running for the GNOME Foundation Board

Posted on by Luis Villa

As I just announced on foundation-list, I’ll be running again for the Board this year. This will be an unusual candidacy. I will not be running to do various and sundry board tasks; I’ll be running to do exactly one thing:

  • legal work- a vote for me is a vote that says ‘Luis should be the coordinator of all GNOME-related legal issues.’

I also will volunteer for two other things, but if someone else wants to do them it won’t bother me:

  • secretarial services- I hate doing secretarial meeting bits, but this is often something organizations delegate to their lawyers, so I’d better get good at it.
  • occasional common sense- I stress occasional here because I don’t have the time or the energy to get into petty politics with anyone, so if that happens, I’ll pretty quickly retreat to lawyer-secretary.

I will not do:

  • anything non-legal that goes beyond common-sense advice giving.

Don’t vote for me if:

  • you think someone else should be the central coordinator for the board’s legal issues
  • you think board members should be jacks of all trades
  • you think it is crazy to hand legal issues over to a second-year law student (nb: you have to justify who should be doing it in that case :)

Do vote for me if:

  • You think issues like copyright, trademark, patents, legal status of web services, relationships with outside counsel and partners, etc., are important to GNOME’s future, and you’d like to see the board (led by me) be proactive in dealing with them.
  • you want someone on the board who is firmly committed to delegation and coordination.

I will almost certainly serve one term and only one term. I expect to have less time once I graduate from school, and the 18 month term will almost perfectly coincide with the rest of my time in law school. In addition, if I’m successful in reaching my goals, by the end of the term I’ll have built strong relationships with our outside counsel, and it will be less necessary to have a board member aggressively devoted to legal issues.

I’ll explain more of why I am doing this as we get closer to the election, but suffice to say that I think that the board could be much more proactive in dealing with these issues, and I’m putting my money where my mouth is by stepping up to do it myself.

Published by Luis Villa

14 thoughts on “running for the GNOME Foundation Board”

  1. Good luck, Luis. I think you’d make a wonderful choice, and that your stated goals are critical to any FOSS project.

    If you really wanted to make me happy, you’d s/Gnome Foundation/Fedora

    :)

  2. Maybe someday. I’d certainly love to figure out (once I’m in private practice) how to be external counsel for projects that matter- GNOME, Fedora, online-desktop, etc.

  3. “I will almost certainly serve one term and only one term.”

    Yeah…like we haven’t heard *that* before.
    If I was an american your little sign would be in my lawn.
    If I had a lawn as well, rather than a bunch of gravel.

  4. I am not a member so I can’t vote :) but you would sure make one swell candidate. Glad to have you back and in action. Let the drum rolls begin.

  6. “I think that any lawyer on Board lends a credibility to all those stupid patents, ‘intellectual property’ and other law things GNOME does not want to support. Law society will do it’s very best to ensure that everything is perverted!

    So maybe Luis’s involvement can be just his personal activity and totally separated from, and have nothing to do with, GNOME.

    Anyway I insist that we have to defend our flanks and PUBLICLY EXPLAIN how it happened that some lawyer is going to run for the Board elections, BEFORE our lovely GNOME users will be flamed because of that.

    Also I have two personal questions to Luis if I may ask:
    1. Are you Novell employee?
    2. How much Ballmer pays you?”

    ;-)

    Hej Luis!

    I hope you will be elected.

    Best wishes,
    Valek

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