Re: Question to GNOME Foundation Board candidates

[Allan Day <aday gnome org>]

Hi Daniel!

On Mon, May 23, 2016 at 7:38 PM, Daniel Espinosa <esodan gmail com> wrote:

Recently has been a campaign to expose GNOME weakness, like:

* GTK+ is C and ugly

* Bugzilla is old and user unfriendly

* Developers don't here suggestions from users

* No apps for GNOME/GTK+

This is a short list of thinks I heart, no my opinions.

As Foundation Bouard Member:

** How do you address negative campaigns from *users*? There are a response on blog.gtk.org, but developer oriented not user oriented, then there are few diffussion about GNOME technologies goodness and use in other projects (including KDE).

This isn't something that the Board takes responsibility for itself - really it's an area that the Engagement Team is involved with. That said, if there are significant user concerns in a specific area the board can act as a mediator and there might be some occasions where it is helpful to have a board member in the mix.

Your question does raise the issue of how proactive the board is, and this is something that I'm interested in and have done some work on in the past year.
I would like the board to be more proactive where possible, so that it is makes regular positive interventions in critical aspects of the project. I should stress that this isn't easy or straightforward (the board has limited time and the Foundation has limited resources), and I'm not entirely sure how feasible it is, but I do feel that it's important to try, and this is something I would spend time on if I was reelected.

** Are you planning to produce a "User Experience Road Map" for GNOME? In order to help users see how they will be benefit with GNOME's infraestructure and/or libraries. I mean, how, for example, Gtk+ changes and roadmap, is going to help users to get the best of their favorite Desktop Environment.

I agree that talking about plans and having a forward looking vision is important for the project (that's actually something I try to do in my blog). Our users need to have a sense that we're going to exciting places, and that they can come along for the ride. Again I think that the Engagement Team has the main role to play here, and that the board's responsibility should be to support it.

The one area that the board needs to focus on, in my opinion, is to communicate the project's plans to our advisory board members (both current and future). I've done a fair amount of work relating to the advisory board recently and it would be great to be talking about our plans more there.

 

** Are you planning to involve GNOME Foundation or sign an alliance with other non-profit organization, in order to support developers fixing users requested bugs/wish lists/fix beheavoir of GNOME related projects? Check at [1]

The Engagement Team has run fundraising campaigns in the past, and some of these funds have been used to contract out work. I've recently been involved in helping to revitalise the Friends of GNOME scheme (I don't need to be on the board to do this work, although it does help in some aspects and has been inspired by my time on the board). Once this has progressed, I'd like us to start running fundraisers again.

However, paying for development work is tricky. Contracting out work is expensive, and I know that there are mixed feelings about bounties within the community. My impression is that paying for hackfests and funding internships is generally the way to go. I'm open to other approaches though and would be interested to hear views from the community on this subject.

Allan