Re: [Off Topic] Words to Avoid Vendor [was Re: Questions to answer]
On Sun, 2005-11-27 at 17:34 -0500, Richard M. Stallman wrote: Nearly - though any new acronym can obfuscate. For that reason, I'd suggest going with ISD, because of its similarity to the familiar ISV, at least the reader may clue in by association and context. ISD would solve the problem equally well. I like ISD. Thanks for the suggestion :) Federico ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [Off Topic] Words to Avoid Vendor [was Re: Questions to answer]
[I removed all the cc] On dim, 2005-11-27 at 13:48 +0100, Murray Cumming wrote: On Sun, 2005-11-27 at 10:48 +, Bill Haneman wrote: Nearly - though any new acronym can obfuscate. For that reason, I'd suggest going with ISD, because of its similarity to the familiar ISV, at least the reader may clue in by association and context. [Sort of like URL vs URI...] Erm, what's wrong with developer or software developer? If I wanted your attention I wouldn't start addressing you by some new unrecognizable name. I think Murray is right. Do we really need a new abbreviation? If we don't want to use ISV anymore, why not use developer or a similar expression? Vincent -- Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [Off Topic] Words to Avoid Vendor [was Re: Questions to answer]
Vincent Untz wrote: [I removed all the cc] On dim, 2005-11-27 at 13:48 +0100, Murray Cumming wrote: On Sun, 2005-11-27 at 10:48 +, Bill Haneman wrote: Nearly - though any new acronym can obfuscate. For that reason, I'd suggest going with ISD, because of its similarity to the familiar ISV, at least the reader may clue in by association and context. [Sort of like URL vs URI...] Erm, what's wrong with developer or software developer? If I wanted your attention I wouldn't start addressing you by some new unrecognizable name. I think Murray is right. Do we really need a new abbreviation? If we don't want to use ISV anymore, why not use developer or a similar expression? A previous email in this thread explained why, I believe. 'Developer' fails to make the point that the developers referred to are not (necessarily) the developers creating Gnome, i.e. not Gnome developers in that sense. I DO think there are contexts in which this distinction is important, i.e. the contexts where we now use ISV. Bill Vincent ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [Off Topic] Words to Avoid Vendor [was Re: Questions to answer]
On Sat, 26 Nov 2005, Alan Horkan wrote: Does ISV stand for Independent Software Vendor? If so, the term is often misleading, because the most important developers of GNOME applications--those developing free software--are mostly not vendors. The important point is the need for clear documentation making it easier for those who want to work with Gnome including businesses which self identify under the term ISV. I'm sure the intention was not to exclude anyone. And as an individual, I think that choice of word did fail. Whenever I saw/read ISV in any context in GNOME, I thought of it as issues concerning businesses only, not myself as a *user* of the GNOME libraries, etc. I'm sure I'm not the only one. So the concern is real IMO. behdad ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [Off Topic] Words to Avoid Vendor [was Re: Questions to answer]
And as an individual, I think that choice of word did fail. Whenever I saw/read ISV in any context in GNOME, I thought of it as issues concerning businesses only, not myself as a *user* of the GNOME libraries, etc. I'm sure I'm not the only one. No indeed you were not. Count me in :) So the concern is real IMO. I second that. The third party developer term is a good choice like Jeff and Richard suggested. Marc ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [Off Topic] Words to Avoid Vendor [was Re: Questions to answer]
On Sun, 2005-11-27 at 14:55 +, Alan Horkan wrote: We can't solve the problem by denying it. No one is denying the power of words but matters of linguistics are distracting from more important issues (like the need for clear information and heading off patent threats). Actually, the patent threats were carefully woven into carefully written sentences that hid their true meaning in the (defunct) European directive proposal on software patents. Linguistics are hardly distracting, they're the form with which our politicians were being fooled into believing they're doing good while their actions risked dragging the EU into the new dark ages of software development. Now there's IPRED2 that allows someone to be labeled a criminal because he heard someone explain how you can play CSS encumbered DVDs on GNU/Linux and didn't point him out to the police, thus abetting* his crime of attempting* to incite* and aid* people to act in what the EUCD brought to define as infringement. * == words from Article 3, Offences of com2005_0276en01.pdf This is scandalous! Rui signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [Off Topic] Words to Avoid Vendor [was Re: Questions to answer]
