom: 2019/6/4 * Carlos Soriano: 2019/6/4 * Robert McQueen: 2019/6/5 * Niels De Graef: 2019/6/5 * Britt Yazel: 2019/6/6 * Federico Mena Quintero * Christopher Davis On Thu, Jun 6, 2019 at 12:44 AM Britt Yazel wrote: > Hi Max, > > Sorry for my late response, however as I have never held a board seat > before I do not have the experience to comment either way on the timing of > the release of board meeting minutes. > > With that said and after reading the prior responses, my personal > preference is to be as quick as is possible in releasing the minutes while > the conversations and points are fresh in our minds. I have found that the > longer things sit, the more likely they are to fall by the wayside, and the > Foundation members deserve to have a timely and transparent board of > directors. > > I hesitate to promise anything as far as a time table commitment, as it > would not be up to me alone when the minutes are released, and without > having personally experienced these board meeting structure, promising > anything of the sort would, in my opinion, be irresponsible. I can say that > the best of my ability I will see that the meeting minutes are made public > as timely and efficiently as is reasonable. I am also happy to revisit the > conversation once the board is elected to see if as a team we can agree on > a reasonable timetable. > > Thanks, > > -Britt Yazel > > On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 4:13 AM Max via foundation-list < > foundation-list@gnome.org> wrote: > >> Hi Robert >> >> Thanks for reply my question again. >> We could have many information when we see the reply. >> Just like my last mail -- the list could be "Answer" or "Not Answer", >> "Date" or "None" >> >> I just check the foundation-list@gnome.org mail list last year( 2018 ). >> " There is no question to board candidates " >> At 2017, only 1 question to board candidates. >> >> I just explain why I do that -- If there is no reply from candidates -- >> We just have their bio :p >> >> >> Max >> >> On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 6:48 PM Robert McQueen wrote: >> >>> Hi Max, >>> >>> On Wed, 2019-06-05 at 09:26 +0800, Max via foundation-list wrote: >>> >>> We are all volunteer live in different time zone, we have real job and >>> life. So we will do community task at rest time of real life. >>> It's good to do community task in reasonable time. >>> I think ask question to candidates during the election time -- we might >>> be see how busy they are in real life. >>> To guess how much time the candidates could spend on community tasks. >>> If someone is real great but he / she is 100% or 90% busy in real life, >>> she / he might be have no time to help. >>> >>> >>> Serving on the board is a form of volunteering your time to help the >>> GNOME community. It comes with specific and quite predictable time >>> commitments in terms of the board meetings, e-mails, etc that being a board >>> member entails - usually around 2 hours a week, and usually at the same >>> time each week. As Carlos points out, these are rarely urgent. The board >>> has actually been trying to take a more "hands off" role - focusing on >>> oversight, strategy, etc rather than day to day or urgent decisions. The >>> Foundation now has 7 full-time staff and they should be able to dedicate >>> far more time and be more responsive. >>> >>> So - provided the board candidate is able to dedicate these specific >>> times, I don't think response time or availability to volunteer for >>> additional things should necessarily be considered while assessing board >>> candidates for election - if someone isn't available to volunteer for >>> community tasks that doesn't mean they will be a bad board member. I hope >>> in my case the opposite is true - I am very busy in my personal and >>> professional life because I am on the leadership team of Endless, a company >>> that works with GNOME - but this means I have experience as a >>> director/executive which I think I can use to help the Foundation board set >>> a good strategy and sensible policies, manage it's r
Re: Question to candidates - Minutes of the board meeting
Hi Max, Sorry for my late response, however as I have never held a board seat before I do not have the experience to comment either way on the timing of the release of board meeting minutes. With that said and after reading the prior responses, my personal preference is to be as quick as is possible in releasing the minutes while the conversations and points are fresh in our minds. I have found that the longer things sit, the more likely they are to fall by the wayside, and the Foundation members deserve to have a timely and transparent board of directors. I hesitate to promise anything as far as a time table commitment, as it would not be up to me alone when the minutes are released, and without having personally experienced these board meeting structure, promising anything of the sort would, in my opinion, be irresponsible. I can say that the best of my ability I will see that the meeting minutes are made public as timely and efficiently as is reasonable. I am also happy to revisit the conversation once the board is elected to see if as a team we can agree on a reasonable timetable. Thanks, -Britt Yazel On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 4:13 AM Max via foundation-list < foundation-list@gnome.org> wrote: > Hi Robert > > Thanks for reply my question again. > We could have many information when we see the reply. > Just like my last mail -- the list could be "Answer" or "Not Answer", > "Date" or "None" > > I just check the foundation-list@gnome.org mail list last year( 2018 ). > " There is no question to board candidates " > At 2017, only 1 question to board candidates. > > I just explain why I do that -- If there is no reply from candidates -- We > just have their bio :p > > > Max > > On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 6:48 PM Robert McQueen wrote: > >> Hi Max, >> >> On Wed, 2019-06-05 at 09:26 +0800, Max via foundation-list wrote: >> >> We are all volunteer live in different time zone, we have real job and >> life. So we will do community task at rest time of real life. >> It's good to do community task in reasonable time. >> I think ask question to candidates during the election time -- we might >> be see how busy they are in real life. >> To guess how much time the candidates could spend on community tasks. >> If someone is real great but he / she is 100% or 90% busy in real life, >> she / he might be have no time to help. >> >> >> Serving on the board is a form of volunteering your time to help the >> GNOME community. It comes with specific and quite predictable time >> commitments in terms of the board meetings, e-mails, etc that being a board >> member entails - usually around 2 hours a week, and usually at the same >> time each week. As Carlos points out, these are rarely urgent. The board >> has actually been trying to take a more "hands off" role - focusing on >> oversight, strategy, etc rather than day to day or urgent decisions. The >> Foundation now has 7 full-time staff and they should be able to dedicate >> far more time and be more responsive. >> >> So - provided the board candidate is able to dedicate these specific >> times, I don't think response time or availability to volunteer for >> additional things should necessarily be considered while assessing board >> candidates for election - if someone isn't available to volunteer for >> community tasks that doesn't mean they will be a bad board member. I hope >> in my case the opposite is true - I am very busy in my personal and >> professional life because I am on the leadership team of Endless, a company >> that works with GNOME - but this means I have experience as a >> director/executive which I think I can use to help the Foundation board set >> a good strategy and sensible policies, manage it's resources well, manage >> the ED, etc. Whether a board member takes on additional >> community/volunteering tasks (eg organising a conference, joining a >> committee, being an officer like secretary or treasurer, etc) is a separate >> decision. (I personally don't have a lot /more/ time to give, but when I do >> I choose to spend it on Flatpak/Flathub because I think the app ecosystem >> is a blocker to the Linux desktop's overall growth and impact.) >> >> Cheers, >> Rob >> >> >> The date is for UTC +08:00 in my local time. >> >> * Philip Chimento: 2019/6/4 >> * Christel Dahlskjaer: 2019/6/4 >> * Benjamin Berg: 2019/6/4 >> * Allan Day: 2019/6/4 >> * Tristan Van Berkom: 2019/6/4 >> * Carlos Soriano: 2019/6/4 >> * Robert McQueen: 2019/6/5 >> >> * Britt Yazel >> * Ni
Re: Question to candidates - Minutes of the board meeting
Hi Robert Thanks for reply my question again. We could have many information when we see the reply. Just like my last mail -- the list could be "Answer" or "Not Answer", "Date" or "None" I just check the foundation-list@gnome.org mail list last year( 2018 ). " There is no question to board candidates " At 2017, only 1 question to board candidates. I just explain why I do that -- If there is no reply from candidates -- We just have their bio :p Max On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 6:48 PM Robert McQueen wrote: > Hi Max, > > On Wed, 2019-06-05 at 09:26 +0800, Max via foundation-list wrote: > > We are all volunteer live in different time zone, we have real job and > life. So we will do community task at rest time of real life. > It's good to do community task in reasonable time. > I think ask question to candidates during the election time -- we might be > see how busy they are in real life. > To guess how much time the candidates could spend on community tasks. > If someone is real great but he / she is 100% or 90% busy in real life, > she / he might be have no time to help. > > > Serving on the board is a form of volunteering your time to help the GNOME > community. It comes with specific and quite predictable time commitments in > terms of the board meetings, e-mails, etc that being a board member entails > - usually around 2 hours a week, and usually at the same time each week. As > Carlos points out, these are rarely urgent. The board has actually been > trying to take a more "hands off" role - focusing on oversight, strategy, > etc rather than day to day or urgent decisions. The Foundation now has 7 > full-time staff and they should be able to dedicate far more time and be > more responsive. > > So - provided the board candidate is able to dedicate these specific > times, I don't think response time or availability to volunteer for > additional things should necessarily be considered while assessing board > candidates for election - if someone isn't available to volunteer for > community tasks that doesn't mean they will be a bad board member. I hope > in my case the opposite is true - I am very busy in my personal and > professional life because I am on the leadership team of Endless, a company > that works with GNOME - but this means I have experience as a > director/executive which I think I can use to help the Foundation board set > a good strategy and sensible policies, manage it's resources well, manage > the ED, etc. Whether a board member takes on additional > community/volunteering tasks (eg organising a conference, joining a > committee, being an officer like secretary or treasurer, etc) is a separate > decision. (I personally don't have a lot /more/ time to give, but when I do > I choose to spend it on Flatpak/Flathub because I think the app ecosystem > is a blocker to the Linux desktop's overall growth and impact.) > > Cheers, > Rob > > > The date is for UTC +08:00 in my local time. > > * Philip Chimento: 2019/6/4 > * Christel Dahlskjaer: 2019/6/4 > * Benjamin Berg: 2019/6/4 > * Allan Day: 2019/6/4 > * Tristan Van Berkom: 2019/6/4 > * Carlos Soriano: 2019/6/4 > * Robert McQueen: 2019/6/5 > > * Britt Yazel > * Niels De Graef > * Federico Mena Quintero > * Christopher Davis > > On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 4:55 AM Robert McQueen wrote: > > Hi Max, > > For what it's worth - I agree very strongly with Carlos here. The > community seems very "latched on" to minutes as the only/best way to hear > from or understand the board. I believe that on the whole Philip and > Federico as Secretary and Vice-Secretary have been doing as good a job as > could reasonably be expected of them, in terms of keeping the process > running and making sure the minutes happen and are published within weeks > rather than months. It's certainly as good or as close to as good as I've > seen it during the past few years, and as a time-starved collection of > volunteers, I don't think it's feasible for an incoming director to promise > that the preparation of minutes will change significantly. > > That said; we hear the concerns about timeliness and transparency but > really - poring over summarised board minutes looking for decisions (or > conspiriacies) and second-guessing justifications/motivations is not a good > way to build trust and transparency. Communication should be more > intentional and directed, ideally the board should be more accessible. This > is why I blogged about the key topics and things we were aiming to do from > our hackfest last year. > > I think that Carlos' GitLab and Discourse suggestions are great, and maybe > the
Re: Question to candidates - Minutes of the board meeting
Hi Carlos Thanks for your reply. Just like my last mail. I think it's good to get more detail and information how hard to be a board member. Let every foundation member know the board hard and work hard is mean to me. Thanks again for your reply and thank for make GNOME forward with board for 2 years. Max On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 2:00 PM Carlos Soriano wrote: > Hi Max, > > Just an honest insight from working in the board for two years. The tasks > the board do rarely require immediate action, in fact the most immediate > important action we can do is a special meeting, which requires 48h notice > in advance. > > In general, it's more valuable to allocate a chunk of time over the > weekend, and for big tasks that can happen once every month or two months. > If my memory serves me correctly, we had around 3-4 emergencies in the last > two years, and almost all directors found some time to deal with them. > > Cheers > > On Wed, 5 Jun 2019 at 03:27, Max via foundation-list < > foundation-list@gnome.org> wrote: > >> Hi Allan, Tristan, Carlos, Robert >> >> Thanks for the quick response. >> Thanks all of you give us more choice and tool. >> GNOME.Asia team also use gitlab issue board to co-work together. >> >> During the GNOME.Asia role, I learn about --- "Pass the information to >> the team members fast" is more better than "Think all method alone". >> We are all volunteer live in different time zone, we have real job and >> life. So we will do community task at rest time of real life. >> It's good to do community task in reasonable time. >> I think ask question to candidates during the election time -- we might >> be see how busy they are in real life. >> To guess how much time the candidates could spend on community tasks. >> If someone is real great but he / she is 100% or 90% busy in real life, >> she / he might be have no time to help. >> >> The date is for UTC +08:00 in my local time. >> >> * Philip Chimento: 2019/6/4 >> * Christel Dahlskjaer: 2019/6/4 >> * Benjamin Berg: 2019/6/4 >> * Allan Day: 2019/6/4 >> * Tristan Van Berkom: 2019/6/4 >> * Carlos Soriano: 2019/6/4 >> * Robert McQueen: 2019/6/5 >> >> * Britt Yazel >> * Niels De Graef >> * Federico Mena Quintero >> * Christopher Davis >> >> On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 4:55 AM Robert McQueen wrote: >> >>> Hi Max, >>> >>> For what it's worth - I agree very strongly with Carlos here. The >>> community seems very "latched on" to minutes as the only/best way to hear >>> from or understand the board. I believe that on the whole Philip and >>> Federico as Secretary and Vice-Secretary have been doing as good a job as >>> could reasonably be expected of them, in terms of keeping the process >>> running and making sure the minutes happen and are published within weeks >>> rather than months. It's certainly as good or as close to as good as I've >>> seen it during the past few years, and as a time-starved collection of >>> volunteers, I don't think it's feasible for an incoming director to promise >>> that the preparation of minutes will change significantly. >>> >>> That said; we hear the concerns about timeliness and transparency but >>> really - poring over summarised board minutes looking for decisions (or >>> conspiriacies) and second-guessing justifications/motivations is not a good >>> way to build trust and transparency. Communication should be more >>> intentional and directed, ideally the board should be more accessible. This >>> is why I blogged about the key topics and things we were aiming to do from >>> our hackfest last year. >>> >>> I think that Carlos' GitLab and Discourse suggestions are great, and >>> maybe there are some other things we could consider - some round table / >>> AMA things - so that the board is in discussion with the membership more >>> frequently than the big Q&A "meet the new board" at GUADEC. At this exact >>> time, the new board don't really know what they're doing (or about to do) - >>> at least I certainly didn't - so you might get intentions/aspirations but >>> very little insight into what is actually ongoing and why. >>> >>> (As a side point, I am also not used to the concept that a board or >>> other panel would /not/ periodically approve it's previous minutes - but I >>> would also not expect a board to ordinarily meet every two weeks. We've >>> moved fr
Re: Question to candidates - Minutes of the board meeting
Hi Niels Thanks for reply my question. :) 2) Extrapolating how busy someone's life is by looking at a period of 2 days might not be really representative. - It's not for 2 days, it might be answer or not answer the question, right ? :) If everyone don't ask questions or ask question but there might be someone doesn't answer any question. How could we know that candidates -- just from the bio? -- Maybe everyone ( okay, at least me... ) want to hear more from candidates. With many reply and information -- We could know how hard to be GNOME board and they work very hard, it's good, right? * Philip Chimento: 2019/6/4 * Christel Dahlskjaer: 2019/6/4 * Benjamin Berg: 2019/6/4 * Allan Day: 2019/6/4 * Tristan Van Berkom: 2019/6/4 * Carlos Soriano: 2019/6/4 * Robert McQueen: 2019/6/5 * Niels De Graef: 2019/6/5 * Britt Yazel * Federico Mena Quintero * Christopher Davis Thanks again for your reply Max On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 1:41 PM Niels De Graef wrote: > Hi Max, > > I first want to thank you for your question, as it is a very valid > point. I agree with Carlos that we already have better collaboration > (GitLab) and communication (Discourse) tools which we should look into > instead of a plain-text email. > > For the rest, I think it's wise to consider a few things before making > conclusions: > > 1) This is a question that is a bit hard to give a good answer to as > someone who hasn't served a term yet (as Tristan mentioned). This > might explain why 3 out of 4 people at the bottom of your list are > would-be first-termers. ;) > > 2) Extrapolating how busy someone's life is by looking at a period of > 2 days might not be really representative. For a personal example: I'm > actually moving to a new place this month, which means it's harder to > get a response out as soon as possible. That does not mean I don't > have time allocated for the board in the rest of the year. I think we > can safely assume the latter also applies to the other people who > haven't answered yet. > > Thanks again for your feedback! > > Kind regards, > Niels > > On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 3:27 AM Max via foundation-list > wrote: > > > > Hi Allan, Tristan, Carlos, Robert > > > > Thanks for the quick response. > > Thanks all of you give us more choice and tool. > > GNOME.Asia team also use gitlab issue board to co-work together. > > > > During the GNOME.Asia role, I learn about --- "Pass the information to > the team members fast" is more better than "Think all method alone". > > We are all volunteer live in different time zone, we have real job and > life. So we will do community task at rest time of real life. > > It's good to do community task in reasonable time. > > I think ask question to candidates during the election time -- we might > be see how busy they are in real life. > > To guess how much time the candidates could spend on community tasks. > > If someone is real great but he / she is 100% or 90% busy in real life, > she / he might be have no time to help. > > > > The date is for UTC +08:00 in my local time. > > > > * Philip Chimento: 2019/6/4 > > * Christel Dahlskjaer: 2019/6/4 > > * Benjamin Berg: 2019/6/4 > > * Allan Day: 2019/6/4 > > * Tristan Van Berkom: 2019/6/4 > > * Carlos Soriano: 2019/6/4 > > * Robert McQueen: 2019/6/5 > > > > * Britt Yazel > > * Niels De Graef > > * Federico Mena Quintero > > * Christopher Davis > > > > On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 4:55 AM Robert McQueen wrote: > >> > >> Hi Max, > >> > >> For what it's worth - I agree very strongly with Carlos here. The > community seems very "latched on" to minutes as the only/best way to hear > from or understand the board. I believe that on the whole Philip and > Federico as Secretary and Vice-Secretary have been doing as good a job as > could reasonably be expected of them, in terms of keeping the process > running and making sure the minutes happen and are published within weeks > rather than months. It's certainly as good or as close to as good as I've > seen it during the past few years, and as a time-starved collection of > volunteers, I don't think it's feasible for an incoming director to promise > that the preparation of minutes will change significantly. > >> > >> That said; we hear the concerns about timeliness and transparency but > really - poring over summarised board minutes looking for decisions (or > conspiriacies) and second-guessing justifications/motivations is not a good > way to build trust and transparency. Communication should be more > inte
Re: Question to candidates - Minutes of the board meeting
