Re: Money spending, questions for the candidates

[Behdad Esfahbod <behdad behdad org>]

Hi Philip,

So you put the candidates under moral obligation to read your mail by
calling it question for candidates, and then call them insane for
reading it all the way down...

Not going to answer point by point.  I'm also surprised that you have so
much time to write such a long mail for, I assume, basing your votes on.

Anyway, my short answer to most of your mail is that every team / group
is only mandated to do whatever the actual people doing the work like to
do.  No one knows better than me as the Pango maintainer that what Pango
needs most.  And I base my decisions on requests I get from others,
through Bugzilla, IRC, email, and face to face conversations.  If I see
people requesting a reasonable feature that makes sense and is hard to
work around, I probably get it implemented in a few months time.  That
is IMO how it should work: Companies simply pay hackers to communicate
to maintainers about what it is they need, and provide patches if they
need faster resolution.  No obligatory "you should implement this"
please, be it from the Foundation, the Board, the Tech Lead Team, or the
US president.

behdad


On Fri, 2007-11-30 at 02:51 +0100, Philip Van Hoof wrote:
> 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!
> 
> 
-- 
behdad
http://behdad.org/

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little
 Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
        -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759