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The GNOME Foundation Is Running Out of Money
An anonymous reader writes "The GNOME Foundation is running out of money. The foundation no longer has any cash reserves so they have voted to freeze non-essential funding for running the foundation. They are also hunting down sponsors and unpaid invoices to regain some delayed revenue. Those wishing to support the GNOME Foundation can become a friend of GNOME."
I started using GNOME at version 1.4 and I really liked it. I followed the development of GNOME 2 closely and was very excited when it was finally released. I spent a lot of time checking the code out of CVS and building it before 2.0. The thing is, I was just a kid back then, I didn't have $25 for a mousepad even though I would have happily supported the project. I remember looking at the website when I was like 17 thinking how awesome it would be to have a GNOME tshirt or some kind of GNOME swag.
Fast forward a few years... Today, I could easily donate $500 but I'm not going to, since I don't use GNOME anymore. When GNOME 3 was released, my disappointment was colossal. I had to completely re-think my desktop - if it was going to change so drastically that I'd have to relearn everything, it might as well be change that made sense. So I switched to a tiling window manager called i3. If i3 project ever needs money, I'll give it to them.
But not GNOME. Sorry guys. I guess this is what happens when you alienate your users and let "user experience"-crap-level developers infiltrate your project.
As charming as your characterisation of /.s membership is, I'm more interested in whether or not there is any truth to the assertion that Gnome's funding was eaten up by outreach programmes. I managed to track down this article, so there does seem to be a certain amount of legitimacy to the claim.
The correct term for that is "software" these days. Like it or not, that's how it is.
If only software would be the focus of the Gnome foundation. I had a look to check if it would be worth donating some of my cash to. One of the ways to see if your money is spent well, is by looking at the financial statements of the charity you're considering to donate to. I found old statements on their page (http://www.gnome.org/foundation/reports/). Their last financial report goes back to 2011...
According to the financial data in their 2012 status report, 25 percent of their spending went to "Women's Outreach" ($106,741 out of $409,400). While I have no issues with programs helping women getting coding internships, I'm pretty sure the Gnome foundation would not be broke right now if they focused on their mission statement: "The GNOME Foundation will work to further the goal of the GNOME project: to create a computing platform for use by the general public that is completely free software. ", according to their website: https://wiki.gnome.org/Foundat....
This looks like a self-inflicted wound, originating out of bad management and diversion from their core mission.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.