GNOME Local user groups

Hi all:

In GUADEC i've been talking with people from the board and from other 
local groups, as we talk there, local groups are a good chance to do 
advocacy and get more users for GNOME and why not some hackers too.

By today we have a good community, GUADEC is good example for this, but 
also there are other ways to spread the word around the world.
In Chile we started small meetings to train GNOME developers (Reuniones 
de formación de desarrolladores de GNOME), our first goal was to train a 
small group of developers to get a good level using GNOME platform, so 
then we can invite some "Rock star" hacker to do some more advanced 
talks. After two or three meetings we receive invitations from 
universities asking us to give some basic talks to their students and 
user groups, after two years we've been talking about GNOME in more than 
16 meetings, some of them with more than 100 people in the room, and 
still we get invitations to give talks. A lot of those talks are just 
for users but every advocacy is a good effort to bring more users to the 
desktop.

The same idea is doing by GNOME-Es at spain, so this is an invitation to 
local groups to get organized and look forward how they can do advocacy 
in their countries, every single step is one step forward to the same goal.

On the other hand i would like to hear ideas on how we can coordinate 
this efforts, and how the board and the foundation can help, having 
strong user groups it is signal of good health of our community.

--

-- 
Fernando San Martín Woerner

Asking Reference for Alireza Kheirkhahan

Dear Foundation List Members;  

An applicant with name Alireza Kheirkhahan has applied[1] for GNOME Foundation
Membership, however references for his/her application did not reply our e-mails. 

Is there anyone who can be reference for Alireza? In case of nobody give
any reference for him/her we have to reject his/her application. 

The GNOME Foundation Membership Committee

[1] Related mail about his/her application:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/membership-committee/2006-April/msg00007.html

_______________________________________________
foundation-list mailing list
foundation-list <at> gnome.org
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list

Asking Reference for Prem Gupta

Dear Foundation List Members;  

An applicant with name Prem Gupta has applied[1] for GNOME Foundation
Membership, however s/he did not gave any references for his/her
application. We asked himself/herself for further information about
his/her contributions but we could not get any reply. 

Is there anyone who can be reference for Prem? In case of nobody give
any reference for him/her we have to reject his application. 

The GNOME Foundation Membership Committee

[1] Related mail about his/her application:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/membership-committee/2005-November/msg00046.html

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Re: Asking Reference for Alireza Kheirkhahan

On Sat, 2006-07-08 at 11:43 -0400, Baris Cicek wrote:
> Dear Foundation List Members;  
> 
> An applicant with name Alireza Kheirkhahan has applied[1] for GNOME Foundation
> Membership, however references for his/her application did not reply our e-mails. 
> 
> Is there anyone who can be reference for Alireza? In case of nobody give
> any reference for him/her we have to reject his/her application. 

I confirm that he's an active Persian GNOME translator, and has been
volunteering in this past GUADEC.  I support his application.

behdad

> The GNOME Foundation Membership Committee
> 
> [1] Related mail about his/her application:
> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/membership-committee/2006-April/msg00007.html
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-list mailing list
> foundation-list <at> gnome.org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
--

-- 
behdad
http://behdad.org/

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Membership Committee Mailing List Archives

Hi; 

Today Behdad asked about why private list like membership-committee
mailing list is public. 

We're using this list for asking information about applications, and
even though vast majority of the responses are positive, there can be
negative ones as well. 

For that reason, it's not good to make them public which might affect
honest responses from reference people. My own opinion is to keep dialog
about applications to be private. But I would like to know if there're
some concerns related with decision. 

Any applicant whom his/her application is denied can easily ask the
reason, and we can show it. Even with private list, we can keep
transparency. 

_______________________________________________
foundation-list mailing list
foundation-list <at> gnome.org
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list

Re: Asking Reference for Alireza Kheirkhahan

On 7/8/06, Baris Cicek <baris <at> teamforce.name.tr> wrote:
> Dear Foundation List Members;
>
> An applicant with name Alireza Kheirkhahan has applied[1] for GNOME Foundation
> Membership, however references for his/her application did not reply our e-mails.
>
> Is there anyone who can be reference for Alireza? In case of nobody give
> any reference for him/her we have to reject his/her application.
>
> The GNOME Foundation Membership Committee
>
> [1] Related mail about his/her application:
> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/membership-committee/2006-April/msg00007.html

I can try to examine the contributions listed in the application.
Alireza Kheirkhahan appears indeed to be a Persian (fa) translator.
Below I will examine the listed contributions one by one.

