Stormy's Corner

One of the most common questions I get asked, right after "What do you do?", is "What does the GNOME Foundation do?" I wrote an article explaining what the GNOME Foundation does in the current issue of OSBR, Women in Open Source, guest edited by Rikki Kite. (And there are some really good articles by some amazing women like Cathy Malmrose, Angela Byron, Cat Allman, Selena Deckelman, Amanda McPherson, Emma Jane Hogbin, Audrey Eschright and Melanie Groves VonFange.)

Open Source Business Review (OSBR) itself is edited by another amazing woman, Dru Lavigne. All of their articles are published under the CC-SA, so you can
republish and use them to educate people on open source software as
long as you give attribution.

Credit goes to Rikki and Dru for helping me write a much better article than I could have written on my own.

The GNOME
Foundation Is All About People, by Stormy Peters originally published in OSBR

"Foundations offer a way to make open-source
development more corporate (organized in such a way that commercial
vendors can participate with fewer reservations) without becoming
commercial, a turn-off for many would-be code contributors."

Matt
Asay

As open source projects mature, they tend to join or
create a foundation to manage the project's financial and software
assets, provide a marketing and legal entity, and
help to set the direction of the project. As non-profit
organizations, foundations have a specific structure defined by the
jurisdiction in which they were formed. This structure typically
includes a volunteer board of directors and sometimes paid staff such
as a secretary or executive director.

As Executive Director of the GNOME
Foundation, I am often asked "what do you do?". This
article will introduce the structure of the GNOME project and its
Foundation, describe how the Foundation works to support the GNOME
project, and discuss the roles of the people within the GNOME
Foundation.

GNOME Structure

The GNOME project started out as an open source
desktop. It has evolved into a complete, free and easy-to-use desktop
environment which includes software for tasks like playing music,
editing images, and working with documents. GNOME also provides a
powerful application development framework for both desktop and mobile application developers. As part of
the GNU Project, GNOME is free to
use, modify, and distribute.

The GNOME Foundation exists to support the GNOME
project's mission of creating a free and open source desktop
accessible to all people regardless of their ability to pay, physical
ability, or the language they speak. The Foundation acts as the
official voice of the GNOME project, communicating with press and
other other organizations, coordinating releases of GNOME,
determining which projects are part of GNOME, and planning events
that support GNOME and its developers.

The GNOME Foundation is a US-based 501(c)(3)
non-profit
organization with an elected Board of Directors, an appointed Board
of Advisors, approximately 400 members, and two paid staff. The 400
members are all contributors to GNOME. A contributor is anyone who
has made a significant contribution such as code, organizing
a conference, writing documentation, or translating GNOME into other
languages. GNOME contributors must renew their membership every two
years.

The GNOME Foundation

The GNOME project is mostly self-managed by
informally structured teams. The GNOME Foundation serves as the
support or steward of the project. Any GNOME contributor can apply to
the Foundation for membership. All members, 370 at current count, can
vote. Typically there is one vote per year by the membership to see
who serves on the Board of Directors. The Board of Directors is then
authorized to make decisions on behalf of the entire body of GNOME
Foundation members. The Board runs the Foundation's day-to-day
business, voting internally on financial decisions, legal issues and
general policy. The Board of Directors is also authorized to hire
staff that reports to them.

In addition to the membership, the Board of
Directors and the Foundation staff, the GNOME Foundation also has a
Board of Advisors. The Board of Advisors is a group of
representatives from companies and non-profit organizations that work
closely with GNOME. Many donate annually to the GNOME project
and provide sponsorship for hiring staff, hackfests, events, and
outreach programs.

GNOME Teams

While the GNOME project doesn't provide an
organizational chart, the project is definitely well organized. The
project is run by contributors, loosely coupled into teams.
Teams are rather informal and tend to be grouped around either
projects, such as GTK+ or GStreamer, or around tasks like marketing,
maintaining the website or providing system administration support.
Teams meet in IRC and hold discussions on mailing lists. Each team
often has its own wiki and web pages to use for collaboration.

There are teams that write code for each of
the technologies in GNOME. Translation team members
ensure that GNOME is available to people
around the world in their native language from Tamil to Vietnamese to
Finnish.

Many contributors begin their involvement by participating in the bug squad team, which tracks incoming bugs
and ensures that major bugs get addressed quickly. Some dedicated
hackers work on the release team, which makes sure a new release of
GNOME goes out every six months. The release team decides which
features will be included in the next release, works carefully with
all of the projects to ensure their product is ready and
tested, writes release notes, and keeps everyone moving towards the
mutual goal of an on-time six month release cycle.

The accessibility team is one of GNOME's core
strengths. This team makes sure that GNOME is easy to use by people
with accessibility needs while supporting GNOME's core value to be
accessible to all, regardless of physical ability or ability to pay.
GNOME's accessibility solutions cost a fraction of the cost of its
non-open source competitors. When speaking of cost, GNOME software is
free, but hardware sometimes needs to be purchased.

While we usually focus on people working on the
project directly, the community also includes the companies and
developers using GNOME technologies in their product solutions. GNOME
technologies can be found in traditional desktops, mobile phones,
breast cancer scanners, and GPS devices. Some of these companies
sponsor the GNOME Foundation.
Others participate in GNOME
Mobile and still others sponsor GNOME
events.

