Re: Mission Statement

[meg ford <meg387 gmail com>]

Hi Ryan,

On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 10:57 AM, Ryan Lortie <desrt desrt ca> wrote:

On Thu, Aug 7, 2014, at 11:18, meg ford wrote:
> I don't think it's relevant. GSoC is also outside of the mission
> statement,
> though as I said before I think there are allusions to outreach in the
> Charter. I think the discussion should focus on what is relevant, which
> is
> how the Foundation should deal with the financial and administrative
> aspects of the program. Otherwise we can also lump in any other outreach
> we
> do to new contributors, which I think would be odd, since FOSS does rely
> on
> contributors and internship programs are a good way to recruit them.

I certainly agree that attracting new contributors is an absolutely
essential part of ensuring the survival of any free software project,
and I even believe that in terms of how the program is structured, OPW's
format is more effective at creating long-term community members than is
GSoC (due to the more 'internship' nature rather than the 'complete a
project' nature of GSoC).

I think there are two fundamental differences between GNOME's
involvement in GSoC and GNOME's administration of OPW, which make all
the difference:

The first is that we are not handling the sending of payments to
students in GSoC, so the amount of work we do here is much smaller.

I agree, I was just pointing out that the discussion should focus on how to balance the workload and finances of OPW so that it is manageable, since we are involved in outreach, even if it isn't explicitly mentioned in our mission statement. The difference is a matter of scale, and I think it makes sense for us to discuss how to adjust the program's administration so it isn't a burden. It might be that Oliver's suggestion that it move to the Software Freedom Conservancy is the best way forward. I think it deserves consideration. There might also be other ways, and if there are then hopefully we can discuss those as well.

The second (and more important) is that our participation with GSoC is
limited to interaction with students who are all directly contributing
to furthering our own goals of creating GNOME: people who will
(hopefully) become members of our community.

Also a fine point, and I think the community is doing a good job of having a balanced discussion of how we can improve our relationship to OPW.

Cheers