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Are You A Friend of Gnome?
From the donation page: "Love GNOME? Want to give back to the community of mostly volunteer developers who have worked so hard to make GNOME
the powerful, flexible, friendly, fun desktop that it is?" There are a number of contribution levels a person can join at, so if you love Gnome, consider helping the foundation out.
Yes, I like gnome a lot. I might even donate money, but the problem with this link is they they don't offer any specific details about what happens with this money? Does it go to administration? How so? To major coders? which? Who qualifies? Bandwidth? Why does the Gnome Foundation do that requires our financial support?
To make matters worse, contributions seem to be handled via Ximian. I have no problem with Ximian forming as a company, or their desire to make money. Still, I'm not entirely confortable with a donation to a company. So, is Ximian providing accounting/banking services here, or are they going to directly benefit from this contribution?
I'm sure there are good answers to all of these questions, but they're not present on the donation page, and they should be.
GNOME isn't a window manager. Neither is KDE for that matter (although KDE has it's own window manager I think (kwm ?) but GNOME does not).
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
CmdrTaco said during an interview: "Well, slashdot kept getting slashdotted, so we decided to post useless crap that no one would want to look at it, and could find elsewhere if they did want to look at it. Yes, that's it."
Some rumors from the slashdot team have indicated that perhaps the person that started this new trend, "chrisd", was really under the influence of heroin, and his /friends were covering for him. This same source said the new trend could be over as soon as the next post. More news as it comes in.
What about the enemies of GNOME? We, the members of COBOLD, oppose project GNOME, their GUI, and all that they stand for! We will not rest until every member of the GNOME development team of lies in a shallow grave. Our leader, COBOL-commander, will overthrow the present order by military force, and restore the glorious days of punchcards and Cobol! Co-bolllll!
As for the "friends" of GNOME - we suggest you cower in terror lest you share the developers fate!
Incidentally, the classic "Kobold" was a spirit of the home or hearth - Kobe holt = hut goblin. The dog-headed lizardmen from D&D are, as many D&D things are, an artifact of somebody's supplementary artwork, and have no "basis" in mythology (although the guy who did the drawings for the Monster Manual is as qualified to make up mythology as anybody; it was all made up at some point.)
Etymology of Gnome.
Etymology of Kobold. Search the page for "cobalt".
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
"I donated $500 and all I got was this lousy t-shirt."
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Let's see, I have $50 burning a hole in my pocket, let's choose between Gnome or Perl.
Gnome (and KDE for that matter) crashes a little too much for my tastes. The UI design could use a little more simplification and consistency. So maybe they need the money, to help improve these things. That would be good.
Perl, on the other hand, is a language that makes me money. I program in Perl and people pay the big dollar. So maybe I owe Perl a little.
Gnome has this guy that likes .NET. In fact, he likes .NET so much it's a little creepy.
Perl has this guy that looks like Weird Al, who's pretty cool. And this other guy that writes packages based on quantum mechanics and other mind-twisting stuff.
Gnome might be moving to the .NET runtime someday, which means Microsoft could possibly have a little more legal power over the project than I'd like. That could be dangerous, maybe I shouldn't give them any money.
Perl 6, though, looks like it has lost all touch with reality (I think it's pretty cool, but then again, that says more about my grip on reality than anything else). In fact I believe programming in Perl 6 will be like taking a hit of LSD. LSD is bad (the flashbacks man) so maybe they don't need my money either.
Tough one... I think I'll just keep my $50 for now.............
Linus never asked us to pony up a little spare change for the kernel? Looks like he is doing pretty good for himself....
If I learned one thing from my dad growing up it was when you start looking to make money from your hobbies then it's to much like your real job -- and maybe time to find a new hobby. Among his many hobby cycles, he restored old saddles and other antiques -- he would spend hundreds of hours on a project for little more than the money for materials and the gleam in his eyes when he finished a project -- when I told he he was crazy to not try to make money doing it -- he said something like "They pay me from 7 AM - 5 PM everyday to do something that has never been fun -- and if I ever have to take money from this it will mean that it has stopped being fun..." When he got burned out he would pick a new hobby.
It never hurt to get a day job. That way you can make money to afford to spend the evenings and weekends doing things you enjoy.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
No, I simply realise that the address a cheque happens to be delivered to is not significant, who the cheque is made out to is.
They clearly say they will use the money to "provide development, education and promotion for GNOME worldwide". If you want to be a friend of GNOME and have something more specific you'd like your money to go towards then just tell them. As their charter states "The foundation will be in charge of disbursing these funds to the benefit of GNOME and, to the extent possible, in accordance with the wishes of the benefactor."
There is nothing hidden here. There is info on the foundation pages, the foundation mailing list is open for all to read. There might not be a vast amount of info on the friends page but that is because they aren't putting on a hard sell. It's there for you if you feel that you'd like to contribute, not trying to make you feel that you should.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park