[Members] X.Org Foundation Election Candidates

[Kevin E Martin]

To all X.Org Foundation Members:

The election for the X.Org Foundation Board of Directors will begin on
30 Oct 2006.  We have six candidates who are running for five seats.
They are (in alphabetical order):

- Egbert Eich
- Stuart Kreitman
- Bart Massey
- Keith Packard
- Leon Shiman
- Daniel Stone

Attached below are the Personal Statements each candidate submitted for
your consideration along with their Statements of Contribution that they
submitted with the membership application.  Please review each of the
candidates' statements to help you decide whom to vote for during the
upcoming election.

If you have questions of the candidates, you should feel free to ask
them here on the <members at x.org> mailing list.

The election committee will provide detailed instructions on how the
voting system will work when the voting period begins.

The Election Committee
X.Org Foundation
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Egbert Eich
===========

Personal Statement
------------------

I've been involved in the development of the X Window System
since 1995.
I helped bootstrapping the X.Org Foundation. In the past two
years I served on the Board of Directors of the X.Org Foundation.
I helped to ensure that the Boards focuses as an overseer
on organizational issues and abstained from undue involvement
in technical matters but.
I was involved in drafting in our new By-Laws and Membership
Agreement and I drafted the 2006 budget.

My strong focus rests in development. As a Board Member I see
my most important duty to support our community of contributors
and bring its issues to the attention of the Board.

A number of issues need to be addressed urgently:

1. Create a Membership Committee to promptly deal with
   reviewing and accepting Membership applications thru
   an open process.

2. Establish a sponsorship program
   Identifying and budget funding opportunities
    * Event Funding
      Set up travel fund program for X related events and coordinate
      with event organizers.
    * Individual funding
      + Set up Budget and policies to sponsor travel for X-related
        presentations
      + Budget for and develop polices for sponsorship of
         individual contributors to attend meetings relavant
         to their area of contribution.

3. Put  X.Org server infrastructure fully in place:
   * Installation of the donated machines from SUN.
   * Identify services that can be shared with freedesktop.org.
   * Establish a backup and mirroring system for the freedesktop.org
     infrastructure.
   * Make sure that the administrational workload can be dealt with
     effectivly.

Please check http://wiki.x.org/wiki/EgbertEich for more information.

Statement of Contribution
-------------------------
I've been working on X Window System development since 19995, made
several contribution to XFree86*) and later on to X.Org. I helped
'bootstrapping' X.Org, coordinated it's initial release and have been
serving on the board for the past two years.

Stuart Kreitman
===============

Personal Statement
------------------
I am honored to be nominated for election to the Board of Directors of
X.org Foundation. If elected I hope to continue contributing to the work
of defining our organization and setting policy that allows all members
of X.org to be motivated and productive contributors in a neutral and
open environment.

Statement of Contribution
-------------------------
I participated in a meaningfull way during the big bang that led to the
formation of this X.org foundation and wish to continue to influence
governance to be inclusive and beneficial to the membership. I'm also
interested in delivering a great developer's conference experience
again.

Bart Massey
===========

Personal Statement
------------------
I have been privileged to be involved with the development
of X since the beginning, and to watch the evolution of the
system and its developers.  The foundation that was set is
amazingly solid 20 years later.  Huge progress has been made
in desktop technology, and X has kept up.  I've tried to
help where I can.

Still, there's more to do than ever.  The transition of
X.org to a participatory foundation model lets the developer
community set the priorities and direction of X development.
We need to grab that opportunity.  Specifically, we need to:

  * Attract and train talented new developers, by providing
    incentives and support.

  * Drive architectural and engineering innovation, by
    making sure the right people have opportunities to meet
    face-to-face when necessary, and by promulgating
    documentation and standards.

  * Tighten and strengthen cooperation related
    organizations---the Linux kernel folks, freedesktop.org,
    LSB, etc---by formalizing organizational relationships
    and encouraging personal ones.

