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Re: Board of Directors Elections 2014 - Candidacy - Emily Gonyer

In regards to paid and unpaid contributors to GNOME, I honestly feel
that unpaid contributions should be favored. I realize that is
probably unlikely to occur, but it ought to. Why? Because GNOME is, at
least in theory, a free software 'project'. As such, it is supposedly
run, and worked on largely by volunteers. Unfortunately of course, we
all know this is not true. In practice most of the top contributors
are paid to work on GNOME - as a result, most of their work is
directed by corporations, and their wants/needs and not by the
thousands of individual users who have different wants/needs. But
because they are paid to work on it, they have more time to do so and
rise faster and receive more respect and admiration than those of us
who do so 'just for fun'. This creates a lopsided portrait of the
wants/needs of users. And, of course, the corporations who are paying
for the work don't care what individual users think - why would they?
As a result, users are ignored and the larger free software community
alienated. This is, IMHO why the GNOME ecosystem has fractured so
fully over the last couple of years. Where we once had GNOME we now
have GNOME Shell, Unity, Elementary, Cinnamon and Mate all competing
for the same handful of users.

I'm not going to pretend that I know how to fix this problem. I don't.
But I do know it exists, and that it has been largely, if not
completely ignored by the majority of GNOME developers and certainly
by the Board of Directors thus far. Perhaps most striking is the very
composition of the Board of Directors itself. How many are not paid to
work on GNOME by an Advisory Board member? Isn't this in some way a
conflict of interest? Shouldn't the board be independent and not tied
to corporate interests? Shouldn't the needs of the project come first,
and not the needs of any individual corporation?

On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 8:00 AM, Ekaterina Gerasimova
<kittykat3756 gmail com> wrote:

"On 20 May 2014 12:10, Emily Gonyer <emilyyrose gmail com> wrote:

On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 11:04 AM, Ekaterina Gerasimova
<kittykat3756 gmail com> wrote:

Hi Emily,

On 17 May 2014 19:42, Emily Gonyer <emilyyrose gmail com> wrote:

Name: Emily Gonyer
Email: emilyyrose gmail com
Affiliation: None

Dear Foundation,

I'm interested in serving on GNOME's board of directors for the first
time, in order to help steer GNOME in a more open and community led
direction. It is my opinion that GNOME has strode too far towards a
corporate-driven project and away from its community-led roots. As of
now, GNOME is, in my opinion too beholden to a small handful of large
corporations which forces the project to ignore large swaths of our
users in preference to them. The end result being that GNOME has lost
a tremendous portion of its respect and goodwill in the wider free
software community. As a member of the GNOME board of directors I will
actively work against this tide and towards the more open,
community-driven project that GNOME once was and I hope will be again.


I understand your concerns with regards to corporate involvement in
the project direction.

Based on the available financial information, the corporate
sponsorship enables the Foundation to employ an executive director and
an administrative assistant. Without this sponsorship, much of the
administrative work would need to be taken over by the Foundation
membership and the current board is already facing the challenges
resulting from having only one employee at this time.

How do you aim to achieve your goals without alienating the companies
that enable the Foundation to have employees to do the administrative
work and offer financial support to our membership?

GNOME is Free software, with a broad base of unpaid and paid
contributors. It seems that you wish to change the proportions of
GNOME contributors from the two backgrounds, how do you aim to achieve
this?


I think we need to take a good, hard look at what we're spending money
on and evaluate what is truly needed vs wanted. Once we figure out how
much money we need to be spending, we can evaluate our current funds,
where they are coming from and how to raise more.


This information is publicly available for up to the end of 2013 at
https://wiki.gnome.org/Foundation/FinancialSummary . What conclusions
have you drawn from it?


