Re: Mission Statement

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

Ryan Lortie <desrt desrt ca> wrote:
...
> I got the sense during the 'open floor' of the AGM that there were a lot
> of people still wanting to ask questions before we were hurried away to
> lunch.  In future years I think it might be nice to schedule the AGM
> either in a larger slot or in a slot that is more freely able to 'spill
> over' for those who are interested in staying.
...

That was my fault - I did the schedule this year. It was mostly a
product of having the keynotes before lunch, and wanting to leave the
end of the day for lightning talks, which can also run over. That
said, I agree that it would have been good to have more time for the
open floor, and I've already made a note to adjust the schedule next
year.

...
> I also came to appreciate during conversations at GUADEC the amount of
> time which members of the engagement team, the board, and others are
> spending fighting against harmful and distracting messaging from various
> corners of the net, and how much OPW has become involved in some of the
> stranger criticisms being leveled toward us.  It's no secret that OPW is
> controversial, even within the project.

I'm not aware of OPW taking up a major portion of the Engagement
Team's time (I'm a member of that team). I think that Sri did some
firefighting on the Interwebs when the news about the Foundation's
spending freeze broke, but I wouldn't attribute that purely to OPW
business...

Again speaking as a member of the Engagement Team, I would say that
OPW has made it easier for us to talk about what GNOME does in a
coherent manner, rather than making it more difficult.

> I feel at the very least, it is
> a distraction from what should be our core goals.
...

Which very much depends on what you understand our core goals to be,
as well as how OPW relates to them, of course. This is a complex
question, and there's a whole bunch of ways you can look at it,
whether it is the wider narrative we set for ourselves as a project,
how diversity affects what we do as a project, or what kind of role we
want to take as a part of the wider Free Software ecosystem.

Allan