Hi Max, On Wed, 2019-06-05 at 09:26 +0800, Max via foundation-list wrote: > We are all volunteer live in different time zone, we have real job > and life. So we will do community task at rest time of real life. > It's good to do community task in reasonable time. > I think ask question to candidates during the election time -- we > might be see how busy they are in real life. > To guess how much time the candidates could spend on community > tasks. > If someone is real great but he / she is 100% or 90% busy in real > life, she / he might be have no time to help. Serving on the board is a form of volunteering your time to help the GNOME community. It comes with specific and quite predictable time commitments in terms of the board meetings, e-mails, etc that being a board member entails - usually around 2 hours a week, and usually at the same time each week. As Carlos points out, these are rarely urgent. The board has actually been trying to take a more "hands off" role - focusing on oversight, strategy, etc rather than day to day or urgent decisions. The Foundation now has 7 full-time staff and they should be able to dedicate far more time and be more responsive. So - provided the board candidate is able to dedicate these specific times, I don't think response time or availability to volunteer for additional things should necessarily be considered while assessing board candidates for election - if someone isn't available to volunteer for community tasks that doesn't mean they will be a bad board member. I hope in my case the opposite is true - I am very busy in my personal and professional life because I am on the leadership team of Endless, a company that works with GNOME - but this means I have experience as a director/executive which I think I can use to help the Foundation board set a good strategy and sensible policies, manage it's resources well, manage the ED, etc. Whether a board member takes on additional community/volunteering tasks (eg organising a conference, joining a committee, being an officer like secretary or treasurer, etc) is a separate decision. (I personally don't have a lot /more/ time to give, but when I do I choose to spend it on Flatpak/Flathub because I think the app ecosystem is a blocker to the Linux desktop's overall growth and impact.) Cheers,Rob > The date is for UTC +08:00 in my local time. > > * Philip Chimento: 2019/6/4 > * Christel Dahlskjaer: 2019/6/4 > * Benjamin Berg: 2019/6/4 > * Allan Day: 2019/6/4 > * Tristan Van Berkom: 2019/6/4 > * Carlos Soriano: 2019/6/4 > * Robert McQueen: 2019/6/5 > > * Britt Yazel > * Niels De Graef > * Federico Mena Quintero > * Christopher Davis > > > On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 4:55 AM Robert McQueen > wrote: > > Hi Max, > > For what it's worth - I agree very strongly with Carlos here. The > > community seems very "latched on" to minutes as the only/best way > > to hear from or understand the board. I believe that on the whole > > Philip and Federico as Secretary and Vice-Secretary have been doing > > as good a job as could reasonably be expected of them, in terms of > > keeping the process running and making sure the minutes happen and > > are published within weeks rather than months. It's certainly as > > good or as close to as good as I've seen it during the past few > > years, and as a time-starved collection of volunteers, I don't > > think it's feasible for an incoming director to promise that the > > preparation of minutes will change significantly. > > That said; we hear the concerns about timeliness and transparency > > but really - poring over summarised board minutes looking for > > decisions (or conspiriacies) and second-guessing > > justifications/motivations is not a good way to build trust and > > transparency. Communication should be more intentional and > > directed, ideally the board should be more accessible. This is why > > I blogged about the key topics and things we were aiming to do from > > our hackfest last year. > > I think that Carlos' GitLab and Discourse suggestions are great, > > and maybe there are some other things we could consider - some > > round table / AMA things - so that the board is in discussion with > > the membership more frequently than the big Q&A "meet the new > > board" at GUADEC. At this exact time, the new board don't really > > know what they're doing (or about to do) - at least I certainly > > didn't - so you might get intentions/aspirations but very little > > insight into what is actually ongoing and why. > > (As a side point, I am also not used to the concept that a board or > > other panel would /not/ periodic
Re: Question to candidates - Minutes of the board meeting
Hi Max, Just an honest insight from working in the board for two years. The tasks the board do rarely require immediate action, in fact the most immediate important action we can do is a special meeting, which requires 48h notice in advance. In general, it's more valuable to allocate a chunk of time over the weekend, and for big tasks that can happen once every month or two months. If my memory serves me correctly, we had around 3-4 emergencies in the last two years, and almost all directors found some time to deal with them. Cheers On Wed, 5 Jun 2019 at 03:27, Max via foundation-list < foundation-list@gnome.org> wrote: > Hi Allan, Tristan, Carlos, Robert > > Thanks for the quick response. > Thanks all of you give us more choice and tool. > GNOME.Asia team also use gitlab issue board to co-work together. > > During the GNOME.Asia role, I learn about --- "Pass the information to the > team members fast" is more better than "Think all method alone". > We are all volunteer live in different time zone, we have real job and > life. So we will do community task at rest time of real life. > It's good to do community task in reasonable time. > I think ask question to candidates during the election time -- we might be > see how busy they are in real life. > To guess how much time the candidates could spend on community tasks. > If someone is real great but he / she is 100% or 90% busy in real life, > she / he might be have no time to help. > > The date is for UTC +08:00 in my local time. > > * Philip Chimento: 2019/6/4 > * Christel Dahlskjaer: 2019/6/4 > * Benjamin Berg: 2019/6/4 > * Allan Day: 2019/6/4 > * Tristan Van Berkom: 2019/6/4 > * Carlos Soriano: 2019/6/4 > * Robert McQueen: 2019/6/5 > > * Britt Yazel > * Niels De Graef > * Federico Mena Quintero > * Christopher Davis > > On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 4:55 AM Robert McQueen wrote: > >> Hi Max, >> >> For what it's worth - I agree very strongly with Carlos here. The >> community seems very "latched on" to minutes as the only/best way to hear >> from or understand the board. I believe that on the whole Philip and >> Federico as Secretary and Vice-Secretary have been doing as good a job as >> could reasonably be expected of them, in terms of keeping the process >> running and making sure the minutes happen and are published within weeks >> rather than months. It's certainly as good or as close to as good as I've >> seen it during the past few years, and as a time-starved collection of >> volunteers, I don't think it's feasible for an incoming director to promise >> that the preparation of minutes will change significantly. >> >> That said; we hear the concerns about timeliness and transparency but >> really - poring over summarised board minutes looking for decisions (or >> conspiriacies) and second-guessing justifications/motivations is not a good >> way to build trust and transparency. Communication should be more >> intentional and directed, ideally the board should be more accessible. This >> is why I blogged about the key topics and things we were aiming to do from >> our hackfest last year. >> >> I think that Carlos' GitLab and Discourse suggestions are great, and >> maybe there are some other things we could consider - some round table / >> AMA things - so that the board is in discussion with the membership more >> frequently than the big Q&A "meet the new board" at GUADEC. At this exact >> time, the new board don't really know what they're doing (or about to do) - >> at least I certainly didn't - so you might get intentions/aspirations but >> very little insight into what is actually ongoing and why. >> >> (As a side point, I am also not used to the concept that a board or other >> panel would /not/ periodically approve it's previous minutes - but I would >> also not expect a board to ordinarily meet every two weeks. We've moved >> from weekly to bi-weekly meetings during this board term, which is great, >> but ideally as we build trust/process/oversight in the ED and staff, the >> board should ideally have to meet less often.) >> >> As the staff team grows, more of the "stuff the foundation does" should >> move away from the board making micro-decisions, and more towards "business >> as usual" for the staff. Then the reporting and transparency requirement >> moves from the board to the staff - especially as they are (by their very >> existence) consuming donor funds. So I feel this transparency is also very >> important. As the ED line manager, I think we've m
Re: Question to candidates - Minutes of the board meeting
Hi Max, I first want to thank you for your question, as it is a very valid point. I agree with Carlos that we already have better collaboration (GitLab) and communication (Discourse) tools which we should look into instead of a plain-text email. For the rest, I think it's wise to consider a few things before making conclusions: 1) This is a question that is a bit hard to give a good answer to as someone who hasn't served a term yet (as Tristan mentioned). This might explain why 3 out of 4 people at the bottom of your list are would-be first-termers. ;) 2) Extrapolating how busy someone's life is by looking at a period of 2 days might not be really representative. For a personal example: I'm actually moving to a new place this month, which means it's harder to get a response out as soon as possible. That does not mean I don't have time allocated for the board in the rest of the year. I think we can safely assume the latter also applies to the other people who haven't answered yet. Thanks again for your feedback! Kind regards, Niels On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 3:27 AM Max via foundation-list wrote: > > Hi Allan, Tristan, Carlos, Robert > > Thanks for the quick response. > Thanks all of you give us more choice and tool. > GNOME.Asia team also use gitlab issue board to co-work together. > > During the GNOME.Asia role, I learn about --- "Pass the information to the > team members fast" is more better than "Think all method alone". > We are all volunteer live in different time zone, we have real job and life. > So we will do community task at rest time of real life. > It's good to do community task in reasonable time. > I think ask question to candidates during the election time -- we might be > see how busy they are in real life. > To guess how much time the candidates could spend on community tasks. > If someone is real great but he / she is 100% or 90% busy in real life, she / > he might be have no time to help. > > The date is for UTC +08:00 in my local time. > > * Philip Chimento: 2019/6/4 > * Christel Dahlskjaer: 2019/6/4 > * Benjamin Berg: 2019/6/4 > * Allan Day: 2019/6/4 > * Tristan Van Berkom: 2019/6/4 > * Carlos Soriano: 2019/6/4 > * Robert McQueen: 2019/6/5 > > * Britt Yazel > * Niels De Graef > * Federico Mena Quintero > * Christopher Davis > > On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 4:55 AM Robert McQueen wrote: >> >> Hi Max, >> >> For what it's worth - I agree very strongly with Carlos here. The community >> seems very "latched on" to minutes as the only/best way to hear from or >> understand the board. I believe that on the whole Philip and Federico as >> Secretary and Vice-Secretary have been doing as good a job as could >> reasonably be expected of them, in terms of keeping the process running and >> making sure the minutes happen and are published within weeks rather than >> months. It's certainly as good or as close to as good as I've seen it during >> the past few years, and as a time-starved collection of volunteers, I don't >> think it's feasible for an incoming director to promise that the preparation >> of minutes will change significantly. >> >> That said; we hear the concerns about timeliness and transparency but really >> - poring over summarised board minutes looking for decisions (or >> conspiriacies) and second-guessing justifications/motivations is not a good >> way to build trust and transparency. Communication should be more >> intentional and directed, ideally the board should be more accessible. This >> is why I blogged about the key topics and things we were aiming to do from >> our hackfest last year. >> >> I think that Carlos' GitLab and Discourse suggestions are great, and maybe >> there are some other things we could consider - some round table / AMA >> things - so that the board is in discussion with the membership more >> frequently than the big Q&A "meet the new board" at GUADEC. At this exact >> time, the new board don't really know what they're doing (or about to do) - >> at least I certainly didn't - so you might get intentions/aspirations but >> very little insight into what is actually ongoing and why. >> >> (As a side point, I am also not used to the concept that a board or other >> panel would /not/ periodically approve it's previous minutes - but I would >> also not expect a board to ordinarily meet every two weeks. We've moved from >> weekly to bi-weekly meetings during this board term, which is great, but >> ideally as we build trust/process/oversight in the ED and staff, the board >> shoul
Re: Question to candidates - Minutes of the board meeting
Hi Allan, Tristan, Carlos, Robert Thanks for the quick response. Thanks all of you give us more choice and tool. GNOME.Asia team also use gitlab issue board to co-work together. During the GNOME.Asia role, I learn about --- "Pass the information to the team members fast" is more better than "Think all method alone". We are all volunteer live in different time zone, we have real job and life. So we will do community task at rest time of real life. It's good to do community task in reasonable time. I think ask question to candidates during the election time -- we might be see how busy they are in real life. To guess how much time the candidates could spend on community tasks. If someone is real great but he / she is 100% or 90% busy in real life, she / he might be have no time to help. The date is for UTC +08:00 in my local time. * Philip Chimento: 2019/6/4 * Christel Dahlskjaer: 2019/6/4 * Benjamin Berg: 2019/6/4 * Allan Day: 2019/6/4 * Tristan Van Berkom: 2019/6/4 * Carlos Soriano: 2019/6/4 * Robert McQueen: 2019/6/5 * Britt Yazel * Niels De Graef * Federico Mena Quintero * Christopher Davis On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 4:55 AM Robert McQueen wrote: > Hi Max, > > For what it's worth - I agree very strongly with Carlos here. The > community seems very "latched on" to minutes as the only/best way to hear > from or understand the board. I believe that on the whole Philip and > Federico as Secretary and Vice-Secretary have been doing as good a job as > could reasonably be expected of them, in terms of keeping the process > running and making sure the minutes happen and are published within weeks > rather than months. It's certainly as good or as close to as good as I've > seen it during the past few years, and as a time-starved collection of > volunteers, I don't think it's feasible for an incoming director to promise > that the preparation of minutes will change significantly. > > That said; we hear the concerns about timeliness and transparency but > really - poring over summarised board minutes looking for decisions (or > conspiriacies) and second-guessing justifications/motivations is not a good > way to build trust and transparency. Communication should be more > intentional and directed, ideally the board should be more accessible. This > is why I blogged about the key topics and things we were aiming to do from > our hackfest last year. > > I think that Carlos' GitLab and Discourse suggestions are great, and maybe > there are some other things we could consider - some round table / AMA > things - so that the board is in discussion with the membership more > frequently than the big Q&A "meet the new board" at GUADEC. At this exact > time, the new board don't really know what they're doing (or about to do) - > at least I certainly didn't - so you might get intentions/aspirations but > very little insight into what is actually ongoing and why. > > (As a side point, I am also not used to the concept that a board or other > panel would /not/ periodically approve it's previous minutes - but I would > also not expect a board to ordinarily meet every two weeks. We've moved > from weekly to bi-weekly meetings during this board term, which is great, > but ideally as we build trust/process/oversight in the ED and staff, the > board should ideally have to meet less often.) > > As the staff team grows, more of the "stuff the foundation does" should > move away from the board making micro-decisions, and more towards "business > as usual" for the staff. Then the reporting and transparency requirement > moves from the board to the staff - especially as they are (by their very > existence) consuming donor funds. So I feel this transparency is also very > important. As the ED line manager, I think we've made some progress during > this term and have converted some of Neil's reporting to the board into eg > a blog post visible to the community, but clearer and more frequent updates > on "what is the foundation doing" particularly through the activities of > staff is something I would hope to be able to continue working on with Neil > and his team over the coming year. > > Thanks, > Rob > > On Tue, 2019-06-04 at 22:22 +0200, Carlos Soriano wrote: > > Hi Max, > > Thanks for your question. You raise a very good point, I agree with you > that we need to improve participation of the community on board topics, and > it's specially difficult if the information is delayed for too long. > > This is indeed a difficult situation. Some topics that the board discusses > are quite sensible, and sometimes we are in doubt whether parts of it are > private or not, so that requires consensus and theref
Re: Question to candidates - Minutes of the board meeting
Hi Max, For what it's worth - I agree very strongly with Carlos here. The community seems very "latched on" to minutes as the only/best way to hear from or understand the board. I believe that on the whole Philip and Federico as Secretary and Vice-Secretary have been doing as good a job as could reasonably be expected of them, in terms of keeping the process running and making sure the minutes happen and are published within weeks rather than months. It's certainly as good or as close to as good as I've seen it during the past few years, and as a time- starved collection of volunteers, I don't think it's feasible for an incoming director to promise that the preparation of minutes will change significantly. That said; we hear the concerns about timeliness and transparency but really - poring over summarised board minutes looking for decisions (or conspiriacies) and second-guessing justifications/motivations is not a good way to build trust and transparency. Communication should be more intentional and directed, ideally the board should be more accessible. This is why I blogged about the key topics and things we were aiming to do from our hackfest last year. I think that Carlos' GitLab and Discourse suggestions are great, and maybe there are some other things we could consider - some round table / AMA things - so that the board is in discussion with the membership more frequently than the big Q&A "meet the new board" at GUADEC. At this exact time, the new board don't really know what they're doing (or about to do) - at least I certainly didn't - so you might get intentions/aspirations but very little insight into what is actually ongoing and why. (As a side point, I am also not used to the concept that a board or other panel would /not/ periodically approve it's previous minutes - but I would also not expect a board to ordinarily meet every two weeks. We've moved from weekly to bi-weekly meetings during this board term, which is great, but ideally as we build trust/process/oversight in the ED and staff, the board should ideally have to meet less often.) As the staff team grows, more of the "stuff the foundation does" should move away from the board making micro-decisions, and more towards "business as usual" for the staff. Then the reporting and transparency requirement moves from the board to the staff - especially as they are (by their very existence) consuming donor funds. So I feel this transparency is also very important. As the ED line manager, I think we've made some progress during this term and have converted some of Neil's reporting to the board into eg a blog post visible to the community, but clearer and more frequent updates on "what is the foundation doing" particularly through the activities of staff is something I would hope to be able to continue working on with Neil and his team over the coming year. Thanks,Rob On Tue, 2019-06-04 at 22:22 +0200, Carlos Soriano wrote: > Hi Max, > Thanks for your question. You raise a very good point, I agree with > you that we need to improve participation of the community on board > topics, and it's specially difficult if the information is delayed > for too long. > > This is indeed a difficult situation. Some topics that the board > discusses are quite sensible, and sometimes we are in doubt whether > parts of it are private or not, so that requires consensus and > therefore delays happen. As you can imagine, we rely on volunteer > time to discuss and process them, and the availability of each > director and secretaries is limited. In all honesty, while this can > always be improved with our current processes, I think Philip > Chimento and Federico made an excellent job with minutes. > > However, let me comment about the lack of participation. I think one > of the reasons is that minutes are simply not the best tool for this. > Minutes feel to me too much of a one way communication, and on top of > that they are over email, which is not the most encouraging tool to > manage and track discussions. They are good for keeping a record, but > not so good for much else. Improving this situation was one of the > reasons we moved our key conversations to GitLab issues, so community > members could closely follow them and chime in directly if wanted. > > My vision to encourage more participation would be around using more > tooling such as GitLab and Discourse for board discussions, and on > top of that, keep pushing on our goal to put as early as possible key > initiatives there to allow members to actually participate. I believe > we have a big room to improve, specially with initiatives that are > not time sensible. > > Lastly, an interesting idea I think we could do is a round of > questions to the membership to know what topics they were interested > in and that we could have done better with their minutes. Although I > believe the board is always open to feedback, I personally look > forward to know about those. > > Thanks, > Carlos Soriano > > On Tue,
Re: Question to candidates - Minutes of the board meeting
Hi Max, Thanks for your question. You raise a very good point, I agree with you that we need to improve participation of the community on board topics, and it's specially difficult if the information is delayed for too long. This is indeed a difficult situation. Some topics that the board discusses are quite sensible, and sometimes we are in doubt whether parts of it are private or not, so that requires consensus and therefore delays happen. As you can imagine, we rely on volunteer time to discuss and process them, and the availability of each director and secretaries is limited. In all honesty, while this can always be improved with our current processes, I think Philip Chimento and Federico made an excellent job with minutes. However, let me comment about the lack of participation. I think one of the reasons is that minutes are simply not the best tool for this. Minutes feel to me too much of a one way communication, and on top of that they are over email, which is not the most encouraging tool to manage and track discussions. They are good for keeping a record, but not so good for much else. Improving this situation was one of the reasons we moved our key conversations to GitLab issues, so community members could closely follow them and chime in directly if wanted. My vision to encourage more participation would be around using more tooling such as GitLab and Discourse for board discussions, and on top of that, keep pushing on our goal to put as early as possible key initiatives there to allow members to actually participate. I believe we have a big room to improve, specially with initiatives that are not time sensible. Lastly, an interesting idea I think we could do is a round of questions to the membership to know what topics they were interested in and that we could have done better with their minutes. Although I believe the board is always open to feedback, I personally look forward to know about those. Thanks, Carlos Soriano On Tue, 4 Jun 2019 at 02:43, Max via foundation-list < foundation-list@gnome.org> wrote: > Hi all, > > Thanks for running for the board. > > Thanks everyone who want take times to make GNOME better. > Just a simple question about Minutes of the board meeting. > > Data and information might be different. > For me - a GNOME foundation member > > Data - Get "Minutes of the board meeting" after 1 month or 2 weeks after. > Because maybe the event is already close or over. > > Information - Get "Minutes of the board meeting" in 1 week or 10 days. > Because something might be happening and everyone could discuss with > board and reply. > > Here is the question > > Could you promise to think a way --- Everyone get "Minutes of the board > meeting" in a very close time? > > Here is my suggestion. > Maybe there will be a table to record the "Minutes of the board meeting" > announcement time and does it announce in short time? > > > > | board meeting | Minutes| in 10 days ? > | > > > | 2019/4/29 | 2019/5/22| No > | > > > | 2019/4/8 | 2019/5/15| No > | > > > | 2019/3/13 | 2019/5/15| No > | > > > > Maybe it could be a record in GNOME annual report？ > There are ? % for Minutes of the board meeting on time to announce. > > I want to say --- It not just secretary task, It's the information we want > to get from all GNOME Board member. > > Thanks again for all who take time to running the board > > > Max > > > > ___ > 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: Question to candidates: eco-friendliness
