2023 X.Org Foundation Election Candidates

Wed Apr 12 09:23:01 UTC 2023

To all X.Org Foundation Members:

The election for the X.Org Foundation Board of Directors will begin on
17 April 2023. We have 8 candidates who are running for 4 seats. They
are (in alphabetical order):

* Thomas Adam
* Arkadiusz Hiler
* Christopher Michael
* Manasi Navare
* Lyude Paul
* Uma Shankar
* Daniel Vetter
* William Weeks-Balconi

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 mailing list.

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

-Ricardo Garcia, on behalf of the X.Org elections committee

## Thomas Adam

Current Affiliation: None

Personal Statement:

Even though I'm aware that despite nominating myself, I might not be
successful, it should be noted that I am personally motivated to help
keep xorg alive, and this is what I will do.

Statement of Contribution:

I've been using x.org for sometime, being the underlying platform which
the fvwm window manager runs on. For some years now, I have been an
active participant, and more recently in the last three years, the sole
maintainer of that window manager in its current guise: fvwm3. See:
https://fvwm.org

In addition to that, I started the x11cp (rather dubiously named "X11
Conservancy Project"), which aims to bring to life, and maintain older
X11 applications from the mid-to-late 90s and onward. From a heritage
perspective it's important, I feel, that such applications are continued
to be supported. See: https://x11cp.org

Because of both these projects, I've always been having to diagnose
problems with xlib, and other areas -- especially where fvwm might flag
up interesting problems with xorg. This is also true of much older
specifications such as the ICCCM2 and EWMH protocols.

I'd like to increase my involvement within the xorg project, and be more
active. Despite the apparent interest with Wayland, I still firmly
believe that xorg is still relevant and deserves a future -- so anything
I can do to help maintain it can only be a good thing.

## Arkadiusz Hiler

Current Affiliation: CodeWeavers

Personal Statement:

Since gaming on Linux seems to be one of the driving forces for
development of X.Org technologies it would be nice to get some
representation of this sector on the board.

I also have experience with conferences and I'm happy to help any future
XDC organizers.

Statement of Contribution:

* I've co-hosted the first virtual XDC 2020 and co-organized and co-
hosted the hybrid virtual / in-person XDC + WineConf 2022.

* I'm working on Proton / Wine which helps to make more games playable
Linux.

* I used to work on i915 drvier.

## Christopher Michael

Current Affiliation: Igalia

Personal Statement:

I am currently working as a Software Engineer at Igalia and would like 
to help the X.org foundation continue to provide valuable support to 
open source developers. I feel that my 25+ years of open source 
experience make me an ideal candidate to assist the X.org foundation in 
matters such as XDC event organization. If elected to the board, I would
also be interested in helping the Papers Committee with organizing the 
Call for papers, and handling some paper reviews.

Statement of Contribution:

I have been an open source user since 1996, and a contributor since 1997
to various open source projects. My current work at Igalia involves work
on the X11 modesetting driver to support hardware acceleration without
using glamor, along with Wayland window system integration on Raspberry
Pi devices. I have been involved with open source for about 26 years now
and would like the chance to take on a more leadership role by helping
to organize events such as XDC, and to help in promoting open source
graphics.

## Manasi Navare

Current Affiliation: Google

Personal Statement:

I would like to continue my contributions to i915, DRM, Gnome and Chrome
OS on enabling enhanced display features. Also if I get elected on X.org
board, I would like to help with XDC organization and paper reviews.
Being in Google, I would also like to mentor for Google Summer of Code
and help give Gsoc students an exposure and opportunity to present at
various X.org events.

Last but not the least I would like to continue to serve on Code of
Conduct committees to ensure an inclusive and supportive culture in the
open source community.

Statement of Contribution:

I have been leading the Linux graphics display kernel development for
past 9 years as part of Intel where I have enabled and usptreamed
display features like DP compliance, link training fallback support,
Display stream compression for enabling high resolution 8K displays,
variable refresh rate for gaming. I recently moved to Chrome OS display
team at Google and have been actively driving open source discussions on
supporting variable refresh rate enhancements on Chrome OS stack. I have
been also involved in Gnome VRR and DSC discussions and will be
presenting at Gnome Shell and display hackfest later this year to drive
these topics and work on fixing the gaps in Gnome.

