Re: Questions to answer

[Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>]

On Mon, 2005-11-21 at 20:26 -0500, baris teamforce name tr wrote:
> Hi,
> 
<snip>
> 1) Why are you running for Board of Directors? What will you do more or
> better than previous years Boards have done?

Because I can, and of course (or at least, we'll try to!).

> 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 a regular contributor to GNOME, and have had my hands in the dirt
(ie. de facto maintainership) for a couple of modules.

> 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 sure a subscription-based bounty system is the best way to get
more participation in the project. I would rather than the people who
need features propose them, as a member of the community with skills
other than programming. But I must say that my personal "will implement
cool features for films" system has worked decently well in the past.

As for the source of funds, I am sure there is an untapped resource
called local governments. This could be a source of revenue to
investigate.

> 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 afraid that I have no knowledge in that field, but I know that GNOME
Hispano has a life of its own, bringing people to GNOME from mainland
Spain and South America.

> 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?

If I think that one way isn't the right way, I can take ownership of the
problem, and do it my way. Problem is obviously different if we are
asking for policy decisions, in which case, it's good ol' politics.
I don't think that any of us are inexperienced enough to not be able to
drive a problem to a solution from start to finish, and the person that
owns this problem should be the one coming up with the plan of action.
Even though the rest of the board should have their say on the bigger
scale, the owner should be the one in charge, and taking responsability.

See my mail to Curtis for the time available [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 can be two-faced, like every politician :)

> 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?

Patents, in my opinion. See [1] for how I plan on helping counter that
threat.

> 8) What one problem could you hope to solve this year?
> 9) Please rank your interests:
<snip>
See above, and below, and in the other mail.

> 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 of existing membership to make the
> GNOME desktop the desktop of choice? [ Hints: the number of Foundation
> members have reduced from 460 in 2001 to approximately 300 in 2002 ]
> (this question is taken from questions of year 2002. I wanted to include
> this because our member count is around 350 today)

I don't think that Foundation membership is that big an issue, as long
as the numbers stay this healthy. We already have one incentive for
@gnome.org e-mail addresses requiring Foundation membership. I don't see
the point in forcing people who don't want to be in the Foundation to
be, but it would still be a very good idea to let people know about the
foundation when their GNOME accounts are created, and, as a one-off, to
let active contributors who aren't part of it know about.

> 11) (only to those who are running for reelection) Name one of your

N/A

Cheers

[1]:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2005-November/msg00103.html
---
Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net> 
The sex scenes are just a job, but I enjoyed them. -- Anthony Hopkins