Re: Eleven good candidates

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Mike Kestner <mkestner ameritech net> writes: 
> I personally hope that you are in the minority on this opinion.  I have
> never met or interacted with, nor do I have an opinion whatsoever as to
> John Heard's skills, commitment to free software, or commitment to Gnome
> for that matter.  I see this as a strong reason for me *not* to vote for
> him.  To see his corporate affiliation place him ahead of the like of
> Elliot Lee is puzzling to me.
> 
> I'm personally hoping that voters will cast their ballots based on what
> people have demonstrated to the community.  If a year from now, John has
> demonstrated his leadership and commitment to Gnome by facilitating the
> seemless integration of the Sun hackers into Gnome, I will consider
> casting a ballot for him.  But not this year.
> 

I would say that the value of having someone who can help with the
integration of Sun into the project outweighs the possibility that
John will turn out to be a bad choice. I'm voting for 10 candidates I
know and trust very much; while I can't say that for John, I do feel
comfortable that the other 10 board members will keep his one vote
from having any negative impact. So I see little risk in this respect.

Given no real risk, and substantial possible gains, along with a
positive initial impression of John and his fairly impressive though
non-GNOME-related resume, I think it's a good idea to vote for him.
Some others such as Miguel have voiced the same opinion.

Let's face it: if we succeed in grabbing marketshare from proprietary
desktop software, we will have to have created the largest and most
ambitious free software project to date, by far. This is only going to
happen if we have excellent organization and communication so that all
the involved groups are working with a common vision in mind. The
board should be a group that will make that happen.

As I've said a couple times before, I consider it a big mistake to
look at this as an awards ceremony or the like. We're trying to hire
people for 11 jobs that involve doing a specific kind of work and
require specific talents and a good balance of people. There are a
couple hundred contributors that deserve recognition for substantial
contributions, but this isn't really what we're trying to do in this
election.

Havoc