Hi Philip, Thanks for your question. The other candidates responded with lot of good ideas, I just want to say that they all look quite good to me and that If implementing some of those is helpful for the environment and increases mindshare about environment impact, that sounds like a win-win for all of us. So I won't add more on that side, the others already answered excellently. Let me try however to give another point of vision, as is not about what we can do to reduce our environmental impact, but rather what can we do to reduce it overall. As an organization, I think GNOME is already on the lowest environmental impact range already, we don't travel every day to an office in contrast with other organizations/companies as Jeremy very well pointed out. While we can lead by example, and we should, we have a greater power. That's our political reach. On the past I have been in doubt whether GNOME as an organization should take sides on certain possible political matters. This one however could be a good case. I believe we have the capacity to do a great social impact here by doing public statements, coordinating those with other FOSS organizations or contacting with companies that might be interested in this topic. From my studies in environmental science (I did one year at university, before switching to CS) what I learnt that we need most to reduce environmental impact is mindshare, social pressure and political impact, and that's what we excel at doing. I'm not sure how much is in our scope to do, but if we believe this is important for the community and helps with our mission I think it worth to try. Thanks, Carlos Soriano On Mon, 3 Jun 2019 at 19:11, Philip Withnall wrote: > Hi all, > > Thanks for running for the board! > > What steps do you think the Foundation could take to reduce its > environmental impact, and the environmental impact of the project as a > whole? > > I’m asking in more of an organisational sense than a technical sense. > It’s up to individual maintainers to ensure their software is not > resource-hungry, etc. > > I imagine this is the kind of question where it’s easy to just say > “yes, I care about environmental friendliness”, so I suggest you might > want to reply with your ideas about things the board could do to reduce > environmental impact — whether those things are big, small, incremental > steps to reduce our physical resource usage, or fundamental changes to > how we organise the project to reduce the impact of travel. It would be > interesting to hear them all, and how feasible/practical you think any > improvements are. > > Obviously, those who have already served on the board will have some > insight to share about what the board already does, and concrete ways > it could improve; hopefully this doesn’t disadvantage those who haven’t > already served on the board. > > Ta, > Philip > ___ > 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: Question to candidates: eco-friendliness
On Mon, 2019-06-03 at 18:10 +0100, Philip Withnall wrote: > Hi all, Hi Philip, > Thanks for running for the board! > > What steps do you think the Foundation could take to reduce its > environmental impact, and the environmental impact of the project as a > whole? Great question! Keeping us on our toes... :) As others have suggested, I think our ecological impact as a Foundation is most acute in travel, then after a significant gap, energy usage of our services, then probably anything else. As Allan pointed out, we've been pushing for increasing travel to hackfests etc as after our staff, hosting and organising events is the most significant and impactful way we can add momentum to project initiatives, giving something of an "opposing force" to any initiative to reduce travel. We've also (with only modest success) been trying to rotate the location of some of the conferences so that we're able to provide more local face to face events, potentially alleviating some of the requirement to travel larger distances. In terms of where the Board "legislates" I see two main places which we've looked at over the past year and could make some changes to what is required - the travel sponsorship policy, and the templates (and requirements) for evaluating hackfests and conference bids. Both seem very feasible to improve the consideration of environmental factors. In the travel policy, we could go ways potentially place requirements there, such as taking ground transfer when it is safe to do so and does not increase the journey time / cost more than a certain percentage - and/or (IRS permitting) making ground travel more comfortable/pleasant (eg allowing a first class upgrade etc) so we have both carrot and stick. The travel committee might have some more insight here. In the event approval processes, simply updating the templates to add a requirement to assess and then ameliorate the environmental impact means we can engage the ingenuity of the volunteers who are helping us to set up these events. Monitoring something changes the behaviour. Best practices or requirements could emerge from this (ie, if we see good ideas, we could roll them out as something we ask/look for specifically). In terms of energy usage, Andrea & team are already using cloud technology (OpenShift) to make more effective/dynamic use of our donated computing resources, which is a good way to get more "bang for buck" versus having statically scheduled machines idling away. Generally dynamic scaling for CI and other "intensive" workloads is a best-practice we do and should continue to follow. We should never use any crypto currencies. I think providing some "gold standard" real-time audio/video infrastructure for the use of the project would be a superb investment in time/infrastructure to allow more effective collaboration outside of events. We certainly practice this in the Board and make extensive use of Bluejeans and Uberconference for effective voice and video collaboration. It would be great to have a self-hosted and FOSS system we can use and make available for the project. There is quite a lot of other "cute stuff" like avoiding single-use plastics at conferences, un-necessary swag, having non-meat-eating days during events that are catered to reduce the carbon impact of food preparation, etc, but I suspect that one person taking a single transatlantic flight would obliterate the cumulative benefit from all of that. I think these things can and should be done "at the leaves" as everything helps, but the policy changes outlined above would be more impactful in effecting that change in a more persistent manner. > Obviously, those who have already served on the board will have some > insight to share about what the board already does, and concrete ways > it could improve; hopefully this doesn’t disadvantage those who > haven’t > already served on the board. My decision to "sleep on this" has made my answer look significantly less original. C'est la vie - however I think it's clear that there is some good alignment between candidates and we should be able to make concrete moves on at least high-level policy changes so that some of these factors are considered in the board's day to day activities. > Ta, > Philip Thanks, Rob > ___ > 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: Question to candidates - Minutes of the board meeting
Hi Max, On Tue, 2019-06-04 at 08:42 +0800, Max via foundation-list wrote: > Hi all, > > Thanks for running for the board. > > Thanks everyone who want take times to make GNOME better. > Just a simple question about Minutes of the board meeting. > > Data and information might be different. > For me - a GNOME foundation member > > Data - Get "Minutes of the board meeting" after 1 month or 2 weeks after. > Because maybe the event is already close or over. Thanks for expressing your concern about getting timely reports from the board, I understand that this is important for transparency and helps people to feel confident and well represented. In the past, I can recall going without any updates for many months and this can be frustrating, and I think the last few years have been much better by comparison. I would love to be able to promise to do better if elected, but as I have never served on the GNOME board before I am honestly not familiar with the obstacles to getting the minutes out in a timely manner. On the other hand, I am very familiar with circumstance of being suddenly swamped with urgent responsibilities, and I can understand that situations arise which cause one to fall behind on reporting ones activities. I think the most that we can expect of any board is that they do their best, and I am thankful that in times when their efforts as volunteers has been stretched thin, they have been able to prioritize on getting things done, even if we do not always get timely reports as a result. In all honesty I can only promise that we will do our best to be transparent and report in a timely manner, as I am sure other boards have made efforts, and have not always been as successful in this as recent boards have. Best Regards, -Tristan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates - Minutes of the board meeting
Hi Max, Max via foundation-list wrote: ... > Could you promise to think a way --- Everyone get "Minutes of the board > meeting" in a very close time? Thanks for the question and for raising this issue. It's really helpful for the board to know what the ongoing concerns of the membership are. I agree that fast publishing of the minutes is a good thing, and is something that we should improve on. In the past I did a short stint as secretary, and during that time I made it a priority to get the minutes out quickly, which I think I did, and I seem to recall that people reacted positively. The challenge is that speed of publishing depends on the board's capacity. To be blunt: we're busy there often aren't people queuing up to do the job. For example, Philip Chimento is our current secretary, but he's been tied up with some urgent, fairly time-consuming work for the Foundation (thanks Philip!), and no one has been able to take up the slack. But I do think that the board should work on this issue, and I can think of some options for what to do: 1. When the officers and responsibilities for the new board are decided, the board could opt to reduce the workload on the secretary. For example, they could be exempt from committee liaison responsibilities. 2. We can create a mechanism so that the board is updated about which minutes have been published. This could be an update from the secretary at the beginning of each meeting, or it could be an issue to which the board is subscribed. 3. The secretary doesn't have to be a director, so if there's no one on the board who is able to perform the role adequately, we could ask for volunteers and appoint someone from the community. The first point is something to consider when the new board takes over, the second is something that the board should look at as soon as its able, and the third is probably a fallback option to consider if things aren't going well. Thanks agin, Allan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates - Minutes of the board meeting
Hi Christel and Benjamin Thanks reply my question. I think people ask question -- Because they want to improve or resolve some problem, maybe the status is optimization. Thanks both of you give some suggestions. I remember there are few questions for Board candidates and not sure every candidates answer all of the question. Here is my thinking, I want to know. * Is there any way to improve Minutes of the board meeting? or something happen in GNOME. * What is the logic -- the board candidates will do? " Because it is a rule in wiki so keep it? " " I have an idea xx " " Do nothing or just vote because " I think maybe now is the best status or way to minutes of board meeting. But if no one say that " Now is the optimization the best one, there is no way to improve ", how could we know? I will ask the question because I meaning to me, If not every candidates answer most the question or no one ask question, how could we know if there are something happen, what will they do with them? Thanks again to Christel, Benjamin and Philip Max On Tue, Jun 4, 2019 at 5:16 PM Benjamin Berg wrote: > Hi, > > On Tue, 2019-06-04 at 08:42 +0800, Max via foundation-list wrote: > > Thanks everyone who want take times to make GNOME better. > > Just a simple question about Minutes of the board meeting. > > So, with the publication of the guidelines by the current board, the > expected time frame appears to be that minutes will usually be > published at the earliest 2 weeks after the meeting (I don't expect > minute approval to happen during a "working session"[1]). To be honest, > I not think that this is a time frame that allows Foundation members to > closely follow what is happening and to engage with the Board if there > is a topic of interest to them. > > I remember that in the student-council we generally published draft > minutes immediately after the meeting. This publication was posted on a > board (inside the university building), had to happen within three days > and would be signed by the secretary and session chair. The formal > approval would only happen in the next meeting (usually one week > later). > > Now, I don't expect that we can do exactly the same thing for the GNOME > Board. On the one hand there because are likely more topics that are of > a sensitive nature, on the other hand because it does not seem like a > good idea to post such preliminary minutes to a public mailing list. > > But maybe it is possible to create a faster path for information to > reach the membership. One thing I can imagine is to create a members > only mailing list specifically for posting preliminary minutes. But I > am really not sure whether such changes are at all feasible. > That said, this seems like a topic that may be worth exploring further, > for example by talking about it as part of a public "working session" > of the Board. > > Benjamin > > [1] https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard#Meetings > > > Data and information might be different. > > For me - a GNOME foundation member > > > > Data - Get "Minutes of the board meeting" after 1 month or 2 weeks > > after. > > Because maybe the event is already close or over. > > > > Information - Get "Minutes of the board meeting" in 1 week or 10 > > days. > > Because something might be happening and everyone could discuss > > with board and reply. > > > > Here is the question > > > > Could you promise to think a way --- Everyone get "Minutes of the > > board meeting" in a very close time? > > > > Here is my suggestion. > > Maybe there will be a table to record the "Minutes of the board > > meeting" announcement time and does it announce in short time? > > > > --- > > - > > | board meeting | Minutes| in 10 days ? > > | > > --- > > - > > | 2019/4/29 | 2019/5/22| No > > | > > --- > > - > > | 2019/4/8 | 2019/5/15| No > >| > > --- > > - > > | 2019/3/13 | 2019/5/15| No > > | > > --- > > - > > > > Maybe it could be a record in GNOME annual report？ > > There are ? % for Minutes of the board meeting on time to > > announce. > > > > I want to say --- It not just secretary task, It's the information we > > want to get from all GNOME Board member. > > > > Thanks again for all who take time to running the board > > > > > > Max > > > > > > > > ___ > > foundation-list mailing list > > foundation-list@gnome.org > > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list > __
Re: Question to candidates - Minutes of the board meeting
Hi, On Tue, 2019-06-04 at 08:42 +0800, Max via foundation-list wrote: > Thanks everyone who want take times to make GNOME better. > Just a simple question about Minutes of the board meeting. So, with the publication of the guidelines by the current board, the expected time frame appears to be that minutes will usually be published at the earliest 2 weeks after the meeting (I don't expect minute approval to happen during a "working session"[1]). To be honest, I not think that this is a time frame that allows Foundation members to closely follow what is happening and to engage with the Board if there is a topic of interest to them. I remember that in the student-council we generally published draft minutes immediately after the meeting. This publication was posted on a board (inside the university building), had to happen within three days and would be signed by the secretary and session chair. The formal approval would only happen in the next meeting (usually one week later). Now, I don't expect that we can do exactly the same thing for the GNOME Board. On the one hand there because are likely more topics that are of a sensitive nature, on the other hand because it does not seem like a good idea to post such preliminary minutes to a public mailing list. But maybe it is possible to create a faster path for information to reach the membership. One thing I can imagine is to create a members only mailing list specifically for posting preliminary minutes. But I am really not sure whether such changes are at all feasible. That said, this seems like a topic that may be worth exploring further, for example by talking about it as part of a public "working session" of the Board. Benjamin [1] https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard#Meetings > Data and information might be different. > For me - a GNOME foundation member > > Data - Get "Minutes of the board meeting" after 1 month or 2 weeks > after. > Because maybe the event is already close or over. > > Information - Get "Minutes of the board meeting" in 1 week or 10 > days. > Because something might be happening and everyone could discuss > with board and reply. > > Here is the question > > Could you promise to think a way --- Everyone get "Minutes of the > board meeting" in a very close time? > > Here is my suggestion. > Maybe there will be a table to record the "Minutes of the board > meeting" announcement time and does it announce in short time? > > --- > - > | board meeting | Minutes| in 10 days ? > | > --- > - > | 2019/4/29 | 2019/5/22| No > | > --- > - > | 2019/4/8 | 2019/5/15| No >| > --- > - > | 2019/3/13 | 2019/5/15| No > | > --- > - > > Maybe it could be a record in GNOME annual report？ > There are ? % for Minutes of the board meeting on time to > announce. > > I want to say --- It not just secretary task, It's the information we > want to get from all GNOME Board member. > > Thanks again for all who take time to running the board > > > Max > > > > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: eco-friendliness
Hi Philip! Philip Withnall wrote: ... > What steps do you think the Foundation could take to reduce its > environmental impact, and the environmental impact of the project as a > whole? I composed this in my head before seeing the other responses to your mail, so you'll have to forgive me if I repeat any of the points that have already been made First, thank you for raising this issue - we haven't seriously looked at the Foundation's environmental impact, and given the climate crisis we ought to look at this. Maybe the Foundation could even take a lead on this issue, which other free/open source projects could follow. I suspect that the biggest environmental impact that the Foundation has is through travel. The one concrete idea I've had for this in the past would be to amend the travel policy, to allow people to take ground transportation rather than flying, even if it comes at additional cost (within certain limits, of course). This would have to be discussed with the Travel Committee but it seems like a fairly straightforward, practical step. Outside of this, it gets a bit trickier. One of the Foundation's goals has actually been to facilitate *more* travel: we want more hackfests, greater attendance at our conferences, and so on. The other factor that makes it tricky is that the Foundation can only influence behaviour to a certain degree: we can encourage the community to hold certain types of events, and we can decide whether to support plans that are brought to us or not, but we can't independently decide which events will be held or where they will be held. That said, I think we should investigate all the options for both our travel policy and our events strategy. This might include some of the following: - Have hackfest organisers consider the carbon footprint of their event, particularly when it comes to picking a location - Encourage regional (ie. continental) events rather than global ones, and take steps to reduce the amount of intercontinental travel to these events - this might mean things like flying fewer people from Europe to GNOME.Asia and to our North American events (self-sustaining regional events are something that the Foundation should push to support anyway, I think) - Work to increase the number of local keynote speakers at our conferences, rather than those from other continents - Come up with innovative ways to avoid or limit travel. Ideas for this: - Remote "sprints" could replace hackfests in some cases. - Have linked events happen simultaneously in multiple-locations; for example, you could have a hackfest happen in one location in Europe and another in South America, and link them using video conferencing, or organise the work into location-specific streams. - Work to provide a reliable video conferencing solution for all Foundation members This is just a preliminary list of ideas and I think that we should ask the community to provide their own suggestions. The board should then consider the ideas we have, and ensure that any agreed changes are implemented. This is something that I'd be enthusiastic about and would certainly support, if I were re-elected. Thanks again, Allan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: eco-friendliness
El mar, 4 de jun 2019 a las 8:12 AM, Philip Chimento via foundation-list escribió: I think it would be interesting to experiment with all-remote hackfests, where we try to build an experience in between the normal "type text, hit submit, wait for text in return" interaction, and the resource- and time-intensive hackfest/conference experience. Not to replace either of them, but to supplement them. The board can't dictate that community members do this, but I would be interested in seeing how we could facilitate it. I think this is a great proposal. I've the same feeling, I want to participate more in some gnome hackfests but I don't have the time or energy to be travelling around the world, so this kind of remote hackfests sounds really interesting. There are tools that can help a lot with this, I think that we don't need *video*, something like mumble [1] will works for that kind of hackfests, with a room, or multiple rooms, and people working together and talking to each other. I hope this kind of hackfests will become a reality so we can collaborate from all around the world with people in real time and maybe we are able to find a mixed solution to have people in place and remote. Thanks a lot [1] https://www.flathub.org/apps/details/info.mumble.Mumble ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: eco-friendliness