On Sun, Nov 27, 2005 at 06:26:05PM +0100, Quim Gil wrote: In GNOME we donpt talk usually about first-party and second-party developers AFAIK (I have only heard of beer-parties). But we talsk about GNOME developers and GNOME hackers, in this context I find more appropriate Independent Software Developer and the acronym ISD (I agree that the proximity with the currently used ISV is a +1). In all of this discussion about whether they are third-party developers or independant software developers, I think people have missed the important point. That point is that we need to encourage traditional independant software VENDORS to our platform. Our platform is placed in such a way that vendors writing closed-source applications can use our platform without licensing costs (unlike QT). Businesses require more than an email client and a web browser, they require the highly vertical applications that enable them to carry out their business. These may be as simple as inventory control or as complex as an Australian law enabled, multi-client tax ledger. In the forseeable future, open-source developers are not going to write these applications, because they do not have the expertise or resources to develop applications of this magnitude. Thus, we need to encourage traditional vendors onto our platform. Once we have highly vertical applications available on our platform, the rate of adoption of the desktop will increase. Perhaps this doesn't fit into some people's utopian view of how the software industry will be overhauled, but it is a much more realisitic and achievable goal. --d -- Davyd Madeley http://www.davyd.id.au/ 08B0 341A 0B9B 08BB 2118 C060 2EDD BB4F 5191 6CDA ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [Off Topic] Words to Avoid Vendor [was Re: Questions to answer]
On Sun, Nov 27, 2005 at 06:48:31PM -0700, Andreas J. Guelzow wrote: Businesses require more than an email client and a web browser, they require the highly vertical applications that enable them to carry out their business. These may be as simple as inventory control or as complex as an Australian law enabled, multi-client tax ledger. In the forseeable future, open-source developers are not going to write these applications, because they do not have the expertise or resources to develop applications of this magnitude. Thus, we need to encourage traditional vendors onto our platform. Not at all! We need to encourage traditional vendors to become open-source developers. This is step 2. This comes right after vendors have learnt about the Freedom and started offering their product on the platform. First we must walk, gain market share, become relevant and be validated. Then we establish a new world order. --d -- Davyd Madeley http://www.davyd.id.au/ 08B0 341A 0B9B 08BB 2118 C060 2EDD BB4F 5191 6CDA ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to answer
Candidacy Questions [My apologies for answering these so late; I've been on vacation and away from email since they were posted.] 1) Why are you running for Board of Directors? Because I care very deeply about the future of GNOME and the future of Free Software (which I feel are fairly intimately tied together.) I have devoted the last four years of my life to GNOME and I believe that the board can and should be one of the primary ways for me to continue that dedication. What will you do more or better than previous years Boards have done? I will strive this year to do vastly less, actually. I think the board has tried to take on too much, and forgotten the lesson learned during the 2.0 cycle with the success of the release team- the role of the board should be to set goals, delegate aggressively, and answer questions and give guidance- not to do things itself. 2) How familiar are you with the day-to-day happenings of GNOME? How much do you follow and participate in the main GNOME mailing lists? Less so than I did when GNOME was my full-time job, obviously. This is particularly evident in my participation in the lists- I'm much less active than I used to be. However, I still spend major chunks of every day paying attention to what is going on in GNOME- reading all the major lists, reading planet, talking with people in IRC, following and testing new software releases, etc. If the board truly is to transition into an advisory and delegatory role, then this is (I believe) sufficient. 3) What sources of funds do you as a candiate try do establish? And what will you spend it on? Not counting revenue from the shop and Friends of GNOME. Think more like the recent move by Mozilla or a subscription based bounty system. First off, I don't think shop and FOG revenue should be discounted. Each of those should be major sources of revenue bringing in many tens of thousands of dollars a year, at least. This year's board (mostly Dave, though we all helped give advice on the process) pushed hard for this to happen, and though we've had a setback recently, I still think that this should be something the Foundation should do. [Though I'd again point out that this is not something the board should be necessarily doing itself- it should be finding volunteers, giving them goals and advice, letting them drive the process, and overseeing it.] FOG should be massively bigger than it is- currently it is a very amateur program as far as non-profit fundraising goes, and as we consider life post-Tim, we should lay some groundwork for how to improve it. [I've been pushing for some time to get CiviCRM installed so that we can move forward on this front, but we've not yet found a volunteer to push this project forward. If you're reading this and think you're the right person, let us know :)] Secondly, the biggest change we need to make in our revenue generation is to more aggressively work with partners to target specific problems. The board needs to be able to go to Sun, IBM, Novell, RH, etc., and say 'we need money to hire someone to fix problem X.' We have experimented with this in a very limited way this year, by hiring Shaun to write better developer docs (which I pushed for