Re: What do you think of the foundation?

[Dave Neary <dneary gnome org>]

Hi,

john palmieri wrote:
> I'm of the same mind here.  There are a number of people who I don't 
> like to read on blogs and whatnot but I would rather us as a community 
> figure out productive ways of dealing with it as opposed to lording our 
> own views over those who don't have as much pull in the community.  Red 
> tape and draconian censorship measures is not the way to handle the 
> issue.  If our blogs and mailing lists are no longer exciting and 
> informative then there is something more fundamentally wrong than who we 
> give a voice to.

Who talked about red tape and draconian censorship?

I commend Philip for succeeding in framing this debate around the 
punishments rather than around the reasons why they might happen.

Let me be as clear as possible:

There are people in our community who are losing faith in the 
community's ability to have reasoned technical debate and design 
discussions because of vacuous 100 mail threads, and IRC being dominated 
by half a dozen people whose principal contribution to GNOME is to be on 
IRC all the time. Others are being driven away from the community for 
our tolerance of "he who shouts loudest" politics, flame wars and 
provocative and offensive blog posts.

I believe that these people should have a group that they can turn to, 
argue their points, and ask for that group to do something about it. I 
believe that the task is the role of the foundation, and the board is 
well placed to assume that role now.

When I say "do something about it", that may be simply to point out to 
the people involved that they're not being productive. It may be to 
publicly shame people for antisocial behaviour. It may be to tell the 
complainer that they're making a big deal about nothing. But right now 
if you are being driven away from GNOME forums or from the GNOME project 
in general, you have no-where to turn. How is that red tape? How is it 
draconian censorship?

Given that you and a colleague have had a run-in with the kind of 
anti-social behaviour I'm targeting here, I would have thought that 
you'd have more sympathy for the victims of the worst kinds of behaviour.

Cheers,
Dave.

--
Dave Neary
GNOME Foundation member
dneary gnome org