The GNOME Foundation Is Running Out of Money 693
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."
Does this mean no more Gnome desktop? (Score:5, Funny)
One can only hope.
Re:Does this mean no more Gnome desktop? (Score:4, Insightful)
The open source movement owes much to the Gnome foundation.
Care to elaborate?
I can only recall the libxml2 and it isn't the most popular xml library.
I had hopes for gstreamer too, but it turned out to be a dud, worth only writing helloworld^W Totem class applications. And GNOME has already wrote the Totem...
Rest of GNOME are just vast layers of layers of wrappers for layers of abstractions for wrappers for 3rd party libraries.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Does this mean no more Gnome desktop? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Does this mean no more Gnome desktop? (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... [gnome.org].
This looks like a self-inflicted wound, originating out of bad management and diversion from their core mission.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
For many years, Gnome was the most popular desktop environment. Many of the people who got into Linux on the desktop moved into a Gnome environment. It provided a familiar UI with standard metaphors. While the Linux desktop has moved on for better or worse, the fact remains that it was Gnome that provided the soft landing for many when they jumped ship.
Pay some respect to those who went before and the work they did.
Re:Does this mean no more Gnome desktop? (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.
Re:Does this mean no more Gnome desktop? (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.
Re:Does this mean no more Gnome desktop? (Score:4, Interesting)
The issue is not 'it looks foreign', it's a fscking productivity nightmare. I've been using Gnome 3 since it came out, and still every day it annoys the crappers out of me. I've been too focused on my work to change to something else, but it's wearing very thin and I'm going to switch very soon.
I think this is the root of this issue with the Gnome foundation - you are part of that foundation and your impression is that users don't like it because it's foreign. That's plain old wrong. It's not a good design for a productive desktop.
The alt-tab/alt-esc shenanigans is just ridiculous, every time I switch machines (yes my works forces me to use Windows for some stuff) I have to stop and think - "Oh what machine am I on, what keys to I press" - Sure the Gnome way might be better, but heck, they may have well made my keyboard switch to dvorak when I'm synergy'ing to my Linux box.
I imagine I can change this (maybe?) but I'm busy, I don't have time to manage configuring my desktop to be normal again. And if I use someone else's desktop I'm still going to land on the same issue unless they've tweaked theirs too.
This is just one of the many "desktop usability regressions" I find with Gnome3 and the real world benefit for this change alludes me. But as it is now, alt-tab is the "Show me a random window" key combo.
Re: (Score:3)
You can use extensions to change the alt-tab behavior so it is the same as windows or other Linux based desktops. Just go to http://extensions.gnome.org/ [gnome.org].
I do thank you for trying out GNOME 3 and sticking with it! Yo
Re:Does this mean no more Gnome desktop? (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.
Re:Does this mean no more Gnome desktop? (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.
Re: (Score:3)
You have plenty of documentation available on https://help.gnome.org/users/ [gnome.org] and https://developer.gnome.org/ [gnome.org].
Re:Does this mean no more Gnome desktop? (Score:5, Interesting)
But, if they pull their head out, and make amends with those folks, I think things can still be saved. Some more prominence and respect for Gnome Flashback would go a LONG way towards bringing people back.
Funny (Score:5, Insightful)
Since they drove away all of their old friends by ignoring any and all criticisms of their design changes.
Re:Funny (Score:4, Interesting)
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". And now that the financial shitstorm is coming to light... the female exec director responsible for this debacle resigns [gnome.org]
So basically men made it...men funded it. Women showed up later and demanded all the money be spent on them... and now there's none left. It's almost a microcosm of the Western nations economic woes.
Re:Funny (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...
Re:Funny (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."
Re:Funny (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, please, pass that word on to the rest of Silly Con Valley. You might nudge Google when you pass that word on. Few of us give a small goddamn about some coder's preferred perversions - just shut up and code!
Re:Funny (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think it's a bad thing for successful organizations with resources they can spare to try to improve IT and society in general. The problem here is not that the goal was the wrong one, it's that Gnome simply spent too much on it.
Re:Funny (Score:4, Insightful)
programs that target funds at people with specific traits that aren't supposed to matter in the first place does not improve anything.
