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The GNOME Foundation Is Running Out of Money

Posted by samzenpus on from the coffers-are-bare dept.

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."

23 of 693 comments (clear)

  1. Does this mean no more Gnome desktop? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    One can only hope.

    1. Re:Does this mean no more Gnome desktop? by OneAhead · · Score: 5, Insightful

      vast layers of layers of wrappers for layers of abstractions for wrappers for 3rd party libraries.

      The correct term for that is "software" these days. Like it or not, that's how it is.

    2. Re:Does this mean no more Gnome desktop? by houstonbofh · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Pay some respect to those who went before and the work they did.

      They are getting the same respect they gave the users who did not appreciate a multi headed very expensive single view tablet as a computing platform. If there was ever a call for Nelson Muntz, this is it.

    3. Re:Does this mean no more Gnome desktop? by Lisias · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Pay some respect to those who went before and the work they did.

      I would gladly do that, if I managed to find them. Obviously, such people is not working for Gnome Foundation anymore.

      --
      Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
    4. Re:Does this mean no more Gnome desktop? by Runaway1956 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Respect is, after all, a two-way street.

      First, we heard that Ubuntu was going to push a Metro-like desktop. Then, almost immediately afterward, we heard that Gnome was going to push a Metro-like desktop. All across the *nix world, there were protests that rapidly grew into revolutions against the concept, but neither Ubuntu nor Gnome could be dissuaded.

      I feel a bit bad that Gnome is in financial straits today. But, there is no real depth to my sympathy. I'm managing quite well on this Mate desktop. Had Mate not come along, I would probably be bouncing back and forth between XFCE and E17. Or, more likely, I would have finally settled on an E17 configuration that I liked. There are SO MANY variables and decisions to make when configuring E, whereas Mate and most other desktops just offer a well rounded "default" when they are installed.

      Oh - you were talking about respect. Gnome should be an object lesson for other projects. Don't just abandon or try to bully your dedicated fan base. Don't insult their intelligence. Respect your users, or your users will abandon you in turn.

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
    5. Re:Does this mean no more Gnome desktop? by ThePhilips · · Score: 5, Informative

      For many years, Gnome was the most popular desktop environment.

      That would have had a meaning, if GNOME was chosen based on technical merits.

      GNOME became "default" desktop only because at the time it was GNU project and unlike KDE/Qt had F/LOSS license.

      --
      All hope abandon ye who enter here.
    6. Re:Does this mean no more Gnome desktop? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 5, Funny

      Careful, he might be a Vim user.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    7. Re:Does this mean no more Gnome desktop? by sabri · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.
  2. Funny by EvolutionInAction · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Since they drove away all of their old friends by ignoring any and all criticisms of their design changes.

    1. Re:Funny by Intrepid+imaginaut · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    2. Re:Funny by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Fucking patriarchal slime. How dare you bring your sexist views into an otherwise rational debate? As women, we have a right to exist too!

      Back to Reddit...

    3. Re:Funny by Intrepid+imaginaut · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I fail to see how you fail to see what I was responding to, specifically "You're missing the real picture. GNOME is running out of money because they spent it on stupid outreach programs for women and "trans-women"". This does appear to be the case. The rest of the comment is indeed misogynistic and irritating.

    4. Re:Funny by houstonbofh · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Fucking patriarchal slime. How dare you bring your sexist views into an otherwise rational debate? As women, we have a right to exist too!

      Only a woman would call the above rational... ;) (That was a joke!)

      In all seriousness, however, you demonstrated the problem clearly. The Gnome Foundation has a core competency of creating user interfaces. (I know! Gnome 3 and competence is a stretch, but stick with me a second.) I don't care if you are a guy, a girl, or a dude in a dress... I want good code. But, women's advocacy has nothing to do with putting out a good UI. A ton of money was wasted that did nothing for them at all! This is not anti-woman. This is anti "women's advocacy."

    5. Re:Funny by houstonbofh · · Score: 5, Insightful

      How can this have been modded "informative"? It is a stupid sexist and homophobic attack.

      Because accuracy also counts.

    6. Re:Funny by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      No report for 2013 yet, but check out page 17 of the 2012 report. "Women's Outreach" accounted for 1/4 of all expenses. It increased 40% from 2011, apparently it increased again in 2013. So Karen Sandler takes over in 2011, Gnome blows all their money on her pet political project, then leaves a week before Gnome announces that they're out of money and have to freeze all non-essential expenses.

