Re: Two Questions for the Board Candidates

[Andre Klapper <ak-47 gmx net>]

On Thu, 2011-05-26 at 10:38 -0700, Lefty wrote:
> First: Since the issue of "divisive attitude[s] such as Richard
> sometimes seems to [promote?] when he talks about 'GNU/Linux'" came
> up, I'd be interested to know what, if anything, candidates for the
> Board propose to do to address the ongoing waste of time and energy in
> the community over trivia like "Linux" versus "GNU/Linux", "free"
> versus "open source", and the like. This extends to things like
> "litmus tests" on mailing lists derailing discussions into
> observations about which email clients or operating systems
> participants might be using at the time they post, for example.
> 
> Attempts to divide the community and delegitimize individuals and
> their viewpoints are common, and becoming increasingly so in the past
> few years. Bad feelings have driven many away from the level of
> involvement in the community they've previously had. Do candidates see
> this as a problem? Do they have any proposals for addressing it?

By default I awesome that people mean well and have good intentions by
fighting for what they think is right.
The nature of things lets this sometimes end up off-topic and heated
which is not only a problem for the foundation mailinglist (similar
things happen from time to time on desktop-devel-list).

Though I have been only actively following the foundation mailing list
for a short period of time (my earlier absence was partially intended to
be a "self-protection" to not having to see some people that I consider
friends acting weirdly), my impression is that the situation has
definitely improved recently.
However earlier warning comments to stay on-topic, to not take things
personal or get personal, and to keep GNOME's Code of Conduct in mind,
combined with more moderation in case this is repeatedly ignored, might
be helpful.

> Second: Do candidates have any view as to how the disastrous attempts
> at engagement by GNOME with the mobile space might be improved on? The
> "GNOME Mobile and Embedded Initiative" went nowhere, and arguably
> handed the mobile device space to Google and Android by forfeit. Since
> that time, there have been various attempts to get community-based,
> mainstream open source onto mobile devices, all of which have pretty
> much died. The sole remaining effort seems to be MeeGo, and GNOME has
> no apparent direct involvement there.
> 
> Do candidates have any thoughts on the future of GNOME with respect to
> the mobile space? It's the fastest-growing portion of the general
> computing device market, and the main platform choices are proprietary
> or as good as. One of the issues raised by Canonical with respect to
> the GNOME 3 shell for Ubuntu was that it wasn't felt to be as
> appropriate for tablets and the like as Unity...

The GNOME Mobile initiative was not a success.
With a redefined GNOME Core (as per the moduleset redefinitions for 3.0)
it is now clearer what GNOME is meant to be and which parts of our
platform are meant to be adapted by customers (companies producing or
shipping mobile solutions).
Some companies use GNOME technology in their products but were/are
reluctant to get more involved in the community so the foundation should
push outreach.
This also refers to companies not using GNOME but considering it so all
parties become more aware of problems in adaption (both of technical and
social nature) and finding ways how to improve the situation together.

Refering to MeeGo, though I would call the direct level of involvement
between MeeGo and GNOME low there are levels of interactions (e.g. bug
reports upstreamed for GNOME components) that surely can be extended.

andre
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