aggressively this year, and which thankfully Federico has now taken the lead on.) That is still very much a work in progress, but I think that will inform how we raise and spend such money in the future, and in general, it is the right way to proceed- identify a very specific problem, find the money, find the right person, and pursue it. It may be that in certain cases the specific problem might be 'community development', and we hire someone on a more permanent basis for that, but in general we should not be following mozilla's route and hiring technical staff to set technical direction. Besides hiring people to resolve specific, limited issues, we need to work more aggressively to improve our global event presence. We started that this year (in a very small way) with the event box, and we need to move forward to work with folks like FOSS.in and other large global conferences to ensure that GNOME is well represented there. This is again the kind of thing that the board shouldn't be doing itself- the board should be finding interested people, recruiting them, and saying 'we feel this route would be best for GNOME- do you think you can do it?' (and then obviously giving them fairly wide leeway to pursure that goal, within reason.) There are a number of ways we can spend money on this- the event box was one, flying people to conferences as speakers is another, and obviously funding small non-GUADEC events where appropriate is another. 4) Gnome is mostly a european and US based project, but seems to have some following in Latin America and India. How will you as a candidate grow the contribution base, especially in Asia, Africa and South America? Perhaps a different and more provocative way to ask this question is 'is there anything
Re: Questions to answer
Many of the candidates have identified software patents as a major threat. Would GNOME like to help in the campaign against the new IPR enforcement directive in the EU? A prominent link to FFII's page about this would be pretty effective, and easy to do. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to answer
I would be happy to help out. As Jonathan mentions, Murray and I have been sorting through some of the issues on live.gnome.org by putting together an Interface Specification that is hopefully useful to ISV's Does ISV stand for Independent Software Vendor? If so, the term is often misleading, because the most important developers of GNOME applications--those developing free software--are mostly not vendors. Consider, for instance, the GIMP developers. Their program works with GNOME, but project is not a vendor. GNU Emacs now has GTK+ support, but we Emacs developers are not a vendor. Every time a standard describes the projects that develop or distribute software as vendors, that has the effect of denying the existence of volunteer projects. So please, let's use a different term for GNOME application developers in general, one which fits all of them, and particularly fits our own community. Perhaps we could refer to them as GNOME Application Developers (GADs), or more generally, Independent Software Developers (ISDs). See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Vendor for reference. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to answer
On Sat, 2005-11-26 at 11:22 -0500, Richard M. Stallman wrote: Many of the candidates have identified software patents as a major threat. Would GNOME like to help in the campaign against the new IPR enforcement directive in the EU? A prominent link to FFII's page about this would be pretty effective, and easy to do. I see no reason why we wouldn't. Thanks, -Jonathan signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to answer
quote who=Richard M. Stallman I would be happy to help out. As Jonathan mentions, Murray and I have been sorting through some of the issues on live.gnome.org by putting together an Interface Specification that is hopefully useful to ISV's Does ISV stand for Independent Software Vendor? If so, the term is often misleading, because the most important developers of GNOME applications--those developing free software--are mostly not vendors. We use the term interchangably with 'third party developers', and have made that explicit in many cases when we talk about it. OOo and Firefox also fit into this world view as 'third party developers' or ISVs. - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2006: Dunedin, New Zealand http://linux.conf.au/ Having strings in a language seems to be a case of premature optimization. - Paul Graham ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to answer
On 11/26/05, Jeff Waugh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: quote who=Richard M. Stallman Does ISV stand for Independent Software Vendor? If so, the term is often misleading, because the most important developers of GNOME applications--those developing free software--are mostly not vendors. We use the term interchangably with 'third party developers', and have made that explicit in many cases when we talk about it. OOo and Firefox also fit into this world view as 'third party developers' or ISVs. Maybe we should just claim that we can't spell very well; ISV = Third Party Developer. A whole new kind of a10n[1]. ;-) Cheers, Elijah [1] Hint at what a10n means here: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-love/2004-November/msg6.html ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to answer
