Re: 11 Questions to answer

[Mike Newman <mike gtnorthern demon co uk>]

On Tue, 2002-11-19 at 18:40, Federico Mena Quintero wrote:

> The number was reduced because of the controversial change in the
> membership policy.  For example, casual users can no longer
> automatically be members of the GNOME foundation, and I think we lost a
> good number of them.

I'm not sure this is correct. The rules in use until September of this
year were those agreed by the board during 2001. These rules did not
permit membership to 'casual users' at all. When it came to renewal for
those accounts which had never been subject to these rules, many many
more of the membership disappeared because they had not kept their
contact details up to date than were rejected by the membership
committee.

I believe that the people who 'fell by the wayside' between the
beginning of the foundation and the renewal exercise this year - a
significant number of people - represent a group of people who had moved
on, lost interest or for other reasons stopped contributing to GNOME.
This is clearly worth noting - and when we think of ways to involve new
developers, we need to also think of ways to retain seasoned
contributors.

Mike