Hi Philip, On Mon, 2019-06-03 at 18:10 +0100, Philip Withnall wrote: > Hi all, > > Thanks for running for the board! > > What steps do you think the Foundation could take to reduce its > environmental impact, and the environmental impact of the project as a > whole? > Thanks for raising this interesting and unexpected question. I do think that the limited resources we have at our disposal, such as compute resources for our infrastructure and CI and travel to conferences and hackfests are quite crucial to our mission, and it is probably in our interest as an organization to increase rather than decrease. However, we could see more efforts in being conscientious about how we use the resources we do use, and in our choices in terms of travel options and compute resources. Unfortunately having a limited budget implies reduced freedom of choice, it might make more environmental sense for attendees to a conference who live on the same continent to travel by train, but if that is more expensive, this would mean that we sponsor less contributors overall. Asides from how we use our own resources, we may be able to make some impact as a publicly visible organization with sponsors. For instance, if there were some way for us to commend or endorse some of our more environmentally friendly sponsors via the friends of GNOME programme (or similar), it may at least contribute to a trend of incentivizing companies to be more environmentally friendly, at the same time as being good publicity for sponsors who may choose to participate in such a "clean computing" campaign for instance. Of course a campaign like this would require a lot more thinking and work than my brief brainstorm reply here, just trying to throw something creative out there to chew on. Perhaps this could be material for a focus group to consider too, I'm sure that if some volunteers were to create such a group to focus on this, the GNOME board will be happy to discuss and support initiatives they come up with for environmental friendliness. Cheers, -Tristan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: eco-friendliness
Hi Philip, On Mon, Jun 3, 2019 at 10:11 AM Philip Withnall wrote: > Hi all, > > Thanks for running for the board! > > What steps do you think the Foundation could take to reduce its > environmental impact, and the environmental impact of the project as a > whole? > > I’m asking in more of an organisational sense than a technical sense. > It’s up to individual maintainers to ensure their software is not > resource-hungry, etc. > > I imagine this is the kind of question where it’s easy to just say > “yes, I care about environmental friendliness”, so I suggest you might > want to reply with your ideas about things the board could do to reduce > environmental impact — whether those things are big, small, incremental > steps to reduce our physical resource usage, or fundamental changes to > how we organise the project to reduce the impact of travel. It would be > interesting to hear them all, and how feasible/practical you think any > improvements are. > > Obviously, those who have already served on the board will have some > insight to share about what the board already does, and concrete ways > it could improve; hopefully this doesn’t disadvantage those who haven’t > already served on the board. > I tend to think it's more likely to disadvantage those who answer later, since the candidates who responded already have mentioned a number of ideas that I wish I had thought of first. So I had better get my response in now :-P I am trying to think what I can contribute to this discussion that others haven't already, and what I've come up with that I'm personally interested in, is figuring out how it might be possible to change the GNOME culture to make it easier to participate in hackfests remotely. I have tried remote participation with a few GNOME hackfests and it's difficult. That may sound odd coming from me since I have worked 100% remote for the last 6 years but I do have to say it's a lot harder to do it in GNOME than in a work environment. We tend to go either fully text-based/asynchronous, or fully face-to-face. Either we send our merge requests and our blog posts, and most of the time we don't pay too much attention to the human side, or we go to the other extreme and travel to a hackfest or conference where we spend 16 hours a day hacking, presenting, and celebrating in each others' company for a short, intense time. There is no in between. In fact I believe this is problematic for other reasons than the environment, as I've seen a number of instances of flame-first-ask-questions-later on GNOME mailing lists in the past year, that I hope would not have escalated so badly if people were actually talking out loud with their voices to another person's face on their screen. I see a few reasons for these extremes, first of all it's difficult to get human connection outside of the face-to-face events. People don't have time (e.g. I personally am okay to write this email to foundation-list at 11 PM whereas I would not get on a video call at that time). Also people have varying levels of comfort with video calls which we need to respect. Second, we don't really have much precedent for remote participants in hackfests. On the occasions when I've tried it, I've been the only one. Third, the free software tools for video calling and remote collaboration are quite far behind the proprietary tools. Furthermore I'm not sure that fixing this is where the expertise of the GNOME community lies. I think it would be interesting to experiment with all-remote hackfests, where we try to build an experience in between the normal "type text, hit submit, wait for text in return" interaction, and the resource- and time-intensive hackfest/conference experience. Not to replace either of them, but to supplement them. The board can't dictate that community members do this, but I would be interested in seeing how we could facilitate it. Regards, -- Other Philip ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: eco-friendliness
Hi Philip, First of all, thanks for awareness on this issue. As the board, I think we can make 2 areas of impact here: to add (hard/soft) requirements to the travel policy and to give guidelines for events. Whether the decisions we make should be considered as rules/guidelines or hints will of course depend on how strictly we enforce them. Hence, these shouldn't be too restrictive (or no-one will follow them) nor without exceptions (because every situation is different in its own right). The first and most obvious aspect is to give extra requirements/guidelines for the travel policy. One example is to ask people to take public transport (train/bus/...) if the event is within a fixed distance -decided by the board- of their home. As sponsors, we should consider the possible extra cost of the train over other modes of transportation. Valid motivations for the contrary exist (little to no public transport available; big increases in travel time or expenses; ...), but should become more of an exception than the rule. For organisers of sponsored events, we can publish some useful guidelines, such as always having to post online on how to get there using public transport. Exceptions can exist here also, but we should consider if we really want to go somewhere that requires everyone to take a car. For attendees of events/hackfests, we can make a small set of "reminders" that can be used as a basis on events. As an example, we can ask attendees to bring their own refillable cups/bottles (which is useful when the venue provides a way of washing them). It might even be nice to sell some GNOME-themed cups/bottles, which gives us a small stream of revenue and gives people a cool accessoire. Kind regards, Niels On Mon, Jun 3, 2019 at 7:11 PM Philip Withnall wrote: > > Hi all, > > Thanks for running for the board! > > What steps do you think the Foundation could take to reduce its > environmental impact, and the environmental impact of the project as a > whole? > > I’m asking in more of an organisational sense than a technical sense. > It’s up to individual maintainers to ensure their software is not > resource-hungry, etc. > > I imagine this is the kind of question where it’s easy to just say > “yes, I care about environmental friendliness”, so I suggest you might > want to reply with your ideas about things the board could do to reduce > environmental impact — whether those things are big, small, incremental > steps to reduce our physical resource usage, or fundamental changes to > how we organise the project to reduce the impact of travel. It would be > interesting to hear them all, and how feasible/practical you think any > improvements are. > > Obviously, those who have already served on the board will have some > insight to share about what the board already does, and concrete ways > it could improve; hopefully this doesn’t disadvantage those who haven’t > already served on the board. > > Ta, > Philip > ___ > 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: Question to candidates - Minutes of the board meeting
Hi Max, and thank you for the question, Generally speaking I tend to be of the opinion that meetings should be efficient and expedient, and for a large distributed community where meetings are generally held behind closed doors I believe communication should be expedient too so as to ensure transparency and foster engagement; I appreciate that all members of the Board of Directors will be volunteering their time and that sometimes an agenda item might not get closed during the meeting at which the item is raised due to outstanding action points and the need to follow up on information. That said, the board meets weekly and while not all of these meetings result in public minutes, I cannot see any reason why a future board couldn't look at (considering the frequency of meetings) the fairly standardised approach of having the approval of the previous meeting minutes be a fixed agenda item to ensure that the minutes are published no later than around one week after the meeting in question. Any ongoing action items, etc., could and should be noted as such and revisited in the agenda for subsequent meetings and updates provided in relevant later minutes. Cheers, Christel On Tue, Jun 4, 2019 at 6:15 AM Max via foundation-list < foundation-list@gnome.org> wrote: > Hi Philip and all > > Thanks for reply the mail. > Yes, I know the guidelines for meeting minutes. > I know the 2 weeks and I want to say 10 days just an example not a real > number. ( So my question is ask Board to think a way, I just suggestion ) > During the my role of GNOME.Asia team, I wrote some minutes [1] too. > > For your question: > "I would also like to ask you: what do you think would help encourage the > kind of discussion you are looking for, other than minutes published after > 7 or 10 days?" > I want to encourage more discussion with GNOME Board, in the other > hands, how many discussion with Minutes of Board meetings or directly to > GNOME board last year? > So my thinking is -- if the minutes cloud mail in more close time ( 2 > weeks is a good time ), I think people might be more discuss with others > or GNOME board ( Or maybe not? ) > > I know the correct information is also important, but I just want to know > if the minutes is more close -- maybe people would discuss more or want to > do more. > for example: some minutes about GNOME.Asia --- when I see it with > Board minutes -- it already over and I just know what discuss in the board. > --- and that's the reason I want to ask the question. > > Thanks again to Philips work hard and reply my e-mail, and sorry for my > poor English :p > > > [1] https://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeAsia/Minutes > > > Max > > On Tue, Jun 4, 2019 at 11:57 AM wrote: > >> On Mon, Jun 3, 2019 at 5:43 PM Max via foundation-list < >> foundation-list@gnome.org> wrote: >> >>> Hi all, >>> >>> Thanks for running for the board. >>> >>> Thanks everyone who want take times to make GNOME better. >>> Just a simple question about Minutes of the board meeting. >>> >>> Data and information might be different. >>> For me - a GNOME foundation member >>> >>> Data - Get "Minutes of the board meeting" after 1 month or 2 weeks after. >>> Because maybe the event is already close or over. >>> >>> Information - Get "Minutes of the board meeting" in 1 week or 10 days. >>> Because something might be happening and everyone could discuss >>> with board and reply. >>> >>> Here is the question >>> >>> Could you promise to think a way --- Everyone get "Minutes of the board >>> meeting" in a very close time? >>> >>> Here is my suggestion. >>> Maybe there will be a table to record the "Minutes of the board meeting" >>> announcement time and does it announce in short time? >>> >>> >>> >>> | board meeting | Minutes| in 10 days ? >>> | >>> >>> >>> | 2019/4/29 | 2019/5/22| No >>> | >>> >>> >>> | 2019/4/8 | 2019/5/15| No >>>| >>> >>> >>> | 2019/3/13 | 2019/5/15| No >>>| >>> >>> >>> >>> Maybe it could be a record in GNOME annual report？ >>> There are ? % for Minutes of the board meeting on time to announce. >>> >>> I want to say --- It not just secretary task, It's the information we >>> want to get from all GNOME Board member. >>> >>> Thanks again for all who take time to running the board >>> >> >> Hi Max, >> >> This question seems quite relevant and timely, and as I'm sure you know >> publishing the minutes has been my responsibility over the last year. You
Re: Question to candidates - Minutes of the board meeting
Hi Philip and all Thanks for reply the mail. Yes, I know the guidelines for meeting minutes. I know the 2 weeks and I want to say 10 days just an example not a real number. ( So my question is ask Board to think a way, I just suggestion ) During the my role of GNOME.Asia team, I wrote some minutes [1] too. For your question: "I would also like to ask you: what do you think would help encourage the kind of discussion you are looking for, other than minutes published after 7 or 10 days?" I want to encourage more discussion with GNOME Board, in the other hands, how many discussion with Minutes of Board meetings or directly to GNOME board last year? So my thinking is -- if the minutes cloud mail in more close time ( 2 weeks is a good time ), I think people might be more discuss with others or GNOME board ( Or maybe not? ) I know the correct information is also important, but I just want to know if the minutes is more close -- maybe people would discuss more or want to do more. for example: some minutes about GNOME.Asia --- when I see it with Board minutes -- it already over and I just know what discuss in the board. --- and that's the reason I want to ask the question. Thanks again to Philips work hard and reply my e-mail, and sorry for my poor English :p [1] https://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeAsia/Minutes Max On Tue, Jun 4, 2019 at 11:57 AM wrote: > On Mon, Jun 3, 2019 at 5:43 PM Max via foundation-list < > foundation-list@gnome.org> wrote: > >> Hi all, >> >> Thanks for running for the board. >> >> Thanks everyone who want take times to make GNOME better. >> Just a simple question about Minutes of the board meeting. >> >> Data and information might be different. >> For me - a GNOME foundation member >> >> Data - Get "Minutes of the board meeting" after 1 month or 2 weeks after. >> Because maybe the event is already close or over. >> >> Information - Get "Minutes of the board meeting" in 1 week or 10 days. >> Because something might be happening and everyone could discuss with >> board and reply. >> >> Here is the question >> >> Could you promise to think a way --- Everyone get "Minutes of the board >> meeting" in a very close time? >> >> Here is my suggestion. >> Maybe there will be a table to record the "Minutes of the board meeting" >> announcement time and does it announce in short time? >> >> >> >> | board meeting | Minutes| in 10 days ? >> | >> >> >> | 2019/4/29 | 2019/5/22| No >> | >> >> >> | 2019/4/8 | 2019/5/15| No >>| >> >> >> | 2019/3/13 | 2019/5/15| No >> | >> >> >> >> Maybe it could be a record in GNOME annual report？ >> There are ? % for Minutes of the board meeting on time to announce. >> >> I want to say --- It not just secretary task, It's the information we >> want to get from all GNOME Board member. >> >> Thanks again for all who take time to running the board >> > > Hi Max, > > This question seems quite relevant and timely, and as I'm sure you know > publishing the minutes has been my responsibility over the last year. You > may have noticed that I just replied on another foundation-list thread that > I am proposing a guideline to the board for best practices around minutes > [1]. > > I can speak about my experience publishing the minutes. Looking back over > the 2018-2019 board term that I've served, sometimes it's been easy for me > to get the minutes done by the time of the next board meeting, and > sometimes, as you have noticed, it takes longer. As being a director is a > volunteer position I don't think it's feasible to always require it to be > done in 7 or 10 days. Sometimes it is delayed waiting for information that > needs to be included in the minutes or because another director needs to > carry out an action item first. It seems to have been inevitable in > practice every year that there are sometimes delays despite each > secretary's best intentions. My personal opinion in a situation like this > where a short schedule has not proved sustainable, is that there's no point > in saying "I'll just do the same thing, but faster next time" as that is > likely to fail. > > We could require the responsibility of writing the minutes to rotate > through all 7 directors so that everyone only has to do it once in a few > months, but I believe that it's actually important to have the same person > continue to write the minutes, so that they are written with a consistent > voice and level of detail as much
Re: Question to candidates - Minutes of the board meeting
On Mon, Jun 3, 2019 at 5:43 PM Max via foundation-list < foundation-list@gnome.org> wrote: > Hi all, > > Thanks for running for the board. > > Thanks everyone who want take times to make GNOME better. > Just a simple question about Minutes of the board meeting. > > Data and information might be different. > For me - a GNOME foundation member > > Data - Get "Minutes of the board meeting" after 1 month or 2 weeks after. > Because maybe the event is already close or over. > > Information - Get "Minutes of the board meeting" in 1 week or 10 days. > Because something might be happening and everyone could discuss with > board and reply. > > Here is the question > > Could you promise to think a way --- Everyone get "Minutes of the board > meeting" in a very close time? > > Here is my suggestion. > Maybe there will be a table to record the "Minutes of the board meeting" > announcement time and does it announce in short time? > > > > | board meeting | Minutes| in 10 days ? > | > > > | 2019/4/29 | 2019/5/22| No > | > > > | 2019/4/8 | 2019/5/15| No > | > > > | 2019/3/13 | 2019/5/15| No > | > > > > Maybe it could be a record in GNOME annual report？ > There are ? % for Minutes of the board meeting on time to announce. > > I want to say --- It not just secretary task, It's the information we want > to get from all GNOME Board member. > > Thanks again for all who take time to running the board > Hi Max, This question seems quite relevant and timely, and as I'm sure you know publishing the minutes has been my responsibility over the last year. You may have noticed that I just replied on another foundation-list thread that I am proposing a guideline to the board for best practices around minutes [1]. I can speak about my experience publishing the minutes. Looking back over the 2018-2019 board term that I've served, sometimes it's been easy for me to get the minutes done by the time of the next board meeting, and sometimes, as you have noticed, it takes longer. As being a director is a volunteer position I don't think it's feasible to always require it to be done in 7 or 10 days. Sometimes it is delayed waiting for information that needs to be included in the minutes or because another director needs to carry out an action item first. It seems to have been inevitable in practice every year that there are sometimes delays despite each secretary's best intentions. My personal opinion in a situation like this where a short schedule has not proved sustainable, is that there's no point in saying "I'll just do the same thing, but faster next time" as that is likely to fail. We could require the responsibility of writing the minutes to rotate through all 7 directors so that everyone only has to do it once in a few months, but I believe that it's actually important to have the same person continue to write the minutes, so that they are written with a consistent voice and level of detail as much as possible. Part of my proposal linked above, the section named "Delays" [2], is that the secretary should have the draft minutes ready to be approved after 13 days, to give board members 24 hours to read them before the start of the meeting two weeks later. I hope that by putting the minutes as the first item on the agenda for every board meeting, that will provide a consistent motivation for the secretary to generally have them ready to publish after 14 days, and also normalize that the secretary should ask another director to prepare the minutes when their schedule is busy. I don't think this will eliminate all delays, but I do think it will help share the work among the directors and also make more visible to the membership when delays occur and when to expect the delay to be solved. I would also like to ask you: what do you think would help encourage the kind of discussion you are looking for, other than minutes published after 7 or 10 days? [1] https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/Guidelines [2] https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/Guidelines#Appendix:_Delays Regards, -- Philip ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Question to candidates - Minutes of the board meeting
Hi all, Thanks for running for the board. Thanks everyone who want take times to make GNOME better. Just a simple question about Minutes of the board meeting. Data and information might be different. For me - a GNOME foundation member Data - Get "Minutes of the board meeting" after 1 month or 2 weeks after. Because maybe the event is already close or over. Information - Get "Minutes of the board meeting" in 1 week or 10 days. Because something might be happening and everyone could discuss with board and reply. Here is the question Could you promise to think a way --- Everyone get "Minutes of the board meeting" in a very close time? Here is my suggestion. Maybe there will be a table to record the "Minutes of the board meeting" announcement time and does it announce in short time? | board meeting | Minutes| in 10 days ? | | 2019/4/29 | 2019/5/22| No | | 2019/4/8 | 2019/5/15| No | | 2019/3/13 | 2019/5/15| No | Maybe it could be a record in GNOME annual report？ There are ? % for Minutes of the board meeting on time to announce. I want to say --- It not just secretary task, It's the information we want to get from all GNOME Board member. Thanks again for all who take time to running the board Max ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: eco-friendliness