Today, the need for a strong X desktop is intense.  X.org
has an opportunity to take a leadership role, not just as
the open source desktop of choice but as something the users
of proprietary desktops envy.  I believe that I can help to
take us there.

Statement of Contribution
-------------------------
Architect, supervisor and initial lead, XCB. Assistance and advice to
the work of Keith Packard (Render, Xft/fontconfig, etc) and Carl Worth
(Cairo). Hosting of freedesktop.org at Portland State University.


Keith Packard
=============

Personal Statement
------------------
With the twentieth anniversary behind us, it is time to look forward into
the future and plan how the X window system will look on its fortieth
birthday. We've spent the last seven years rearchitecting the window system,
adding missing features and new capabilities beyond those available in other
environments. Throughout this process, it has been teamwork that has driven
our success, teamwork built on collaboration and cooperation of people around
the world.

With the successful transition to a developer-governed organization, it's
time to consider how we can improve our ability to collaborate and
communicate, to strengthen our existing community and to encourage other
talented people to come and join us.

I believe one of the best ways we can build a better community is by
bringing people to work and play together. X.org has done a modest amount of
this, but we can do more. To strengthen our existing community, we should
continue to hold the X Developers Conference. To build bridges to other
communities, we should work to have our members participating at other
conferences around the world.

I'm excited to be a part of the revitalized X.Org Foundation and look for
your vote in the upcoming election.

Statement of Contribution
-------------------------
X architect, author of much of the existing codebase.

Leon Shiman
===========

Personal Statement
------------------
I am a co-founder and current Secretary and Director. I ask for your vote to
continue to serve as a Director of the X.Org Foundation. My management
contributions to X.Org, technical work on X and integrated media,
international liaison withtechnical, trade, and government open source
organizations, and  history with X and  X.Org are detailed in the public
Member Application. I view X as a critical base technology for all open
source, Linux, and Unix-based desktops, and the pre-eminent open source
windowing technology for all platforms. X.Org is its chartered agent. The
X.Org Foundation has now both opportunity and obligation to facilitate the
evolution of X and X Standards. In my view, the Board of Directors can and
should be the active enabler of greater and more broadly based participation
in creative development and application of X Technology.

This must include: effective internationalization of user, developer,
vendor, and distributor communities; formation of an advisory panel;
creation of a forum for vendor collaboration; the growth of local community
activity; encouraging sponsorship; mechanisms for financial and logistical
support of developing talent; and  closer collaboration with peer
organizations which include FreeDeskTop.Org, FSF, FSFE and its international
affiliates, KDE, the Gnome Foundation,  the Free Standards Group and its
Accessibility Working Group, and the OSDL Desktop Initiative.

Organizational requirements are: finalizing the X.Org legal structure,
developing strategy for managing IP, development of a mentoring program,
completion of the X.Org site and supporting its management, strengthening
the Architecture Working Group, developing a strategy and plan for managing
documentation and publishing, and effective communication and outreach.
Achieving these requires the broadened community participation that remains
our chief goal.

Statement of Contribution
-------------------------
I am currently Secretary of the X.Org Foundation and and member of its
Board of Directors. I have been closely involved with X, XOrg, its
formation, and its predecessor organizations. I was co-founder and
sponsor of X.Org, member of the X Consortium, and sponsor of the X
Project Team of the OSF. My recent contributions include: Management of
internal coroporate documents and Board Meetings, I have worked actively
with X, the X.Org Foundation, and all its predecessor organizations
since the 1980's. I currently serve as Secretary and Director on its
Board where I have been responsible for transfer from The Open Group,
L.L.C. management and legal issues, negotiating free legal services,
setting up L.L.C. banking, negotiating IP and Trademark issues,
re-acquiring the X.Org website, acquiring control of VSW5 under an X.Org
MIT License, re-establishing a physical MIT network site, Board Meeting
agendas and minutes, author of official announcements, national and
international outreach, developing X.Org Graphics and presentation
materials. As Secretary, I represent X.Org in all official matters. I
also represent X.Org on the Government Open Source Advisory Committee
(GOSAC). Developer of MAS for X.Org.


