# The GNOME foundation has run out of money



## mojeda (Apr 13, 2014)

https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/CurrentBudgetFAQ



> 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 both in terms of the number of interns and the number of participating organizations. 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. The changes were not tracked effectively from the point when other organizations joined the OPW. This impacted not only our ability to manage the OPW administration, but also to keep up with the core financial tasks of the Foundation -- tasks which already needed the full attention of the Foundation's employees and the board.


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## Thelen (Apr 13, 2014)

Maybe they could get Ubuntu to kick in some money, or is Ubuntu KDE I can't remember :/


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## WebSearchingPro (Apr 13, 2014)

Thelen said:


> Maybe they could get Ubuntu to kick in some money, or is Ubuntu KDE I can't remember :/


Ubuntu used to use Gnome, however they are developing and using their own solution called "Unity".

However Canonical has a Ubuntu GNOME flavor floating around.

Rather disappointing seeing that they just released 3.12.

This is actually starting to become a recurring theme, OpenSSL, OpenBSD ect...


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## Francisco (Apr 13, 2014)

It's a shame @Aldryic is a KDE fan.

Francisco


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## dano (Apr 13, 2014)

Gnome was how I was able to "ween myself off Windows" back in 2003-2005 time. Now that I am 100% Windows free, I feel like I should give them something, even if it's not much, to show them that I appreciate the work they did, and that they helped me learn something that was foreign to me at the time, with a small barrier to entry, and did it with few bugs that would make someone re-think "switching".


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## RLT (Apr 13, 2014)

Hmm am I reading this right? They started an outreach program put all of their cash and resources into it? Not on purpose but because they didn't keep the funds separate?


Sorry folks I gave up on Gnome when 3 was released.


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## sv01 (Apr 14, 2014)

RLT said:


> Sorry folks I gave up on *Gnome when 3 was released*.


+1


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## Francisco (Apr 14, 2014)

RLT said:


> Hmm am I reading this right? They started an outreach program put all of their cash and resources into it? Not on purpose but because they didn't keep the funds separate?
> 
> Sorry folks I gave up on Gnome when 3 was released.


From what some slashdot posts have said, the lady they brought to head the foundation a few years ago went into some raging feminist movement deal and dump *boats* of cash into things. She left her post

a month or so ago, just in time for things to burn down.

A developer/contributor commented that while things don't look good, some of their issues are related

to not actually invoicing/collecting due invoices and such.

http://beta.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5027049&cid=46740191

The real meat of it is at:



> 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.


The 'idea' of the outreach wasn't a problem at first but later turned into one when she kept

increasing the amount of cash into it every year.

Francisco


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## KuJoe (Apr 14, 2014)

What is it with open source software companies getting into financial problems from non-software related issues?


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## coreyman (Apr 14, 2014)

KuJoe said:


> What is it with open source software companies getting into financial problems from non-software related issues?


This whole ordeal seems like it could have easily been avoided. How did they not know she was spending the money WHILE she was spending the money? This happened over a course of several years - not overnight.


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## texteditor (Apr 14, 2014)

Francisco said:


> From what some slashdot posts have said, the lady they brought to head the foundation a few years ago went into some raging feminist movement deal


Yeah you might wanna find another source for this. Not saying it isn't true, but Slashdotters are kinda like Redditors in that they can find a way to blame feminists for literally anything.


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## qrwteyrutiyoup (Apr 15, 2014)

Interesting read on the matter: https://plus.google.com/+SarahSharp/posts/2cVAWJiWqzm


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## drmike (Apr 15, 2014)

So, Gnome tries to attract FEmales.  Utilizes them as interns.  All Clintonista cigar jokes aside...

Sandler, the woman turns out to be a feminst.  Hmm... but she married a guy.... But she claims be both punk and a lawyer. Sounds kosher.

Sad thing is she parachutted her ass over to here ---> http://sfconservancy.org/  More software freeDOM, male work horses slaving and bigger kitty to rob, ahem appropriate from.

Gnome Expenses, 2010 to 2012

Administration: $11,210
Employees: $201,934
GUADEC: $29,953
Hackfests: $21,932
Other events: $34,587
Marketing: $1,117
Contracts: $1,530
*WOMEN'S OUTREACH: $106,741*

What they spent on Women's outreach in 2012, exceeded 25% of the Foundation's income for the year. Cause you know Women's Outreach is what bring the donations in, is their user base, etc.

While we think this is some novel include the women sort of thing, it really is more ahh strange than that.

"This program is open to anyone who was assigned female at birth and anyone who identifies as a woman, genderqueer, genderfluid, or genderfree regardless of gender presentation or assigned sex at birth."

Link: https://wiki.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen

Doesn't sound like promoting women to me.... Genderfluid, yummy.  Do they serve genderfluid in hemp smoothies out in Commifornia?