Re: (Score:3)
It wasn't Gnome's money, other orgs paid Gnome to run the program for them, e.g. Mozilla and Fedora and KDE. In the last round 8 orgs paid for 30 interns, only 3 interns were for Gnome, that's US$148,500 passing through Gnome books as income and expense in 2013 that isn't actually Gnomes money, only US$16,500 was and that was probably sponsored through other direct donations for that purpose. The other orgs even paid Gnome a fee to do this for them, so they didn't lose money on it.
So not your money.
Re: (Score:3)
A large percentage of the whole budget spent to target a specific sex (an attribute that isn't supposed to matter to programming) IS sexist alright.
Re:Funny (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 [phoronix.com], so there does seem to be a certain amount of legitimacy to the claim.
Re:Funny (Score:5, Informative)
No report for 2013 yet, but check out page 17 of the 2012 report [gnome.org]. "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 [gnome.org] a week before Gnome announces that they're out of money and have to freeze all non-essential expenses.
Re: (Score:3)
It's still a leap to go from "they had one crap executive director" to "it's the fault of women, just like the recent banking crisis was". I mean seriously, women are highly under-represented on the boards of major companies, especially financial institutions, and in most western governments. In fact the country that is going best in the Euro zone is Germany, the one run by a woman.
Re:Funny (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Funny (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Funny (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Funny (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you then feel personally responsible for allowing 25% (or more?) of the budget on activities that are not mentioned in the mission of the foundation and merit zero discussions in the board meetings? I did not read every meeting minutes, I just went back to late 2013, but any item that takes 25% of the budget merits frequent discussions.
Looking at a few of the board's meeting minutes, it looks like the board are asleep at the wheel. No discussion of the impending financial crisis in the last 6 or 7 meetings, just business as normal.
Re:Funny (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Funny (Score:4, Informative)
We have had discussions about it. I can't give a complete explanation at the moment as what I tell the public should go through the board so that we are giving a consistent message. When dealing with lots of people asking the same questions it is probably better to update the FAQ. I suggest you subscribe to the URL there so that you can keep up.
Re:Funny (Score:4, Informative)
https://mail.gnome.org/archive... [gnome.org]
Re:Funny (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Funny (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Funny (Score:4, Informative)
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 [phoronix.com], so there does seem to be a certain amount of legitimacy to the claim.
You can actaully find more or less the same thing from GNOME themselves: https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/CurrentBudgetFAQ [gnome.org]. It states:
What is the problem? The Foundation does not have any cash reserves right now.
Why has this happened? The Outreach Program for Women (OPW) has proven to be extremely popular and has grown quite rapidly.... GNOME, as the lead organization, has been responsible for managing the finances for the entire effort. However, as the program grew, the processes did not keep up.
That being said, the original poster's sexism and cisgenderism is obviously out of line in any case, but it does appear the growth of this program (which undoubtedly is largely cis women) was a large factor in creating the current financial situation. They also except to have it resolved within a month or so and don't seem to be too concerned about it.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Funny (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing they should be spending their funds on is the development of gnome software. That does not include funding political viruses like 'affirmative action'. Targeting money at programmers of specific sexes, races, or 'lifestyles', is discriminatory unless the case can be made why the targeted group writes superior code.
Seriously, your foundation needs to reevaluate its priorities.
Re:Funny (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes there is. Reaching out to women because they're women is discrimination based on sex, which is inherently hypocritical when it's done under the feminist (stated) claim that sex doesn't matter. What you should discriminate on are programming and other relevant skillsets. Since race, sex, and sexual 'lifestyle' are poor indicators for those traits, you shouldn't spend significant sums pursuing people along those attributes. Those percentages are meaningless, arbitrary quotas.
These PC people are like viruses in that they require the resources of a host organization in order to propagate their ultimately self-interested message, which makes the host's goals of secondary importance to them, if at all. They invade organizations they see as having power in a particular community and sap resources that could be better spent on relevant goals, with particularly virulent ones killing their hosts off, entirely. I realize you mean well, but this is society-wide problem, and the only way to stop it is to resist their influence at the beginning. You might be threatened with 'discrimination' lawsuits and the like, but as long as the organization's policies are (and have a history of being) truly agnostic towards irrelevant attributes (and not just race, sex, and sexual 'lifestyle'), they're morally sound.
