(After writing this long email I was tempted to cut most part of it. But hey, I'm verbose. I won't fake it here. Now you know.) > 1) Why are you running for Board of Directors? Because the board as a body is in crisis and I think I can contribute to reshape it and make it as useful to the Foundation and the community as it could. Because I'm coordinating the next GUADEC and I'm going to work part time for GNOME anyway (see my affiliation update - http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2005-November/msg00100.html ). Because of this I need to get the big picture anyway and follow the debate about the evolution of the whole GNOME project. Therefore, recycling this time and energies to strengthen the efficiency of the board seems like a reasonable plan. > What will you do more or > better than previous years Boards have done? I will try to improve the current standards of transparency and openess of the bard towards the Foundation membership and the whole GNOME community. I will try to do more on making explicit that the board leads the community by not leading it and directs the foundation by serving the membership and the community. > 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'm subscribed, I follow and sometimes I participate in guadec-list, guadec-planning, marketing-list, gnome-web-list, foundation-list and the Planet GNOME, clicking and following most on-topic links. I don't follow directly the release process and the technical stuff, although indirectly I follow the Ubuntu release development and it has a remarkable GNOME accent. > 3) What sources of funds do you as a candiate try do establish? Maybe I'm missing something but I'm surprised that public administrations with large deployments using GNOME are not in the list of sponsors, the advisory board or even the list of Friends of GNOME. In the private sector, every year there are more companies getting revenues thanks to free software projects (not just development, also consultancy, migrations, certification, research...) in which GNOME is an essential part. "If you save or get money thanks to GNOME, you could contribute some resources to the GNOME project so the relation is more reciprocal and sustainable." They should understand, specially if they are involved in mid/long term projects. We should not forget that money is for us just an interface to get other things: events, meetings, travels, software, hardware... The same organisation that can't justify internally a donation of 1.000€ to a US based foundation can set a budget of 10.000€ to organise whatever in their city, allocate people worth 20.000€ for a free and open development .... It's not about begging. It's about sharing opportunities and problems with organisations that have the will and some resources to face them... with us. > 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. As a member of the Foundation I could have my say: sponsoring hackers' and speakers' travel and accomodation in meetings and events, bounties to solve everlasting bugs, art & merchandising contests... All this would be my personal opinion in an open debate. As a member of the board I should only answer about expenses related to the board and the core part of the Foundation: 1 or 2 liberated people, cheap VoIP phones or extra bandwidth to improve the internal communication, travel of people representing publicly GNOME... All this should be debated internally in the board AND with the membership. The board as such should not decide what is spent and where. The concretion of the GNOME Foundation budget should be participative. If the release team think it's worth to buy 50 weird devices to test the development versions, it's their duty to ask for budget to cover these purchases. If the marketing team come up with a great idea of producing a TV ad to hit the mainstream, it is their duty to come up with a budget for the creative adventure. Since the board needs to have a global vision of the GNOME project, maybe they could recommend to specific projects or teams actions that would require costs paid with the general budget. The board is also responsible of promoting a cross-project debate and also of getting to a consensus (abut the Foundation's budget in this case). But the board of directors deciding in closed meetings the destination of an unknown budget and reporting once there is no way back... is not what I'd like to see. > 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? I like this question. First I would urge the G8 and the WTO to end this parody of free trade and let the developing countries have a fair international trade to sell their goods in equal conditions. Then I would demand the UN, the NATO and the White House to be serious on creating and consolidating peace & freedom conditions internationally instead of keep feeding the War industry that benefits the rich countries and impoverishes the rest. Once we get these two conditions, I would wait 2 or 3 generations hoping that civil rights and economic emancipation consolidate in these countries at least at the levels of the so-called developed countries. IT infrastructures such as Internet backbones and broadband connections for the general public will help as well. Maybe at that time we will achieve that young students and entrepreneurs from specially Asia, Africa and South America don't need to emigrate to Europe and the US to enjoy something like a middle class life that allows them to think about the possibility of joining the GNOME contribution base........ The problem is: being in the board won't help to solve any of these real problems that really condition your question. In the meantime, what the board and the GNOME community could do is: - Scan the community looking for contributors from regions where is difficult to get contributors. Listen to them, learn from them, help them increase the contribution base in their surroundings following the tactics they suggest. In other words: don't fail in the typical mistake of Europeans and US guys discussing the best way to attract non-Europeans and non-US guys without listening to others. (it's like male contributors discussing how to increase the female contribution base without asking women) - Officialise multilinguism under gnome.org, so people may become GNOME contributors and members even if they don't have a clue of English. I know I can go to places like GNOME Hispano and contribute in translations but this is not enough. - Officialise decentralisation, so regional branches of GNOME may act local while thinking global. We have done a good chunk