On Mon, 2005-11-21 at 20:26 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 1) Why are you running for Board of Directors? What will you do more or better than previous years Boards have done? Why am I running? Because I need the exercise. (-: More seriously, I am running because I am passionately involved in GNOME and Free Software, and want to help it succeed. I aim to help create a great Desktop, and I can contribute positively to the board. 2) How familiar are you with the day-to-day happenings of GNOME? How much do you follow and participate in the main GNOME mailing lists? Very. I follow mailing lists, planets, and irc. I also have good relationships with a lot of people in the various GNOME sub-communities, and follow what they are working on. 3) What sources of funds do you as a candiate try do establish? And what will you spend it on? Not counting revenue from the shop and Friends of GNOME. Think more like the recent move by Mozilla or a subscription based bounty system. (olafura from gnomedesktop.org) I think that looking for general revenue for GNOME is the wrong approach. While we have had a lot of luck raising general purpose funds with the Friends of GNOME program, we have had even more luck raising money for specific purposes. One of the initiatives I would drive the on the board this year is a fund raising drive around our ISV platform. There is a heck of a lot of external interest in seeing this move forward, and I believe we can do a good job. 4) Gnome is mostly a european and US based project, but seems to have some following in Latin America and India. How will you as a candidate grow the contribution base, especially in Asia, Africa and South America? (olafura from gnomedesktop.org) These are two different questions, so I will answer them separately. I actually have a feeling that GNOME has a healthy presence in those regions. We should definitely encourage the work done locally there, and the board has previously sponsored flying people to Latin America. Or in general what would you do to increase community participation in the GNOME community and GNOME elections? Make sure that people know that the GNOME foundation is relevant to them. One of the strengths (I feel) of the GNOME community is that we are diffuse, and thus you do not have to be part of the 'core' group to do something interesting. There are a lot of other projects that have a lot of life and momentum on their own. If we can prove to them that we're relevant to their efforts, they'll join. Also, we should hold an annual membership drive. 5) The board meets for one hour every two weeks to discuss a handful of issues. Thus, it is very important that the board can very quickly and concisely discuss each topic and come to consensus on each item for discussion. Are you good at working with others, who sometimes have very differing opinions than you do, to reach consensus and agree on actions? How flexible is your time; can you dedicate extra time one week and less the next? I have the time to work on the board, and have done so in the past. It would be part of my job at work to make sure that the board functions well. 6) Do you consider yourself diplomatic? Would you make a good representative for the GNOME Foundation to the Membership, media, public, and organizations and corporations the GNOME Foundation works with? I try hard to be diplomatic, and I hope others think of me that way. 7) What do you see as current threats to the future of a complete Free Software desktop? And what would you like the GNOME Foundation to be doing to address these issues? Lack of execution and focus. We have put ourselves in a great position to become the premiere desktop -- we now need to follow through! I am really quite optimistic about our chances, though. The other major threat to a Free Software Desktop is Software patents. That is a big issue that all free software projects need to work on together. 8) What one problem could you hope to solve this year? The very first problem that the board is going to have is that of staffing. Since Tim has moved on, we are going to need to hire someone immediately to take care of the administrative details. Having been involved with a large number of hires at Red Hat, I am qualified to do this. Additionally, we need to push our ISV platform. This is one of the biggest issues facing us, and as big an effort as getting GNOME 2.0 out was. We should start another group to work on this (similar to the release team) and for this to be a big project-wide initiative. 9) Please rank your interests: a. GNOME evangelizing to government, enterprise, small business, and individuals b. GNOME marketing and merchandising of branded items nationally and internationally c. GNOME legal issues like copyright and patents d. GNOME finances and fund raising e. Alliance with other organizations. These are all
Re: Questions to answer
On 11/25/05, Jonathan Blandford [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Additionally, we need to push our ISV platform. This is one of the biggest issues facing us, and as big an effort as getting GNOME 2.0 out was. We should start another group to work on this (similar to the release team) and for this to be a big project-wide initiative. I think that would rock. It may be worth noting that Brian has been pushing in this area[1], Murray tried to help push it along[2], and Federico is making noise in the area as well[3], all of which is great. Brian and Murray have been putting together some draft/preliminary Interface Specification notes on the wiki (which I've looked over, but I'm not really that qualified to help out in this area). So I think along with your work there'd be at least a few easy candidates who could be suckered^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hnominated/appointed to be part of such a team. ;-) Cheers, Elijah [1] http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/yippi?entry=gnome_summit, http://mail.gnome.org/archives/release-team/2005-July/msg00162.html [2] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2005-August/msg3.html [3] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/release-team/2005-November/msg00075.html ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to answer