Equal outcome is not a good measure of equal opportunity. So, guidelines that discriminate on relevant attributes and pay no heed to balanced populations along irrelevant attributes are NOT oppressive, no matter what shaming language is hurled your way. If that results in a 50/50 split between the sexes, fine.. If not, that's fine too, because your organization is focused on hiring the best developers, not the best male or the best female developers.
Re: (Score:3)
Yes there is. Reaching out to women because they're women is discrimination based on sex, which is inherently hypocritical when it's done under the feminist (stated) claim that sex doesn't matter. What you should discriminate on are programming and other relevant skillsets. Since race, sex, and sexual 'lifestyle' are poor indicators for those traits, you shouldn't spend significant sums pursuing people along those attributes. Those percentages are meaningless, arbitrary quotas.
I'm sorry, but we must disagree. GNOME is part of GNU which is in fact a social justice organization. Free Software is about that and is part of our creed. The goal is to bring free software to everyone. It helps when our organization is a reflection of the people we are reaching. We are not an open source project.
These PC people are like viruses in that they require the resources of a host organization in order to propagate their ultimately self-interested message, which makes the host's goals of secondary importance to them, if at all. They invade organizations they see as having power in a particular community and sap resources that could be better spent on relevant goals, with particularly virulent ones killing their hosts off, entirely. I realize you mean well, but this is society-wide problem, and the only way to stop it is to resist their influence at the beginning. You might be threatened with 'discrimination' lawsuits and the like, but as long as the organization's policies are (and have a history of being) truly agnostic towards irrelevant attributes (and not just race, sex, and sexual 'lifestyle'), they're morally sound.
Equal outcome is not a good measure of equal opportunity. So, guidelines that discriminate on relevant attributes and pay no heed to balanced populations along irrelevant attributes are NOT oppressive, no matter what shaming language is hurled your way. If that results in a 50/50 split between the sexes, fine.. If not, that's fine too, because your organization is focused on hiring the best developers, not the best male or the best female developers.
Nobody is looking at a 50/50 split. We want to form a community that attracts everyone. When we go through the exercise we create a great place for everyone to be part of Free Software. When you make a place that's great for many kinds of genders or people you make it a great place for everyone. You're fixated on the technology part without thinking about the people. The only thing I would add is that it should have a sunset clause, no program such as this should go on in perpetuity. That would indeed
Re:Funny (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.
Re:Funny (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Questioning feminism and/or actions taken by feminists (ie spending an organization's money inappropriately) is not hatred of women.
Re:Funny (Score:4, Informative)
How do you think Poe's law applied to the post you responded to?
Outreach Program for Women is grateful to the following organizations [gnome.org]
Outreach Program for Women is grateful to the following organizations and companies for their generous sponsorship of the previous round: ...
Equalizer: Wikimedia Foundation
Promoters: Google, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Mozilla, Open Source Robotics Foundation
Includers: Cloudera, Debian, GNOME Foundation, Linaro, OpenStack Foundation, Rackspace, Red Hat
Ceiling Smasher - $52,000 - 8 interns
Equalizer - $32,000 - 5 interns
Promoter - $19,000 - 3 interns
Includer - $6,250 - 1 intern
The sponsorship per intern includes $5,500 (USD) stipend, $500 travel allowance, and a $250-500 administrative fee for the GNOME Foundation.
Re:Funny (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it just me, or has the quality of Slashdot comments devolved quite a lot in the recent months - essentially due to crap like the anonymous cowards posting in this post? It would be a shame if these idiots make it neccessary to remove anonymous posting at ./ - I've seen some brilliant posts written by people who briefely coming out of lurkdom to answer something which is right in the middle of their field of expertice.
Re:Funny (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not the comments that have decreased in quality, it's the moderation. Ever since the whole beta thing people seem be less willing to spend time moderating and meta-moderating the site. Hardly surprising; when you treat people that way it's not wonder they don't feel inclined to contribute their time and energy. Quite a few people seem to have left permanently since the boycott too.
Re:Funny (Score:5, Insightful)
How can this have been modded "informative"? It is a stupid sexist and homophobic attack.
Because accuracy also counts.
