Some questions for future board members.

[Alex Deucher]

On Sun, Apr 10, 2016 at 10:26 AM, Luc Verhaegen <libv at skynet.be> wrote:
> I am quite amazed that no-one so far has bothered to ask any questions.
> I doubt that this is because there are no questions left to ask.
>
> Perhaps this has more to do with how irrelevant the X.org board seems to
> have become. Peters blog entry (1) while good, was actually too little
> and way too late, and ended up doing very little to change public
> perception of the X.org Foundation or the X.org Foundation board.

Irrelevant in what respect?  It's never been the job of the board to
set technical direction or development direction.  The board serves to
facilitate the direction set by its members.

>
> Then there is the supposed issue of X.org running out of money soon. I
> say supposed, as we have not seen a financial statement for years. How
> on earth is the X.org foundation going to raise any money if it is
> irrelevant and has such a sustained record of intransparency?

As per the bylaws the board should be generating a formal treasurer's
report.  That is something that should be fixed.  That said, the
treasury info is reported periodically in the regular IRC meetings.

>
> Is in the above light, plus given all the supposed overhead, and the few
> results, it wise to spend time and money on EVoC? Would it not be more
> wisely spent on things that more directly improve the X.org foundation
> visibility and relevance to the open source projects that it is
> supposedly there to support?

The only money spent on EVoC is on the projects themselves.  There is
no money spent on marketing or anything like that.  EVoC projects are
generally successfully.  The problems are more to do with the ins and
outs of international banking and things of that nature than with the
projects themselves.

If not EVoC, what would you have the foundation spend it's money on?
As I said before, we serve to facilitate the direction set by the
membership.  If anyone has ideas for interesting projects that could
be facilitated by the board, please let us know.

>
> The fact that wayland now got a separate GSoC project tells me that
> there is little hope left for rescuing the X.org foundation, but i would
> like to believe that this is not true.

I'm not sure I'm following.  Rescuing the foundation from what?  Other
than EVoC, the main other thing we do is fund the yearly XDC
conference, which, based on my experiences, is one of the better open
source conferences and has generally been a great success.  Most
people I've talked to at the conferences have enjoyed it and think it
is worthwhile.

We also help coordinate GSoC.  There is more to it then just signing
up to GSoC.  You actually have to be able to issue POs and be able to
accept money from google for mentor stipends, etc.  This is something
the board helps with.  We are happy to act as an umbrella organization
for projects like mesa, wayland, etc. to make sure those projects are
represented in GSoC.  Someone stepped up to run the GSoC project for
wayland directly this year.  I think that's great.

>
> And finally, i personally seriously doubt that the move to SPI is going
> to positively influence any of the real issues the X.org Foundation has.
> At best, it is going to help intransparency, and probably is more a
> gentle wind down of activities for the X.org foundation, which might be
> what some board and even X.org members are steering towards
> deliberately.

What issues are you hoping it will solve?  The main issue we are
trying to solve is to move the tax and financial handling to an expert
rather than trying to handle it directly with the volunteer board
whose does not have a lot of expertise in those areas.  If you feel
strongly about this and you or someone you know is an expert in those
areas and would like to get involved, please run in the next
elections.


>
> So my question to the prospective board members is:
>
> What option(s) do you see to improve the relevance of the X.org
> foundation, and how do you plan to achieve those?

Relevance in what respect?  This is not some high power foundation
wheeling and dealing with big corporations and governments.  It's just
a bunch of volunteers who are trying to help facilitate the direction
set by it's members.  It's something that is of interest to us as
(prospective) board members.  We want to help make a difference where
we can, but we also have day jobs and families.  To me, the xorg
foundation should encourage new developers that are interested in
graphical user interfaces and related technologies and it should
provide a forum for discussion of those ideas.  EVoC and XDC are two
great ways to accomplish that.

Alex