El lun, 21-11-2005 a las 20:26 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] escribió: Hi, With the recent announcement of candidates, questions for candidates to discuss during these week is here. Questions are gathered from previous years' questions, from foundation-list, and this and previous years' discussions on gnomedesktop.org. Candidates are encouraged to answer questions to give ideas to Foundation Members why they should vote for them. And members can direct their questions to candidates different than these questions if they want. Good luck to all candidates and let the discussion begin: 1) Why are you running for Board of Directors? What will you do more or better than previous years Boards have done? Because I'd like to contribute with another perspective. I can't say I will do better than previous boards, but obviously I'll do my best effort to do a good job. 2) How familiar are you with the day-to-day happenings of GNOME? How much do you follow and participate in the main GNOME mailing lists? I am subscribed to 41 lists from gnome.org, between major and minor lists, that I usually read (some of them doesn't have any traffic, so don't get surprised about the amount of lists). Also I follow in a regular base what is happening in GNOME Hispano and GNOME Chile. I follow different sources such as footnotes, plantet's, and some media that have information about what is happening with GNOME, desktop and Free Software in general. So, I feel that I'm familiar with the day-to-day happenings of GNOME, even I hadn't been good writing a lot of emails in these lists. 3) What sources of funds do you as a candiate try do establish? And what will you spend it on? Not counting revenue from the shop and Friends of GNOME. Think more like the recent move by Mozilla or a subscription based bounty system. (olafura from gnomedesktop.org) Probably I'm not good on that task. I've been in the other side: how to achieve goals with a very reduced budget. I can help there. Furthermore, I don't think the whole board must have skills for everything, because people can be a complement each other. 4) Gnome is mostly a european and US based project, but seems to have some following in Latin America and India. How will you as a candidate grow the contribution base, especially in Asia, Africa and South America? (olafura from gnomedesktop.org) Or in general what would you do to increase community participation in the GNOME community and GNOME elections? I'm from South America :-) We have a big amount of users there, but no so many contributors to the core. There is a gap between local programmers (probably they don't feel self confident about their own skills) and the core hackers. I'll promote activities that promotes interchange of experiences and knowledge between them. 5) The board meets for one hour every two weeks to discuss a handful of issues. Thus, it is very important that the board can very quickly and concisely discuss each topic and come to consensus on each item for discussion. Are you good at working with others, who sometimes have very differing opinions than you do, to reach consensus and agree on actions? How flexible is your time; can you dedicate extra time one week and less the next? I'm flexible on this. A longer answer could be found in the answer of this question in my previous message [1]. 6) Do you consider yourself diplomatic? Would you make a good representative for the GNOME Foundation to the Membership, media, public, and organizations and corporations the GNOME Foundation works with? I'm diplomatic when is needed. But, I must recognize that sometimes I've been opinionated when there was not good argument against a real fact. It's not common anyway. I try to listen all opinions and viewpoints given and I consider myself open minded. 7) What do you see as current threats to the future of a complete Free Software desktop? And what would you like the GNOME Foundation to be doing to address these issues? I did answer this question in my previous message [1] 8) What one problem could you hope to solve this year? I won't speak as a problem, but as a opportunity to improve. I would like to improve the transparency about the board works and improving the communication between different actors. 9) Please rank your interests: a. GNOME evangelizing to government, enterprise, small business, and individuals b. GNOME marketing and merchandising of branded items nationally and internationally c. GNOME legal issues like copyright and patents d. GNOME finances and fund raising e. Alliance with other organizations. I did answer this question in my previous message [1]. In short it was a, d, e, b, c. 10) One of the ingredient for success in Free Software project such as GNOME is committed and dedicated memberships. How would you propose to promote new membership, and encourage commitment
Re: Questions to answer