Some of my past contributions to X.org include presenting at past XDC
conferences, serving on BOD committee for last 4 years, being on XDC
code of conduct committee, part of XDC paper review committee and being
a X.org Treasurer briefly for a few months. I also volunteer currently
on Freedesktop CoC committee and I am passionate about helping ensure a
healthy, inclusive and motivating culture in all open source projects.

## Lyude Paul

Current Affiliation: Red Hat

Personal Statement:

Hi! My name is Lyude Paul, and I'm currently employed at Red Hat as a
Software Engineer. I'm also currently on the X.org Board of Directors as
X.org's Secretary, and am also a member of the CoC team. I've also been
a member of X.org for multiple years now and have contributed to a
plethora of various projects in the X.org/freedesktop.org/linux kernel
space such as: nouveau, i915, amdgpu, the wayland protocol, igt-gpu-
tools, libinput, and more.

During my tenure on the board I've accomplished a couple of cool things:

* Restarted X.org's relationship with VESA in order to give X.org
  members access to various VESA specifications that they might not have
  access to otherwise without already having a VESA membership
* Worked to enable X.org to provide funding for professional CoC
  training for any X.org/freedesktop.org project that requests it
* (In progress) working with the rest of the board in order to prepare
  for a possible transition to SFC as our parent organization, provided
  that members approve the relevant By-law changes in this upcoming
  election. If this goes through, we will have greater access to
  resources including paid sysadmins to help run our GitLab instance.

I've quite enjoyed being able to serve this community, and will continue
to do so if re-elected to the board of directors.

Statement of Contribution:

Hi! It's Lyude, I work on tons of projects on FDO such as mesa, Xorg,
libinput, wayland, multiple linux kernel drivers, weston, and more! I
also now happen to be a member of the X.Org board, along with being
X.Org's official secretary.

## Uma Shankar

Current Affiliation: Intel

Personal Statement:

Working as Graphics Software developer at Intel Corporation and
passionate about opensource development. I want to contribute and engage
more tightly with community and bring hardware vendors on same page and
drive complex graphics features with a tighter collaboration with
various stakeholders. Keeping the spirit of open source, benefitting the
community at large with no bias for any individual corporate. I would be
honoured to serve and contribute to X.Org foundation.

Statement of Contribution:

Worked as Linux Driver Developer for more than 15years across various
subsystems. More than 10years of Display Driver Development experience,
with contribution of more than 65+ patches in Linux kernel. Instrumental
in getting HDR, Color Space and Color Management support in upstream
Linux, working with driver and userspace communities. Reviewed more than
100+ patches in Linux DRM KMS driver and involved in various discussions
in upstream. Leading the middleware development in the organization,
with a vision to tightly collaborate with community working with various
hardware vendors, community developers and benefit the larger opensource
ecosystem.

## Daniel Vetter

Current Affiliation: Intel

Personal Statement:

I've been hacking on graphics drivers for a few years now, mostly
stuck on the kernel side of things. More recently I've also started to
work on community issues, trying to make it easier to contribute to
upstream, improve processes all around and reduces barriers to get
drivers merged and new people integrated into our community.

In previous terms I've served as secretary but stepped down a while
ago. I've served on the papers committee for XDC, and I lead the
sponsor drive, continuing to secure over 10 sponsors each year,
despite Covid and all that. I'd like to continue this work and making
sure we have a great conference to meet and exchange ideas, open and
accessible to everyone.

Statement of Contribution:

DRM maintainer and other stuff.

## William Weeks-Balconi

Current Affiliation: Microsoft

Personal Statement:

I am an avid user of Xorg. My kids use Trisquel Sugar on a stick, so
after each reboot I need to use the xrandr command to configure the
display.
I am a user that will strive to maintain xorg.
I am an average user of the X Window system.

Statement of Contribution:

I enjoy Linux, eMacs, and Clojure. This month’s distribution of choice
is Trisquel KDE. I was watching an interview with RDS, and he mentioned
that he uses it.