Author: vuntz

Several months ago, people raised the issues of some inappropriate comments made during various talks. The board worked on resolving those issues, and then proposed the creation of guidelines to have better ways to limit such inappropriate comments, as well as to answer similar issues that would be raised in the future.

The result is a document listing a set of guidelines to help speakers avoid offending the audience, in order to have the talks enjoyed by as
many people as possible: http://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct/SpeakerGuidelines

We would like to encourage everybody who will deliver a talk at a GNOME event, or who will represent GNOME with a GNOME talk at other events, to go read those guidelines!

Many thanks to Matthew Garrett for his initial work on this, and to the community for the feedback sent after we’ve published a draft of this document.

The GNOME Foundation is hiring a system administrator. Thanks to all of you who have made this possible!

System Administrator Job Description

The GNOME Foundation is seeking candidates for a part-time system administrator position. The GNOME infrastructure cluster consists of a distributed network of machines providing services such as version control, bug tracking, web sites, and mailing lists to hundreds of part and full-time GNOME developers, and to the GNOME user community. The system administrator will work with and assist the volunteer GNOME sysadmin team to keep these services running smoothly, securely, and reliably, and to implement enhancements.

This position is not primarily a coding position, however a certain amount of programming ability is needed to be able to maintain and enhance the system administration scripts and custom web applications that run on the GNOME servers.

This position reports to the Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation.

The successful candidate will:

• Be able to conceive and execute projects independently without detailed direction.
• Have experience working with volunteer and geographically distributed communities.
• Be technically strong with experience in many or most of the following technologies:
  • Multiple GNU/Linux distributions with specific knowledge of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Debian / Ubuntu distributions
  • Python
  • SQL databases
  • PHP
  • LDAP
  • Puppet
  • Mailman
• Have good communication skills in written and spoken English.
• Be passionate about Free Software and have knowledge regarding GNOME.

Other job requirements include:

• Ability to communicate and manage projects and priorities with a distributed group of volunteers who make up the GNOME Sysadmin team
• Weekly and monthly communication with the Executive Director and quarterly reports regarding the Sysadmin Team’s work to the GNOME Foundation.

There are no specific educational requirements for this position, however a typical candidate will have completed or be in the process of completing an undergraduate degree. Several years experience maintaining production servers is mandatory.

How to Apply

To apply for this job, send your resume to board-list@gnome.org.

Timeline

• June 22nd: deadline for accepting resumes
• June 15-July 15th: phone interviews by hiring team
• July 25-30th: Follow up with top candidates.
• August 9th: Job starts.

Magnatune is an independent record label that aims at treating both its musicians and its customers fairly. There is a Rhythmbox plugin that enables users to browse the Magnatune music store, listen to full tracks, and purchase albums. Our friends at Magnatune decided that 10% of every purchase made through Rhythmbox will go back to the project, and after some discussion, the Rhythmbox team decided to donate this money to the GNOME Foundation.

John Buckman announced yesterday that he will therefore send a $614.20 check to the GNOME Foundation, which was a great surprise! John’s post has some more interesting statistics about how many albums were purchased.

We’re really grateful to Magnatune for their support, and we’d like to also thank the Rhythmbox team for choosing to donate this money to the GNOME Foundation! We think such inventive ways to help fund free software projects are promising, and we will make sure to use this money to help make a difference for the GNOME project. Christophe Fergeau, one of the Rhythmbox hackers, has a post on how you can contribute to improving Rhythmbox with hardware donations.