Re: (Score:3)
Context: the Gnome Foundation administers OPW on behalf of the other orgs, passing all the money through their own books. The other orgs pay the Gnome Foundation to pay their interns for them. For example in the last round 8 orgs paid for 30 interns, only 3 interns being from Gnome itself. So Gnome received US$5,500 per intern for 27 interns from the other orgs, so that's US$148,500 in income and expense passing through the Gnome Foundation books in 2013 that has nothing to do with Gnome, only US$16,500
Re: (Score:3)
Perhaps people who give a shit will fork it.
Like this? http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/ [linuxmint.com]
who didn't see this coming? (Score:3)
Here's hoping. (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe GNOME will dry up and wither away, and most likely MATE will survive - because MATE is the GNOME people want.
Re: (Score:3)
Though, on the other hand, Cinnamon is built on top of the GNOME-Shell infrastructure, with much functionality built in JavaScripts, so it suffers the "continually leaking, ever expanding RSS" problems of GNOME-Shell.
Re:Here's hoping. (Score:4, Interesting)
"pleasant on the eye" is subjective and mealiness. In my experience Cinnamon is unreliable which is not good for people just trying Linux. I have installed Linux Mint on many systems, Every time a new release comes out I try Cinnamon hoping for better results. It often crashes and reverts to "fallback mode" which as awful. Maybe it works on some magic hardware combination that I have not tried. MATE has worked perfectly out of the box on every system I have tried. Stable, reliable and pleasant to my eye. I have also tried the fedora MATE spin and it was nowhere near the polish and functionality of the Mint systems. So it may be Mint treatment of MATE as much as the DE itself.
Cinnamon is for people in denial about Gnome 3 and believe it has actual value buried deep in there somewhere.
MATE is for people who just want to use a computer for actual work.
KDE is for people that want to use a computer for actual work and also like eye candy.
Re:Here's hoping. (Score:4, Informative)
Here ya go: http://mate-desktop.org/donate... [mate-desktop.org]
Re: (Score:3)
Yup. Back when Gentoo's Foundation forgot to file some renewal papers there were all kinds of statements of doom and gloom. The reality is that volunteer-based FOSS organizations require fairly little in the way of money to actually operate. In Gentoo's case it was just a paperwork issue which got quickly sorted out, but something any non-profit needs to learn to do is to live on a budget. If your only expense is RAID replacements and the odd piece of hardware it is pretty hard to have a crisis. If you
maybe KDE will be next (Score:2, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U... [wikipedia.org]
Well then X should be next on that list. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
>make XFCE behave itself
Please elaborate on how XFCE isn't behaving itself.
Re:maybe KDE will be next (Score:5, Interesting)
Right now in Xubuntu: The WindowButtons/Taskbar shows the wrong windows when using multiple monitors, the xfce-volumed is constantly hanging, not registering volume keys and using the wrong soundcard, the indicator-applet is completely broken and putting apps into fullscreen doesn't work properly any more either with multiple monitors. Most of this used to work a year or two ago. It feels like XFCE is just getting more and more broken as time progresses. It's pretty frustrating, guess it's time to try Mate.
Re: (Score:3)
I use xfce on Gentoo and have observed similar (not all) of the grandparent's problems: fullscreen is broken for some apps, the theme icons are not correct whenever a second monitor is connected when the X server starts, and so on. And yes, it used to work before.
Granted, xfce on Xubuntu is much worse.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
I heart KDE , but if any component is even aware of systemd being PID 1 I will abandon it forever.
Re: (Score:3)
QFT:
Kay Sievers sucks. Now, if we can just ban Lennart Poettering's code too, we can start getting back on track. They both suck. Most of their contributions are ungainly, ugly abominations and Systemd is the suck on the suck of it. These guys are from the first wave of Winblows lusers getting involved in Linux and beginning the great ruination. The first wave of people to get involved with Linux (e.g. Alan Cox, Donald Becker, etc.) were all Unix people, and they did things gracefully, as god wanted. Then t
systemd hard dependency (Score:5, Insightful)
You did it to yourselves. Go become irrelevant. Viva la Fluxbox!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
SystemD makes sense as it is event based. Solaris and MacOSX have moved beyond init and it makes sense.
How do you setup initd on a Macbook where it is on one network, falls asleep, then wakes up on another? Scenarios such as this and others such as detecting when an apache server gets compromised you can set a chain of commands to do things based on events.
Yes it is different and unix admins hate changes that require years worth of scripts to go obsolete.
But initd is from a different era where a typical ser
Re: (Score:3)
Many people don't like launchd on OS X either. It uses XML configuration files and you get a hurd of apps spinning and waiting for resources. It's very easy to botch writing a good startup script.
The real issue is that systemd is a non compatible, poorly licensed solution and it intentionally is incompatible with every other unix system. If we're going to replace init with something else, it should be possible to actually run on more than one unix like operating system. There have been poor attempts to po
Re: (Score:3)
None of that is the problem. I would be happy to look at an event based system. What I don't want is some monstrosity that insists on doing all or nothing. Init should not be sticking it's fingers into /dev or dbus. Events are fine, just let it call the appropriate script for the events.
As for sleeping on one network and waking up on another, that feature exists already on systems that have never heard of systemd.
As for detecting when apache gets compromised, when did systemd solve the halting problem?
What
There may be some at a loss for sympathy (Score:4, Insightful)
I know that some here on Slashdot will be at a loss for sympathy for the project being in such dire circumstance. However, the key thing that some should remember is that a lot of what the GNOME hackers do, goes into the base for many other projects as well. Much of Linux Mint is an eclectic mix of Ubuntu and GNOME. Likewise for Elementary OS.
So while we might be able to argue if this project has finally run its course, which I do want to add that the foundation running out of reserves hardly equates to the death knell for GNOME. One of the things we shouldn't do, or at least it would be in a very short sighted, is think that the actual GNOME Desktop and how ... "not so great," they've ran that ship plays into all of this. Agreed, the people in the project have become quite hard headed, but honestly which OSS project hasn't by now? However, there are a lot of people (Canonical *cough, cough*) who find their software very useful and hardly give anything back, at least to the foundation.
PS: Being using beta now for a month plus some. I honestly think it is getting better but it does need quite a bit more work. I guess I just wanted to add that after seeing all the f*** beta sigs.
Re:There may be some at a loss for sympathy (Score:4)
a lot of what the GNOME hackers do, goes into the base for many other projects as well.
I think a lot of the hostility comes from seeing GNOME developers take an actively hostile attitude to non-GNOME projects [transmissionbt.com] using components like GTK+ that we used to think of as vital infrastructure everybody used.
Among other things (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The Linus/systemd controvery is long over btw. People had a conflict, yelled a bit at each other, then came up with patches, and everything went back to normal.
Personally I like at least the idea of systemd. It means I can make a single startup script, and have most of the work done by the system, instead of having to muck around with the minor differences of the ubuntu/debian/etc scripts.
Blame GNOME 3 (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.
Re: (Score:3)
I have been using Gnome 3.10 (Fedora 20) on an Acer Iconia W700. This has no keyboard when I use it as a tablet. It does have multi-touch, and gyro/magnetic/ambient light/etc sensor.
Tried XFCE (my usual desktop for the past decade) -- it doesn't do well with the 192dpi display. I then decided to try Gnome 3, because of all the complaints (it forces tablet view on users).
- No keyboard means typing to find an application doesn't work. Adding the "Applications Menu" and "Places" Gnome Shell extensions solves t
To be expected (Score:5, Insightful)
You make a product that no one wants to use? You die as an organization. Fair enough.
Re: (Score:3)
Focus group sessions showed that users who have lost four fingers on each hand are an important category who need to be supported.
"those wishing to support GNOME" HAH! (Score:5, Funny)
For those of us who wish to hasten the death of GNOME, is there anything we can do?
From the parent article: (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.
Re:From the parent article: (Score:5, Insightful)
No, I'd say what people here want in general is for an organization to be apolitical. Being against LGBT is bad, but doing activities related to LGBT is also bad. A software company is supposed to be a bunch of people coding and nothing else, ideally.
Deviations are allowed only for subjects related to the core mission: patents, copyright, open source, etc.
Re: (Score:3)
But that seems to be what a lot of people on Slashdot want. Look at the Mozilla and DropBox controversies. Lots of people posting and moderating support those.
Doesn't matter. If anyone or any organisation insists on doing things beyond their financial means, they've got a problem. If they keep on doing it, they've got a serious problem. Sometimes you've got to be unkind to someone and say "no" because otherwise you'll go bankrupt and get to do nothing at all with anyone. Being able to say "no" on the grounds that what people seek to do is too far away from your mission is a critical life skill. (It's why having an actual mission is important!)
Sure, sometimes you
Re: (Score:3)
it wasn't the Gnome Foundation's money, they were just paying it out on behalf of the other participating orgs. It was the slowness of the other org in paying (or the Gnome Foundation's slowness in collecting) that has caused the cash-flow problem. Last round there were 30 interns for 8 orgs, only 3 interns from Gnome. At US$5,500 per intern you do the maths.
I liked Gnome 2. (Score:4)
I'd give money to a gnome 2 foundation (Score:3)
Unfortunately Gnome 3 pushed me back to ovlwm and xfce. I have a feeling there are a significant number of users (and posters in this thread) in my situation.
It's a little sad because a few years ago, the Linux Desktop was really really great (especially with Gnome 2 + compiz fusion). These days, I really don't feel that way. I wish I could get myself to like KDE.
Wasn't Sun the primary funder of Gnome development?
Re:I'd give money to a gnome 2 foundation (Score:5, Informative)
There is a Gnome 2 foundation -- it's called MATE. Knock yourself out: http://mate-desktop.org/ [mate-desktop.org]
I'm disapointed in people (Score:3, Insightful)
Temper this with the fact that I'm one of the few people who actually like Gnome 3, enough that I switched from Ubuntu to Fedora just to not have to replace Unity. But, fine, people are angry that they didn't respect their user base, when what their user base wanted was yet another rehash of the win 95 desktop layout. The Gnome developers actually tried to do something new in desktop UIs, they actually tried to innovate. And as with any innovation, some of the things they did worked, and some didn't. Gnome 3.0 had a lot of problems, but the potential was there and some of us saw it. As of Gnome 3.8 there is a ton more polish. And a lot of that polish came from user feedback. No they didn't listen to feedback that said "Bring back Gnome 2! No change evar!" They just continued to refine what they had. And they laid down a ton of backend libraries that allowed things like Cinnamon to exist. If they had adopted Cinnamon as one of a few official skins for Gnome 3, would people support them then? Because in terms of development there wouldn't be any change. Some devs continue to work on the new UI, some devs on the rehashed old UI, many on the shared core. Just like today.
I'm going to go contribute to a project that has done amazing things for open source.
Re:I'm disapointed in people (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'm disapointed in people (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not change=good versus change=bad. Everyone is ok with change. The question is what type of changes and why?
Gnome has a history of changing for the worst, and for the worst reasons.
Not just Gnome, they are a leading case but the affliction they suffer from appears to be very widespread in the computing industry. We have a glut of 'designer' prima donnas that all want to 'change' and 'innovate' for no reason other than so they can feel trendy, and this is a predictable result.
Change comes in so many different forms. "I changed this line to fix this bug" is one kind of change. "I changed the master control loop slightly to add a hook for new functions I wrote" is another. "I broke everything completely so we can all have a lot of fun rewriting everything from scratch, and let's make it totally different just to be fresh!" Is a third.
It's not that there is something inherently evil about the third type of change, even. No, it's perfectly acceptable, fine, good, laudable - in the right situation.
But gnome has earned a reputation for excessive and inappropriate changes.
Re: (Score:3)
Then that just underlines thier incompetence even more clearly, since approximately 0% of the "growing phone/tablet market" has any interest in any linux that's not twisted into Android, and they released a "usable" (and I use that word very charitably) desktop installation before any tablet release.
Re:I'm disapointed in people (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
See, that's the thing. You got used to changing your fonts around because in the old days fonts sucked. We didn't really have a good font system. All the other non-free desktops had a great font rendering system. Now we have something decent, you shouldn't have to screw around with fonts. It should just work. That's why GNOME doesn't have that many options for fonts. Neither does OSX nor Windows. You can still do the same kind of font fiddling before, you just have to use gsettings or tweak tool to do it. But they exist, but we need to build something greater. What we're doing is much harder, making things work for the general case.
People change fonts when the defaults don't suit them, and there is no one choice that will suit everyone. The logical conclusion of this is that you need to have some method by which people can change the setting, or your software will not be suitable for a significant number of people.
