Re: Additional questions for the board candidates

[Dave Neary <dneary free fr>]

Hi,

Philip Van Hoof wrote:
> So basically you guys will be responsible for being the official voice,
> steering the releases, communicating with vendors and customers, GNOME
> related conferences and promotion.

"You guys" being the foundation. Not necessarily the board.

> How important are desktop standards for you. How will you attempt to let
> the GNOME developers cooperate even more with the freedesktop.org
> movement? Or do you dislike that movement? In in general: What should
> GNOME "do" with fd.org?

I never like to see repeated work. It's always disappointing to me to 
see KDE people say that fd.o is a GNOME effort, that the standards there 
are imposed on them. I'm not really in a position to help change that, 
but I know that fd.o houses a number of efforts to encourage 
inter-project co-operation (like the Create project) which are desktop 
independent.

In fact, I dislike seeing duplicated work at the distribution level too, 
and I think the foundation would be a great place to consolidate some of 
that duplication, and make the integration job easier and cheaper for 
distros, and making the core desktop better in the process.

> Second question:
>
> What will you do to further enhance cooperation with the KDE developers?
> Will you invite them to our conferences? Will you pay their travel
> expenses? Will you let them talk on GUADEC? Will you visit their
> conferences and will you do a talk about cooperation at their
> conferences? Or will you simply disregard them and think GNOME is
> superior yadiyada (in which case I wont vote for you, by the way)?

It's going to come from bottom-up, and from top-down.

First, as individuals, we need to avoid a them & us situation - and that 
means watching your tongue sometimes. I think we do OK at this at the 
moment.

Second, as an organisation, we need to make sure that we're talking to 
each other. I'd like to see GNOME talking part in the OSDWs organised by 
Aaron Seigo, for example. It'd be better to start working together on 
that kind of thing that each person organising essentially the same 
thing in their corner. I'd like to see KDE e.V and the GNOME Foundation 
co-sponsor development work that benefits both desktops. I'd like to see 
us applying for grants together.

> I can imagine companies that would like to target the GNOME desktop,
> while developing solutions for their customers, would like this type of
> leadership to happen. Yet I can imagine a lot Free Software GNOME
> developers dislike "any" form of "leadership". It's not a simple problem
> to solve. Will the GNOME Foundation fill this gap? Or will the GNOME
> Foundation create a solution? How will you, provided you become board
> member, address this. Or isn't this important enough for the Board to
> discuss? Or isn't it the focus of the Board?

I guess it's the board's job to make sure that some kind of leadership 
exists, but it's definitely not the board's place to make that kind of 
decision. Otherwise someone would be asking prospective board members 
whether they though Mono should be added to the bindings, and Beagle to 
the platform.

One problem we have on that particular issue is that at the moment, we 
don't have anyone ready to make that call, because making the obvious 
call will alienate at least 2 distributions supporting GNOME. But the 
call will need to be made soon, because in about 6 months, we're going 
to be in a situation where we have a de facto fork.

> Because I can imagine it's going to be an important project for the
> GNOME desktop and infrastructure, how will you involve yourself in the
> One Laptop Per Child concept?

I'm happy that people in the GNOME project are working on the project, 
and I will try to keep in contact and make sure we know what's happening.

Cheers,
Dave.

--
David Neary
bolsh gimp org