X.Org Foundation Election Candidates

[Matt Dew]

On 03/03/2012 04:26 PM, Luc Verhaegen wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 02:32:06PM -0800, Alan Coopersmith wrote:
>> To all X.Org Foundation Members:
>>
>> The election for the X.Org Foundation Board of Directors will begin on
>> Monday, 5 March 2012 and will come to a close 12 March 2012.  We have
>> six candidates who are running for four seats. They are (in
>> alphabetical order by surname):
>>
>>      Marc Balmer
>>      Alex Deucher
>>      Matt Dew
>>      Matthias Hopf
>>      Jeremy Huddleston
>>      Keith Packard
>
> Oops, 5th is almost upon us soon, time flies. Let me get a few
> questions in quickly then.
>
> First of, many thanks for those who have served their 2 year term. The
> last two years were marked by a massive increase in openness, which
> might not always have been easy, but it is and was very important in
> order to maintain the relevance of the X.org Foundation.
>
> Q1) Election time is upon us again, and once again, we have to go into
> elections blindfold. We have the irclogs of the last 2 years, but we
> have no State of the union, we have no financial information, we have no
> summary of the works in progress. How do the candidates feel about this?
> How do the returning candidates feel that their work of the past two
> years cannot be properly evaluated? How do the new candidates feel with
> respect to being able to provide their mission statements, not fully
> knowing which areas to target for the next 2 years?

A1)
I would disagree on the blindfolded part.  While opening things up is 
still ongoing, from what I observe, the work does indeed proceed. 
Granted my view if from the outside, but I don't see anything that 
worries me.  My interest is in increasing awareness of X and bringing in 
new contributors so not knowing full details of the financial situation 
doesn't affect my target.


>
> Q2) As the organizer of (once again) the X.org DevRoom, and co-organizer
> (together with Egbert Eich and Matthias Hopf) of XDC 2012 in Nuremberg,
> i run into a spot of trouble. The reality is that the importance of the
> actual Xserver is shrinking, with respect to all the other things that
> are going on in what once was mostly the domain of the Xserver (drivers,
> mesa, wayland, ...). The schedule for our devroom at fosdem was like 50%
> drivers, 25% wayland, 25% other things, of which 1 talk really could be
> marked as purely X. My issue with the current constellation is that
> people tend to associate the X.org Foundation with just the Xserver,
> which makes it increasingly difficult for me to label the events i
> organize with just "X.org". I kind of, implicitely, see the X.org
> Foundation as the guardian of all the listed technologies, but this is
> not so clear outside of the members of the X.org foundation.
>
> How do the candidates see this? Should the X.org foundation only be the
> about the X server, and become less and less relevant, or should it
> expand its stewardship to also officially include related technologies?
> I am not sure whether a change to the bylaws for that would be
> necessary, or would just an official statement made by the new X.org
> foundation board, a statement that expands the reach of the X.org
> Foundation to include related technologies, be sufficient.
>
> This would not only make life easier for me as a devroom organizers, but
> it might make things clearer for everyone.
>
> One key example happened just a month ago, just before FOSDEM.
> Apparently there was some Wayland event before the actual FOSDEM
> conference. I doubt that many X.org foundation members, and X.org
> foundation board members are aware of this today, let alone were aware
> of it beforehand. I do not think that any announcement of this made it
> out onto the wayland mailinglists, or whether it was really meant to
> only have a small closed group of people who are key contributors to the
> wayland project. That is, if all of the wayland contributors were
> present, i have little visibility there.
>
>  From a fosdem devroom prganizer pov, i found this rather bad, as I am
> sure that, if this event was known publically, there would have been
> more interest in people visiting FOSDEM and our FOSDEM devroom.
>
> My feeling is that if the X.org Foundation would've (semi-)officially
> stewarded (and thus provide infrastructure and sponsor events) not only
> the X server, but also drivers, Mesa, wayland and related technologies,
> then this event could've been sponsored by the X.org foundation, it
> would have been more public, and would've allowed more people to
> participate.
>
> How do the candidates feel about this? Should the X.org foundation
> expand its stewardship reach? What is your vision there?

A2)
   Are the other projects interested in having Xorg be the overall 
steward of the stack?  Mesa, Wayland, ... guys?.

   I'm very much in favor of X.org sponsoring more booths at conferences 
and creating more opportunities for developers of any and all projects 
in the stack to get together face to face.   Finding people to work them 
however, is another question. (Luc, thanks for doing FOSDEM.)
    I think it'd be good to have one organization to coordinate efforts 
between the different projects and to 'advertise' the projects wherever 
possible.  The problem is that X.org is thin on people resources. There 
are too few people doing the work, so taking on additional efforts and 
responsibilities requires either bringing in more people (difficult) or 
spreading existing people even thinner.  Are any of the ~140 people 
reading this A) interested and B) able and willing to step up and take 
on some of this?

Matt