Sane defaults do not remove the need for configuration. Look at KDE - their defaults are perfectly fine for most people, but Plasma is /way/ more configurable than Gnome 3. This one-size-fits-all attitude is the primary reas
Who would see that coming? (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
Surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not. Sadly, this is precisely what happens when non technicians do technical decisions on a tech Foundation.
Gnome Desktop 2 was one of the main reason I jumped ship from Windows and spend 2 excelent years developing on a Linux box. Almost everything just works, and the few that didn't, I managed to tweak it into production with little effort - I'm a tech guy, after all.
And then came Gnome Desktop 3. And I decided that the migration efforts would be better spent on MacOS X - that I'm using since that days. No regrets.
I think the time for a MATE Foundation has come. :-)
This is a screaming message to every Open Source Foundation around (yes, Mozilla, I'm talking to you): do what your users *NEED* you to do, not what your non techies "advisors" *want* you to do.
There's no space on a tech industry for "politically correct" tech solutions that doesn't cut it!
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.p... [phoronix.com]
Maybe they should stop sucking. (Score:5, Interesting)
Cash flow (Score:4, Informative)
Well looking at Gnome's website. The problem seems to be mainly cash flow not so much a huge drop in funding. What they are saying is that OPW (outreach for women has been popular beyond expectations, they are spending more than expected and not everyone is paying their invoices).
So what you see is:
Invoicing our Advisory Board members for their annual subscription fees
Invoicing our conference sponsors
Following up on unpaid invoices more actively
Taking on the Executive Director's administrative and fundraising duties
Invoicing the OPW sponsoring organizations for the upcoming round immediately
Increasing our general fundraising efforts for the Foundation and its events
Some of the OPW administrative workload is being shifted from Foundation employees to the OPW organizing team
Which is basically a cash flow problem. If there were domestic this would be an easy problem to solve by borrowing against receivables. For an international charity I'm not sure what the rules are.
So greedy, they want money but don't want users. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't personally mind at this point if gnome dies, they should have seen what happened to KDE 4 and take note. They should have see what happened with Windows 8 and read the writing on the wall. Even Microsoft has changed course by now while Gnome is still heading to irrelevance.
If I were in their shoes, I'd simply change course, post a public apology, announce Gnome 4 and bring back everything that users are missing. That should give them enough support to stay alive. I'm sure there is still time for them. But as I said before, I don't think they even care so let them die.
Thank you, but no (Score:3)
Gnome has become an abysmal piece of drek not worth the effort of spitting on. The only reason I ever use it is because some configuration options for various distros are only released for the Gnome desktops on those distros. I use KDE day to day, with the sole exception of the Rhythmbox music player (which itself is just a "lesser of evils" choice -- every Linux music player I've tried sucks in some way or other.)
Gnome 2 was usable. I liked Gnome 2. I would have happily stuck with Gnome 2 and reasonable enhancements to it.
But nooooooo, the development team for the Gnome project knew "better" than everyone else how a computer should operate. They totally screwed the power user with Gnome 3, creating an unholy abortion that doesn't work well with mouse and keyboard and doesn't work well with a touchscreen. It is the worst of "both worlds", and even implements a number of widget metaphors that testing showed people didn't like as far back as 1990.
The Gnome dev team is full of egotistical idiots, and I, for one, can't wait to see them all hit the curb.
The software is open source. If the project dies, the useful bits will be picked up and forked, and all the drek they've shoved down user's throats can wither away and die a horrible, painful, screaming death as far as I'm concerned.
Might get support if they supported people (Score:4, Interesting)
There is simply no end to the complaining about the latest GNOME desktop. It is exactly as Linus Torvalds said it was. It's an unholy abomination and most people don't want it. They should have kept the old desktop and offered an alternative to see how people wanted to go. But no. They just had to annoy the hell out of so many people. I want to say "let them die" but then I wonder what would happen with the GNOME2 stuff... is MATE being actively developed? If so maybe the likes of RedHat will shift over to supporting and developing MATE/GNOME2 again.
Here's some real facts for you. (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.
Re: (Score:3)
Their broke what?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I believe ALL the BSDs still use BSD init, though I dont keep up with them and could be mistaken. Slackware stuck to BSD init when other distros went to SysV, although Patrick wound up as I mentioned modifying it a little for compatibility with upstreams that ASSume SysV.