Gaps within GNOME project?

[Olav Vitters <olav vitters nl>]

[ Andre asked me to writeup what was announced/discussed at GUADEC. I'm
  just making stuff up, so take below as a rough draft. ]

[ This is the first email to define the gaps within the project. After
  that we should summarize the biggest ones and start a discussion how
  to solve those ]

During GUADEC we noticed that it is not clear what the release team
does, doesn't do, or should do. During the Annual General Meeting, there
was a short discussion about this. Due to lack of time, this was later
discussed during the GNOME-OS Birds of a Feather session.

A recap for everyone who wasn't there, this is what the release team
assumes:
  "We work for the developer community, helping everyone to work together
   and make progress. We try not to get in the way."

Or in other words:
- We do not set a direction or lead
- We work based on the perceived consensus within the project
- Release team consist of people who do work across the project; coders,
  QA/triagers, accessibility, translators, documentation and build
  freaks

What we do:
- Look after the schedule and anything that follows from that
- Make sure things are stable and tarballs build
- Keep track of anything that might be going on in any team or project
- Approve/reject features&goals; mostly by following what the rest of
  the project said&want
- Occasionally announce proposals as official (e.g. GNOME goals,
  features, etc)

We do not:
- Set direction
  The one exception is "GNOME 3". Look closely, and actually we just
  followed what we thought was needed. Further, we didn't direct. The
  details of "GNOME 3" were left up to the various teams (new websites,
  new application designs, etc).
- Act as a Technical Steering Group

Some people have noticed problems within the project:
- Communication
- Powers / decisions
- Manpower / involvement
- Vision
- etc

Various expect some overall group to decide on these matters. Some look
towards the release team to do this, or wonder why this hasn't happened.

Before looking into the role of the release team, we'd like to clearly
understand what currently is lacking within GNOME as whole.

Ideally I'd like to do this as a 5 minute silent thinking post-it
session. Or in other words:
1. DO NOT READ ANY OTHER REPLY.
2. Now take 5 minutes and write down 5 things you think are lacking
   within the project as a whole
   Write down anything you can think of, do NOT limit it to release team
   items
3. DO NOT READ ANY OTHER REPLY.
4. Send it as a reply.
6. Ignore all the other replies
   reading those will only influence what you'd think about.

[ If that doesn't work out, I'll maybe setup some kind of voting thing. ]

-- 
Regards,
Olav