Candidacy (Michael Meeks)

[Michael Meeks <michael helixcode com>]

	It seems the baby kissing season is upon us, so here we go:

	Support wildlife -- vote for an orgy.

* Random thoughts on this election

	It worries me that so many non-hackers have put themselfs up
as candidates for board membership. [ _hacker_ hereinafter refers to
any or all of documenter, UI designer, artist, translator, and coder
]. Here is an ( unfortunately negative ) list of people I think we
_don't_ need on the board:

	* Advocacy * - people to tell other people stuff; useful, and
	much appreciated but why do they want any executive control
	over Gnome's future ?

	* Consensus Builders * - people to manage meetings and bring
	people to a decision. Surely there will be people among a
	group of hackers to perform this role, we are not children.

	* Clueless people * - people whose major qualification is
	lack of technical knowledge. Clearly it is vital to listen
	to users, but I'd rather not be guided in releasing, defining,
	funding etc. by people with little technical GNOME
	understanding.

	I think we do need people like this:

	* Hacker [ see above ] * - passionate about Gnome, preferably
	with a proven track record of working on Free software for
	fun in their spare time. Determined to get GNOME right
	without arbitrary commercial interests and time-scales
	obscuring the quality of the product and thus end user ( and
	hacker ) experience.

	I would also venture to suggest that company politics will
eventually come into play here, and that a Hacker is more likely to
be swayed by technical concerns than partisan commercial concerns.

	I would encourage all the Gnome contributors I have enjoyed
working with for so long to vote for less well known technical
contributors than well known not-so-technical people.


* A potted history

	I can't remember when I joined the GNOME project but I wasn't
in the room with Federico and Miguel when it began that's for sure.
In fact I joined quite late in the game. After a few hacks around
Gnome I started hacking on gnumeric, implemented first libole2 then
Excel IO, I care a lot about compatibility with MS' industry
"standard" file formats and protocols. After whetting my appetite with
this I got stuck into the juicy bits in the guts of a modern
spreadsheet.

	The important thing in the chronology is that I joined GNOME
when it was manifestly inferior to KDE because I believe software
Freedom to be a vitally important thing. Another joy of Freedom was the
lack of tight deadlines with no chance of getting things right. I had
experienced that in developing commercial software ( and hardware ).

	I hacked variously around gnumeric contributing to
gnome-print, gnome-libs & gdk-pixbuf in a reassuringly minor way.
Jody and I also created Gnome Basic to solve some of the Excel macro
problems that our users were having.

	Then I got sucked into the exciting Bonobo thing, and hacked
miscellaneously on a number of projects relating vaguely to this:
glade, libglade, gnome-vfs, evolution, gtkhtml, eog, xpdf, gnome-db,
guppi3, sodipodi, achtung, nautilus, oaf and ORBit alongside all
manner of new and interesting people. But mainly I concentrated on
Bonobo's core.


* About me

	I'm an English and Christian man ( not a European =), though
why that should make any difference to anyone defeats me, although it
means that I 'talk funny' and can't live up to my own ( or others)
expectations.

	I tend not to slavishly respect age and experience as much as
the sound technical arguments that these can provide.

	I poured free time into GNOME well before I was able to work
full time on it. I believe hacking Gnome should be kept fun.

	I have greatly enjoyed presenting Gnome, Gnumeric and Bonobo
to hordes of people, hopefully imparting some of my enthusiasm for
the wonderful work that you guys do.

	I don't spend copious hours writing waffle to mailing lists
[ ironicaly this mail got rather long ].

	I like testing, regression tests and source validation.

	I will try _not_ to represent the interests of the company I
love, that is for the advisory board, instead focusing on what is best
for all of Gnome's users and developers.


* So what !

	As one of the few hackers lucky enough to be able to work full
time on GNOME infrastructure I feel I have not only the time, but
insight vital for the board. Particularly my maintenance of Bonobo (
with Miguel ) is interesting.

	Bonobo has to become central to Gnome's strategy. It will
become the real 'foundation' for Gnome ( ok so ORBit is important too
), being used in all the new killer apps: Gnome/Open Office, Nautilus,
Evolution, desktop bits, scripting, system configuration and
distributed, .Net killing component systems.

	Another privilege I have had is working with the Sun guys,
investigating how we can fuse the best of their UNO technology into
Bonobo. I would really appreciate being kept in the loop on all the
important decisions that have to be made in this area.

	In summary, Bonobo will have a massive impact on release
schedules, defining what the standard Gnome is through its interfaces,
and its direction. Bonobo is clearly a core part of the original
vision of a GNU Network Object Model Environment.

	Sadly I have no real opinion on the most important issue of
the day; is it 'Gnome' or 'GNOME', my manifesto promise is thus to sit
on the fence indefinitely or until it becomes painful.

	I appreciate votes of all shapes and sizes.

--
	Don't vote -- it only encourages them!

	"The voters have spoken, the bastards..."

		Due to a shortage of devoted followers, the
	production of great leaders has been discontinued.

-- 
 mmeeks gnu org  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot