Mystery Donor Pledges $1 Million To The GNOME Foundation (betanews.com)

Brian Fagioli, writing for BetaNews: This week, The GNOME Foundation made a shocking revelation: a mystery donor has pledged $1 million dollars. We don't know who is promising the money -- it could be a rich man or woman, but more likely -- and this is pure speculation -- it is probably a company that benefits from GNOME, such as Red Hat or Canonical.

"An anonymous donor has pledged to donate up to $1,000,000 over the next two years, some of which will be matching funds. The GNOME Foundation is grateful for this donation and plans on using these funds to increase staff to streamline operations and to grow its support of the GNOME Project and the surrounding ecosystem. While the GNOME Foundation has maintained its position as a proponent of the GNOME Project, growth has been limited. With these funds, the GNOME Foundation will be able to expand and lead in the free software space," says The GNOME Foundation.

Comments

Please don't encourage them

[Anonymous Coward]

GNOME devs have their heads deeper up their own asses than pretty much any project in the history of software development.

Re:Please don't encourage them

[brickhouse98]

Knew it wouldn't take long for some douche to come in and blast Gnome. Somehow they do what every other DE does (ie. design what they want) yet take the most flack for it, not least of all from some AC.

The future of gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard that the gnome UI has devolved into a single large button labelled "NO" but I can't say if that's true. You know, so as not to confuse the users. The last time I looked at gnome it was headed in that direction.

Should pay for a resurrection of Gnome 1.

[Anonymous Coward]

Before the HIG, spatial file manager, shell, disabling of double click to launch executables and other Gnome groans. Despite given head starts by Microsoft with Me, Vista, 8 and 10 Gnome is still a major reason we haven’t had a year of the Linux desktop in the 20 years Gnome has existed.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnome will not hire developers, just those idiot designer hipsters. They will not stop removing features until all the functionality is gone and screen has just plain white content.

Probably Puting

[Rashkae]

Probably Putin, trying to destabilize the Free Software movement and keeping the desktop fragmentation Gnome created (or, at least, greatly escalated) going.)

Re:transparency

[HanzoSpam]

If if was Red Hat the donated the money, I can understand why it was anonymous. After what they did to us with systemd, there would probably be riots in the gnome user community.

I could never do that

[skoskav]

I'd be terrified that they'd spend it all on sweets and comic books. I would at least demand some old bugs to be fixed.

Microsoft?

[whoever57]

Look at what Gnome3 has done to fracture the user base.

Microsoft benefits from more changes in Gnome.

Re:Microsoft?

[StormReaver]

Microsoft benefits from more changes in Gnome.

Microsoft doesn't need to do a whole lot to sabotage GNOME or KDE, as both desktops are cutting off their own noses to spite their respective faces. GNOME has always been largely unusable and so ugly that even its mother could be forgiven for wanting to drop it into an exploding volcano.

KDE's decline began with the stagnation of the IO Slave architecture, the rise of Windows Explorer's bastard child, Dolphin, and the neglect of one of the world's best file managers, Konqueror. Since most of KDE's main features have been either neglected or mostly gutted, it really no longer matters which foundation gets the donation. At this point, they have already failed as a usable desktop (GNOME), or are well on the way to failing (KDE).

Given the way Gnome3 has developed from Gnome2

[HiThere]

I suspect the donation is by Microsoft or Apple, given the way Gnome3 has developed from Gnome2. There's also the increasing monolithic spread of systemd, and various other trends that I find "equally encouraging". Such as adaptations to facilitate running Linux as a subsystem under MSWindows.

Re:Glad its GNOME and not KDE

[Teun]

It seems we use our computer differently and the advantage of Linux is we both find what we like.
There is fairly good proof KDE is the more complete and better thought out desktop environment.

The biggest problem of Gnome is it is not a system but a whole bunch of loosely connected (or not!) applications.
The desktop sucks at calling those applications and looks bad without options to reconfigure it.
side from the configurability one of the biggest advantages of KDE Plasma is the file manager Dolphin, it is based on good old Konquerer but has more useful plug-ins.

Regretfully no amount of money can make Gnome catch up, it was broken from the start.

For sure someone who just upgraded to ubuntu 18.04

[mugurel]

I hope 1M is enough to fix that mess. Successfully switching between user sessions is a matter of luck; Useful panel functionality is only provided through sometimes abandoned third party extensions; For anything other than the five-or-so options in the system settings you need to resort to something like a "tweak-tool"; Then there is the wildly unnecessary "swipe up screen" that get's in your way. All in all a very bad experience. I'm switching back to 16.04 for now.

Re:For sure someone who just upgraded to ubuntu 18

[apoc.famine]

I tried to disable the stupid swipe up to log in for a bit, then realized you could just start typing your password and it would log you in.

It's stupid as fuck, and everyone who came up with the idea, approved it, and implemented it should be shot.

Dear Anonymous Donor

[imperious_rex]

Here's some other deserving open-source projects where $2M would have a wider benefit to the Linux community than GNOME:
(in no particular order)
1. Linux Mint/Cinnamon
2. MATE
3. GIMP
4. Inkscape
5. Firefox
6. Scribus
7. XFCE
You're welcome.

Re:transparency

[ClickOnThis]

After what they did to us with systemd, there would probably be riots in the gnome user community.

No there wouldn't. Because after all the fantastical "we'll switch to BSD" angry nonsense the result was that instead of doing that or even forking the upstream and getting out from under RedHat's domination of the majority of the Linux community the result was to just STFU and accept systemd. Proof that RedHat OWNS the desktop Linux community (the vast majority of it anyway, inbefore the 'oh i use slackware' or 'oh i use gentoo').

Red Hat OWNS the Linux desktop? I don't think so. Currently it ranks 50 on distrowatch. Even Fedora is in 8th place, behind Debian, Ubuntu, and others.

And speaking of Debian and Ubuntu, they also adopted systemd, after Fedora was the first to do so. Whatever you think of systemd, you can't just blame Red Hat for it.

Re: Oh fuck.

[Zero__Kelvin]

You are an idiot. We have been using far better WMs than Windows' shitty "explore" she'll for literally decades. Only an incompetent idiot would try to claim that Windows has a better desktop / WM than Gnome or KDE. In other words does Gnome suck compared to KDE? Absolutely. Does it suck compared to Windows? Give me a break. Windows is a toy OS with a WM that barely qualifies as an "also ran" in the race.

More like

[ArchieBunker]

a company that sells Linux support as a business model? Redhat pushed systemd knowing it was untested and bad ideas so they could sell more support.

Re: Oh fuck.

[Zero__Kelvin]

I'm sorry you are too stupid to understand what you read. I assume it is because you have no idea what a WM is, and don't realize that claiming the "desktop experience" is superior is, by definition, claiming the WM is superior.