quote who=[EMAIL PROTECTED] 1) Why are you running for Board of Directors? What will you do more or better than previous years Boards have done? I've had a year off after two years on. So I understand the workings of the Board from the inside and have watched it from the outside with and without that experience. I'm running again because I have time, renewed energy, and I want to make sure that the Board is focused on its core mission, and help the community achieve its goals (through both active assistance and getting out of the way - whichever is appropriate at the time). 2) How familiar are you with the day-to-day happenings of GNOME? How much do you follow and participate in the main GNOME mailing lists? I still take oversight as seriously now as I did during my time as release manager, so I regularly read and participate on the major mailing lists, and catch up with the other lists when I can. Beyond that 'community oversight', I also watch for GNOME in external forums such as LUGs, press mentions, etc. It's extremely important for a Board member to understand what's going on in the community if they are to capably represent it. 3) What sources of funds do you as a candiate try do establish? And what will you spend it on? Not counting revenue from the shop and Friends of GNOME. Think more like the recent move by Mozilla or a subscription based bounty system. (olafura from gnomedesktop.org) In the past, I have encouraged the Board to involve smaller companies on the Advisory Board by creating a tiered fee structure, and I was extremely happy to see Dave Neary complete that goal. I'd like to bring more companies into the Advisory Board, encourage more pooled funding and (importantly, because it's not all about money) resource contribution to GNOME projects, and make sure we're getting the most out of existing fund-raising efforts. 4) Gnome is mostly a european and US based project, but seems to have some following in Latin America and India. How will you as a candidate grow the contribution base, especially in Asia, Africa and South America? (olafura from gnomedesktop.org) Or in general what would you do to increase community participation in the GNOME community and GNOME elections? I see the Foundation (and the Board, shepherding it) as a natural conduit between stakeholders in the project that do not otherwise communicate or mix, so outreach to new and existing local communities is an important part of that. I raised this goal of reconnecting our local communities in my 10x10 speech at GUADEC, particularly focusing on outreach to developing countries (or 'emerging markets' in the marketing lingo). I want the Board to assist in any way it can to help this happen. For instance, flying GNOME developers and evangelists to local FOSS events to talk and teach... Spread the love! :-) 5) The board meets for one hour every two weeks to discuss a handful of issues. Thus, it is very important that the board can very quickly and concisely discuss each topic and come to consensus on each item for discussion. Are you good at working with others, who sometimes have very differing opinions than you do, to reach consensus and agree on actions? Hmm. I wonder how entertaining this answer will be. I have come to realise over the last few years, and in particular over the last year and a half, that some people are decision-making oriented (make a call, run with it, adapt to changes or failures as they arise), while others are discussion oriented (sound out the options, talk with stakeholders, build consensus, then agree to a course of action). I tend towards the latter, 'feminine' approach, which drives my boss and sometimes my wife up their respective walls. I'm appreciate and value both approaches. :-) How flexible is your time; can you dedicate extra time one week and less the next? I work from home and travel quite a lot, so my time is necessarily flexible! 6) Do you consider yourself diplomatic? Would you make a good representative for the GNOME Foundation to the Membership, media, public, and organizations and corporations the GNOME Foundation works with? I think this is one of the most important things I bring to the Board (and to the project in general). I'm an energetic ambassador for GNOME, I've had media training (and generally keep my foot out of it), and I'm very good at developing and delivering good messages. As an amusing answer to the above combined question, here's an interview I did a while back that required serious restraint and diplomacy simply to answer the combative questions: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/02/21/1045638481419.html I particularly like the last sentence of the introduction. :-) 7) What do you see as current threats to the future of a complete Free Software desktop? And what would you like the GNOME Foundation to be doing to address these issues? (I will answer this in reply to the SWOT analysis section of Curtis' earlier email
Re: Questions to answer
quote who=Juha Siltala What do you think of the composition of the current board, where a couple of big companies hold half of the chairs? I trust those individuals as members of the GNOME Foundation and community, *and* as representatives of companies that contribute a great deal to GNOME (in development resources and front-line sales, marketing and research). We have a culture that embraces contributions from individuals, whatever their affiliation, which has bolstered our ability to involve major companies and their developers in the project at large. We're good at this. What do you think about the fact that about a third of GNOME modules' maintainers are employed by the Big Three GNOME corporations? Is this a problem for you? Not at all. I think the few problems we have with our maintainership process are totally unrelated to the affiliation of those maintainers. It comes down to the people involved, not the logo on their business card or the domain of their email address. - Jeff -- Ubuntu USA Europe Tour: Oct-Nov 2005http://wiki.ubuntu.com/3BT Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system. - From Monty Python to ESR, by way of Al Viro ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions to answer
