GNOME Foundation membership

[Christian Rose <menthos gnome org>]

I just wanted to point out that there's a GNOME Foundation annual
election coming in November, an election that decides who will be on the
GNOME Foundation Board of Directors.
The people that can vote in the election is, as always, existing GNOME
Foundation members.

Who are the Foundation members, then, and who can become a member?
------------------------------------------------------------------
The GNOME Foundation (http://foundation.gnome.org/) is a foundation
where any significant GNOME contributors can apply for membership, be
the contribution code, docs or translations or any other significant
contribution. See http://foundation.gnome.org/membership.html for
details about who is eligible for membership, and how to apply for
membership.

But I'm only a translator, I haven't done anything else for GNOME...
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Translations count as contributions, and translators that have
contributed a significant number of translations are in my experience
more than well eligible for a membership. So if you are translating
GNOME and also have contributed many translations that are now in CVS,
you should really apply for a Foundation membership, if you aren't a
member already.

Why should I care?
------------------
A membership will as mentioned above entitle you to a vote in the
elections and hence will allow you to influence who is on the board, and
thereby control much of the future of GNOME. Traditionally, there
haven't been many translators as members in the Foundation, which is
somewhat unfortunate.

Cool. Aren't there any other benefits of being a Foundation member?
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, if you are a Foundation member you can apply for a cool @gnome.org
email alias! If you're interested, read the rules for such aliases at
http://developer.gnome.org/doc/policies/accounts/mail.html and then send
your request to accounts@gnome.org. Please note that the requested mail
alias must match your CVS account name (if you have a CVS account) for
technical reasons.


Christian