of the way, one proof is that someone like me can aspire to be in the board of a US based foundation without crossing the Athlantic nor needing to deal with the US Foreign Office. But decentralisation is still long ahead. I guess there are models in the NGO world to emulate. - Rethink and redesign the surface and upper layouts of gnome.org, so it becomes a website atractive and clear to newbies, with clear ways to get involved, find your place, find your colleagues, make you feel at home or, actually, better than at home! Currently I would say you need to be a good friend of a GNOMEr to become a GNOMEr, or have a very specific interest in a specific GTK+ application. Any love story starting in the gnome.org homepage will possibly end up in nothing. If you are in, say, Africa your chances of knowing GNOME contributors or mastering GTK+ are even less. So the homepage is really relevant to increase the contribution base. - Stablish better channels of communication and collaboration with the distros shipping GNOME and their communities. A contributor of distro X should consider the possibility of contributing (also) to GNOME, so their contributions end up anyway in distro X but also in distro Y and Z. - Contact the planners and decisionmakers of big deployments in these countries. Make sure they go for free software and they go for GNOME. In my opinion, the most natural way to increase the contribution base is increasing the user base. There are and there will be big free software projects in many of these countries. > Or in general what would you do to increase community participation in the > GNOME community and GNOME elections? People participate when they feel it's worth for something and they are empowered to decide and change something by participating. People don't participate if they feel it's not worth because they are actually powerless and only required when it's formally appropriate or when the crisis is over everybody's heads. More GNOME contributors would join the Foundation if this would be useful for something, if it would make a difference to be or not to be a member. Actually many people becomes member of the Foundation and then don't participate in the very few occasions they have to exercise their membership... Why is this happening? Delegate real power and real decisions to the membership and you will see how the membership increases and exercise its rights. > 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? Yes I am. All the projects I have been involved since 1995 needed this capacity: cooperative projects, many of them purely online, all of them very horizontal and ruled by consensus. > How flexible is your time; can you dedicate extra time one week and > less the next? I generally respond to deadlines and compromises. If I run for election it's because I think I have time enough to be a useful board member. This is why I asked weeks ago to the foundation-list when I was thinking whether to present candidacy or not. I'm freelancer now. I organise my time. 50% of my working time is the GUADEC, this should be almost a guarantee. The other 50% falls also near GNOME. > 6) Do you consider yourself diplomatic? I'm not going to give a diplomatic answer to this question. I'm opinative, but I do listen to others, I do reconsider my opinions when good arguments are presented, I accept when my position is minoritary (it happens many times) and once the decision is made I work for the decision taken by the group. > Would you make a good > representative for the GNOME Foundation to the Membership, media, public, > and organizations and corporations the GNOME Foundation works with? I think so. I have a journalist background, have worked in a newspaper and have experience in appareances in radio and tv. I have been almost regular speaker in conferences and due to my work I'm used to meet managers, politicians and decision-makers in general. My level of Spanish (and Catalan) in these situations is good. My English is just ok. I managed to live a couple of years in London (with English flatmates and English working environment). > 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? I think the main threat are the powers around proprietary software that lobby to have software patents and infoxicate the media and people's minds. I guess the GNOME Foundation needs to invest some effort to fight infoxication and send it's own message (or help sending messages like ours) to people's minds. The free desktops are the surface of the free software. Now the attention and the debate is still focused on the distros (all vs XP) and the major applications (MS Office vs OpenOffice.org, MS Explorer vs Mozilla...), but I think in the very near future the pressure will be put mainly in the desktops: GNOME/KDE vs Vista. The Foundation, and this includes the board, should be prepared for this. We should help increasing the collaboration with KDE and the other free desktops in the framework of freedesktop.org, and don't promote the useless and energy-wasting debate GNOME vs KDE. Same thing with the companies and projects developing distributions with GNOME inside. It is clear that Red Hat, Novell, Sun, Canonical, etc, are competition. But it is also clear that their main competitors and the big market share is in the proprietary software side. I'm saying nothing new, I know. But in the meantime some GNOME users and developers are still wasting emails and hours discussing like football fans about their preferred distro. This discussion is good but we should build some kind of common GNOME proud fraternity over it. > 8) What one problem could you hope to solve this year? gnome.org needs serious work and many teams are involved. The board could help with a debate in neutral ground and coordination, and I'm familiar with web projects. > 9) Please rank your interests: GNOME finances and fund raising GNOME evangelizing to government, enterprise GNOME marketing Alliance with other organizations. merchandising of branded items legal issues individuals small business > 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) Same as > Or in general what would you do to increase community participation in the > GNOME community and GNOME elections? + users --> + contributors --> + members --> + commited members The performance of the equation increases with the usefulness of being a member and the real empowerment commited members have. (If you have read all until this line let me invite you next time we meet) :D -- Quim Gil - http://desdeamericaconamor.org
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