    7. Re:Funny by Sri+Ramkrishna · · Score: 5, Informative
      It had nothing to do with Karen honestly. While one could draw some line for when she left and when the crises occured, the truth of hte matter is that we didn't track our finances very well. So, after going through the books we realized that we had a shortfall due to the fact that we did not do collections from the OPW program. See, the OPW program became very popular very quickly, and organizations were not paying on a timely basis. Since interns had to be paid, the funds were coming out of the general funds.

      OPW should have their own general fund in which to tkae money out of instead of using GNOME's. That was where the mistake was. So, we're going back and getting the money owed so that we can fix up the general fund for GNOME. We should be back on even footing again by July.

  3. Here's hoping. by dosius · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Maybe GNOME will dry up and wither away, and most likely MATE will survive - because MATE is the GNOME people want.

    --
    What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
  4. systemd hard dependency by nctritech · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Fuck 'em. They made the desktop environment require the monstrosity that is systemd, so I don't care if they go away entirely. GNOME was decent in the 2 series, though still never managed to not be buggy; when they moved to 3, everything went downhill HARD. Terrible UI changes that almost no one wanted, and then forcing systemd as a required dependency.

    You did it to yourselves. Go become irrelevant. Viva la Fluxbox!

  5. Blame GNOME 3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  6. To be expected by sandertje · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You make a product that no one wants to use? You die as an organization. Fair enough.

  7. From the parent article: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "The GNOME Foundation staff and board fell behind in their processes with being overwhelmed by administering OPW. GNOME's Outreach Program for Women is explained as "The Outreach Program for Women (OPW) helps women (cis and trans) and genderqueer get involved in free and open source software." They've had around 30 interns for their most recent cycle."

    Let me translate. They were fucking off by diverging from the core project into recreational political activities unrelated to their mission.

    I completely support the idea of such outreach, but if you don't have your core in order then they are best done elsewhere.

    If you saw off the branch you were sitting on you have no place to seat the new folks you wanted to include.

    There is no kind way to put it. GNOME fucked up due to willful stupidity. They'll see not a dime from me.

  8. Who would see that coming? by Rehdon · · Score: 5, Informative

    After I realized that no matter what the existing user base would say, the GNOME 3 developers weren't going to make Gnome Shell suitable for the good old desktop work flow (besides making it impossible to have GNOME 2 installed together with the new version ...), I started looking elsewhere. I tried several desktop environments, and then sticked to Cinnamon, a "no nonsense, it just works" shell based on the Gnome libraries.

    What I noticed almost immediately was that, in spite of the GNOME devs making fun of people jumping ship and waving them goodbye, Linux Mint received more donation money in a month than GNOME in 5-6.

    So there you go guys, people have voted with their feet deserting you, and with their wallets funding other, more worthwile open source projects: I'm tempted to help, just because Cinnamon is based on Gnome libraries, but the conclusion is that you reap what you have sown. No sympathy from this ex-GNOME user.

    Rehdon

  9. Here's some real facts for you. by Danious · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sigh. Standard ignorant Slashdot commenting, perhaps you should read up about OPW before making stuff up.

    Here's how it works. An organisation such as KDE decides to participate in OPW and so finds some sponsors to pay the US$5,500 stipend for each intern. In KDE's case we found one of our corporate sponsors who was willing to pay. The participating organisation collects the sponsorship money and pays this to the Gnome Foundation who then pays the interns. The Gnome Foundation also charges the participating organisation an admin fee to cover their expenses in running the program. There are at least 18 organisations who have participated in OPW in this way, including Mozilla, VideoLAN, Fedora, and the Linux Foundation. In the last round there were 30 interns from 8 organisations, only 3 interns were from Gnome.

    There's two problems with this:

    1) All the money passes through the Gnome Foundation accounts, making it appear they have spent 25% of their income on OPW, when in fact it isn't really an income or an expense to the Gnome Foundation, e.g. last round they paid out US$165,000 of which only US$16,500 was their own money, the rest was paid on behalf of the other orgs.

    2) The program got so successful so fast that the Gnome Foundation's internal financial processes couldn't cope, they had to pay the interns before they had received all the sponsorship money from the participating organisations, and they used their own cash reserves to cover the gap. Once the participating orgs pay up, the Gnome Foundation will be back to normal again.

    Anyone who's ever run a small business will recognise this as a classic cash-flow crisis from growing too big too fast before your admin has a chance to catch up. The lesson here is that the Gnome Foundation needs to set up a separate set of books for OPW and work harder to get the other orgs to pay the sponsors money up front.

    So those of you slandering Karen Sandler claiming she's "stolen" money from Gnome for her own personal agenda really have some apologizing to do.

    One other point to make is that the Gnome Foundation, just like the KDE eV, has absolutely no say over the direction of development of Gnome, they are just there to provide financial support to the direction the developers choose to take.

    John Layt, KDE eV member.