Daniel Stone
============

Personal Statement:
-------------------
My agenda as a board member will be:
 * open membership immediately if it is still an issue,
 * reform heavyweight processes such as membership, distribution of
   board minutes,
 * seek to remove the board's involvement in processes which are plainly
   better left to the judgement of technical members,
 * reinstate a yearly face-to-face meeting of board members,
 * seek ways to dispense some of the Foundation's considerable
   financial resources to benefit our members (e.g. purchasing equipment
   to aid development, joining organisations such as Khronos or VESA,
   sponsoring conference attendance if it would be useful),
 * get all donated machines online and functional, and look at both
   transitioning needed x.org infrastructure over, and also
   interoperating with fd.o machines better.

Of these bullet points, the first three are the most crucial, and
require a longer explanation. So:

I first started participating in the Debian project in 2001, and the
Ubuntu project in early 2004, long before its existence was made public
(as of mid-2006, I am no longer involved with either project).  I
believe that Debian/Ubuntu provides an interesting parallel to the
situation the X community faces today.

Debian is best described as organisationally inert: tasks somehow take
longer to perform in Debian than they would in other frameworks, even
with the same people and processes.  Ubuntu was particularly agile in
the areas of X and GNOME in particular, despite having mostly the same
people involved as Debian.  Many other examples during my nearly two
years working full-time on Ubuntu served to reinforce this view.

Over the past year or so, I've come to believe that this same
organisational inertia has crept into X.Org.  Simple tasks such
as dealing with the treasury or getting an FTP mirror functional,
take orders of magnitude longer than they should.  Complex tasks
such as modularisation take an age to get started.  (This is not
a slight on the individuals involved; as I said earlier, I
believe it to be an _organisational_ issue.)

These are only examples of a single problem which is currently, as I
see it, crippling X.Org.  Many X developers are using freedesktop.org
as a back door of sorts with which to avoid having to deal with X.Org
(e.g. website, machine logins).  This is, to say the least, suboptimal.
This was the situation back when most X.Org assets were tied up with
TOG, but it still persists today.

I believe a significant contributing factor to this is that the board is
placed on the critical path for almost everything going through X.Org,
instead of having tasks delegated to the members as appropriate.  This
is wildly inappropriate if only because members of the board are not
necessarily qualified to be making technical judgements: we're
conflating the roles of 'skilled board member' with 'skilled hacker'.

The board should ideally follow a generally non-interventionalist
approach, such as that taken by the GNOME Foundation and the KDE e.V.,
who are removed from technical development roles, and deal solely with
administrative issues.  In the unlikely event that the board needs to
take technical decisions, it seeks counsel from its technical advisors.

I am currently also working in the bylaws group to see if anything can
be usefully amended there to assist in these goals.

One role I think the Foundation could take on that it does not
currently, is more of an advocacy role; working within organisations
such as Khronos and VESA to not only obtain access to specifications we
need to get our work done, but influence the processes which produce
these specifications.

I also think the Foundation has provided an invaluable role in
sponsoring developers to attend conferences (I myself received
sponsorship to attend EXDC and FOSDEM when I was not in a position to
fund myself, and several others have also), and would like to see this
great work continued.

When the next elections come up (one year into my two year term), I will
sit down and review my progress on these goals.  If I feel this has been
unsatisfactory, I will step down from the board during next year's
elections, and let fresh blood in, or the status quo continue.

I have been a member of the X community for a few years now: predating
the X.Org Foundation, but certainly not a greybeard by any standard.  I
have participated as a packager (Debian and Ubuntu, from pre-release
XFree86 4.3, to the modular tree), as a build system hacker on the
modularisation project (xlibs/xserver/debrix to modern-day), and lately
as a coder, being the maintainer of the input subsystem in general, and
very specifically XKB.  However, I would hope that votes for the board
of directors wouldn't be influenced by competence or otherwise with
respect to coding.

Statement of Contribution
-------------------------
I work on X a lot.