Apparently the Captain Beefheart reference in my blog title was too obscure (“Fast and Bulbous” recurs a few times during Trout Mask Replica), and some people thought it was rude.
So welcome to Safe as Milk, which lacks subtlety, but surely won’t have anyone calling me a pervert.
When Jonathan Scharz talks about free software, I can’t help but wonder whether he’s talking about free as in beer, or free as in freedom.
The petition for a referendum on board size is up to 33 signatories, just 4 shy of the 37 needed to call a referendum.
As Bill Hanneman and others pointed out on foundation-list, signing the petition doesn’t necessarily mean that you favour the change. It does mean that you feel this is an issue that should be discussed and voted by the foundation membership.
For those still wondering why this is a good idea, please have a read of the posts by Luis Villa and myself on foundation-list. Between them, they summarise a lot of the reasons why I think this will be a net positive for the foundation.
Update 11 Oct: The petition now has 43 foundation member signatories and 4 people who aren’t (yet?) members. I’ve asked Vincent Untz to put the process in motion, and we should have a calendar for this referendum this week. Thanks to all those who signed up. I will post the full list to foundation-list for completeness later today.
A few days ago I got a big package in the mail…
There was a lot of stuff inside.
Here’s what the cover looks like.
And there’s two, four, six, eight, ten, eleven! whole pages dedicated to the best free software desktop experience around.
Many thanks to Fleur Brosseau at Linux Pratique for providing us with the magazines, and 50 LiveCDs that we will be giving out on the GNOME-fr stand at the JDLLs, to Marcus Bauer and Luis Villa for the huge amount of work they put into the Live CD, to Davyd Madeley for his rocking summary of the new stuff in GNOME 2.12 and to Ken Vandine and Laurent Richard for writing and translating Audio CD ripping and burning in GNOME.
I’m happy today.
OpenedHand, Imendio and Fluendo have all announced that they’ve joined the GNOME Foundation advisory board.
As well as bringing new blood into that group, and with luck revitalising our communication with companies supporting GNOME, these are 3 companies which have grown out of our community – founded by GNOME hackers, thriving developing free software for and with GNOME (and, in the case of Fluendo, infrastructure for a whole platform).
In other news, Vincent Untz sent out a release announcing the creation of gnome-fr, a French non-profit to promote GNOME among French speakers. The association has massive potential. There is a really cool and vibrant community of GNOME French speakers, and I wish them (us) well.
For both these reasons, which show what’s great about the GNOME community, I’m happy today.
I just read this article on the “Creating Passionate Users” blog (a worthwhile read in general), and it seemed relevant to our current discussions on board size.
When people aren’t brave enough for one reason or another, ideas are morphed and the sharp edges are worn away until there’s little left but a completely palatable, utterly unlovable lump.
The most interesting thing to come out of the article is not that groups are bad (they aren’t), but that successful groups work by empowering individuals in areas where they’re strongest.
For those of you who aren’t regular readers of foundation-list, I have started a petition to have a referendum on reducing the size of the board. If you agree that reworking how the board works is important, please add your name, or send me an e-mail expressing your support if you’re uncomfortable using the wiki, and I’ll add it for you.
Why is this issue important?
I believe that having 11 people on the board, with no established structure for decisions and delegation, is death to momentum. The board gets its head up its own ass regularly about very small issues – we end up discussing issues, deciding that we’ll explore the issue, and after exploration, deciding that maybe we’ll wait a while before we make a decision.
Or worse, someone mails the board with a question, and because there are so many of us, everyone things “someone else will answer that one”, and the issue drops through the cracks. In fact, I was told last night that asking for help on board-list was a bad idea, since “asking for a volunteer in a large group of people isn’t usually effective”. My point exactly.
For the foundation, and the board, to be effective, we have to be fast-moving, sleek, panther-like. So people don’t have time to do board stuff – OK, then they shouldn’t run, or we shouldn’t elect them.
Being on the board is (or should be) about disseminating information, and delegating authority. The board is there only to answer questions that no-one else can answer (“Yes, we will spend money on this”, or “No, this is not a reasonable use of our trademark”). So I think that reducing board size, and having a group of people who actually take responsibility for that, is a good thing.
I live in France, and just found out that Hugh MacLeod’s free wine to bloggers promo has been extended to French residents. The man has balls, sending bottles of South African Stormhoek wine to people who have the very best that Bordeaux, Bourgogne, Alsace and the Côte du Rhône have to offer on their doorstep.
It’ll be interesting to see how the wine fares in a taste test with the Givry I got earlier at Leclerc.
Updated to correct boo-boo
OK, against my better judgement…
The new job has not turned out to be the opportunity I was hoping for. A number of factors have led to some conflict, and a total lack of passion or momentum.
I am currently considering my options – start a free software company (the problem is so many ideas on the one hand, and figuring out where the revenue stream is going to be on the other), re-entering the job market and just admitting that taking this job was a mistake, or try to make a silk purse out of the sow’s ear, buckle down, build character, and try to do the best I can in the circumstances.
I’m interested in hearing ideas people might have, by e-mail or in blog comments.
Due to the increasingly varied nature of the projects which will be represented in Lyon March next year, the conference will undergo a name-change. The GIMP developers conference will still take place, but it will be as part of the Libre Graphics Meeting – LGM for short, if you’re into acronyms, pronounced glam. Don’t ask. Just pronounce it glam. Or say LGM. Whichever you feel like. Or just use the long name, so people know what you’re talking about.
The Libre Graphics Meeting will be a meeting of minds and bodies involved in libre graphics. That is, people who program, work with, or want to find out more about free software graphics applications. It’ll be a blast.
The web-page for now is in the GIMP wiki. Please feel free to aliment it with ideas, feedback, comments and abuse.