A small group of GNOME contributors run the membership
committee, verifying that all members are GNOME contributors. On the
infrastructure team, people with system administration skills keep
the GNOME infrastructure running, fixing all sorts of issues in their
spare time. Most of the hosting and infrastructure is donated to the
GNOME Foundation by supporting companies such as Red Hat.

There are others who spend evenings and weekends
discussing how the website could best be redesigned to recruit
more developers and enable more people to begin using GNOME. Others
volunteer to set up and staff the GNOME booth at a conference.
Those with artistic talent create artwork including logos,
brochures, and tshirts. Some contributors, both those with marketing
talent and those with a strong desire to learn more about marketing,
write and design brochures for potential sponsors. Some volunteers
organize major GNOME events like GUADEC
or GNOME.Asia. Many users are
happy to answer questions for the person sitting next to them at the
coffee shop.

Role of Board and Executive Director

In addition to all of the people working directly on
GNOME, seven contributors each year are elected to serve on the Board
of Directors. The Board itself does not make technical decisions,
although many of the Directors also hold technical leadership roles.
Rather, the Board is responsible for the stewardship of GNOME's
finances, trademark, press relations, staff, and legal issues. Board
members ensure that the GNOME project is successful by organizing
annual get-togethers from GUADEC to hackfests. They maintain
relationships with corporate partners through the advisory board. The
Board solicits corporate sponsorship and individual support, and
prepares and manages the budget.

While the Board of Directors doesn't make technical
decisions, the Board is elected by the community to represent the
project and Board members often get asked by members of the GNOME
community for advice and direction.

The Board of Directors in turn hires the staff they
see as necessary to run the GNOME Foundation effectively and in a way
that supports all of GNOME. We've had an administrative assistant,
Rosanna Yuen, for several years. She maintains the financial
books, invoices corporate sponsors, reimburses community members for
sponsored travel, sends out Friends of GNOME gifts and generally
keeps things running day-to-day.

Last year the board hired an Executive Director to
help grow the Foundation. The Executive Director is expected to be
the "eyes and ears of the GNOME Foundation." Many people
approach me and say they are so glad there is an Executive Director
as now they know who to ask a particular question about GNOME. I
respond by connecting them to the right person in the project. It
still surprises me when companies that use GNOME technologies have no
idea when they do or do not understand what GNOME actually is. I
assume it's because open source tends to be introduced into
corporations from the bottom up. In these cases, I educate management
and help them understand how working more closely with the GNOME
community can help them.

As Executive Director, I assist in marketing by
making sure the project is reaching out to the right people. Other
job duties include:

• fundraising: for staff salaries, specific
  outreach projects, travel costs to bring developers together at
  conferences and hackfests, and a future paid system administrator

• business development: finding new ways to make
  money as well as bringing in companies that aren't traditionally
  seen as being part of the GNOME community

• general housekeeping: ensure projects are
  carried through to completion, potential business deals are followed
  up, and meeting companies interested in working with GNOME

One of the vital things I do that doesn't cost
anything is saying "that's a good idea". GNOME has a great
community of talented and motivated individuals. Often they bring an
idea to me or to the Board and they just need confirmation or an
introduction to the right person to start their plans.

How does GNOME Make Money?

A commonly asked question is "how does the
GNOME project make money?". The GNOME Foundation is supported
financially by donations. Donations come in several forms which
include:

• regular donations from individuals who pledge
  $10/month to the GNOME Foundation through Friends
  of GNOME

• one time donations from individuals or
  companies through Friends of GNOME

• companies who pledge to support the GNOME
  Foundation with $10,000/year

• companies that hire people to work on GNOME
  projects

• companies that sponsor events like GUADEC,
  GNOME.Asia and hackfests

This financial support has given GNOME the ability
to grow as a project. Being able to get most of the community
together at our annual GUADEC conference as well as holding smaller
local events and hackfests has enabled the community to work
closely together, creating desktop technologies that adhere to strong
values like freedom, internationalization, usability and
accessibility.

What Will GNOME do Next?

GNOME 3.0 discussions are well under way with a
preliminary roadmap outlining new technologies and user interfaces.
GNOME's challenge for the next couple of years will be figuring out
what the "desktop" means to users who have a traditional
computer, a netbook or a smartphone. GNOME is actively working on
the best technologies and user interfaces to help users navigate
these technologies.

The GNOME Foundation will support GNOME 3.0's
evolution by getting feedback from the community and sponsor
companies, continuing to release GNOME every six months, and working
out a plan to deprecate old code and provide an appropriate migration
path for partners and users.

In addition to working with our existing community
and partners, the Foundation will continue to grow. We'll add new
corporate sponsors, perhaps companies focused on mobile
technology, chip design, netbook manufacture, and telecommunications
carriers. We'll add new community members, including developers and
volunteers that work on planning new events and growing existing
ones. We'll see new teams in countries like Nigeria that are busy
translating GNOME into local languages.

The desktop will continue to evolve as people work
and interact with technology. We'll see more devices from desktops to
smartphones, more people in developing countries beginning to use
technology and technology adapting to meet their needs. The
GNOME project will continue to work to make a free desktop available
to everyone regardless of their physical ability, financial status or
the language they speak. Come join us!

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