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

[Ekaterina Gerasimova <kittykat3756 gmail com>]

On 20 May 2014 14:48, Oliver Propst <oliver propst gmail com> 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?

As far as I am aware, only in the board minutes at
https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes and accessibility team
minutes at https://wiki.gnome.org/Accessibility/Minutes

> > 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