Hi Philip and thank you for the question, I currently have little insight into how environmental impact factors into the cost-benefit analyses that the Foundation carries out in relation to meetings, events and general expenditure so my answer will be fairly broad and a bit open-ended perhaps. Open-ended in so far that perhaps the upcoming BoD should, if no such work has been carried out already, assess what measures the organisation does and could take to limit environmental impact without harming the future governance of the project and without making the threshold for contributing and becoming part of the community higher. Ideally such an assessment would result in a proposed policy document to govern the way in which the organisation makes the decisions while also taking the environment into account. More specifically, albeit broad due to the lack of insight into any such current or previous activities, I would say that there are several smaller steps we can take; - Ensuring that we make responsible decisions when it comes to our supply chain for swag, event materials, etc., (and packaging of same) aiming to strike a balance where we look at using suppliers that use recycled materials without this being offset by innumerable travel miles or other costs that it would be difficult for a non-profit of our size to cover. - Ensuring that we encourage event organisers (whether local bid winners for the larger events such as GUADEC and GNOME.ASIA or those arranging smaller hackfests, etc.) to consider the materials they use for event signage, etc., discouraging the use of plastic and, as appropriate, encouraging the printing of reusable materials for recurring events (provided the reduction in waste does not result in a steep financial outlay and a greater carbon footprint due to subsequent storage and shipping). - Discouraging unnecessary travel/meetings while also being mindful of the benefits face-to-face events and meetings have and the positive impact those improved interpersonal dynamics may have on collaborative projects in general and aiming to strike a balance that looks after both the health of the community, interests of the organisation and the planet alike. - We could even take tiny steps such as ensuring that when we remind those attending GUADEC in Thessaloniki to stay hydrated in the Greek heat, we also encourage seasoned GUADEC attendees to bring their GNOME water bottles and to refill to refuel rather than buying a new single-use bottle each time thirst sets in! - Encourage the use of virtual events/meetings/hackfests/whatever to reduce travel while also encouraging broader participation from those community members who are prevented from travelling due to cost and personal/professional commitments that otherwise make it difficult for them to attend an in-person event. - Continuing to ensure that we minimise our reliance on hardcopies when it comes to paperwork, aiming to receive and send electronically where possible. I am sure there are a number of other things we could look at too, but those are the things that pop into mind without having a greater understanding of the current situation when it comes to leaving our GNOME footprint on planet earth! Best, Christel On Mon, Jun 3, 2019 at 6:11 PM Philip Withnall wrote: > Hi all, > > Thanks for running for the board! > > What steps do you think the Foundation could take to reduce its > environmental impact, and the environmental impact of the project as a > whole? > > I’m asking in more of an organisational sense than a technical sense. > It’s up to individual maintainers to ensure their software is not > resource-hungry, etc. > > I imagine this is the kind of question where it’s easy to just say > “yes, I care about environmental friendliness”, so I suggest you might > want to reply with your ideas about things the board could do to reduce > environmental impact — whether those things are big, small, incremental > steps to reduce our physical resource usage, or fundamental changes to > how we organise the project to reduce the impact of travel. It would be > interesting to hear them all, and how feasible/practical you think any > improvements are. > > Obviously, those who have already served on the board will have some > insight to share about what the board already does, and concrete ways > it could improve; hopefully this doesn’t disadvantage those who haven’t > already served on the board. > > Ta, > Philip > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list > -- *Christel Dahlskjaer* *Chief Communications Officer* chris...@londontrustmedia.com UK: 07475431271 International: +44 7475431271 London Trust Media, Inc. // Private Internet Access https://londontrustmedia.com // https://privateinternetaccess.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https:/
Re: Question to candidates: eco-friendliness
This one hits me where I live :-). I work for a company which has over 100,000 employees, all of whom it forces to commute into central offices, despite being one of the planer's largest internet companies. Quite frankly, it's insane. I would argue for face-to-face meetings to be the exception, rather than the rule, and encourage Gnome developers to help create the world's best videoconferencing collaboration stack. I understand that personal travel for young developers can be a great way to integrate them into FLOSS teams (I'm on the way to a conference hoping to do that right now) but I feel this should be focussed on new/early stage career developers and more established folks should really try and motivate local talent without having to fly around the world producing an obscene carbon footprint. I'd encourage local groups, connected by Gnome developed internet technology. The more we use this ourselves, the better we're going to have to make it work. With the end of Moore's law we also need to start making our code more efficient on smaller machines. Avoiding crypto-currencies which seem to me to be an alien conspiracy to burn as much power as possible to cook the planet would also help (FYI, in case anyone misunderstands me, that's a joke. I don't really believe this :-). This is a long term problem which will require effort on many fronts to help everyone. Jeremy On Mon, Jun 3, 2019, 10:11 AM Philip Withnall wrote: > Hi all, > > Thanks for running for the board! > > What steps do you think the Foundation could take to reduce its > environmental impact, and the environmental impact of the project as a > whole? > > I’m asking in more of an organisational sense than a technical sense. > It’s up to individual maintainers to ensure their software is not > resource-hungry, etc. > > I imagine this is the kind of question where it’s easy to just say > “yes, I care about environmental friendliness”, so I suggest you might > want to reply with your ideas about things the board could do to reduce > environmental impact — whether those things are big, small, incremental > steps to reduce our physical resource usage, or fundamental changes to > how we organise the project to reduce the impact of travel. It would be > interesting to hear them all, and how feasible/practical you think any > improvements are. > > Obviously, those who have already served on the board will have some > insight to share about what the board already does, and concrete ways > it could improve; hopefully this doesn’t disadvantage those who haven’t > already served on the board. > > Ta, > Philip > ___ > 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: Question to candidates: eco-friendliness
Hi, On Mon, 2019-06-03 at 18:10 +0100, Philip Withnall wrote: > What steps do you think the Foundation could take to reduce its > environmental impact, and the environmental impact of the project as a > whole? It is an interesting question. I really believe that this is an important issue and that we have an issue with worldwide politics either not doing enough to hold their promises or even actively undermining efforts. But, I also believe that environmental politics is outside of the scope of the GNOME Foundation. So while I personally do encourage every Foundation member to be active, I also doubt that it makes sense for the Foundation to take a strong political stance on the issue. That said, we can and probably should try to change in some regards. You mentioned travel, and an easy change we can quickly implement would be to explicitly ask everyone to offset their carbon footprint when travelling and reimbursing the additional cost for everyone who is Foundation sponsored. I also know that some organisations have started to make it mandatory to consider environmental impact in their decision making process. I expect that at least some individuals have made considerations like this when e.g. buying swag for events. That said, I do think it is perfectly reasonable and desirable for the Foundation to decide that these factors should or must be taken into account when making spending decisions. With regard to development on GNOME to e.g. support older hardware and prolong their lifetime (waste reduction), I do currently see such initiatives as normal development efforts that would be supported by the Foundation as usual. Benjamin > I’m asking in more of an organisational sense than a technical sense. > It’s up to individual maintainers to ensure their software is not > resource-hungry, etc. > > I imagine this is the kind of question where it’s easy to just say > “yes, I care about environmental friendliness”, so I suggest you might > want to reply with your ideas about things the board could do to reduce > environmental impact — whether those things are big, small, incremental > steps to reduce our physical resource usage, or fundamental changes to > how we organise the project to reduce the impact of travel. It would be > interesting to hear them all, and how feasible/practical you think any > improvements are. > > Obviously, those who have already served on the board will have some > insight to share about what the board already does, and concrete ways > it could improve; hopefully this doesn’t disadvantage those who haven’t > already served on the board. > > Ta, > Philip > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Question to candidates: eco-friendliness
Hi all, Thanks for running for the board! What steps do you think the Foundation could take to reduce its environmental impact, and the environmental impact of the project as a whole? I’m asking in more of an organisational sense than a technical sense. It’s up to individual maintainers to ensure their software is not resource-hungry, etc. I imagine this is the kind of question where it’s easy to just say “yes, I care about environmental friendliness”, so I suggest you might want to reply with your ideas about things the board could do to reduce environmental impact — whether those things are big, small, incremental steps to reduce our physical resource usage, or fundamental changes to how we organise the project to reduce the impact of travel. It would be interesting to hear them all, and how feasible/practical you think any improvements are. Obviously, those who have already served on the board will have some insight to share about what the board already does, and concrete ways it could improve; hopefully this doesn’t disadvantage those who haven’t already served on the board. Ta, Philip signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: Best use of Trademark Fundraiser money?
On Sun, 2015-05-24 at 21:52 +0100, Magdalen Berns wrote: > Hi Andreas, > > I think most of us haven't seen latest the accounts yet, but I think > it's > probably fair to assume that a war chest of ~$100,000 is probably a > wee bit > excessive. ;-) It doesn't sound like a lot of money to me. It's probably not enough to fight a single trademark case in court in the US - you'd need two or three times as much money [1, 2]. Regards, Liam [1] http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2013/05/23/trademark-protection-is-litigation-worth-the-cost/ [2] http://tcattorney.typepad.com/ip/2011/05/trademark-infringement-lawsuits.html -- Liam R. E. Quin http://www.fromoldbooks.org/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: Best use of Trademark Fundraiser money?
On Sun, 2015-05-24 at 19:23 +0200, Andreas Nilsson wrote: > Dear candidates. Thank you all for running! > > As part of the GNOME Trademark Fundraiser [1], the Foundation raised > $102 608 USD. > Since the trademark claims from the other part in the issue was > withdrawn, it was never taken to court and the money was never spent on > that. > What, in your mind, is the best use of these funds now? Kept as a War > Chest [2] or spent on something specific? We should allocate at least some of that money towards hiring a new Executive Director. An ED is expensive, easily the largest single line item in the budget. But a good ED will help us bring in more money, allowing us to run more campaigns and more hackfests. -- Shaun ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: Best use of Trademark Fundraiser money?
Hey Andreas, Andreas Nilsson wrote: > Dear candidates. Thank you all for running! > > As part of the GNOME Trademark Fundraiser [1], the Foundation raised $102 > 608 USD. > > Since the trademark claims from the other part in the issue was withdrawn, > it was never taken to court and the money was never spent on that. > What, in your mind, is the best use of these funds now? Kept as a War Chest > [2] or spent on something specific? Really good question. From my perspective, there are two critical issues here: 1. It is important that people who have donated money see that it is being put to good use. If they don't, they might not be willing to donate again in the future. 2. We don't want donors to feel that they have been tricked, or that the money is being spent in a different spirit to how it was donated. Therefore, my view is that we need to speak publicly about the funding as quickly as possible, so people know what is happening with it, and we need to identify a use for the funds that reflects the goals of the fund-raising campaign - defending GNOME. Investing it in ways that strengthens the legal position of the project would make sense here, and we could seek advice on this. That said, I don't have a particularly strong opinion on what the money should be specifically spent on (and we don't have to spend it all on one thing). What I do believe is that we need to act to ensure that people feel that their donation is being put to good use. Allan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: Best use of Trademark Fundraiser money?
On Sun, May 24, 2015 at 07:23:01PM +0200, Andreas Nilsson wrote: > As part of the GNOME Trademark Fundraiser [1], the Foundation raised $102 > 608 USD. > Since the trademark claims from the other part in the issue was withdrawn, > it was never taken to court and the money was never spent on that. > What, in your mind, is the best use of these funds now? Kept as a War Chest > [2] or spent on something specific? As stated in the fundraiser, "If we are able to defend the mark without spending this amount, we will use the remaining funds to bolster and improve GNOME.". That applies to *all* money directly donated to GNOME, as well. If, in working with the people we worked with on the Groupon issue, we get legal advice that suggests we'd be in a stronger position to defend GNOME by registering trademarks in additional countries, or otherwise getting specific legal structures into place, I think it makes sense to use some of the funds for that purpose; however, that would be a *very* small fraction of the funds raised. I also don't think it's worth keeping all of that money aside in a "war chest" in anticipation of a future legal issue that may never arise. So, I would suggest that after we consider any potential follow-up legal protections we're advised to take, we place the funds into the general GNOME Foundation account as we would any donations directly to the Foundation. I don't think it makes sense to earmark these funds for any particular purpose other than legal issues, and legal issues should not take up any significant fraction of these funds. I also don't think it makes sense to plan a project that involves spending that entire sum at once, rather than putting it in the GNOME Foundation account where it can be used as needed towards purposes that improve GNOME. - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: Best use of Trademark Fundraiser money?
2015-05-24 19:23 GMT+02:00 Andreas Nilsson : > Since the trademark claims from the other part in the issue was withdrawn, > it was never taken to court and the money was never spent on that. > What, in your mind, is the best use of these funds now? Kept as a War Chest > [2] or spent on something specific? The Board this year didn't have much time to discuss further how to spend this amount or even a chunk of it. While I would be for keeping part of this amount as part of the Foundation's cash reserves (for when we'll be hiring an ED, possible other legal issues) I'm open to ideas from the community and will be more than happy to discuss with other Board members which of these proposals is more inherent to the "bolster and improve GNOME" goal we promised to our donors at first. -- Cheers, Andrea Debian Developer, Fedora / EPEL packager, GNOME Infrastructure Team Coordinator, GNOME Foundation Board of Directors Secretary, GNOME Foundation Membership & Elections Committee Chairman Homepage: http://www.gnome.org/~av ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: Best use of Trademark Fundraiser money?
Hi Andreas, One of the things is an ED, I think everyone agrees here... On the other hand, I have specific items in mind, but I really don't know the drawbacks of them, since I don't know why we didn't do it before. So it needs discussion. I think we have to fix the "where is the money I gave to the foundation went? Did it achieve the goals? How does it affect me directly?" One thing that I had in mind is, show the community that their money is spend in something that directly affects them (and not only long-time developers, like spending the money on GUADEC or so). I really think we have to show that to those people. For example allocating some money for bountysource or so, in this way we can choose some bugs that we think are priority to fix, and we can say "part of your money was spend in this specific thing that will affect directly to you". Another thing I had in mind is a "GNOME excellency program". Read as, a GSOC for one person and directly paid by GNOME. The problem with GSOC is that is only for students. And the "issue" with Outreachy is that is only for women. So the way I imagine it is, one important specific project that people has to "compete" to be elected to do it, and we offer a little bigger amount than GSOC to promote it. In this way we can achieve a specific goal, independent of the person, so here the goal is not to gain new people, but to achieve the goal of the project. In this way we can also say to the community "part of your money was spend in a very great developer, to fix this long-standing issue that directly affects you". I think spending 10% of the money in those initiatives are not that much, and send a message to the community and improves the image of GNOME towards them. But I also believe we need to have a little war chest and I understand big part of the money goes to hackfests, etc. Cheers, Carlos Soriano - Original Message - | Dear candidates. Thank you all for running! | | As part of the GNOME Trademark Fundraiser [1], the Foundation raised | $102 608 USD. | Since the trademark claims from the other part in the issue was | withdrawn, it was never taken to court and the money was never spent on | that. | What, in your mind, is the best use of these funds now? Kept as a War | Chest [2] or spent on something specific? | | 1. https://www.gnome.org/groupon/ | 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_chest | - Andreas | ___ | 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: Question to candidates: Best use of Trademark Fundraiser money?
Hi, On Sun, May 24, 2015 at 7:23 PM, Andreas Nilsson wrote: > As part of the GNOME Trademark Fundraiser [1], the Foundation raised $102 > 608 USD. > Since the trademark claims from the other part in the issue was withdrawn, > it was never taken to court and the money was never spent on that. > What, in your mind, is the best use of these funds now? Kept as a War Chest > [2] or spent on something specific? Keeping it all as a war chest doesn't make much sense to me. As others have already said, we should spend it to "bolster and improve GNOME" but what this will mean remains to be defined. I think this will mostly mean that when a proposal to spend some money on something will arrive, we'll be a bit more confortable as this reserve gives us some leeway. However I don't think we can decide to spend a huge chunk of it on a specific item as this was not raised with a specific goal apart from the trademark issue which is no more. -- Alexandre Franke ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: Best use of Trademark Fundraiser money?
Hi Liam, On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 12:09 AM, Liam R. E. Quin wrote: > On Sun, 2015-05-24 at 21:52 +0100, Magdalen Berns wrote: > > Hi Andreas, > > > > I think most of us haven't seen latest the accounts yet, but I think > > it's > > probably fair to assume that a war chest of ~$100,000 is probably a > > wee bit > > excessive. ;-) > > It doesn't sound like a lot of money to me. It's probably not enough > to fight a single trademark case in court in the US - you'd need two > or three times as much money [1, 2]. > Just as well Groupon didn't catch on to that before they conceded then ;-) GNOME originally registered as a public benefit cooperation (i.e. a charity) so our income must be substantially related to GNOME's exempt purposes or it could be taxable and as you can see $100,000 would normally amount to a significant chunk of our average annual income.[1] So, I still agree with Tobias and I also agree with everything Cosimo has said, on this: There really ought to be some compelling reason for us to want to sit on that kind of money rather than invest it back into the project. I'll leave it there, so the rest of the candidates can answer. Magdalen [1] http://rct.doj.ca.gov/Verification/Web/Details.aspx?agency_id=1&license_id=1043846&; ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: Best use of Trademark Fundraiser money?
Hi Andreas, On Sun, May 24, 2015 at 10:23 AM, Andreas Nilsson wrote: > As part of the GNOME Trademark Fundraiser [1], the Foundation raised $102 > 608 USD. > Since the trademark claims from the other part in the issue was withdrawn, > it was never taken to court and the money was never spent on that. > What, in your mind, is the best use of these funds now? Kept as a War > Chest [2] or spent on something specific? > It's hard to answer this question without a good understanding of the Foundation cash flow, and even then economics is not my best skill :-) Having said that, assuming the Foundation has some cash reserves outside this "war chest", I don't think keeping the money in the bank is the best use of it, as it will quickly lose its value over time; I don't have a single specific idea in mind, but I would like the money to be spent "on people". GNOME is in the unique position to be able to support and connect people with the same or converging interests. This can take many concrete shapes: outreach into new communities, bounties for features or fixes, conferences and many more. In other words, I would love to see that money used in a way that leaves the GNOME community enriched with more human capital, and that criteria would guide my choices on how to spend it. Cosimo ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: Best use of Trademark Fundraiser money?