Donating to GNOME as an individual is not as easy as it could, indeed
should, be. We don't currently have a specific 'campaign' going on,
and as a result, a cursory glance at the website reveals no obvious
way to donate to GNOME's general fund (as far as I can tell the only
way to do so is to find the tiny 'Support GNOME' link at the very
bottom of the page). Additionally, I still don't understand why the
only way to donate to GNOME is through PayPal. Why don't we allow
people to donate via google or amazon? Why not accept bitcoins? Why
not encourage people to support GNOME via AmazonSmile and similar
programs?


There is a big link in the middle of www.gnome.org which says "Make a
donation and become a Friend of GNOME!". That offers PayPal as a
primary option, with check (USD), wire (to a USD account) and Bitcoin
via a third party on a secondary page. The board is working on being
able to receive donations by bank transfer to a EUR account as well.

The board has been advised by our accounting contacts and lawyers that
we should not take Bitcoin directly because it will greatly increase
the likelyhood of GNOME being audited by the IRS, which is likely to
lead to the Foundation losing the not-for-profit status temporarily,
to incur accounting costs of over USD 10000 in that year (which is
considerably more than current costs) and eat into the board's and
employees' time. Based on current personal donation trends, it is
extremely unlikely that the Foundation will receive anywhere close to
USD 10000 in Bitcoin donations.

Every additional donation method does incur an additional accounting cost.

Regardless, any individual is more than welcome to send in a proposal
to the board with details of a new payment method which the board
would be more than happy to review. In fact, it would be great if such
initiatives were taken up by members who are not on the board as this
will help ease the board's workload. The pages with information on
donating are editable by a number of Foundation members, so the
additional payment methods can also be added by whoever proposed them,
once they have been approved.


These are just the first handful of ideas for alternative, and largely
untapped funding options that occur to me at first glance. I'm sure
there are myriad other funding options which we have not investigated
fully, and which do not include asking for corporate sponsorship.


Personal donations make up a relatively small portion of the
Foundation's income compared to corporate sponsorship. What other
funding options do you think can be tapped which will bring in an
income on a par with what the corporate sponsorship currently brings
in?


Finally, I believe the board needs to be far more transparent than it
has been of late as to its activities & finances. The board in the
past has been resistant to allowing non-board members to 'sit in' on
meetings - even as a means for Engagement team members to take notes
and report minutes. As I understand it, the board represents and works
on behalf of the membership and their meetings ought to be public.


The board discusses sensitive issues at almost every meeting, such as
Foundation members' personal details, time-sensitive announcements and
negotiations with potential sponsors. These are all recorded in
private board minutes, in an abridged state (same as with public board
minutes), which are available to all future board members so that they
are not "lost".

The secretary, whose duty it is to record and publish minutes, does
not have to be a board member but it is expected that they are to be
discreet in doing their duty.

The board does work on behalf of the membership, which is why the
membership is always more than welcome to request agenda items and
concerns to be discussed at meetings.

I think that your concern about transparency is valid, which is why I
put in a fair bit of effort into trying to make sure that minutes are
published at more appropriate times and I am proposing that the
financial status of the Foundation should be made public on a regular
basis. Are there any other steps, short of making the board meetings
public, which you think should be investigated?

I would still be interested to know your thoughts on paid and unpaid
contributors to GNOME.


Emily Gonyer




I have been a long time user of GNOME since the 1.x days, and an
active contributor for the last 2+ years, primarily in
Marketing/Engagement with limited development and design
contributions. I actively promote free
software whenever and wherever I can, and feel strongly that it is
only through free software that we will be able to keep the freedoms
that we all cherish both online and off. Those freedoms are being
actively obstructed and eroded by corporations and governments around
the world. As a member of the board of directors I will actively work
against these forces, in order to ensure a free and open internet for
everyone.

Good luck to all!

--
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius,
power and magic in it. -  Goethe

Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't
matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr.Seuss

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that
counts can be counted. - Albert Einstein
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--
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius,
power and magic in it. -  Goethe

Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't
matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr.Seuss

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that
counts can be counted. - Albert Einstein




-- 
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius,
power and magic in it. -  Goethe

Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't
matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr.Seuss

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that
counts can be counted. - Albert Einstein
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