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## drmike (Apr 15, 2014)

It gets funnier....

" One example I can easily point to is that Wikimedia had in the past only one woman apply for GSoC. After they participated in one round with OPW, they had 7 accepted GSoC students who were women. In the GNOME project, we've had a very visible changes. Women are participating in our top level discussions and are always present on Planet GNOME. While we started at 4% women in attendance at GUADEC in 2009, *this year we had about 18% participation by women with 22% of the speakers being women.* It's been a phenomenal change. I encourage anyone who's interested in the program (as a mentor, sponsor or participating organization) to contact me or Marina and to encourage awesome women to apply!"

So without know who was what, blind man might think oh great more women in open source.  However, the program is / was open to:

"open to anyone who was assigned female at birth and anyone who identifies as a woman, genderqueer, genderfluid, or genderfree regardless of gender presentation or assigned sex at birth.""

READ: anyone except heterosexual males.

That 18% or 22% female partcipation, yeah, most of those weren't probably females by the strict definition of the word FEmale.

Why is Gnome being used to promote "minority" rights and mocking/minimalizing women in the process?


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## tchen (Apr 15, 2014)

Thank you for being the poster child of the problem.


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## drmike (Apr 15, 2014)

tchen said:


> Thank you for being the poster child of the problem.


Explain that?  This gal did squat for bringing WOMEN into open source and did it at great cost to Gnome.

Here's a further example of her wisdom:

5 tips for Bringing More Women into Open Source


1. Address women directly.


2. Accept non-students and non-coders.


3. Connect women with mentors. "There's a feeling that women are less likely to ask for help, and find a mailing list intimidating... Mentors respond to newcomers and make them feel welcome," Sandler said.


4. Require a contribution as part of the application. It can be small like fixing a minor bug or rewording a pagraph of documentation. It gives people a head start for joining the community and also gives program administrators a better idea of who is applying and whether they're good.


5. Make sure women don't feel pressure to propose really ambitious projects.

#3 I totally agree with.  Everyone getting started needs mentors.

#1 is fine also.   Code isn't appealing to most women and it doesn't take a PhD to determine why.

 The other three points, ARRGH!

"Accept non-students and non-coders" = accept no experience and artificially create space for them that probably otherwise isn't there.

"It can be small like fixing a minor bug or rewording a pagraph of documentation." -  don't focus on their actual ability and knowledge to contribute.  Perhaps they can do the documentation, be the secretary or some accessory to the actual work.

"Make sure women don't feel pressure to propose really ambitious projects."  - Why shouldn't they be challenged?  Much of the talks were about including women in big things like the LINUX KERNEL.   If you aren't a gigantic thinker and very experienced, you are just in the farking way chatting about KERNEL optimization.

This all is an insult to women who work hard, contribute on level as men do and don't make excuses.

"she experienced sexism more directly. At tech conferences, for example, her male colleagues would sometimes ask her whose spouse she was, not knowing that she was actually a speaker at the event."

So when I am at the maternity ward and I ask some fellow where his wife is and he says he gave birth, I too can be lumped in with the sexists.  It's not sexist, it's statistical outcomes, obvious pattern recognition and equally important shows the social ineptness of technical dorks.  Worst thing you can do with a bunch of sweaty palmers who can't get laid in a strip club with a bag of $100's is mix up she-dongers and butter coat the whole thing as woman 2.0.


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## tchen (Apr 15, 2014)

Francisco said:


> the real meat of it is at:The 'idea' of the outreach wasn't a problem at first but later turned into one when she keptincreasing the amount of cash into it every year.Francisco


Not so much that she was purposely funneling money into it, but more that it took off with partnerships like Rackspace, et al (17 in total lately). As coordinator, they're responsible for collecting and dispersing money for the program. The problem arose because of the additional complexity of managing and timing funds across so many participants. The stipends are scheduled while collections were not sadly.


Donations to the gnome project itself were still apportioned as they were before the OPFW. Program funding on the balance sheet is still offset by open account receivables with the participating organizations. Cash is the problem, since they've been the ones who have to cover the discrepancy in timing - a bad choice in structuring the program which they freely admit.


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## drmike (Apr 15, 2014)

"Currently 25 percent of all software developers are women, but only 3 percent work in free and open source software."

Could it just be that women just aren't that g*d [email protected] dumb to work for free? Men are prone to idealistic time wasters like coding and ahh hunting. Low ROI, giant time sink.

I am actually rather surprised by the 25% statistic.  Seems rather high.  Taken from:

https://www.linux.com/component/content/article/200-libby-clark/714599-women-in-free-open-source-software/

I support all people with GENUINE interest to write code, contribute, build their own whatever.  There are real reasons why this industry isn't appealing to women and it isn't the obnoxious men.  I've hired many non-traditional folks over the years for all sorts of roles.   Some were gender challenged, some thought they were unicorns, others believed they were warlocks, some liked four legged critters a tad too much...

