Re: Astonishment

[Vincent Untz <vincent vuntz net>]

Le Jeudi 19 septembre 2002, a 12:10, Martin Baulig a ecrit :
> Hi,

Hi,

> it's really nice that people on this list still know my name :-)
> 
> I was also very astonished that my application was rejected.  Sure, I'm not actively
> contributing to GNOME at the moment, but my understanding was that membership expires
> after two years and not after one year.  So basically I thought that I don't even need to
> list any recent contributions in this form since my membership cannot be denied this year,
> but will exire next year if I do not renew it.

For some reason that I don't know, there is no trace of when members
were accepted in the foundation prior september 2001.
So, the board and the committee decided that every member accepted
before september 2001 would have his/her membership end september 1st
2002. This explains why your membership did not last two years and why
you have to renew.

[...]

> The other thing which astonishes me is that IMHO their way of "expiring" members is very
> rude and may get them pissed off:  why do former contributors get the same form letter
> than any "newscomers" ?
> 
> If I remember correctly, this is the first renewal in the foundation's history and the
> guidelines are really not clear about who's eligible and who's not.  So I think it'd be a
> lot more polite and not even more work to inform such people that their application is
> incomplete and that they need to list recent GNOME contributions rather than just sending
> them a form letter with "No recent contributions to GNOME" as the one reason given.

We try to be polite with everyone - not only with former contributors
but also with newcomers. But it may happen that we fail there.

What you're suggesting is that instead of rejecting an application, we
should mail the guy to ask him if he understands our position and if he
has some other details to give. And then, we could take the final
decision. I agree this would be great, but it's really more work. Do not
forget that we have to process the applications before the elections and
that there are a lot of applications.

This is why we tell people to reapply with more informations if they
feel they should not have been rejected.

I hope you understand.

Vincent

-- 
Les gens heureux ne sont pas presses.