Several happenings over the weekend are case studies in how open source software communities work. The Dev Behind a Hugely Popular GNOME Extension Just Quit While the news is about a developer quitting because it’s not “fun”. I think the message – or messages – are deeper than that. Isn’t it awesome that are free […]
How Open Source Communities Work Read More »
One of the best pieces of advice I got was “Find out if they are an email person or a phone person and communicate with them that way.” These days you have to add text messages, hangouts, whatsapp, irc, etc to the list, but the same principle holds true. I’ll give you an example of
Speak their language: communicate in the right tool Read More »
Traditionally, open source software has relied primarily on asynchronous communication. While there are probably quite a few synchronous conversations on irc, most project discussions and decisions will happen on asynchronous channels like mailing lists, bug tracking tools and blogs. I think there’s another reason for this. Synchronous communication is difficult for an open source project. For
I recently listened to a talk by Michael Lopp about how to be a great manager. During his talk, he stressed the importance of hallway conversations. Hallway conversations are informal conversations about projects, goals and status. As Shez says, they are great for bouncing ideas off people you might not normally interact with and just
How to have hallway conversations when you can’t see the hallway Read More »
When I told the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors that I was leaving my job as executive director, I told them my number one priority was to hire my replacement. Before I was hired, the GNOME Foundation went through a long period without an executive director and I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen
How to hire an Executive Director Read More »
Transparent voting is an idea that is ideally really useful but also completely useless in GNOME. Some people in GNOME have been asking for transparent votes. When the board votes, they would like to know who voted which way. I totally agree with them – it’s important to know how different board members think so
Transparent voting: why I like the idea even though I think it would be useless Read More »
At the Rensselaer Center for Open Source Software students develop open source software solutions to solve societal problems. For example, at the HFOSS Symposium today I talked to Graylin Kim who is working on the New York Senate Open Legislation Service where people can look up any bill that is being discussed in the New
RPI students create some cool things Read More »
This is for my work done as a volunteer. Reviewed the 9 slidesets that InitMarketing is putting together probono for GNOME. These are slidesets that anyone speaking about GNOME will be able to use and they cover things like applications, history, accessibility, etc. They are starting to look pretty good. Forwarded emails to the right
Stormy’s GNOME update: November 12, 2010 Read More »
This is my update for work done for the GNOME Foundation. For a higher level overview for what I do as the Executive Director, see What do I do as Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation? F123.org and Mozilla both gave us grants for GNOME accessibility! We are opening contracts for good work with the
Stormy’s GNOME Update: November 7, 2010 Read More »
I have really enjoyed working with GNOME over the past 2+ years. Working with the GNOME community on creating a free desktop accessible to everyone has been fun and exciting – as well as challenging – which is part of the fun. 🙂 It is the community that makes GNOME, and it’s working with that