I will almost certainly not be running for the GNOME board this time. There's still important things to do, but I only planned to be useful for one year, and I really need to reclaim some time by giving up some responsibilities. In the second half of this year I haven't even had enough time for the few hours that the Board needs per week. The first half of the year was consumed largely by GUADEC Stuttgart, though GUADEC never needs to be that difficult.

It's been a pleasure to work with the Board this year, and it's tempting to try to get elected again just so I can keep meeting these wonderfully talented people.

This board has dealt with (or 99% dealt with) several issues that had been dragging on for the previous year or so, but it needs to be even more decisive. I've been thinking about who would be good for next year. So, in no particular order, and probably forgetting some very useful people:

• Dave Neary. I know that Owen doesn't plan to run again, so I think Dave Neary would make a perfect chairman. Owen has done a great job, but I think Dave will be even more ready to bring things to constructive conclusion. He's already shown an extraordinary ability to get things done while judging what the community wants. Incredibly, he achieves that while upsetting almost nobody. Give him a mandate to do even more, even faster.
• Quim Gill is organising this year's GUADEC in Barcelona. I've been impressed by his commitment and ability to work with the Board, the community, local government and business. My experience this year showed me that being on the Board is a big help when organising a GUADEC.
• Daniel Veillard: has said that he's thinking of not running this year. I hope he changes his mind, because his minute-taking does so much to keep meetings on track. He's also often the voice of the non-commercial community. And he has a great French accent.
• German Poo Caamano is very active in South America, and has lots of ideas to do even more with the Board's support. When I met him in Stuttgart, I could tell that he has real people skills, but doesn't forget that there's important stuff that needs to be done.
• 
  Federico Mena-Quintero has given lots of his time and expertise for detailed tasks such as the trademark agreement and the documentation plan/contract. Let's have some more of that.
• Jonathan Blandford has also given large chunks of his personal time, sorting out our finances and trademark agreement, while always being good-natured and light-hearted. His experience would be useful next year.
• Luis Villa has effectively pushed for accountability and efficiency,
  and he seems ever more capable of
  dealing with other non-profits and legal issues. He understands the need for marketing at this stage. He's even becoming
  concise – not an easy habit to learn.

I'm starting on the Hildon C++ bindings for Nokia. Setting up the development environment was really easy with the detailed instructions. I used the scratchbox 0.9.8.5 version via the debian apt-get source, and it worked fine on Ubuntu Breezy.

Compared to emulators I've used for mobile phone work, this is easy thanks to a fakeroot shell and X-Windows. The N770 environment just runs in a second nested X server. And because it's a real linux system, with shared libraries and real processes, instead of a lump of statically-compiled hacks, you can start and stop programs individually (run-standalone.sh yourapp), just like a real computer, and actually debug/interact with them properly. You can't understand how nice this is unless you've experienced the tedious crap I've used in the past. I haven't developed for Nokia phones, but I bet it isn't this good.

I'll be voting Yes in the referendum. It's not necessarily the best solution, but it's the one that's likely to have an effect. Making the existing large group decisive has been tried without success. If the referendum does not succeed, then the members pretty much lose the right to keep complaining that the board does not make decisions quickly enough.

My logic:

• The board is delayed by decision making more than by a lack of people
  getting things done. Decisions get punted repeatedly to the next meeting
  and eventually forgotten about for a few months, so we miss
  opportunities. In comparison, tasks are usually not much more than “send
  an email” or “write a wiki page” – we delegate large task to groups such
  as release-team and marketing.
• Theoretically, time-limited discussion followed by votes within the
  board, would make decision possible. However, as a community we have a
  strong urge to reach consensus so any single person can veto a decision.
  I do not believe that we can change that, so we must reduce the number
  of vetos.
• One or two people have suggested the alternative of having a
  president with the ability to make decisions without consultation. This
  is going too far, and has usually been suggested as a way to make
  (usually technical) decisions which are not the board's responsibility.
  Even the suggestion of conflict of interest would be huge and
  destructive.
• The stuff that we disagree on is usually important, but there is
  rarely a great difference between the available options. Any one of them
  would probably be good enough, so there isn't a great risk in making it
  more possible to choose one.
• When there's less people, there's more personal responsibility, and therefore more pressure to get things done, and more pressure only to
  run for election if you really have the time. Throughout GNOME, I've
  noticed that when you give responsibility, people take responsibility.

Whether or not this referendum is passed, I am pleased that it is yet another issue that we will have dealt with this year.