Re: Money spending, questions for the candidates

["Lucas Rocha" <lucasr gnome org>]

Hi,

> The questions:
>
> o. Given that the Foundation of GNOME has plenty of money, will you if
>    elected vote to spend this money on important projects?
>
>    Being mostly interested in mobile targets and GNOME Mobile, I could
>    certainly come up with some projects that might both increase
>    deployment of our GNOME technologies on mobile devices and increase
>    the amount of contributors.
>
>    Both reasons are, I think, part of the reason why our Foundation
>    exists.
>
>     - Development on language bindings, like a binding generator for
>       for example Android and other mobile targets (plenty of our
>       components don't require Gtk+ yet could run on this target)
>
>     - Funding development on development tools (like the new Anjuta)
>
>     - Development on a WinCE port of Gtk+
>
>     - Development on a P.I.P.S. (Symbian with POSIX) port of Gtk+
>
>     - Improve the existing Win32 target of Gtk+
>
>     - Employ a maintainer and/or additional developers for Gtk+'s
>       development
>
>     - Pay people to travel to schools and universities to educate
>       students about GNOME (serious educating, not just doing cheap
>       presentations)
>
>     - ... (for making these decisions we need people who'll make real
>       and hard decisions)

First of all, the "plenty of money" that the GNOME Foundation
currently has is not enough to pay a lot of people to do many
different things. Second, I'm still not convinced that it's good,
safe, and healthy to have the GNOME Foundation paying certain people
from the community to develop software. Specially considering that
GNOME is heavily based on volunteer work.

As I said before, the GNOME Foundation role is to make sure that the
community has the needed infrastructure for its daily work and to
support community activities as much as it can.

> o. What is your opinion on an examination that could carry the title:
>    "GNOME Mobile certified software developer exam"

I don't like the general idea of certifications. I think the
contributions that one gives to a certain FLOSS project is more than
enough to prove its compentence on a certain software development
area.

> o. How are you planning to help the GNOME community overcome the fact
>    that we have relatively few technical leadership?
>
>    - By waiting for the integration our softwares to turn into
>      something that looks a lot like that O.S. called CHA-OS?

?

>    - By letting companies like Nokia, Novell, ... set our goals?
>      I think this is what's happening right now. Might be fine imo.

I don't really know what you mean here. Anyway, I disagree with the "I
think this is what's happening right now" part anyway. I don't really
see those companies setting our goals. IMO, GNOME is totally open for
volunteer and individual efforts which can have a lot of influence in
the project and hence setting our goals too.

>      Note that, however, our users sometimes get confused by this:
>
>        o. People thinking that Miguel De Icaza, Novell and GNOME are one
>           entity. (I love your work Miguel, don't get me wrong. A lot of
>           GNOME people do)
>
>        o. Too late announcing of GNOME developers joining the OOXML
>           discussions (I think it's great that we are among the people.
>           defining this, don't get me wrong. But our "technical
>           leadership", the one that we lack, should have made our
>           position clear to the audience (our users) before getting
>           Slashdotted by the religious ones in the land of freesoftware.
>
>     I think that we are having quite a handicap by this, and that we
>     should do something about it. This year.
>
>     How will you do that? What is your strategy?

As I said before, IMO, there was a communication problem about the
participation on the ECMA TC45 (actually it was more about the
timing). There's no "strategy" needed here. It's more about having
clear and consistent communication.

> Notes on my mind:
>
>  o. Technical leadership != one person dictatorship, we can work with
>     committees too. Let's be open minded in stead of the "I'm against
>     everything" point of view.
>
>     If the right people are in that committee, nobody will be against
>     anything.
>
>  o. I'm still hoping for GMAE/GNOME Mobile to be(come) that committee
>     for mobile related components. Why not do ...
>
>       o. one for the Desktop
>
>       o. one for the translators and documentation writers
>
>       o. one for that futuristic Online Desktop
>
>       o. one for the language bindings and development tools
>
>  o. On importance level: I think that without such technical leadership,
>     GNOME will fragment into a huge amount of unconnected projects.
>
>     I think this will eventually render most our components irrelevant.
>
> I don't want to end with panic-speech but I just did. I'll continue my
> philosophic text  with ... passion
>
> We are a bunch of passionate people. I've met a lot of the other
> developers at conferences and my conclusion is that our average level of
> passion is high.
>
> With our combined passion, I think we can compete with any big player on
> this planet. I believe it has always been passion that made the final
> difference in technology
>
> It would be a waste to steer ourselves to irrelevance. I think we can be
> both passionate and successful. And if not, let's die trying.
>
> (now that's a good conclusion, no?)

I don't feel like answering those comments. I guess you just want to
give your opinion about the project. Those are very
important/interesting topics but not  in the context of Board
elections.

Thanks,

--lucasr