I’m hereby announcing I’m running for another term on the board in this year’s election.
Name: Julian Sparber
Email: jsparber@gnome.org
Corporate affiliation: SPI (systemd contractor)
I’ve been a contributor for about 10 years, working on a wide variety of things across the project. This includes core components such as GNOME Shell, Libadwaita, Settings, Contacts and more but also Circle and third-party apps like Fractal or design tools. Most recently I’ve been working on a Prototypefund project focused on local-first collaboration, and a new installer for GNOME OS as part of an STF project (fiscally hosted by SPI).
Over the past 2 years I’ve served on the executive committee, attending weekly meetings and helping with business that cannot wait for the monthly board meetings. For the first year of my term I also served as secretary in both board and executive committee meetings. In was also on the ED hiring committee, and I am serving on the travel committee.
When I ran for the board, I wanted to focus on fixing two issues: Creating more opportunities for community members to get paid for their work, and closing the gap between Foundation and community that had been created by prior administrations. While there’s still work to do on both fronts, we’ve made significant progress and the Foundation is on a much better trajectory now.
Get contributors paid
I’m particularly excited about the Fellowship, which I helped conceptualize, alongside the fundraising initiative spearheaded by Steven, Allan, and others. It’s still early days, but I think together, these two programs can make the vision of more sustainable funding that directly translates to jobs for contributors a reality.
Other than continuing to grow these, there is a lot more the Foundation could do to get developers paid. Both public grants and Flathub payments are important areas for this, and I’d like to help make this happen.
For Flathub payments, it is my position that we should do this using an entity in the EU. This has advantages in terms of being more independent and relevant for EU digital sovereignty goals, but it’s also a wish expressed by our community and our friends at KDE.
Bridge the gap between community and foundation
Healing the divisions in our community that were formed over the past decade is a long-term process. During my first term I helped re-establish this trust, by making the Foundation more efficient at serving the project, and engaging with different people across the community on important matters, including the Fellowship and Flathub payments.
I was also an important voice in increasing the availability of travel sponsorship for conferences and hackfests, as this enables especially newer contributors and people from marginalized groups to get onboarded and participate in ways that would otherwise not be possible. In my experience many people are still reluctant to ask for sponsorship because they stopped expecting the Foundation to provide support like this. This is why, in addition to making this funding available, we need to get better at communicating it, and follow up with other concrete improvements to rebuild confidence in the Foundation.
While we have a long road ahead of us, I think I can continue to have a positive impact by keeping the Foundation’s actions informed by and accountable to the wishes of the membership.
