X.Org Foundation Election Candidates

[Marc Balmer]

Lux, list,

> 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?

I am not so sure if that is blindfold.  I was able to read past IRC
meeting minutes and with the good contacts I have within X.Org I am sure
I can get any information I need to accomplish my work if the need arises.

> 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?

Not only the X server, but also related technologies should be stewarded
by the X.Org foundation.  In the bylaws, I found no mention that X.Org
is only about the X server, btw.

> 
> That's all that comes to mind right now. Thanks.

You're welcome.

- Marc Balmer

> 
> Luc Verhaegen.
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