Hi Andreas, Thanks for your question! On Sun, May 24, 2015 at 6:44 PM, Tobias Mueller wrote: > Hi! > > On So, 2015-05-24 at 19:23 +0200, Andreas Nilsson wrote: > > What, in your mind, is the best use of these funds now? Kept as a War > > Chest [2] or spent on something specific? > I don't have a particular idea for those funds (as opposed to the funds > earmarked for Security and Privacy), so I am open to ideas. But we must > stick to what we promised to our donors: "If we are able to defend the > mark without spending this amount, we will use the remaining funds to > bolster and improve GNOME." I think most of us haven't seen latest the accounts yet, but I think it's probably fair to assume that a war chest of ~$100,000 is probably a wee bit excessive. ;-) so in principle, I'd echo Tobias and also advocate we take ideas from members like yourself on what we ought to spend surplus funds on in order to "bolster and improve GNOME". Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: Best use of Trademark Fundraiser money?
Hi! On So, 2015-05-24 at 19:23 +0200, Andreas Nilsson wrote: > What, in your mind, is the best use of these funds now? Kept as a War > Chest [2] or spent on something specific? I don't have a particular idea for those funds (as opposed to the funds earmarked for Security and Privacy), so I am open to ideas. But we must stick to what we promised to our donors: "If we are able to defend the mark without spending this amount, we will use the remaining funds to bolster and improve GNOME." Cheers, Tobi ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Question to candidates: Best use of Trademark Fundraiser money?
Dear candidates. Thank you all for running! As part of the GNOME Trademark Fundraiser [1], the Foundation raised $102 608 USD. Since the trademark claims from the other part in the issue was withdrawn, it was never taken to court and the money was never spent on that. What, in your mind, is the best use of these funds now? Kept as a War Chest [2] or spent on something specific? 1. https://www.gnome.org/groupon/ 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_chest - Andreas ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates
On Thu, 2013-06-06 at 01:29 +0200, Tobias Mueller wrote: > Hi Gil, everyone. > > On 26.05.2013 22:17, Gil Forcada wrote: > > but what about relations with > > companies and GNOME's ecosystem. GNOME has a large advisory board and > > there are lots of companies and interests around it. Do you feel > > comfortable and up to the task for that too? > Yes I do. And I think it is necessary for us to keep current advisory > board members happy and to try to find new ones. I wouldn't necessarily > actively engage with them though, as I think Karen is better suited for > that. But I would if it becomes necessary. Are the current advisory members happy? How do we measure that? By *we* I mean GNOME Foundation represented by you, the board of directors. -- Germán Poo-Caamaño http://calcifer.org/ signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates
Hi Gil, everyone. On 26.05.2013 22:17, Gil Forcada wrote: > but what about relations with > companies and GNOME's ecosystem. GNOME has a large advisory board and > there are lots of companies and interests around it. Do you feel > comfortable and up to the task for that too? Yes I do. And I think it is necessary for us to keep current advisory board members happy and to try to find new ones. I wouldn't necessarily actively engage with them though, as I think Karen is better suited for that. But I would if it becomes necessary. Cheers, Tobi ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates
On 2013-05-26 16:17, Gil Forcada wrote: I saw that most of your candidacy descriptions talk about community, empowering and improving foundation tasks, but what about relations with companies and GNOME's ecosystem. GNOME has a large advisory board and there are lots of companies and interests around it. Do you feel comfortable and up to the task for that too The Adboards generous donations keep us running and allows things such as hackfests to happen. That's great! I think it's very important that we not only make sure to keep our current members, but look for opportunities to engage with new companies and organizations. - Andreas ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates
On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 1:17 PM, Gil Forcada wrote: > Hi all! > > First of all thanks for running for being elected as a director of the > foundation. > > I saw that most of your candidacy descriptions talk about community, > empowering and improving foundation tasks, but what about relations with > companies and GNOME's ecosystem. GNOME has a large advisory board and > there are lots of companies and interests around it. Do you feel > comfortable and up to the task for that too? > > Hi Gil, thanks for your question. Since I work in an environment were I do in fact work with an external company I feel fairly comfortable interacting with companies. Once, you've spent a lot of time spending time defending GNOME to the external community, you're going to be pretty confident about GNOME with both its strengths and weaknesses. sri > Cheers, > Gil > > -- > Gil Forcada > > [ca] guifi.net - una xarxa lliure que no para de créixer > [en] guifi.net - a non-stopping free network > bloc: http://gil.badall.net > planet: http://planet.guifi.net > > ___ > 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: Question to candidates
- Original Message - > From: "Gil Forcada" > To: "foundation-list" > Sent: Sunday, May 26, 2013 4:17:42 PM > Subject: Question to candidates > > Hi all! > > First of all thanks for running for being elected as a director of the > foundation. > > I saw that most of your candidacy descriptions talk about community, > empowering and improving foundation tasks, but what about relations with > companies and GNOME's ecosystem. GNOME has a large advisory board and > there are lots of companies and interests around it. Do you feel > comfortable and up to the task for that too? Yes. I'm interested in getting a better understanding of the needs of all stakeholders and how we can develop the project and the community in ways that address them. Thanks, Marina > > Cheers, > Gil > > -- > Gil Forcada > > [ca] guifi.net - una xarxa lliure que no para de créixer > [en] guifi.net - a non-stopping free network > bloc: http://gil.badall.net > planet: http://planet.guifi.net > > ___ > 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
Question to candidates
Hi all! First of all thanks for running for being elected as a director of the foundation. I saw that most of your candidacy descriptions talk about community, empowering and improving foundation tasks, but what about relations with companies and GNOME's ecosystem. GNOME has a large advisory board and there are lots of companies and interests around it. Do you feel comfortable and up to the task for that too? Cheers, Gil -- Gil Forcada [ca] guifi.net - una xarxa lliure que no para de créixer [en] guifi.net - a non-stopping free network bloc: http://gil.badall.net planet: http://planet.guifi.net ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: on-line services
On Wed, Jun 8, 2011 at 4:25 PM, Frederic Peters wrote: > > > I believe it is clear, from past board actions (e.g. the snowy > > hackfest) that such services are something we want to encourage, with > > our money and brand, but it seems we only have few developers engaging > > with the web, do you think the GNOME foundation should reach out to > > other communities (Mozilla? Apache? Midguard?) to foster developments > > in this area? (I am particularly interested in Stormy answer, as a > > Mozilla insider). > >(and what do you think the board can do wrt this?) > > Pretty ping? > I think that web services are very important (as I've said before.) I also think we have more people than we think working on them. What we need is an expanded vision for GNOME (or clarified version of what a desktop means) so that everyone can work towards the same vision and we can communicate it to potential partners. I think without an expanded definition/vision, it's very hard to reach out to other communities or companies who might work with us. Stormy ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: on-line services
I wrote : > Bastien Nocera wrote: > > > I'm not sure that administration, hardware, or the likes are the major > > blockers for this sort of problem. What's really missing is the cloud > > services themselves. > > > > When we do get a cloud service worth offering for the whole of our > > community, we'll find a way to get past the financial hurdles. > > Of course we cannot do everything by ourselves, but it has been > repeated many times that when something needs to be fixed, no matter > the layer, we'll get to fix it properly, this has been notably true > when going to layers down the "desktop", for example you didn't wait > for a kernel hacker to fix the bluetooth stack. > > I believe it is clear, from past board actions (e.g. the snowy > hackfest) that such services are something we want to encourage, with > our money and brand, but it seems we only have few developers engaging > with the web, do you think the GNOME foundation should reach out to > other communities (Mozilla? Apache? Midguard?) to foster developments > in this area? (I am particularly interested in Stormy answer, as a > Mozilla insider). (and what do you think the board can do wrt this?) Pretty ping? Fred ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: on-line services
On Fri, 2011-05-27 at 00:27 +0200, Gil Forcada wrote: > Everyday more and more services are offered on the cloud and there's > also initiatives powered by Free Software (tomboy on-line...). > > One of the main problems for Free Software projects providing cloud > services is the hardware/administration/connection expenses which are > mostly a no-go for a Free Software project without any backing from a > big corporation. > > As a member of a the future board will you look for ways to promote and > look for resources to offer these free software cloud services? Maybe > part of a funding campaign (be a Friend of GNOME and have a Tomboy > on-line account for free). I don't have a strong opinion on GNOME's take on this (hence also my late answer). :) GNOME could recommend using free (as in speech) services but must not exclude users from using popular closed services either. A (naive?) idea could be to highlight those services being free in online service account creation dialogs that exist in GNOME. With regard to hosting services ourselves we might miss developers (as fredp pointed out), and input from the infrastructure team is required on potential hardware limitations that we might run into by providing more services ourselves. While a service provided by GNOME should be free (as in both speech and beer) it could still create some revenue by either advertising Friends of GNOME and values of freedom, or also by providing additional paid services (but that's rather up to its developers and maintainers IMO). andre -- mailto:ak...@gmx.net | failed http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper | http://www.openismus.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: on-line services
Cloud computing actually represents the future of innovation, Let's not be so quick to proclaim a future that we might want to avoid. "Cloud computing" is a nebulous term; it means using Internet servers. There are many ways to use servers; some pose ethical problems and some don't. Even if the server is running all free software, it might do various bad things to its users -- or it might not. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html for a discussion of one issue that applies to some network services. There are other issues too. People should think carefully before using an Internet service, and should consult their consciences before developing one. So it would be wise to avoid terms such as "cloud computing" that encourage making a blanket decision, without considering the issues of each case. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org, www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use free telephony http://directory.fsf.org/category/tel/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: on-line services
Bastien Nocera wrote: > I'm not sure that administration, hardware, or the likes are the major > blockers for this sort of problem. What's really missing is the cloud > services themselves. > > When we do get a cloud service worth offering for the whole of our > community, we'll find a way to get past the financial hurdles. Of course we cannot do everything by ourselves, but it has been repeated many times that when something needs to be fixed, no matter the layer, we'll get to fix it properly, this has been notably true when going to layers down the "desktop", for example you didn't wait for a kernel hacker to fix the bluetooth stack. I believe it is clear, from past board actions (e.g. the snowy hackfest) that such services are something we want to encourage, with our money and brand, but it seems we only have few developers engaging with the web, do you think the GNOME foundation should reach out to other communities (Mozilla? Apache? Midguard?) to foster developments in this area? (I am particularly interested in Stormy answer, as a Mozilla insider). Thanks, Fred ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: on-line services
Gil: On 05/26/11 17:27, Gil Forcada wrote: Hi members, Everyday more and more services are offered on the cloud and there's also initiatives powered by Free Software (tomboy on-line...). One of the main problems for Free Software projects providing cloud services is the hardware/administration/connection expenses which are mostly a no-go for a Free Software project without any backing from a big corporation. Thanks for the great question. The GNOME community already provides a lot of great on-line services ranging from source code control systems, a CRM system, and a significant web presence. So, I think it is important to recognize that this is not something completely new. The main development is that such services seem to be more end-user focused rather than developer focused. I helped in these efforts by helping to push the Tomboy Online hackfest in the past year. One challenge that has been hampering efforts in this vein has been the fact that GNOME's server hardware has been aging. Over the past couple of years, the board has been working with the community to address these issues, but there is more to do. As a member of a the future board will you look for ways to promote and look for resources to offer these free software cloud services? Maybe part of a funding campaign (be a Friend of GNOME and have a Tomboy on-line account for free). Most specific decisions on how to run Friends of GNOME and do such promotion is handled by GNOME Marketing Team. Many board members are a part of the Marketing Team, so there is some overlap. I am supportive of any campaign to improve the presence of GNOME and free software online services. Brian ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: on-line services
On Fri, 2011-05-27 at 00:27 +0200, Gil Forcada wrote: > Hi members, > > Everyday more and more services are offered on the cloud and there's > also initiatives powered by Free Software (tomboy on-line...). > > One of the main problems for Free Software projects providing cloud > services is the hardware/administration/connection expenses which are > mostly a no-go for a Free Software project without any backing from a > big corporation. > > As a member of a the future board will you look for ways to promote and > look for resources to offer these free software cloud services? Maybe > part of a funding campaign (be a Friend of GNOME and have a Tomboy > on-line account for free). I'm not sure that administration, hardware, or the likes are the major blockers for this sort of problem. What's really missing is the cloud services themselves. When we do get a cloud service worth offering for the whole of our community, we'll find a way to get past the financial hurdles. Cheers ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: on-line services
On Fri, 2011-05-27 at 00:27 +0200, Gil Forcada wrote: > Hi members, > > Everyday more and more services are offered on the cloud and there's > also initiatives powered by Free Software (tomboy on-line...). > > One of the main problems for Free Software projects providing cloud > services is the hardware/administration/connection expenses which are > mostly a no-go for a Free Software project without any backing from a > big corporation. > > As a member of a the future board will you look for ways to promote and > look for resources to offer these free software cloud services? Maybe > part of a funding campaign (be a Friend of GNOME and have a Tomboy > on-line account for free). > I don't think the Foundation can engage in setting up a service for this, but what it can do is to engage in discussions with companies that offer this kind of services. Then, on the technical side, there could be a common interface so that GNOME apps could work with any service provided by any company willing to. An example might be CouchDB, which is already used in Ubuntu One, for instance. So GNOME apps could just use CouchDB for replication of data and users could just use the service they want. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: on-line services
On 05/27/2011 06:27 AM, Gil Forcada wrote: Hi members, Everyday more and more services are offered on the cloud and there's also initiatives powered by Free Software (tomboy on-line...). One of the main problems for Free Software projects providing cloud services is the hardware/administration/connection expenses which are mostly a no-go for a Free Software project without any backing from a big corporation. As a member of a the future board will you look for ways to promote and look for resources to offer these free software cloud services? Maybe part of a funding campaign (be a Friend of GNOME and have a Tomboy on-line account for free). I also think that online services is the trend and is another area where we are rather weak (free software in general, not only GNOME) for the reasons that you highlighting (hardware, administration, connection, etc). From all the questions that have been asked I see a lot of requests from the community to the board to act upon. If elected I will try to get the board to draft a global strategy to which we will all agree and work jointly on executing, rather than each of us driving individual projects we feel are important. In fact we should decide to foster innovation (and lines of code) in specific areas that are important to the project and financially support those individuals, projects, or events that are in line with our strategy. And so yes online services should be considered, and i personally would vote for it to be on our strategy road map. Pockey Cheers, ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: on-line services
Le jeudi 26 mai 2011 à 21:02 -0400, Shaun McCance a écrit : > I think Tomboy Online is awesome. I think we should provide > more online services ourselves. I also think there's nothing > wrong with charging money for providing a service. Maybe the > foundation can't do it as a non-profit. Maybe we need to have > a commercial front as well. I don't know. But it's something > we should all talk about. (Speaking as a complete newbie as regards US law about nonprofits.) I don't think being a nonprofit is an issue here. You can charge users for the service you provide, and even use potential benefits in other areas of your activities (hackfests, employees...). But of course you can't get that money out of the foundation (members are not shareholders). So I'd say there's no problem with setting up online services that users would pay for (or only some of them, e.g. above a certain amount of GB used). But I guess the current directors can give more details about the law aspect of it. Regards ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: on-line services
On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 4:27 PM, Gil Forcada wrote: > > As a member of a the future board will you look for ways to promote and > look for resources to offer these free software cloud services? Maybe > part of a funding campaign (be a Friend of GNOME and have a Tomboy > on-line account for free). > > I am a big fan of making sure online services are free in the sense of free software. I pushed hard and encourage where ever possible for Tomboy Online and for Tomboy Online to be hosted by the GNOME Foundation. I think we can create and host even more free online services. I think with more users will come more use models. I think we could keep our numbers small and charge for the service - many of us would be willing to pay for free/open services. Or we can find other business models like the basic model is free and you pay for additional features. There are many models to explore, but I think creating the services and getting users is the first step. I think there is a great need for free and open web services/cloud computing/. Stormy ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: on-line services
On Fri, 2011-05-27 at 00:27 +0200, Gil Forcada wrote: > Hi members, > > Everyday more and more services are offered on the cloud and there's > also initiatives powered by Free Software (tomboy on-line...). > > One of the main problems for Free Software projects providing cloud > services is the hardware/administration/connection expenses which are > mostly a no-go for a Free Software project without any backing from a > big corporation. > > As a member of a the future board will you look for ways to promote and > look for resources to offer these free software cloud services? Maybe > part of a funding campaign (be a Friend of GNOME and have a Tomboy > on-line account for free). Yes. :) I think we all recognize that we need to integrate with more online services. We don't need to provide them all, but we should provide some. For things we don't provide, I think we should do what we can to pressure service providers to respect users. At the very least, users need to own their own data, and be able to get it without restriction. We don't have to do this alone. I think Tomboy Online is awesome. I think we should provide more online services ourselves. I also think there's nothing wrong with charging money for providing a service. Maybe the foundation can't do it as a non-profit. Maybe we need to have a commercial front as well. I don't know. But it's something we should all talk about. -- Shaun ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: on-line services
Hi Gil, 2011/5/27 Gil Forcada : > As a member of a the future board will you look for ways to promote and > look for resources to offer these free software cloud services? Maybe > part of a funding campaign (be a Friend of GNOME and have a Tomboy > on-line account for free). Cloud computing actually represents the future of innovation, and having a full and well integrated cloud service available (for free) to use for every single user is something I would really love to see happening within GNOME. While I totally support your idea, I also think that finding the needed resources and money to deploy our service will be really hard especially during the current economic crisis. (I would prefer seeing those money being spent for hackfests, GNOME events and release parties to promote and improve GNOME at this time) But never say never, if the GNOME Foundation will ever find a big company willing to sponsor this service, I will be more than happy to propose it to other Board's members and vote for it to make it happen. Thanks for the very nice question, you definitely touched a topic I particularly care of. cheers, Andrea ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Question to candidates: on-line services
Hi members, Everyday more and more services are offered on the cloud and there's also initiatives powered by Free Software (tomboy on-line...). One of the main problems for Free Software projects providing cloud services is the hardware/administration/connection expenses which are mostly a no-go for a Free Software project without any backing from a big corporation. As a member of a the future board will you look for ways to promote and look for resources to offer these free software cloud services? Maybe part of a funding campaign (be a Friend of GNOME and have a Tomboy on-line account for free). Cheers, -- Gil Forcada [ca] guifi.net - una xarxa lliure que no para de créixer [en] guifi.net - a non-stopping free network bloc: http://gil.badall.net planet: http://planet.guifi.net ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [question to candidates] GNOME OS