Hi, Answering these questions is a lot harder than what I had expected :-) Please ask for clarifications if I'm not clear (which is quite possible), or tell me I'm wrong if it's the case. On Tue, November 22, 2005 02:26, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 1) Why are you running for Board of Directors? I'm running because I care about GNOME and about the Foundation and I believe I can be useful on the board. As a Foundation member, I'd like to know more about the Foundation and what's happening in there. As a member of a local group, I'd like to see the Foundation as a central point of contact for GNOME that would help lots of local groups. As a user, I'd like to see that GNOME users are not forgotten. As a contributor, I would like to see more effort going into making GNOME even more known than it is. Those are the points that are important to me. A quick summary is: + making the Foundation more open + developing local groups + showing how important our users are + making our project more known What will you do more or better than previous years Boards have done? I'm not sure I can say I'll do something more/better than what was done before since I don't know exactly how hard the job is. But I can give two concrete examples of what I think we can easily do: + having more discussion on foundation-list. This will make the Foundation more open, but also will make it possible for members to get more involved in the Foundation. + having someone who's responsible for making sure everything is fine for the events where there'll be a GNOME booth. This person could help find some materials (hardware, posters, stickers, etc.) for a booth, but also would provide some useful tips. This will help new local groups developing even more quickly. Maybe in the end a simple checklist would be useful, but when you do your first booth, you sometimes want more :-) I'd like to note that the GNOME Event Box that Murray launched is really a wonderful step in this direction. 2) How familiar are you with the day-to-day happenings of GNOME? How much do you follow and participate in the main GNOME mailing lists? I'm on many mailing lists (although I'm not always participating), I'm reading the archives of some others lists, I'm hanging on IRC, etc. I'm also following the development of the GNOME releases, so I know what's happening from a technical point of view, but also as a what's new in this release point of view. So I think it's safe to say I'm fairly familiar with the day-to-day happenings. 3) What sources of funds do you as a candiate try do establish? And what will you spend it on? Not counting revenue from the shop and Friends of GNOME. Think more like the recent move by Mozilla or a subscription based bounty system. (olafura from gnomedesktop.org) I'm not that interested in raising funds (see question 9), but one thing I think we can do is tell companies and people: here's a list of projects we want to do, you can see the money needed for each project. If you're interested in helping for one of these projects, consider joining the Friends of GNOME. That is, clearly state where the money will go. Where should this money be spent? Where the best ideas are :-) Some ideas: global and local marketing materials (where global is for everyone and local is for some local groups), hardware for developers who might need it, travels to present GNOME at events, etc. I'm sure there are better ideas out there. And if you have one, please share it on this list. There's no need to be on the board to have ideas! 4) Gnome is mostly a european and US based project, but seems to have some following in Latin America and India. How will you as a candidate grow the contribution base, especially in Asia, Africa and South America? (olafura from gnomedesktop.org) As a candidate, I'm afraid I won't directly grow the contribution base. However, I'd like to help local groups doing so: it's important to explain and show that GNOME welcomes all the contributions and that starting to contribute is easy. For example, on the GNOME booth we had at the RMLL (in France, four months ago), we made some mini-conferences: GNOME Love, how to contribute to GNOME?, Coding a new feature, let's do it, etc. Some users were interested in this because from outside, it looks really difficult to start contributing. I'm glad to see that at least two of the people who assisted at those mini-conf are making some patches, have helped for translation and are probably contributing in some other ways too. So, to attract new contributors, we need to show them that it's really easy to contribute and to guide them (by making some list of tasks, eg). Another important point is to make people more aware of GNOME than they are right now. This means making more noise about our project :-) This is something we're trying to do in GNOME-FR, and I'd like to push all the local groups who have some time to do so. Or in
