Re: Minutes of the GNOME Board meeting 10 July 2001

[linas linas org (Linas Vepstas)]

On Mon, Jul 16, 2001 at 02:59:57PM -0400, Daniel Veillard was heard to remark:
> On Mon, Jul 16, 2001 at 01:49:22PM -0500, Linas Vepstas wrote:
> > On Mon, Jul 16, 2001 at 12:34:50PM -0400, Daniel Veillard was heard to remark:
> > > 
> > > 	  Minutes of the GNOME Board meeting 10 July 2001
> > > 
> > >    - Mostly discussions, it was light agenda, 
> > 
> > It would be nice to know what the agenda was.
> 
>   it is under the Discussion part all items are the agenda and associated
> discussion.
> 
> > Presumably, there's stuff that's 
> > being decided between meetings,
> 
>   No the decisions are really done during meetings, and made public
> in the minutes. There might be exception, but this is the common case.

Ahh. The agenda then is indeed slim. This worries me slightly.  I guess
I'd like to see the foundation doing more PR, and possibly other
activities.   e.g. maybe the foundation could actively solicit
donations, which would be used to pay developer salaries?  Or maybe
it should be hyping various projects? e.g. 'cool gnome project of
the month', and using this to attract new developers to the 'cool
project'?  Or just plain-old making people aware that it exists,
for those of us who are overwhelmed by freshmeat?   

Or maybe the gnome foundation should develop a political arm, and lobby
various congressmen and public offices to encourage passing laws freindly
to the GPL.  You know, get the FBI to investigate GPL-violators.
Seriously.

I am not sure where to discuss such things, and I don't sense this level
of discussion occuring at the gnome foundation meetings.

> > >   ACTION: Havoc to invite Sander and Martin
> > 
> > Who are they, and why do they need to be invited ???
> 
>   Seems you didn't followed the foundation list much, those are the
> Gnome-2.0 release coordinators.

Following the list does not imply that I've commited everyone's names
to memory.  I'm not sure if these are thier first or last names.  
What I work on (gnucash) doesn't get coordinated with gnome.  So
pardon my ignorance.

> > >   ACTION: John try to get a Copyright assigment form and procedure for the
> > >           GNOME Foundation
> > >     => still pending waiting on the FSF, RMS is working on that.
> > 
> > Does the gnome foundation have a policy on copyright assignment? What is it?
> > When is it applied?  If there's no policy, then why is the above important?
> 
>  No, N/A/, N/A, because Sun contribution is large and it's a really
> bice gesture.

Well, then there's a defacto policy of 'whoever wants to assign to
to gnome, can'.  And that's OK.   All I got out of reading this was a
head-scratch, 'why are they doing this'?

--linas