Re: Two Questions for the Board Candidates

[Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo gnome-db org>]

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?
> 
not sure that divides the community, but indeed is a waste of time and
effort. I really think Richard is right in making sure the message gets
correctly to the wider audience, but there's no need to point that out
in GNOME mailing lists, where the audience already knows what each term
really means

My only proposal for this is mailing list moderation and common
sense :-)

> 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...
> 
I haven't really been involved at all in the mobile space, so I don't
have much data, but for sure, I think the board should try to get in
contact with mobile-interested parties and see what their needs would
be. Although I guess with the recent moves from Nokia and the success of
Android, the situation is not easy IMO.