Re: Board of Directors Elections 2014 - Candidacy - Oliver Propst

[Oliver Propst <oliver propst gmail com>]

On Tue, 2014-05-20 at 13:19 +0100, Ekaterina Gerasimova wrote:
> Hi Oliver,
>
> On 15 May 2014 20:51, Oliver Propst <oliver propst gmail com> wrote:
> > Name: Oliver Propst
> > Email: oliver propst gmail com
> > Affiliation: None
> >
> > Dear foundation members I want to announce my candidacy for the GNOME
> > Board of Directors.
> >
> > I have been contributing as part of the Engagement Team since 2010,
> > recently I have been involved with the GUADEC 2015 Gothenburg bid and
> > the Annual Report.
> >
> > I think that free software never have more important then now and if
> > we as a community can get together and do the necessary work the
> > greatest future of GNOME lay ahead of us.
> >
> > I have two years of experience of being on the non-for profit FSCONS
> > board (FSCONS, the free software conference in Gothenburg that Karen
> > keynoted last year). More info about me (including occupation) can be
> > found here [1].
> >
> > In the upcoming year I like to continue explore growth/collaborations
> > opportunities for the foundation and investigate the benefits of a
> > possible WC3 membership [2].
>
> In early 2013, the board briefly investigated W3C membership, 
Interesting, any notes about this?

> The cost of a W3C membership is 7,900 USD and there is
> extensive information available on their website at
> http://www.w3.org/Consortium/membership . 

> What benefits do you feel
> that joining the W3C will bring to GNOME and how would you approach
> sustainable raising the funding for the membership fees?

While I have not done any extensive investigation about benefits, I have some
thoughts about this.

If more free software entities where to join WC3, proponents of a open
unrestricted and Web would have a stronger voice thus be able to making
a lager impact and ultimately shaping the future of the Web in a free
software friendly direction (for those who wants to have more info about
WC3 and its work I recommend this video [1]).

Right now to my knowledge Mozilla are only the free software foundation
that are a W3C member[2], as the events of the past week have showed
fighting for a Open Web in that environment is hard [3], They have
to carry a very heavy load. 

Its also brings up a point that we as a free software project are
used to tell a story from a outside perspective when there is value of
to join others and collaborate across organizational boundaries
(something are very used to do within the project and on the technical
side ). 

Also as you (and others) may know GNOME are maintaining its own WebKit
implementation and browser [4] [5], I'm sure contributors to those
efforts could provide valuable inputs to WC3 and learn much from other
members. 

I understand of course a that a membership fee should never threaten the
financial situation of the foundation. With that said I hope that the
Foundation will have larger revenue in the future, thus be able to pay
the membership fee or find other founding opportunities.

1 http://www.w3.org/2011/11/w3c_video.html
2 http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Member/List
3https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/05/14/drm-and-the-challenge-of-serving-users/
4 http://webkitgtk.org/
5 https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Web