On Tue, Nov 05, 2002 at 12:38:42AM -0800, Gregory Leblanc was heard to remark: > On Tue, 2002-10-22 at 15:32, Nat Friedman wrote: > > > > Proposal > > -------- > > > The key to having a Foundation that does a good job > of that is having members who care enough about GNOME to be -active- in > it's leadership. I don't think that approving somebody who wrote an > application manual for GNOME 1.0 and hasn't done anything since then, > not even participating on the mailing lists, will lead to a Foundation > that does such leadership. "active" is a relative term. I haven't been "active" in gnome for over two two years, yet I still care what goes on here. For example, the workings of the gnome foundation affect the future of www.gnucash.org, a server that I put in (significant) time & money to operate: and so I care about this future. But right now I do not have the opportunity to be "active", and would hate to be shut out of the process. > I don't think lifetime membership in the GNOME Foundation is a good > policy. We need folks who are currently active in GNOME. I'd like to > see a 2 year span on membership for the GNOME Foundation. I beleive 2 years is too short. At least 4 or 5 is better. When you get older, 2 years can just blink by. I've been busy, but I don't want to be disenfranchised simply because I'm busy elsewhere. Not that I've ever felt particularly "enfranchised"; I've never felt like I was a part of the gnome "in crowd"; I don't see that I need to be reminded that I'm not part of the "in crowd" by getting kicked after a couple of years. I'd argue that most past & present developers who wrote code that uses gtk/gnome/glade/etc. have *never* felt that they were part of the Gnome In Crowd (aka leadership), or felt that they had any sway on the future of gnome. To remind these busy, slightly-involved, mostly-disinterested onlookers (who just happen to write code that uses gnome) that they aren't wanted after a 2 years of slight-involvement, partial-disinterest doesn't achieve a thing. It certainly wouldn't stroke *my* ego (which needs regular stroking), or give me any sort of warm fuzzies about the gnome foundation, or encourage my loyalty or allegiance if I was booted because I had to fill out yet another god-damned administrative 'effing form every two years. (That's not a threat. That's just an example of how many people think. And, on a bad day, its the little things, like expired memberships, that can piss you off and cause you to burn bridges). [...] > I disagree here. If they made a contribution at some point, but are no > longer participating in GNOME, then they don't belong as a GNOME > member. At the bare minimum, they should still be following some of the > GNOME development related mailing lists. I have *never* followed a GNOME development related mailing list. I don't see what this has to do with anything. I've still written a half-dozen gnome apps. What's the development lists got to do with it? > GNOME Foundation membership isn't a "reward" for being good. GNOME > Foundation membership is a privledge granted to people who are > interested enough in GNOME to contribute to it, and who care enough to > want to shape the direction it's going. Please keep in mind that this is a volunteer-driven, unpaid activity. My experience in coordinating volunteer groups is that pissing off the volunteers serves no purpose. Its *very easy* to shrink the membership roles of a volunteer organization, and a lot harder to grow them. Maybe I've already pissed you off. See what I mean? --linas -- pub 1024D/01045933 2001-02-01 Linas Vepstas (Labas!) <linas linas org> PGP Key fingerprint = 8305 2521 6000 0B5E 8984 3F54 64A9 9A82 0104 5933
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