[Members] DRAFT airlie

[Egbert Eich]

Leon Shiman writes:
 > >
 > >1) X.org has limited funds gotten from company sponsorships, I'd like
 > >to know what plans for those funds the nominees would have?
 > >
 > 
 > And those funds are shrinking because sponsorship is currently not being 
 > encouraged, and most major vendors have chosen to contribute employee 
 > developer time rather than funds for us to allocate.

The funds are shrinking because the organization has not made good
use of them and convinced the sponsors that it has used them for a
worthwhile cause. Of the budgeted spendings for this year a little 
more than just 10 percent have been spent.
Once you subtract the fixed costs for domain and LLC, hosting services
and materials (not to forgot the final charges for our managment agent)
there is very little that has been spent on causes that drive the
community forward.

 > 
 > What funds we have should be used to build the organization. I think that 
 > should include not only support for contributors to attend developer 
 > meetings, but also awards for specific development, some of which may be 
 > speculative. I think we need to encourage innovation and imagination, giving 
 > individuals the means to concentrate on fresh ideas, outside of large 
 > corporations. That has to include addressing some longstanding needs, such 
 > as documentation. But it does in my view also include outreach, to build 
 > interest and participation world-wide. 

This begs the question who should do the outreach and how the 
outreach should be performed.
Sending those who actively designed new pieces of technology or have
contributed to these to developers or even user conferences to talk 
about the advances in the project seems to be a very worthwhile cause.

Supporting people to go to trade shows local to them may also be 
worthwhile. 
Trade show  attendances can serve as gathering places for the local 
community and help strengthen ties.
However this is different from Board organized attendences all
over the globe completly disconnected from local communities.

Talking about outreach to user: A lot of user questions rank 
around support issues and questions. These people would like to 
talk to somebody with hands on experience and expertise 
in this area. This however is not necessarily the expertise 
of a Board Member.
I think that drawing in new contributors can at best be achieved by
letting people get to meet other contributors and give them the
opportunity to discuss ideas and desires and possible ways of 
implementations with them.
If we are going to have a trade show presence people with this level
of expertise should be encourage to organize it. There is no need to
staff a trade show booth with a Board Member - espeically if the
Board Member does not have this expertise.


 > 
 > >2) Due to fact that we have a limited budget, how does your current
 > >employer feel about your X.org contributions and will funding for
 > >X.org related travel come from your employer or the X.org funds?
 > >
 > 
 > I am employed by Shiman Associates, a non-aligned consulting and development 
 > group. I can and do contribute a lot of effort, but can't always support 
 > travel. My X.Org travel has sometimes been partially supported by X.Org 
 > funds. I've also become skilled at cheap travel.
 > 

I don't think this is a matter of cheap. This is a matter of what
we want to achieve and a matter of how we offer and distribute
the funds.
Without a sponsoring program a Board Member has a considerable 
advantage to ask the Board for funding and I believe that this 
is wrong just as I believe that it is not necessary to always
have a Board Member present at such events.
I tried to change this for the upcoming LWE event in Colone Germany
and give our community an equal chance to apply for funds.
However I was told that too little time is available to do so and
my proposal was not accepted by the Board.

I found that the incentive for community members to attend trade
shows is not extremely high. It is even lower when the Board 
makes it its errand to host those events without soliciting the
local community for volunteers before. People feel treated second
class if the organization sets aside half of the available funding 
to bring a Board Member in while those other contributors are 
allowed to apply for the rest.
But it is not so much a funding issue. It is also the lack of
confidence into the local community exhibited here by the Board
that lets people become inactive and lethargic.


 > >3) X.org attends a number of "industry" events, like Linuxworld I
 > >believe, do you feel this is necessary for what is primarily a
 > >development oriented foundation? or that funds would be better placed
 > >elsewhere at organising developer meets...
 > 
 > X.Org has had booths at LinuxWorld and LinuxTag events, but those costs have 
 > not been great. To my knowledge all such events that we have attended offer 
 > free booth space to .Org's. Both Boston and SanFrancisco this year had zero 
 > cost I think. The sponsors also think this is a good use of their funds. I 
 > don't see that expense is the primary issue. I believe that visibility of a 
 > major critical technology at major open source trade events is good policy. 
 > Do we need a comprehensive outreach policy? Yes. Why? As the ByLaws state 
 > clearly, the purpose of the X.Org Foundation extends beyond the support of 
 > development. Those expenses did not conflict with developer support. Of 
 > course support of development, release, communication, documentation, etc --  >  is our first responsibility.

The outreach effords of this organization certainly need to be revisited:
We need to identify the goal and the target audience and pick events
and people that best serve these goals.
As said: cost isn't much of an issue. As corollary we should not stop
individuals to persue other sorts of outreach when they don't involve
costs.

 > 
 > You didn't mention training, mentoring, and education of new contributors. 
 > Without direct support from senior contributors, I am not sure how 
 > successful we can be in using our funds to grow the base community. We need 
 > to help those who show interest and are receptive to guidance. This also 
 > requires dedicated organizers. This is a gap I would like to help close - 
 > based in part on my teaching experience at MIT.

Since the Fondation has been set up and the development has moved
to freedesktop.org a lot of mentoring has taken place to educate
new developers and help them to find their area of expertise.
This is an ongoing efford of the community taking place largely
on channels some Board Members are not even aware of.
Luckily these effords have started without waiting for the Board
to move on the issue. There doesn't seem to be a need for extra
help by the Board or Board Members.
The technological achievements on the X Window System have happened
without the help of the Board - not to say despite of the Board.
The Board has not contributed much to the success of the development
project - sometimes it had even been an obstacle.

 > 
 > According to the X.Org ByLaws, the Board has oversight responsibility for 
 > the operation of the Foundation. The communications and data handling are an 
 > important part of the organization. The Board also can and should delegate 
 > responsiblity for its operations such as web-site(s), wikis, lists, cvs/git, 
 > bugzilla, etc. Two new servers will be coming on-line at X.Org's MIT site. 

Right now x.org doesn't operate any of these. I would not say
that these reside on freedesktop.org by delegation of the Board
so much but by choice of the contributors.
The code hacking could take place anyplace. freedesktop.org is
just a very suitable and convenient place to be.


 > Decisions about staffing, redundancy, etc need to be made. I think managing 

These decisions don't have to be made by the Board. This is a popular
misconception that currently exists on the Board. The Board only
has the responsibility to oversee that this is done - however due to
the misconception described not even this is happening.

 > such services is another good way to open and build the organization. The 
 > Board should certainly _not_ be directly involved in daytoday operational 
 > decisions. My impression from lookng at the current list of fdo system 
 > admins is that most of them are already over-committed developers.
 > 

Definitely. But these are people who depend on these 
systems. This forces them to adjust their priorities 
so that the infrastructure keeps running. 
This seems to be a good way to ensure that things are 
done without delay.


Cheers,	     
	     Egbert.