Hi Richard, (we are not candidates and shouldn't derail this thread but just a quick response) On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 1:36 AM, Richard Stallman wrote: > I really think the GNOME OS idea is a very good one, that is, making > GNOME provide access to configuration and features of the underlying OS, > so that it is a complete desktop that can deal with everything the users > would ever need from a desktop. > > The idea is fine, but calling it "GNOME OS" is confusing since GNOME > was designed to be part of the GNU operating system. Someone else > suggested "GNOME Desktop System" -- that avoids the confusion. I see what you are saying but I don't think this reflects the view of the people most actively involved in this project. It certainly doesn't represent the view of the people I work with while designing GNOME. The conversation you are taking part in is related to acknowledging that we have been designing GNOME as an operating system for quite some time. > But at the same time we have people from OSes other than Linux > interested in using GNOME, > > Linux isn't an operating system, it's a kernel. I think you're > talking about the GNU system but calling it "Linux". > > That's a big misunderstanding. GNOME has no special relationship > with Linux but does have one with the GNU system (see gnome.org). It is true that Linux is just a kernel. However, GNOME does have a special relationship with Linux. A GNOME OS very likely would be built from Linux and many GNU tools. I think you will see that this will be a very effective way to advance the reach of free software. So, I don't think this is a point worth debating. Anyway, let's not derail this thread. I'd prefer to listen to what the candidates have to say. :) Thanks, Jon ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [question to candidates] GNOME OS
Andy: On 05/26/11 04:51, Andy Wingo wrote: You just used the name "Richard Stallman" as a token for "this argument is invalid." You then proceeded to call someone stalinist; was it Richard? Was it GNOME OS proponents? Unclear. This was a poor attempt at humor, I guess. With my words I was only trying to discourage a divisive attitude such as Richard sometimes seems to when he talks about "GNU/Linux". I clearly failed miserably. In any case, it's quite offensive, especially coming from a member of and candidate for the board. Apologies, I did not mean to offend. Brian ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [question to candidates] GNOME OS
Hi Brian, On Wed 25 May 2011 18:30, Brian Cameron writes: > Using the GNOME brand to foster divisions within the Free Software or > GNU/Linux community, to me, feels like the sort of thing Richard > Stallman would be into. While I love free software, I personally do > not drink this sort of Stalinist kool-aid. You just used the name "Richard Stallman" as a token for "this argument is invalid." You then proceeded to call someone stalinist; was it Richard? Was it GNOME OS proponents? Unclear. In any case, it's quite offensive, especially coming from a member of and candidate for the board. Andy -- http://wingolog.org/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [question to candidates] GNOME OS
On 05/25/2011 02:24 PM, Frederic Peters wrote: Hello all, GNOME OS has been mentioned and questioned repeatedly in recent discussions on desktop-devel-list, about its definition itself[1], and the changing (or not?) role of the GNOME project with regards to distributions (based or not on the Linux kernel). What are your thougths on this?[2] Do you think this is a foundation job to answer those questions? If not, is this a responsibility of the release team? Or something that is best left unanswered, as pieces are put into positions by different persons? My contributions being mainly in the promotion and marketing areas (as I am a non-technical contributor) I have difficulties to fully understand what GNOME OS exactly means. It surely is a great marketing term but does it mean we become a GNOME/Linux distribution or does it mean we tightly integrate with a specific kernel where functionalities provided merge deeply with that kernel? Or does it mean something else? I tend to care more about the visible parts of GNOME and how accessible we make our desktop to all kinds of people, leaving the technical bits to the experts. Now, to answer the second question I believe the foundation is here to represent its members and assist them in their endeavors whichever those are (to some extend and within the GNOME project). I find it very unrealistic for the foundation to dictate technical decisions if the foundation doesn't have manpower to implement them. The community (each and everyone voicing their opinion) should come up with an idea of what GNOME OS is and the foundation should make it understandable to our users and people outside of the project, promote it and support that idea. Thank you. Pockey Thanks, Fred [1] http://live.gnome.org/GnomeOS doesn't help, the only laid out plan I know was in Jon McCann "Shell Yes!" talk at GUADEC (now locked on slideshare.net) [2] this question comes first but in terms of candidacies to the board, I believe the next ones are even more important. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [question to candidates] GNOME OS
I really think the GNOME OS idea is a very good one, that is, making GNOME provide access to configuration and features of the underlying OS, so that it is a complete desktop that can deal with everything the users would ever need from a desktop. The idea is fine, but calling it "GNOME OS" is confusing since GNOME was designed to be part of the GNU operating system. Someone else suggested "GNOME Desktop System" -- that avoids the confusion. But at the same time we have people from OSes other than Linux interested in using GNOME, Linux isn't an operating system, it's a kernel. I think you're talking about the GNU system but calling it "Linux". That's a big misunderstanding. GNOME has no special relationship with Linux but does have one with the GNU system (see gnome.org). -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org, www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use free telephony http://directory.fsf.org/category/tel/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [question to candidates] GNOME OS
On Wed, 2011-05-25 at 08:24 +0200, Frederic Peters wrote: > GNOME OS has been mentioned and questioned repeatedly in recent > discussions on desktop-devel-list, about its definition itself[1], > and the changing (or not?) role of the GNOME project with regards > to distributions (based or not on the Linux kernel). > > What are your thougths on this?[2] Do you think this is a foundation > job to answer those questions? If not, is this a responsibility of the > release team? Or something that is best left unanswered, as pieces are > put into positions by different persons? To me the term "GNOME OS" has both a technical and a marketing aspect which are of course linked to each other. I consider the technical one rather a release-team topic while the marketing one is something to be handled by the marketing team and/or the board. On a marketing level, it is about strengthening the brand "GNOME" towards existing and potential customers which are currently distributions. Technically, "GNOME OS" seems to imply pushing for a higher level of standardization and integration with Linux platforms which might lead to increased adaption of our stack, with the backlash for other (less spread) Unix-based platforms to potentially have more work to integrate GNOME. However I consider this to be the reality already with most GNOME developers using Linux, hence no radical change here. GNOME should be welcoming to contributions making parts of the GNOME stack that are either focused on Linux or Linux-only also support other platforms. If this is not feasible because of highly increased code complexity (which seems to be a likely case e.g. for systemd) these parts of the stack must at least define and provide stable interfaces for potential implementations on non-Linux platforms and should welcome especially non-Linux platform developers to get involved in discussions on API introductions/changes for such projects. Currently I don't see anything to "decide" for the board or the release team on the topic "GNOME OS" since its definition is vague. Plus I am not convinced that the term "GNOME OS" instead of "GNOME" helps us pushing our technology, especially after the moduleset redefinition that clarified what the GNOME Core is in combination with the increased freedom on the application level (Let the market and its users decide on the latter level). andre -- mailto:ak...@gmx.net | failed http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper | http://www.openismus.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [question to candidates] GNOME OS
On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 12:24 AM, Frederic Peters wrote: > Hello all, > > GNOME OS has been mentioned and questioned repeatedly in recent > discussions on desktop-devel-list, about its definition itself[1], > and the changing (or not?) role of the GNOME project with regards > to distributions (based or not on the Linux kernel). > > What are your thougths on this?[2] Do you think this is a foundation > job to answer those questions? If not, is this a responsibility of the > release team? Or something that is best left unanswered, as pieces are > put into positions by different persons? > I think it's up to the GNOME community to decide. However, I think the GNOME project lacks a common, well communicated technical vision. I think many people are doing great things but even if we don't all agree on one vision for the future, we do need to decide which ideas or visions we want the GNOME Foundation to promote. Is GNOME a set of technologies that we want other distros and mobile solution providers to use? Is it GNOME if it's not the GNOME desktop? Are the technologies a subset of GNOME? Should it be an OS? Once we have answers we are willing to talk about, it will be much easier to work with other projects and companies. I don't think we have to have a common, defined vision, but I think it would be good. While I think it unlikely we will all agree completely, I think having a vision that we communicate will get us a lot further towards our goal of a free and accessible desktop. And I do think our vision should be expanded to be much more than "desktop". At the very least it should include mobile devices. But I think the board's role is to help start and facilitate those discussions and then help communicate the results to all our (new and existing) partners. Stormy > > > Thanks, > >Fred > > [1] http://live.gnome.org/GnomeOS doesn't help, the only laid out >plan I know was in Jon McCann "Shell Yes!" talk at GUADEC (now >locked on slideshare.net) > > [2] this question comes first but in terms of candidacies to the >board, I believe the next ones are even more important. > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list > ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [question to candidates] GNOME OS
Hello Frederic :) On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 1:24 AM, Frederic Peters wrote: > Hello all, > > GNOME OS has been mentioned and questioned repeatedly in recent > discussions on desktop-devel-list, about its definition itself[1], > and the changing (or not?) role of the GNOME project with regards > to distributions (based or not on the Linux kernel). > > What are your thougths on this?[2] Do you think this is a foundation > job to answer those questions? If not, is this a responsibility of the > release team? Or something that is best left unanswered, as pieces are > put into positions by different persons? > My personal take on GNOME OS is that it certainly is ambitious, I like the idea of expanding our user experience to a the system and not just the desktop shell and some applications. There'll always be some rough edges since we primarily hack on top of Linux but I believe good will always take us to common interfaces and APIs. It would be foolish to think we can coordinate every known system/distributor out there on what /we/ want before we actually do it. Disclaimer: I've never worked on the low level parts of our stack, so maybe I'm being naive :-). As for the Foundation, I'll agree with what others already said: technical matters are to be evaluated by release-team/maintainers. However we can influence this with Hackfests or sponsoring work on a certain area. I'll echo Ryan that the current approach of "let-happen-what-will-happen" can have negative consequences, I believe the approach of Feature Proposals we are seeing can give us better planning and more fruitful discussions. This remined me that when we usually ask ourselves about "technical lead" or "making things clear", I wonder if a team doing a lot of coordination work (not decisions, working closely with RT) to get everyone on the same channel would be a more efficient investment. In my personal experience, sometimes hackers were missing the proper introduction or a mediator to get things flowing. I'd like to explore this as a solution under a more formal process than just "beer budget". Thanks for the question! ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [question to candidates] GNOME OS
hi Frederic, On Wed, 2011-05-25 at 08:24 +0200, Frederic Peters wrote: > GNOME OS has been mentioned and questioned repeatedly in recent > discussions on desktop-devel-list, about its definition itself[1], > and the changing (or not?) role of the GNOME project with regards > to distributions (based or not on the Linux kernel). > > What are your thougths on this?[2] Do you think this is a foundation > job to answer those questions? If not, is this a responsibility of the > release team? Or something that is best left unanswered, as pieces are > put into positions by different persons? I echo the comments from the other participants that this is not a question for the board of directors. The board is not qualified to make these types of decisions. The consensus in the community *seems* to be that GNOME OS is a compelling idea, and I agree with that. What's left unanswered is what our responsibility is to people who don't buy entirely into that vision. On one end, do we consider non-Linux systems? On the other end, do we consider non-gnome-shell desktops? Personally, I lean towards inclusiveness. I think that it's extremely important for us to continue to focus on uses of our developer platform that fall outside of the "GNOME OS" vision. I think that wide use of our developer platform is a great way of attracting new contributors to our project. That's just my opinion, though, and I'll say again that this is not the sort of opinion that should be held in an official capacity by a director of the board. One way or another, what I do strongly believe [in an official capacity] is that we need to come up with decisive answers to these questions and to make our position clear. Our downstreams suffer from our lack of clarity and we suffer as a result of that. This is a problem that you and I have both heard quite a lot about. One way or another, we need some body of individuals that is both qualified to represent the project and willing to take on these kinds of problems. Maybe that means that the release team should step up. Maybe that means a new body should be formed. I don't know if it should be under the banner of "the foundation" or not (I don't even know if the release team is considered to be part of the foundation, to be honest). In general, I think that the current approach of let-happen-what-will-happen is causing damage. Thanks for the good question. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [question to candidates] GNOME OS
2011/5/25 Frederic Peters : > What are your thougths on this?[2] Do you think this is a foundation > job to answer those questions? If not, is this a responsibility of the > release team? Or something that is best left unanswered, as pieces are > put into positions by different persons? The idea of seeing a GNOME OS coming out in the future as a full and complete desktop suite is simply awesome. Many technical and non-technical decisions that are now taken respecting all the parts (distributions, companies etc.) involved in the release procedures and decisions could be finally taken by the *GNOME* Foundation (by its members and developers) on its own. On the other side, changing GNOME’s definition from a desktop manager to a complete desktop suite takes in multiple technical issues (should we go for an RPM-based system or a DEB one? should we develop just for the Linux platform? and what about BSD? etc.) that will require a lot of months and efforts to happen. Please also note that I would love seeing GNOME being freely available to everyone as it is now, everyone should be able to grab GNOME’s sources and build their own distribution like it’s been happening for several years now. Having multiple distributions and flavours is definitely a big plus within the Open Source’s communities, all the contributors and developers should be able to choose where and how they want to contribute: seeing your ideals, values and ideas reflected in a specific contribution makes you willing to do your best to see it growing and being successful. That said, I think this is not an issue to be fully discussed within the GNOME Board of Directors, it’s a decision that should be taken by the whole GNOME Foundation i ncluding *all* his members, contributors and developers together. (i.e through a referendum) In the end, as pointed out by a few other candidates this is actually just a proposal and many discussions should take place within the Release Team and all the maintainers involved to evaluate all the way this possibility, its pros and its cons to find out which decision will *really* benefit our beloved project. thanks, Andrea ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [question to candidates] GNOME OS
On 2011-05-25 at 08:24, Frederic Peters wrote: > GNOME OS has been mentioned and questioned repeatedly in recent > discussions on desktop-devel-list, about its definition itself[1], > and the changing (or not?) role of the GNOME project with regards > to distributions (based or not on the Linux kernel). > > What are your thougths on this?[2] Do you think this is a foundation > job to answer those questions? If not, is this a responsibility of the > release team? Or something that is best left unanswered, as pieces are > put into positions by different persons? I think I already gave part of the answer[0] to Richard about this, so I'll not restate my position; I just want to elaborate on the role of the Foundation a little bit further. the Foundation's role is of a facilitator; the Board should make sure that the relevant people connect in a positive environment — and not answer questions of technical or political nature. the direction of the Gnome project is the sum total of the people showing up to actually do the work that brings an awesome experience to the users: maintainers, contributors, translators, documentation team, and QA. it is true, though, that the project as a whole needs focus and direction. the release team covers part of that, by working as the technical oversight for the actual GNOME release. since one of the goals of the "GNOME OS" is to make sure that the dependencies are actually chosen and developed with a whole product in mind, chosing those dependencies has become an important part of the steering process. for this reason, my view is that the release team needs to be consolidated, and that it should be integrated by the equivalent of the Linux kernel's "patch liutenants": a selected list of individuals, chosen by merit and skill and not necessarily from within the GNOME project itself, that act as reference point for different sub-systems: the graphics stack; the power management; the network stack; etc. these people would be reference points, and gatekeepers of the QA process — not a steering committee, but maintainers that will answer to the requirements of the designers, and will keep the design team and the release team distributions teams in the loop with the various projects that GNOME depends on. this will help maintainers within the GNOME project, but will also help the teams of packagers inside the distributions. *this* is something that the Foundation Board can create and direct, and I'd be glad to help do if I'm elected. another role for the Foundation Board is getting OEMs, OSVs and ISVs come to GNOME, and see GNOME as a compelling product for creating compelling devices. not a toolkit with a reference user experience, but a complete solution that can accomodate customizations of design and features — in the open, and with amazing talent already available. we have a long way to go for this, but offering a cohesive experience in terms of design, development and deployment is a worthy goal that should be helped in terms of marketing, as well as documentation and development. ciao, Emmanuele. [0] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2011-May/msg00016.html -- W: http://www.emmanuelebassi.name B: http://blogs.gnome.org/ebassi ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [question to candidates] GNOME OS
Fred: GNOME OS has been mentioned and questioned repeatedly in recent discussions on desktop-devel-list, about its definition itself[1], and the changing (or not?) role of the GNOME project with regards to distributions (based or not on the Linux kernel). I remember sitting in Jon McCann's talk at Den Haag last Summer where GNOME OS was first brought to my attention. It seems a catchy use of the GNOME brand, but we clearly have not yet found an effective way to make use of it. Using the GNOME brand to foster divisions within the Free Software or GNU/Linux community, to me, feels like the sort of thing Richard Stallman would be into. While I love free software, I personally do not drink this sort of Stalinist kool-aid. I think it is far more interesting to work as a community on free software alternative products that are competitive with those from Microsoft and Apple. What are your thougths on this?[2] Do you think this is a foundation job to answer those questions? If not, is this a responsibility of the release team? Or something that is best left unanswered, as pieces are put into positions by different persons? Yes, I do. I think that the GNOME Foundation, as a community, needs to answer these questions and decide how the "GNOME" brand should be used. We need to discuss, and perhaps vote if the answers are not just obvious. Remember, the GNOME board of directors only works to express the will of the Foundation membership - the board members are your representatives. I do think there is real value in having a good definition of our brand. It does not seem clear how we should best encourage both a "GNOME" vision of usability and also promote the fact that GNOME Technologies are found in GNOME Shell, mobile devices, Sugar, OLPC, the City of Largo, etc. The fact that usability can vary across different hardware and distros, and that we do not yet have a GNOME 3 HIG contributes to things being fuzzy at the moment. Some have proposed that the GNOME brand be tied to the usage of particular combinations of technologies or kernels. Perhaps we need to use the GNOME brand in a spectrum of ways rather than a single "GNOME OS". Perhaps the GNOME Foundation could be a body that blesses acceptable usages of the brand, such as what can be called "GNOME Mobile OS", "GNOME Developing World OS", "GNOME Accessibility OS", "GNOME Technologies", or whatever. Having some structure and process towards how we use the GNOME brand could be very useful, especially if the community ever did something like setup an internet application store. The "Build on What we Have (or: too much structure is poison)" section of the GNOME Foundation charter highlights that The GNOME Foundation does not have the mandate to be divisive, or that would encourage forking. The charter says: Any new structure which the GNOME foundation provides, if taken too far, will be artificial, ignored, or at worst: really really annoying to developers. Furthermore, the foundation can have no real powers of enforcement; compliance with foundation decision should be an act of good-faith. If we've lost consensus to the point where we're regularly forcibly ejecting people from the foundation and co-opting their projects, we're sunk anyway. Instead, the foundation will work with GNOME's strengths to make it better. A foundation that provides cohesion, vision, direction, and enough organization will be an incredible asset. A foundation that attempts to do this, but hides the iron fist under a velvet glove will not. Such an entity would likely be ignored, and words like "fork" would be thrown around. How to use a brand effectively is no short discussion. I think it is the discussion we are having right now, really. A very timely thing to consider with GNOME 3 out the door. I hope that we, as a community, are able to do this in a non-divisive manner. You have to love people who put terms like "iron fists" and "velvet gloves" in their charter. Brian ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [question to candidates] GNOME OS
