Throwing in my hat...

[Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com>]

Hi listees:

After some encouragement a couple of weeks ago, and having given some
thought to the matter this week, I would like to put my name forward as
a candidate for the Gnome Foundation Board of Directors.

In defense of this rash move, I'll say the following:

I have only been involved in the Gnome project for a little less than a
year.  However my level of committment has become very high indeed.  I
remain very excited about the projects which I am maintaining (atk,
at-spi, gap) and some new projects that are about to be announced
(/plug).  As some of you know I co-maintain the gnome-accessibility-list
with Padraig O'Briain, and have contributed code to atk, gtk+, libglade,
at-spi, and will shortly be putting some code back to libbonoboui (if
Michael doesn't get cold feet ;-).  

I know that most of you (who know me at all) know me as 'that
Accessibility guy'.  I would like to say up front that while wearing the
'Gnome Board hat' I would work hard to take a broad view of what's best
for Gnome, rather than taking an 'accessibility-centric' view, in case
there are any concerns on that front.  

Regarding my views of Gnome's future, I would like to see not only the
maturation and further development of the platform and library layers
a-la Gnome 2.0, but increasing integration and consistency of
applications on that platform, with strong emphasis on migrating useful
features into core over time, and reconciling divergences among
applications and APIs.  I'd like to see interoperability with other
toolkits and platforms (KDE, Java) improved and emphasized, so that the
total 'Gnome experience' for the end-user is consistent and of high
quality.  If we do this I believe that we can overcome the perception of
Gnome (and linux!) as a hacker's platform, while still putting more
power into the hands of the user.

In short I am excited about usability, quality, interoperability, and
extensibility; particularly in achieving each of these goals without
doing so at the expense of the others.  Consensus may be a very hard way
to do business, but I believe that when it works the results are
superior.

If elected I will make every effort to attend meetings; my location in
Ireland should make it relatively practical for me to attend all
european-based Board meetings.  

Lastly, though I am as you probably all know a Sun employee, my
committment to Gnome spills far over the boundaries of my employment.  I
think that it's useful for Sun (and other companies contributing to and
benefiting from Gnome) to be represented on the Board, and for the Board
to include people who can offer viewpoints from a commercial context. 
On a personal level however, by far the most rewarding thing about
working on the Gnome project is involvement in a lively community
working to create free and collaborative software whose usefulness is
likely to outstrip and outlive the current-day commercial interests that
help sustain it day-to-day.  It's in the context of enriching and
broadening Gnome's utility that I would cast any commercial perspectives
that I might bring.  That said, I am, primarily, a hacker at heart...

-Bill