Fwd: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy

[Iain <iain gnome org>]

Lefty fwd'd his reply to the list, but not mine to him.


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Iain <iain gnome org>
Date: Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 5:34 PM
Subject: Re: Candidacy: Seif Lotfy
To: "Lefty (石鏡 )" <lefty shugendo org>


On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 4:39 PM, Lefty (石鏡 ) <lefty shugendo org> wrote:
> On 6/1/10 7:38 AM, "Iain" <iain gnome org> wrote:
>>
>> It seems to me that your underlying belief is that there is too much
>> (large) corporate influence in GNOME. Would you say that you might
>> have some conflict of interest here given that your project
>> (Zeitgeist) was ignored/shunned by the GNOME Shell developers?
>
> Iain, this seems unreasonable to me. Is anyone who decides to run for the
> board who's ever had a disagreement with some group of GNOME developers or
> other going to be subject to the suggestion that they have a "conflict of
> interest"?
>
> If that's the case, I doubt we can really find a single qualified candidate.
>
> Everyone's got their interests and views, and (hopefully) the candidates are
> candid about what their views are. I think these suggestions of "conflicts
> of interest" are, honestly, a little out of line.

I disagree, I don't remember any candidate who has quite glaringly
obvious conflicts of interest running though their candidacy statement
as Seif's. Its a struggle to find anything in his statement that
doesn't come from his annoyance that Zeitgeist is not being picked up
for GNOME 3.

I have to say that I don't think we need to have spotlessly clean,
conflict of interest free candidates. Its perfectly fine to run for
the board even if these conflicts exist. They are his opinions,
interests and beliefs after all, but it seems rather disingenious to
pretend that the conflicts do not exist and I think it is completely
proper to mention them, discuss them in public and to allow people to
make up their own minds as to whether the conflict is going to cause a
problem if they are elected. This is the reason elected
representatives are supposed to inform the public as to their
conflicts of interest, so that we can see whether or not the decisions
they make are for the good of the project/country or for the own
person. Seeing as Seif has mentioned in the past his plans for
starting a company based around Zeitgeist, I think this is a very
important issue. The board is not a method to push your personal
projects in the limelight.

In future, I would prefer it if you would reply in public,
thanks,
iain