Money spending, questions for the candidates

[Philip Van Hoof <pvanhoof gnome org>]

Hi there,

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)

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

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.

     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?


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?)


ps. I hereby promise I will try not to make such long philosophic
E-mails anymore. You must be insane for reading all of it!


-- 
Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer
home: me at pvanhoof dot be 
gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org 
http://pvanhoof.be/blog
http://codeminded.be