Re: candidacy (Bart Decrem)

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Hi,

Since Bart isn't a hacker and maybe isn't a "big name" you were
already planning to vote for, I'd like to post briefly and tell why
I'd vote for him to be on the board.

I don't think most people realize how much work he's done to get the
foundation going. Quite an impressive amount; and I'm very sure it's
work that we wouldn't have gotten around to on our own, at least not
very quickly.

What Bart has to offer the board is pretty much what he says himself;
he has experience in organization and knows how to keep things moving
along. He can focus on communication and process issues. During the
process of creating the foundation, I think he's been extremely good
at listening to what people want, and responsively changing plans at
every stage to match the consensus. Bart is not the kind of person
that demands to get his way on every detail, he's the kind of person
who builds a consensus.

Given that, he's still a guy who will stand up for the big ideas that
matter. I think the past work he mentions, and the GNOME Foundation
work he's done, speak to that.

I don't think it hurts that he's a lawyer and knows something about
talking to business guys.

Anyway, I'd like to see Bart on the board, as someone who can keep us
organized and help communicate with the outside world. After all
that's in part what the board is supposed to be for. Bart is the only
guy we have who has lots of legal/corporate/organizational skills and
also knows most of the GNOME hackers by name and hangs out on IRC - so
he's someone I would really encourage people to vote for. If we just
elect our favorite 11 hackers IMHO the board won't be nearly as good
for GNOME and free software as it could be with Bart on it.

Havoc