On Wed, 2011-05-25 at 08:24 +0200, Frederic Peters wrote: > Hello all, > > GNOME OS has been mentioned and questioned repeatedly in recent > discussions on desktop-devel-list, about its definition itself[1], > and the changing (or not?) role of the GNOME project with regards > to distributions (based or not on the Linux kernel). > > What are your thougths on this?[2] Do you think this is a foundation > job to answer those questions? If not, is this a responsibility of the > release team? Or something that is best left unanswered, as pieces are > put into positions by different persons? I don't think it's the board's job to decide, but I do think the tendency of the community right now is to integrate more deeply with the system, rather than bolt things on top of a multitude of platforms we don't control. This is going to raise technical questions. How much will we dictate software, versus dictating features and interfaces? Do we want to get into the business of distribution, or are we happy to let others deal with that? It's also going to raise branding and marketing questions. If we see GNOME appearing on non-PC devices, do we want them presented as GNOME devices, or are we happy to be a footnote? I don't have those answers, and it's up to the community to make those decisions. But if we do want to push a complete software stack, and we want to push GNOME as the OS for devices, then we need to look at getting GNOME onto devices. We need to get device vendors on board, working upstream, and helping us decide how to best adapt GNOME to their hardware (or adapt their hardware to our designs). This is something I'd like to work on if elected. -- Shaun ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [question to candidates] GNOME OS
Le mercredi 25 mai 2011 à 08:24 +0200, Frederic Peters a écrit : > Hello all, > > GNOME OS has been mentioned and questioned repeatedly in recent > discussions on desktop-devel-list, about its definition itself[1], > and the changing (or not?) role of the GNOME project with regards > to distributions (based or not on the Linux kernel). > > What are your thougths on this?[2] Do you think this is a foundation > job to answer those questions? If not, is this a responsibility of the > release team? Or something that is best left unanswered, as pieces are > put into positions by different persons? Hi Fred, I've seen a lot of discussion around that but it was more "feelings" than rational thinking. Decisions should be based on facts. Example: how many GNOME users are *not* using Linux? How many GNOME contributors are *not* using Linux? What would be the advantages and disadvantages of switching to Linux only? I haven't seen a rational discussion about those facts yet, so bringing it to the board seems a bit early yet. Anyway, I think that the board should not "take a decision". What would happens if the board take a given decision and that a substantial part of the key contributors disagree with that? I personally don't feel qualified enough to take such an important decision, even if I'm elected :-) In my opinion, the board should intervene in such technical debate only if the community want it or if the board consider that the debate is harming the community. (that looks a bit extreme). In that case, I would advocate for the board to keep a mediator role. The board will try to analyse what are the different alternatives, what they implies and who the key people are and how to reconcile them. The board should remain neutral but, if needed, it could decide to call for a referendum (this is not a prerogative of the board, any foundation member can call for a referendum if 10% of the members agree with that). Anyway, I'm a strong believer in meritocracy. Those who do the job will choose. The board is not the one doing the job here but could definitely act as a mediator. I hope I was not too long ;-) Lionel ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [question to candidates] GNOME OS
On Wed, 2011-05-25 at 08:24 +0200, Frederic Peters wrote: > Hello all, > > GNOME OS has been mentioned and questioned repeatedly in recent > discussions on desktop-devel-list, about its definition itself[1], > and the changing (or not?) role of the GNOME project with regards > to distributions (based or not on the Linux kernel). > > What are your thougths on this?[2] I'd rather not expand on the subject as part of answering questions as a candidate to the Board. > Do you think this is a foundation > job to answer those questions? If not, is this a responsibility of the > release team? Or something that is best left unanswered, as pieces are > put into positions by different persons? It's neither the Board's nor the Release Team's decision, in my opinion, to drive the project technically. The project, and the community that drives the project in particular, are the ones in charge of where they want the project to go. If you're asking me, and my fellow candidates, whether you think there might be push-back from partners, Advisory Board members, or distributions on this, I don't think so. The goal of the "GNOME OS" part of the timeline is to ensure that GNOME as a desktop doesn't block on other parts of the infrastructure, and provides a complete and integrated experience. That doesn't stop people from using bits of the GNOME stack for their applications, or special cases. That also doesn't stop people from using other distributions, Unices, or kernels from adapting GNOME for them (or their code for GNOME in some cases), it probably just wouldn't provide the same experience. Cheers > [1] http://live.gnome.org/GnomeOS doesn't help, the only laid out > plan I know was in Jon McCann "Shell Yes!" talk at GUADEC (now > locked on slideshare.net) > > [2] this question comes first but in terms of candidacies to the > board, I believe the next ones are even more important. > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [question to candidates] GNOME OS
On Wed, 2011-05-25 at 08:24 +0200, Frederic Peters wrote: > Hello all, > > GNOME OS has been mentioned and questioned repeatedly in recent > discussions on desktop-devel-list, about its definition itself[1], > and the changing (or not?) role of the GNOME project with regards > to distributions (based or not on the Linux kernel). > > What are your thougths on this?[2] Do you think this is a foundation > job to answer those questions? If not, is this a responsibility of the > release team? Or something that is best left unanswered, as pieces are > put into positions by different persons? > I really think the GNOME OS idea is a very good one, that is, making GNOME provide access to configuration and features of the underlying OS, so that it is a complete desktop that can deal with everything the users would ever need from a desktop. But at the same time we have people from OSes other than Linux interested in using GNOME, so I think we should take those into account, even if their developers don't work on making GNOME work on those OSes as actively as the Linux crowd. So, I think we should not be targetting only Linux, but make the developer communities of those OSes more active in GNOME. More people helping can just lead to a better GNOME. As for who makes the decision, since it's a technical thing, it's up to the release team/maintainers/future technical board (if any), but I think the board should be really giving the message that any UNIX-based OS is supported in GNOME, and make it easier for the developers of those other kernels to provide their own versions of the Linux-only stuff used in GNOME (by talking to them so that they get engaged in technical discussions) When Linux-only stuff is needed in GNOME, like systemd, I think, as discussed in the thread, clear-defined interfaces should be provided so that people from other kernels can easily implement what is needed. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
[question to candidates] GNOME OS
Hello all, GNOME OS has been mentioned and questioned repeatedly in recent discussions on desktop-devel-list, about its definition itself[1], and the changing (or not?) role of the GNOME project with regards to distributions (based or not on the Linux kernel). What are your thougths on this?[2] Do you think this is a foundation job to answer those questions? If not, is this a responsibility of the release team? Or something that is best left unanswered, as pieces are put into positions by different persons? Thanks, Fred [1] http://live.gnome.org/GnomeOS doesn't help, the only laid out plan I know was in Jon McCann "Shell Yes!" talk at GUADEC (now locked on slideshare.net) [2] this question comes first but in terms of candidacies to the board, I believe the next ones are even more important. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: what about next ODF?
On Dec 4, 2007 11:55 AM, Richard Stallman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Richard, I also like to see you show up in the GNOME Advisory Board > meetings and mailing list as FSF's representative. > > Does that require travel, or can it be done by phone? Typically by phone, though once annually by travel. I should note that I think that Brad has done an admirable job representing FSF over the past several years in this forum. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: what about next ODF?
On Tue, 2007-12-04 at 11:55 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote: > Richard, I also like to see you show up in the GNOME Advisory Board > meetings and mailing list as FSF's representative. > > Does that require travel, or can it be done by phone? One time pr. year a meeting in person during GUADEC, and 3-4 times by phone. So you can do participate. And will be very welcome. Regards Anne ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: what about next ODF?
Richard, I also like to see you show up in the GNOME Advisory Board meetings and mailing list as FSF's representative. Does that require travel, or can it be done by phone? ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: On Boston Summit organization and delegation [was Re: A question to candidates]
On Dec 3, 2007 3:16 PM, John (J5) Palmieri <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Would one of you guys like to put together a proposal including venue, > costs and dates? What do you say Adam? Are you in NC? Want to grab a cup of coffee and chat? Cheers, -- Og B. Maciel [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] GPG Keys: D5CFC202 http://www.ogmaciel.com (en_US) http://blog.ogmaciel.com (pt_BR) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: what about next ODF?
On Mon, 2007-12-03 at 01:11 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote: > > I don't recall that any candidate explicily rejected supporting the > free software movement by means other than improving the > attractiveness and success of GNOME. But several candidates answered > in a way that seemed to pointedly imply a rejection of any such form > of support for the community. They listed various ways of helping the > free software movement, all through making GNOME more attractive and > successful. To me, it seems to imply that they reject the idea that a > project such as GNOME ought to try to help the movement other than > through maximizing the project's own success as software. > > I'm glad to know that isn't how you see the matter. I see what you mean now. I have been thinking about this very same issue recently. Looks like GNOME Foundation is by definition limited in what it can do, because unlike foundations like FSF or EFF, it was solely created to handle GNOME Projects needs. It's part of the definition that it should avoid making controversial decisions that are not backed by the community, and recent examples show that the community at large can't really agree on anything but what compiler to use... Examples of foundations that have not limited themselves so strictly and have grown to shine are the Apache and Python Software Foundations. By limiting ourselves to routine tasks, we have essentially limited the potential income of the foundation to such low levels that we have problems hiring a decent Business Development or Executive Director, and that means it's now up to the board members (plus our part-time administrator) to do all the mundane tasks that can be done much better by a professional. Of course, it looks like we have too much money at our hands, but just because we don't spend anything. Hire two people and we are as poor as you can imagine. To summarize, while I'm a huge advocate of "board just does the mud work for others", I have started feeling that GNOME Foundation as a whole is limiting itself too much, risking to become irrelevant in a few years. We can't change that overnight, but we can start thinking about it. Richard, I also like to see you show up in the GNOME Advisory Board meetings and mailing list as FSF's representative. Many of your points, comments, and criticism on this list is exactly what the adboard is for, and FSF is already a member. Regards, -- --behdad http://behdad.org/ ...very few phenomena can pull someone out of Deep Hack Mode, with two noted exceptions: being struck by lightning, or worse, your *computer* being struck by lightning. -- Matt Welsh ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: what about next ODF?
ma., 03.12.2007 kl. 13.43 -0500, skrev Richard Stallman: > > I don't recall that any candidate explicily rejected supporting the free > > software movement by means other than improving the attractiveness and > > success of GNOME. But several candidates answered in a way that seemed > to > > pointedly imply a rejection of any such form of support for the > community. > > I answered about the success of GNOME, mostly because I didn't read what > you > now raise as the point of your original question. > > I'm sorry I expressed myself badly before. Now the point has > been clarified. How do you think the GNOME Foundation (and GNOME) > should try to help the broader free software movement, beyond > the contribution which GNOME makes by being successful free software? I don't presume to think I know how Jeff would answer your question but in my opinion we should do that by crediting all the free software that GNOME's success is dependent on in addition to advocating other free software where GNOME doesn't provide a solution. Or for that matter where users don't get what they want from our software. Clearly GNOME wouldn't be successful without the groundwork from other free software projects like - linux/*BSD and other kernels - glibc - gcc - mozilla/firefox - GNU crypto libraries - autoconf, automake, make - gettext - Xorg and most of the other freedesktop projects - Gtk+/glib and probably countless others that I've forgotten. Cheers Kjartan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: On Boston Summit organization and delegation [was Re: A question to candidates]
On Mon, 2007-12-03 at 12:46 -0500, Adam Schreiber wrote: > On Dec 3, 2007 12:41 PM, Og Maciel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > How about North Carolina? We have a great place with big name > > companies, schools and exciting people. > > Seconded. > > Adam Schreiber > *cough*Clemson University, Clemson, SC*cough* Would one of you guys like to put together a proposal including venue, costs and dates? It might be too late for this year since I am pretty sure we can book the Stata Center in January but it would be nice to have people talking to other venues and getting estimates so we have backup plans and the ability to move fast when choosing a venue for the year after. Alternatively if you wanted to get your feet wet and start small you could organize a smaller event and apply for funding from the board. -- John (J5) Palmieri <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: what about next ODF?
> I don't recall that any candidate explicily rejected supporting the free > software movement by means other than improving the attractiveness and > success of GNOME. But several candidates answered in a way that seemed to > pointedly imply a rejection of any such form of support for the community. I answered about the success of GNOME, mostly because I didn't read what you now raise as the point of your original question. I'm sorry I expressed myself badly before. Now the point has been clarified. How do you think the GNOME Foundation (and GNOME) should try to help the broader free software movement, beyond the contribution which GNOME makes by being successful free software? ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: On Boston Summit organization and delegation [was Re: A question to candidates]
On Dec 3, 2007 12:41 PM, Og Maciel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > How about North Carolina? We have a great place with big name > companies, schools and exciting people. Seconded. Adam Schreiber *cough*Clemson University, Clemson, SC*cough* ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: On Boston Summit organization and delegation [was Re: A question to candidates]
How about North Carolina? We have a great place with big name companies, schools and exciting people. -- Og B. Maciel [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] GPG Keys: D5CFC202 http://www.ogmaciel.com (en_US) http://blog.ogmaciel.com (pt_BR) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: what about next ODF?
> I don't recall that any candidate explicily rejected supporting the free > software movement by means other than improving the attractiveness and > success of GNOME. But several candidates answered in a way that seemed to > pointedly imply a rejection of any such form of support for the community. I answered about the success of GNOME, mostly because I didn't read what you now raise as the point of your original question. - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 "Learning and doing is the true spirit of free software -- learning without doing gets you academic sterility, and doing without learning is all too often the way things are done in proprietary software." - Raph Levien ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: what about next ODF?
> Some candidates answered my question it by stating the intent to > contribute to the community through the development of GNOME > itself--and in no other way. I didn't say "and in no other way". When I say "If someone's drowning, and you know how to swim, and he's not Bush, then you have a duty to save him," in a strict logical sense that makes no statement about Bush. However, everyone gets the implicit point that Bush would not deserve to be saved. I don't recall that any candidate explicily rejected supporting the free software movement by means other than improving the attractiveness and success of GNOME. But several candidates answered in a way that seemed to pointedly imply a rejection of any such form of support for the community. They listed various ways of helping the free software movement, all through making GNOME more attractive and successful. To me, it seems to imply that they reject the idea that a project such as GNOME ought to try to help the movement other than through maximizing the project's own success as software. I'm glad to know that isn't how you see the matter. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: A question to candidates
I think it would add value to spend more on marketing and on evangelical community building opportunities. For example, Windows and MacOS have flashy "Welcome to the desktop" presentations. Perhaps it is time for the GNOME community to find ways to better advertise itself. It would also be an opportunity to talk about freedom. This is a dimension where we have a superiority which Windows and MacOS don't even try to match; but not everyone is aware that the dimension even exists. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: On Boston Summit organization and delegation [was Re: A question to candidates]
On Sun, 2007-12-02 at 14:53 +0100, Kjartan Maraas wrote: > > > Just a note... I can probably find some good space at the University of > > Toronto (Canada) if it was ever required. It is generally easier for > > folks in some countries (like China, and Russia) to get visas to come > > here, and it is a cheap flight for Bostonians. There is a Red Hat > > office here, not sure about other GNOMEy elements. > > > Sounds like a great idea to me. Do we have any numbers showing how many > non US attendants were there at the previous Boston summits? Don't think so. But I'm all in favor of Boston Summit in Toronto too. -- behdad http://behdad.org/ "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759 ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: On Boston Summit organization and delegation [was Re: A question to candidates]
on., 28.11.2007 kl. 16.00 -0500, skrev David Bolter: > Hi Jeff, all, > > Jeff Waugh wrote: > > > > > > > >> > >> > >> > >>> Have the board paused and thought why the Summit has to be Boston? Is it > >>> because most hackers work around Boston? May be it was the case. > >>> > >> Because there's a critical mass of developers there -- most of both the > >> Red Hat and Novell desktop teams. > >> > > > > Dan Winship points out on IRC that while this was true when the Boston > > Summit was created, there aren't a lot of Novell desktop hackers left in > > Boston these days. Perhaps a roaming Columbus Day weekend conference (still > > in the USA) would be a good thing? > > > > Just a note... I can probably find some good space at the University of > Toronto (Canada) if it was ever required. It is generally easier for > folks in some countries (like China, and Russia) to get visas to come > here, and it is a cheap flight for Bostonians. There is a Red Hat > office here, not sure about other GNOMEy elements. > Sounds like a great idea to me. Do we have any numbers showing how many non US attendants were there at the previous Boston summits? Cheers Kjartan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: what about next ODF?
On Fri, 2007-11-30 at 11:48 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote: > > Such action for the larger free software community is one example of > the issue that my second question was intended to raise--namely, > issues important to the community's health in general. > > Some candidates answered my question it by stating the intent to > contribute to the community through the development of GNOME > itself--and in no other way. I didn't say "and in no other way". You asked what should GNOME Foundation do to help FS *in general*. Now English is not my native language but if I understand that correctly, I still think in general GNOME Foundation should foster GNOME development. Doesn't mean htat it shouldn't help/support/endorse other causes and efforts. If I wanted to be smart to /pass/ your test I would have said "GNOME should help spreading Free Software and software freedom to everyone, no matter if they need or can execute their freedom, because software freedom is good for them even if they don't know it.", but I rather avoid political debate around a pretty mud-work position candidacy. -- behdad http://behdad.org/ "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759 ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: what about next ODF?
Microsoft haven't done so publicly thus far, but the risk is there, (Reports are that they often do this privately to great effect.) and we will endeavour to make it absolutely clear that our participation does not imply endorsement, contribution or support. We've taken one step already with our statement on our participation, and you are sure to see more in the future. I am glad that we will see more. On issues like these, the whole community needs to pull together. Such action for the larger free software community is one example of the issue that my second question was intended to raise--namely, issues important to the community's health in general. Some candidates answered my question it by stating the intent to contribute to the community through the development of GNOME itself--and in no other way. In effect, those statements imply that the GNOME Foundation would disregard the larger issues of the community. Perhaps some would like to post a new answer. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: what about next ODF?
> The reason this is not so is that Microsoft is trying to spin the > apparent "support" of GNOME into proof that OOXML is not bad for > free software. Such a risk is always there. People who base their information on what one side of a story says are doomed to hear everything but truth in 99% of situations. If that occurred only at random due to carelessness, we could dismiss it that way. However, it seems that Microsoft pays people to systematically give officials one-sided pictures. We should follow the advice of people in the anti-OOXML campaign when they report on what they see. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to candidates: what about next ODF?
On Fri, Nov 30, 2007 at 09:41:24AM +1100, Jeff Waugh wrote: > > > > The reason this is not so is that Microsoft is trying to spin the apparent > > "support" of GNOME into proof that OOXML is not bad for free software. > > Microsoft haven't done so publicly thus far, but the risk is there, and we > will endeavour to make it absolutely clear that our participation does not > imply endorsement, contribution or support. We've taken one step already > with our statement on our participation, and you are sure to see more in the > future. I've heard Stephen McGibbon himself say to Portuguese TC-173 such suggestions. He made a quick list to show there is support from the Free Software community, and one of the references was "de Icaza *from*GNOME*", another was a lawyer who has worked with OSI, Jody, etc... Just so you may know for sure that in closed circles they *are* spinning it. Rui -- Keep the Lasagna flying! Today is Prickle-Prickle, the 42nd day of The Aftermath in the YOLD 3173 + No matter how much you do, you never do enough -- unknown + Whatever you do will be insignificant, | but it is very important that you do it -- Gandhi + So let's do it...? ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
