[Members]: disconnect from board to active developers

[Leon Shiman]

Here is my (delayed) response to Dave Airlie's initial request. I felt his 
questions deserved a thoughtful reply.

on Wed, 18 Oct 2006 09:43:58 +1000 Dave Airlie wrote (to the XOrg list):
>
>Hi,
>
>First up, I'd like to have ran for the board, but I've had some other
>things get in the way of late and I'm not a fully employed X developer
>which means my time on X is clearly defined by my free time and my
>girlfriend :-), also in the past I've received travel funding from
>X.org to go to XDC which I appreciated....
>

The Board supports contributor travel to attend meetings. Policy for giving 
support, for announcing and managing funding, and for soliciting and  
processing applications aren't good, as you know. But we have tried to fund 
every reasonable request that made sense... The process needs a lot of 
improvement - but that also requires volunteers to help make it work.

>I'd like to ask the potential board members some questions...
>
>1) X.org has limited funds gotten from company sponsorships, I'd like
>to know what plans for those funds the nominees would have?
>

And those funds are shrinking because sponsorship is currently not being 
encouraged, and most major vendors have chosen to contribute employee 
developer time rather than funds for us to allocate.

What funds we have should be used to build the organization. I think that 
should include not only support for contributors to attend developer 
meetings, but also awards for specific development, some of which may be 
speculative. I think we need to encourage innovation and imagination, giving 
individuals the means to concentrate on fresh ideas, outside of large 
corporations. That has to include addressing some longstanding needs, such 
as documentation. But it does in my view also include outreach, to build 
interest and participation world-wide. 

>2) Due to fact that we have a limited budget, how does your current
>employer feel about your X.org contributions and will funding for
>X.org related travel come from your employer or the X.org funds?
>

I am employed by Shiman Associates, a non-aligned consulting and development 
group. I can and do contribute a lot of effort, but can't always support 
travel. My X.Org travel has sometimes been partially supported by X.Org 
funds. I've also become skilled at cheap travel.

>3) X.org attends a number of "industry" events, like Linuxworld I
>believe, do you feel this is necessary for what is primarily a
>development oriented foundation? or that funds would be better placed
>elsewhere at organising developer meets...

X.Org has had booths at LinuxWorld and LinuxTag events, but those costs have 
not been great. To my knowledge all such events that we have attended offer 
free booth space to .Org's. Both Boston and SanFrancisco this year had zero 
cost I think. The sponsors also think this is a good use of their funds. I 
don't see that expense is the primary issue. I believe that visibility of a 
major critical technology at major open source trade events is good policy. 
Do we need a comprehensive outreach policy? Yes. Why? As the ByLaws state 
clearly, the purpose of the X.Org Foundation extends beyond the support of 
development. Those expenses did not conflict with developer support. Of 
course support of development, release, communication, documentation, etc -- 
 is our first responsibility.

You didn't mention training, mentoring, and education of new contributors. 
Without direct support from senior contributors, I am not sure how 
successful we can be in using our funds to grow the base community. We need 
to help those who show interest and are receptive to guidance. This also 
requires dedicated organizers. This is a gap I would like to help close - 
based in part on my teaching experience at MIT.

>
>4) These seems to be a major disconnect between the X.org and
>freedesktop.org organisations (particularly around security
>releases...), at times it seems like the board forgets that we have
>freedesktop.org hosting a lot of our services and goes and does things
>itself which usually would be much quicker done with fd.o support,
>most of the fd.o admins are X.org members, none of the X.org admins
>are active developers from what I know...  do you believe that the
>X.org board should be involved in these decisions or should the
>administration of those machines be handled by a separate admin team?
>(i.e. >1 person)...
>

According to the X.Org ByLaws, the Board has oversight responsibility for 
the operation of the Foundation. The communications and data handling are an 
important part of the organization. The Board also can and should delegate 
responsiblity for its operations such as web-site(s), wikis, lists, cvs/git, 
bugzilla, etc. Two new servers will be coming on-line at X.Org's MIT site. 
Decisions about staffing, redundancy, etc need to be made. I think managing 
such services is another good way to open and build the organization. The 
Board should certainly _not_ be directly involved in daytoday operational 
decisions. My impression from lookng at the current list of fdo system 
admins is that most of them are already over-committed developers.

You ask good questions Dave...

Leon