Re: Questions for the candidate

[Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller <uraeus linuxrising org>]

> 1. Judging from the comments posted here (gnomdesktop.org comments
> area), it seems as though most people are confused about the purpose of
> the GNOME Foundation and its board. How will you, as a member of the
> board, try to clear up confusion and outline a clear direction and
> purpose for the Foundation?

A big part of what I have done when being involved in free software
projects inside and outside GNOME is try to increase their mindshare and
visibility. I will try to do the same for the work of the board if I get
elected. I think that by having the work done by the board being more
widely published and advertised a lot of the confusion would go away. 
If people get a clear understanding of what the board does, it will
hopefully also help people see what the board doesn't do.

> 2. What do you see as the most important thing that the board
> accomplishes, and what do you think is the area of the board's activity
> where you could improve things?
The board main function is my opinion is to give the project and offical voice outwards
and it allows other organizations and entities interact with GNOME in a
more traditional fashion. It also lets the GNOME project takes
initiatives towards others with a clearer mandate behind it. Another
important function of the board is providing entities like the release
team their legitimacy. 

If elected to the board I would work to increase the activity in the
board both externally both also in regards to empowering more groups to 
try and provide the GNOME project with needed services, in a similar
fashion to how the release team and usability teams work today.


> 3. What is the number one priority for the GNOME project now, in your
> opinion? What do you think you can do as a board member to work towards
> that goal?
I think GNOME is going in a very good direction at the moment. The biggest challenge on the horizon is 
figuring out how to deal with the evolution of the development platform.
There are many people with different views on this in the community and
I think the boards role would be, often through the release team or
other empowered groups, to let the natural processes of the community
stake out a path and then function as both an arbitrator and facilitator
in making sure the chosen path will be implemented with as little pain
and conflict as possible.

> 4. What do you think is the most important market for GNOME over the
> next year or two, and what do you feel you can do to help get GNOME
> better penetrated into that market?
I feel that the business desktops is our natural next goal. Getting business desktop volume is
the step where we are closest to offering people the software and
services they need. Home usage tends to bring in to much cruddy hardware
and to few games for instance for us to be able to provide people with
the experience they want. Getting business desktop volume first will
probably lead to a lot of the home desktop holes getting filed in
through that process.

> 5. What unique aspect will you bring to the job?
Unbridled enthusiasm and a strong will to have problems resolved in a
clear fashion :)

> 6. How would you feel about moving to a system of Preferential Voting?
When the GNOME board started up I was more worried about various
election technical issues than I am today. My basic viewpoint is that if
we have a situation where people feel a true need for a more complicated
voting system I think we have a deeper problem in the community than a
'flawed' voting system. If things are so poisoned that people start
doing calculations and widespread alliance building to 'rig' the
election then I think no matter what board we elect the community is on
a way to destroy itself, and no voting system can solve that.

> 7. How do you think you could motivate the rest of the board, if and
> when the other directors have other time pressures? 
The only way to truly motivate others is by being a good example yourself combined with showing
appreciation for the work put in by others. If that doesn't work I guess
we expose the slackers on Slashdot :)

> 8. What one problem could you hope to solve this year?
Extending the reach of the community to encompass more projects and areas.


> 9. What would you do to increase community participation in the GNOME
> community and GNOME elections?
If we can increase the attention to what the board is doing and of course have the board involved with
things people feel are interesting and relevant that will increase
community involvement in the elections and election discussions. 


> 10. Should Gnome be marketed as a separate component ? Or should it be
> actively promoted as a part of the offerings in a commercial software
> stack ?
> (Separate component in the sense *a DE in its own way and with its own
> ecosystem*)
The GNOME project needs to market GNOME as a separate entity, but of
course point to distributions who ship high quality bundlings of GNOME,
like Sun, Red Hat, Ubuntu and Novel.

Christian