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

[Karen Sandler <karen gnome org>]

On 2014-05-20 09:48, Oliver Propst wrote:
> 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 .

Actually, I was able to get most of the way towards the discounted fee 
for the fist years of WC3 membership when I was Executive Director, but 
we just didn't have the bandwidth to participate in it. If the new board 
thinks it's valuable, I can help pick up that conversation (whether I am 
on the board or not of course).

karen

> 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
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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