Re: Questions for the board election candidates

[Seif Lotfy <seif lotfy com>]

Hello,

On Tue, May 22, 2012 at 9:58 AM, Robert Nordan <rpvn robpvn net> wrote:
>
> Hi all, I have a few questions for the candidates in the upcoming
> election to the board. They are obviously shaped by my interests, but I
> believe that other Foundation members may be interested in the answers
> as well.
>
> 1) "Open Source" or "Free Software"?
>
> This is about personal philosophy: Do you prefer the pragmatism of the
> Open Source Initiative or the political idealism of the Free Software
> Foundation? (Some of the candidates have already flagged a stance on
> this.)

We need idealism as well as pragmatism. For me the pragmatism of the
Open Source Initiative is more of a political negotiation mindset that
makes way for the ideal goal which is Free Software. Personally I use
the term FLOSS a lot or open-source, and like many other I pick my
battles.

> 2) Overhaul of GNOME's git infrastructure
>
> I personally believe that the way the GNOME git system is set up is a
> bit antiquated and doesn't use git to its full potential. It's fine for
> developers with commit access, but  contributors without have to create
> individual patches and attach them to bug trackers or convince the
> maintainers to look up their personal branch hosted somewhere else and
> merge in. In a time when GitHub is setting the standard for ease of use
> when it comes to forking, merging and development, GNOME is lagging
> behind.
>
> I have heard chatter among GNOME people about setting up a GNOME
> instance of Gitorious to gain that kind of functionality, but nothing
> has really happened. Do any of the candidates want to make a juicy
> campaign promise on this issue?

I can only agree with you here, that the GNOME infrastructure is not
really contributor friendly. But unlike gitorious and github we are do
not want to allow people to willy-nilly host their projects without
any affiliation to GNOME. The only thing we could take from github or
gitorious is maybe the user experience. Creating accounts should be
administrated.
Nevertheless I think setting up github or gitorious for GNOME with a
administered user registration is a good way forward. However  setting
this up would take a lot of time and resources. If anyone is up for
that I don't think the board wouldn't back up the initiative.

>
> 3) GNOME and Ubuntu
>
> In the recent years there has been a public perception of a schism
> between GNOME and Ubuntu resulting in double work and wasted resources
> on both sides. Do you think that perception is unfounded or not, and how
> do you plan to handle it?

Well I don't think it is wasted resources. GNOME and Ubuntu are (in
their own rights) both providing their own different UX. To provide a
UX you need libraries and services, and that is where I think GNOME
and Ubuntu share common ground, since Ubuntu uses services (as well as
applications) developed by GNOME.

On a side note, in my opinion, some competition on a UX level is healthy.

> 4) Stance on GNOME forks
>
> Similarly, GNOME 3 has met with some opposing developments like Cinnamon
> and MATE. It is of course the right of dissatisfied users to do what
> they want and fork if they like, but should GNOME ignore them or try to
> find ways to work together with them?

Well I am not sure how GNOME can work with MATE really since most of
us are focused on GNOME 3. We are trying to move forward and not
backwards. I however admire the initiative but I am not sure how we
can work together.
Cinnamon on the other hand, I see as a parallel development to GNOME
3, since it is nothing else but a different Shell, using the same
technologies. Here I see a lot of room for working together. And it
obvious that they have their own fan club. Instead of looking at them
as opposing development we should approach them and try to look at
some of the good efforts they have done. I am not sure how to start,
maybe by inviting Clem to GUADEC or so. There is lots of room for
collaboration.

Cheers
Seif

>
> --
> Robert Nordan <rpvn robpvn net>
>
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