> > Persian translation of packages:
> > epiphany,

http://l10n-status.gnome.org/gnome-2.16/PO/epiphany.HEAD.fa.po
Alireza is credited in the file (2005), although not listed as the
last translator.

> > evolution,

http://l10n-status.gnome.org/gnome-2.16/PO/evolution.HEAD.fa.po
I can unfortunately find no credit for Alireza in the file.

Subversion migration recap (cut-off Friday July 14th)

Hi guys,

I hope you have all recovered from GUADEC. As you have all probably long
forgotten by now, we are scheduled to migrate the GNOME CVS repository
to Subversion next weekend. Friday night at 23:59UTC to be precise. That
means that the migration will probably be under way this time next week.

Here's an update on the status of the main issues.

Archive history issues
----------------------

Unfortunately, during it's lifetime the GNOME CVS server has suffered
several accidental clock resets (to a point in 1997). The timestamps
listed in some of the CVS ',v' files are not always correct and in
chronological order. This led to some problems high-lighted by James
Henstridge:

http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-infrastructure/2006-February/msg00059.html

Despite lengthy discussions with Michael Haggerty, the current
maintainer of cvs2svn, and several patches attempting to work around the
problem, it seems that it is unlikely that we'll be able to eliminate
the problem entirely - only use the patches we've developed to alleviate
the problem in the many cases. The most recent few mail exchanges on the
subject are archived here:

http://cvs2svn.tigris.org/servlets/BrowseList?listName=dev&by=date&from=2006-07-01&to=2006-07-31&first=1&count=4

At any rate, we will not be able to rely on the subversion archive to

Re: Membership Committee Mailing List Archives

Hi,

Baris Cicek wrote:
> Today Behdad asked about why private list like membership-committee
> mailing list is public. 
> 
> We're using this list for asking information about applications, and
> even though vast majority of the responses are positive, there can be
> negative ones as well. 
> 
> For that reason, it's not good to make them public which might affect
> honest responses from reference people. My own opinion is to keep dialog
> about applications to be private. But I would like to know if there're
> some concerns related with decision. 
> 
> Any applicant whom his/her application is denied can easily ask the
> reason, and we can show it. Even with private list, we can keep
> transparency. 

I feel strongly that the membership list should be public. Applications,
and the reasons for their rejection, should be visible to all.

The reference mails can perhaps go off-list, but honestly I can't think
why that might happen - in general, if you're replying it's to give a
good reference, and if the reference would be bad, you don't reply.

Cheers,
Dave.

Re: Membership Committee Mailing List Archives

On 11 Jul 2006, at 13:13, Dave Neary wrote:
> Calum Benson wrote:

>> Hmm... so if a dozen people have bad things to say about someone, and
>> only a couple have good things to say about them, we only get to  
>> see the
>> good ones and the application is accepted?
>
> It all depends on the scope of the question. For a GNOME Foundation
> membership request, the question is "has this person donated
> considerably more time and effort to GNOME than could normally be
> expected of a user?" - filing one bugzilla bug is a "no", writing a QT
> application is a "no", I think writing a GTK+ application would  
> probably
> qualify as a "yes", being a volunteer during a GUADEC would be a  
> "yes", etc.
>
> At what stage of the process does the question of whether the  
> person is
> a good contributor or a bad contributor come into play? Should it come
> into play at all?

It's a fair question, and not one I'd pretend to be qualified to  
answer... I guess my point is that, in general, any system of  
feedback seems somewhat flawed to me if you're only expected to give  
positive feedback, and remain silent otherwise.  (If anything, it's  
the opposite of how most feedback systems work: you usually have to  
actively voice opposition; silence tends to imply tacit acceptance.)

Re: Membership Committee Mailing List Archives

On 10 Jul 2006, at 19:34, David Neary wrote:

>
> The reference mails can perhaps go off-list, but honestly I can't  
> think
> why that might happen - in general, if you're replying it's to give a
> good reference, and if the reference would be bad, you don't reply.

Hmm... so if a dozen people have bad things to say about someone, and  
only a couple have good things to say about them, we only get to see  
the good ones and the application is accepted?

Cheeri,
Calum.

--

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum.benson <at> sun.com            Java Desktop System Team
http://blogs.sun.com/calum             +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems