Re: Questions to answer

[Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller <uraeus linuxrising org>]

> 1) Why are you running for Board of Directors? What will you do more or
> better than previous years Boards have done?
> 
> 2) How familiar are you with the day-to-day happenings of GNOME?  How much
> do you follow and participate in the main GNOME mailing lists?
I follow GNOME pretty good, both through reading some of the main
mailing lists and through reading planet gnome and gnomedesktop. 

> 3) What sources of funds do you as a candiate try do establish? And what
> will you spend it on? Not counting revenue from the shop and Friends of
> GNOME. Think more like the recent move by Mozilla or a subscription based
> bounty system.
I believe there is untapped potential for more corporate sponsorship and
getting more corporations to start funding the GNOME foundation is one
of my major goals.

> 4) Gnome is mostly a european and US based project, but seems to have
> some following in Latin America and India. How will you as a candidate
> grow the contribution base, especially in Asia, Africa and South America?
> (olafura from gnomedesktop.org)
> Or in general what would you do to increase community participation in the
> GNOME community and GNOME elections?
Apart from trying to help us get more funding which in turn can be used
by GNOME-related activities all over the world I will do very little in
this respect. Getting people in South America or Asia involved is not my
area of expertise. 

I think the current level of participation in the GNOME elections are
ok, they reflect that the GNOME board is mostly a purely administrative
function, which needs to be responsible towards the community, but who
aren't important in the day to day activities of the project. 


> 5) The board meets for one hour every two weeks to discuss a handful of
> issues.  Thus, it is very important that the board can very quickly and
> concisely discuss each topic and come to consensus on each item for
> discussion. Are you good at working with others, who sometimes have very
> differing opinions than you do, to reach consensus and agree on actions?
> How flexible is your time; can you dedicate extra time one week and
> less the next?

I have no problems working with others who have differing opinions than
me, and maybe more importantly I have no problem letting people decide
how things are done themselves. My policy for board calls over the last
year has been. a) If I don't plan on doing the work discussed myself I
don't offer an opinion unasked on how the work should be done. And b) if
asked I support the viewpoint of the person doing the actual work.

In decisions which are pure policy based I tend to state my opinion if
differing strongly from the resolution I end up supporting, and then
move on and support the solution I feel would resolve the issue the
quickest.

> 6) Do you consider yourself diplomatic?  Would you make a good
> representative for the GNOME Foundation to the Membership, media, public,
> and organizations and corporations the GNOME Foundation works with?

Yes, I like to think myself both diplomatic when needed and able to
communicate well with people not intimate with GNOME and free software.

> 7) What do you see as current threats to the future of a complete Free
> Software desktop? And what would you like the GNOME Foundation to be doing
> to address these issues?
The GNOME Foundation should focus on taking care of the core tasks assigned to it. 
a) raise money b) give outside organisations an initial point of contact
when wanting to interact with GNOME c) empower other groups in GNOME to
do help move the project forward 

There are many potential legal, political and technical threats facing
the desktop and apart from giving public support to the groups working
on those issues the board can and should not be expected to be able to
solve such issues. Maybe if we can increase our funding substantially
the board would have resources to truly play an active part in
influencing political decisions etc., but at this point in time the
board should limit itself to getting the GNOME Foundation listed as a
member or supporting organization of organizations for instance fighting
software patents.


> 8) What one problem could you hope to solve this year?
 More funds maybe the problem that people expect the board to be the solution to all problems :)


> 9) Please rank your interests:
> 	a. GNOME evangelizing to government, enterprise, small
> 	   business, and individuals
> 	b. GNOME marketing and merchandising of branded items
> 	   nationally and internationally
> 	c. GNOME legal issues like copyright and patents
> 	d. GNOME finances and fund raising
> 	e. Alliance with other organizations.

d, e, c, b, a

> 10) One of the ingredient for success in Free Software project such as GNOME
> is committed and dedicated memberships. How would you propose to promote new
> membership, and encourage commitment of existing membership to make the
> GNOME desktop the desktop of choice? [ Hints: the number of Foundation
> members have reduced from 460 in 2001 to approximately 300 in 2002 ]
> (this question is taken from questions of year 2002. I wanted to include
> this because our member count is around 350 today)

In the beginning a lot of people became members of the foundation
because the believed important development decisions would be taken by
the foundation and they wanted a say. As that myth died and the true
purpose of the board became evident fewer people have taken an interest,
which is fine.

I know a lot of people who care about GNOME and who do a lot of good
development for GNOME, that they don't give a fig about the exact text
of the GNOME trademark policy or how much money where spent on ethernet
cables during last GUADEC, which is not really a problem for them or for
GNOME.

So the best help to get a committed and dedicated membership of the
GNOME community is by not expecting everyone to care about being a
member of the GNOME foundation and by continuing to evolve our desktop
towards being the best solution possible. 

Personally I think the work thats been done recently to optimize GNOME
is much more important than anything the Foundation board can even hope
to do.


> 11) (only to those who are running for reelection) Name one of your
> accomplishments. And we were told that the board in the last years had
> huge problems being pro-active. Any issue which was slightly contentious
> had an opposition in the board. As a consequence there was no resolution.
> How do you intend to behave differnetly this year to avoid a repetition of
> that problem.

I think my greatest accomplishment over the last year was to support
every proposal which basically meant the board got its butt out of the
way. Which is also my greatest shame, that we for instance didn't manage
to get our butts out of the way and let the local organizers have full
control of next years GUADEC sooner as one example. 

To summarize, I am not running as a candidate again to use the board as
a vehicle for getting things done. I tried that last year and I have
realized the error of my ways. I am running as a candidate to use the
board as a vehicle for helping make sure nothing gets in the way of
getting things done. 

Christian