June 2011 - Inkscape Board of Directors

Board Membership
by Josh Andler 12 Jul '11

12 Jul '11

Hey All, As previously mentioned, I really feel that JazzyNico and Johan should be given the opportunity to serve on the board. JazzyNico has expressed interest and Johan has not (yet, who knows, I haven't cornered him yet ;). In the grand scheme of things, is anyone willing to be succeeded by either of them? If both are interested and we only have one opening (or none), I would be willing to give up my spot on the board and just serve as community nag/liaison to the board while having no voting power just to empower a current active developer with the ability to influence the project in different ways. Please give input/feedback. Cheers, Josh

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Fwd: Re : re committee
by Josh Andler 27 Jun '11

27 Jun '11

Apparently the following got bounced from the list, so I'm forwarding it on. Cheers, Josh ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Nicolas Dufour <nicoduf@...32...> Date: Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 1:01 PM Subject: Re : re committee To: Josh Andler <scislac@...23...>, Alexandre Prokoudine < alexandre.prokoudine@...23...>, Inkscape Board < inkscape-board(a)lists.sourceforge.net> Cc: Ted Gould <ted@...1...>, "Jon A. Cruz" <jon@...9...>, Johan Engelen <jbc.engelen@...31...> Hi, >De : Josh Andler <scislac@...23...> >Johan & Nicolas, would you be interested on being on the board? If you think I can be helpful, I'll be glad to join the board. >I really think this is one of those tough issues regarding Packt and the project showing any form of favoritism in the name of financial gain vs something community based (not say that there's anything comparable, but saying that tends to be the preference). If I could get a copy of it (no I don't want to pay) to judge the quality, I could then feel comfortable with voting. We could try to have something community based AND get financial gains... Here's my suggestion: 1. An Inkscape doc team writes the Inkscape introduction ebook and release it for free (Gnu FDL or whatever fits best) on the Inkscape website. 2. Ask Packt to publish a printed version of the book for a small fee (and try to be less expensive than printing it at home). 3. Add a link on our website that redirect to the Packt book store. 4. Optionally translate and try to sell translated printed copies as well. I see at least too difficulties: 1. We need a motivated documentation team to write the original ebook, and some motivated translators (you can count on me!) for the localized versions. But hey, it's just 40 pages, and some of us already have published books, articles, or have contributed to on-line manuals! We could use the Floss Manuals platform to write it in collaborative mode. 2. Probably the main difficulty: would Packt accept to publish a printed version of a free ebook? Eyrolles did it recently with the French translation of the RMS biography by Sam Williams (FDL) last year. You can download the ebook for free on the Framasoft website, and you can buy the printed version in many technical book stores in France. Doing that would be beneficial for Packt's reputation as a free and open source software supporter, and would not necessarily reduce the number of books sold. I believe that the promotion made by Packt in order to sell the book would attract users to the project's page, and that the users that find the ebook useful would also buy the printed version if it's not too expensive compared to a home printed version. My 0.02€ Regards. -- Nicolas

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Re: [Inkscape-board] re committee
by Aaron Spike 18 Jun '11

18 Jun '11

Ok. So to summarize, the question is, "do we want to sell a short commercially produced tutorial from a link next to the download button on our main page?" I guess this could be broken into two questions 1) do we want to sell this tutorial and 2) do we want to publicize it in such a prominent location? What are the likely issues going to be? - is it hard to make a decision without knowledge of the quality of the tutorial? - how will this affect our volunteer documentation efforts? Are they getting such prime real estate? - standard questions about need for and use of money. - what precedent is this setting, ie how will we respond (possibly unlikely) requests from other publishers or documentation sources? Let's hear some opinions folks. Aaron Spike

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Re: [Inkscape-board] re committee
by Josh Andler 18 Jun '11

18 Jun '11

Hey Alexandre (& board), I really think this is one of those tough issues regarding Packt and the project showing any form of favoritism in the name of financial gain vs something community based (not say that there's anything comparable, but saying that tends to be the preference). If I could get a copy of it (no I don't want to pay) to judge the quality, I could then feel comfortable with voting. As for the board though, I do believe that at some point it was originally supposed to be term based. I think we should revisit this issue as there may be people on the board who are no longer actively involved with the project and are unresponsive. Additionally, there may also be some of our newer & more active contributors who might have different perspectives that could be beneficial. I feel that at least two people should definitely be given the opportunity to be on the board. Those people would be Johan & JazzyNico. According to ohloh.net (not perfect), but Johan is ranked as the #2 committer to the project behind only bulia and Nicolas is ranked #5 (4 commits away from being #4)... and yes, I realize that Nicolas also does translation work and maintenance, but I'm looking at commitment to the project. At some point I'd also want to extend offers to Felipe & Krzysztof as well, but that's for another day. Johan & Nicolas, would you be interested on being on the board? If you look at the archives for the list, we rarely talk about stuff (every 6 months at best, I believe we've had a stretch of well over a year with no discussions), so it's by no means a big commitment time-wise. Alexandre, I understand where you're coming from. Please know that you evangelizing for the project (and oss graphics software in general) is HUGELY appreciated. Please don't leave us. I will admit, I've been at that point in the past too... mainly when there is no code changing activity, lack of responses on the mailing lists, and it seems like no one is interested in just fixing bugs so we can just get a release out. Adib & Nicolas generally step up and relieve that tension though (Gellule is shaping up to be another). Either way, I've literally been just an inch away from the half baked scene (NSFW): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuBRk6tjiUQ(obviously I wouldn't be like that with any fellow contributors, but I've certainly been that frustrated). Cheers, Josh On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 2:43 AM, Alexandre Prokoudine < alexandre.prokoudine@...23...> wrote: > Hi, > > I have to say that I'm extremely disappointed with Inkscape committee. > It's been a month since I'm not able to tell PacktPub *anything* > concrete about their proposal. A PR person is not supposed to keep > people waiting a whole damn month. > > Guys, what do you expect me to tell PacktPub? That decision makers in > the project don't care about the project? That they don't actually > make decisions per se? Do you understand that this is about > reputation? > > I can stretch it a bit once again, but if this nonsense doesn't stop, > I will step down as PR manager. > > Please forward to the rest of the committee. > > Alexandre Prokoudine > http://libregraphicsworld.org >

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Re: [Inkscape-board] re committee
by Aaron Spike 17 Jun '11

17 Jun '11

On 06/16/2011 05:34 PM, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote: > Let's just agree that here and now we need a decision, and that > decision should be communicated to PacktPub in a timely manner. I can > wrap up our reply, what ever it would turn out to be, in nice words > and pass it on. I've done it before, I can do it again. But continuous > lack of decision despite of pinging and pinging and pinging committee > members simply makes us look bad. To me this is unacceptable. I agree! But I must not have been one of the aforementioned "pingged". What exactly are we deciding this time? Last I remember Bradley was working directly with Packt to arrange payment and I see their books listed on our site. I thought I had been watching the -board list closely, but I confess that I missed whatever you sent. I apologize if I'm the only one who doesn't know what's going on here. What remains to be done? Thanks again for pushing this forward! Aaron Spike

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