Defining GNOME software (finally)

[Allan Day <aday gnome org>]

Hi Release Team,

Many many moons ago, we had a call about GNOME trademarks and how the
project defines its official software. The background to this was that
the board has been told that:

  1. We need to clearly state what GNOME's official software is, and
  2. We need to bring the definition of that software within the
umbrella of the Foundation

The basic idea we discussed was to have the Release Team act as a
committee of the board, and maintain some simple documentation about
what GNOME's official software is. At the time it seemed that you were
OK with that, and Matthias added a stub to one of your wiki pages [1].

It's taken us an embarrassingly long time, but we're finally in a
position to make all this happen. I hope that you're still all OK to
go ahead with it!

To move forward, we'll need the wiki page filled out, so we can see
the list of modules which are official GNOME software. Is someone able
to do that? We'll also need you to confirm that the member list [2] is
up to date.

We'd also like to know if you want to keep the Release Team name, or
whether you'd prefer to switch to "Release Committee" or "Engineering
& Release Committee", or anything else. It's up to you.

You should also know that becoming a committee will involve some small
changes [3]:

  - You'll need to have membership changes ratified by the board
  - You'll need to have a chair, and minuted meetings
  - You'll need to keep the board informed about how things are going

We expect all of this to be very light touch, so don't worry about overhead.

We'll be publishing a more detailed plan for the community to give
feedback on. Once that's happened, it'll go to the board for a vote.
Do you have any questions of your own?

Thanks,

Allan
Vice-President, GNOME Foundation Board of Directors
-- 
[1] https://wiki.gnome.org/ReleasePlanning/WhatWeRelease/Criteria
[2] https://wiki.gnome.org/ReleasePlanning/Membership
[3] https://wiki.gnome.org/Foundation/Committees/#Expectations_for_Committees