Re: Questions for all board candidates

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Thu, 2011-05-26 at 05:43 -0700, Jeff Schroeder wrote:
> 1.) For incumbents, have you missed any meetings? What is your % of
> missed vs attended meetings and why? For new challengers, how much
> time can you dedicate to working on the board each week? How do you
> plan on spending that time?

As a freelancer, How much time I can spend depends on whether
I have an active contract. I expect that I'll be able to put
in a full day's work each week at a minimum, sometimes more.
Of course, as with any GNOME contributor, there will be a
trade-off with my regular development and writing work.

I'd like to spend much of that time talking to the people who
can get GNOME into the hands of users, as I talked about in
my candidacy statement. Reaching out to them, pushing GNOME,
listening to their concerns, and putting them in touch with
developers and other community members when necessary.

I've never served on the board before, so I don't know all
the things that need to be done regularly. This will be a
learning experience for me, as I'm sure it was for every
first-time board member.

> 2.) Other open source / free software projects run their meetings in
> the open via IRC (such as Fedora's FESCO I believe). Would you
> consider that, and if not, what about recording how board members vote
> on a given topic. This includes +1 / -1 / abstains and perhaps give a
> small comment on any -1 or abstain. In my opinion, as an open
> foundation, the transparency of the board is absolutely critical
> _where possible_. Leaders should always set the example for members.

Is there a real problem with transparency? The board does send
minutes of all meetings. Reading the minutes (which I usually
at least skim), I don't get the impression that the board takes
official votes on everything they discuss. You can only record
people's votes if they vote. Introducing more procedure could
just bog everything down.

I do think phone meetings are usually more productive that IRC
meetings. Discussions just move faster. I certainly don't want
to come in as a first-time member and tell the board it needs
to change how it works.

That said, if our community thinks there's transparency problem
with the board, then that's a serious issue we need to address.
I'm just not going to commit to a specific solution right now
without a better understanding.

--
Shaun