At the end of the day, I like most folks care about having competent folks who can deliver product(s) with minimal excuses, headaches, grandstanding, etc.

Want to encourage more interest from women, make products women actually care about / use.... Offer scholarships  to subsidize education...  Set up summer camps...  Tons that could be better done to create groundswell of real interest across gender barrier that is falsely erected.


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## hellogoodbye (Apr 15, 2014)

I'm sorry, I don't understand the full details behind this and how GNOME is run regarding funding allocation and so forth, but I do disagree with you on a couple of points:



drmike said:


> Sandler, the woman turns out to be a feminst.  Hmm... but she married a guy.... But she claims be both punk and a lawyer. Sounds kosher.


Feminists can and do marry guys. There is nothing that says being a feminist means you must be a man-hating, woman-loving warrior.



drmike said:


> "she experienced sexism more directly. At tech conferences, for example, her male colleagues would sometimes ask her whose spouse she was, not knowing that she was actually a speaker at the event."
> 
> So when I am at the maternity ward and I ask some fellow where his wife is and he says he gave birth, I too can be lumped in with the sexists.


It's physically impossible for a man to give birth (yet, anyway) so the natural assumption would be that he is accompanying his wife at the maternity ward. It's not physically impossible for a woman to knowledgeable in the tech field, so it shouldn't be a natural assumption that she's accompanying a spouse at a tech conference. Personally I wouldn't consider it sexist if people assume I'm only attending because my significant other brought me along, but it doesn't change the fact that your comparison is a flawed one.

I think there should be less focus on the gender aspect and more on the whole picture, analyzing all the things that went wrong within the organization and why. The same thing could easily have happened if the outreach program was meant for, say, teenagers or disabled persons, and Sandler was a man instead of a woman, because GNOME's main issue was an inability to keep up with and manage the rapid growth of the program as it proved to be "extremely popular". It would be naive and myopic to assume that everything fell apart just because some raging feminist wanted to devote all the money to women and then jumped ship before it sank.


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## tchen (Apr 15, 2014)

The goal of the program "Because the program is intended to help newcomers and contributors who are relatively new to the FOSS community"


Here, I fixed it for ya,



drmike said:


> Explain that?  This gal did squat for bringing xXXx into open source and did it at great cost to Gnome.
> 
> 
> Here's a further example of her wisdom:
> ...



Your arguments above hit all the fallacious argumentative hallmarks.


1) it's statistics!


Never mind that the statistics is driven by the community's inbuilt desire for the status quo.


2) it cheapens existing women in the field.


Never mind that it's an outreach program. By the natural extension of that logic, ALL internship programs cheapen ALL workers in the field.


3) why accept only inexperienced secretaries, or what, you can't find c0ders?


This assumes the program is trying to fill a quota. It specifically excludes experienced applicants (eg past Google summer of code interns for example) and places emphasis on opening the eyes of women who though opensource was chiefly the domain of sweaty bigots hiding behind a keyboard. Will all of them stick? No. Neither do ungendered internship programs.


4) why have a gender specific program when there exists an existing non discriminatory one?


This one is debatable, but it harks a parallel to why have diversity programs at all? The North American population is majority white. It's the natural order of things borne out of statistics that most good jobs should be given to whites since they are the majority after all. Oh, that colored person? He's just there because of some program. The job would have been given to a nice clean white guy because that's what you'd expect. Oh, my friend Bob is colored too. Oh, he's different. He's actually smart unlike the rest. He deserves to be here - we share many things in common, he speaks just like one of us, have BBQs, and even laugh at n***gr jokes too. He knows we don't mean him when we tell it and it's all clean fun.


If the above made you feel slightly uncomfortable, think it through before you give in to your natural impulse to lash out. The current environment is heavily hostile towards changes in the statistical makeup. Like race, the silent majority doesn't care enough to speak up and go with the flow. Statistical truths are a convenient excuse to just shrug your shoulders and say that's how it's suppose to be. Then add to that the loud vocal minority who feel threatened. That's what feminists refer to as privilege. Not necessarily that you, specifically as an individual was given a helping hand, but that society as a majority already dictated ahead of time that the other person should be a 'secretary' or a 'nurse' Anything outside of those roles are a statistical abboration that needs to be squashed, tolerated, or just written off to a non visible section of society so that it doesn't bother the rest of us.


Is it unnatural to have the YMCA? Boy Scouts? Veterans Association? How about specific cultural identity scholarships for Italians, Irish, Protestants? These were all created in their own times to address these statistical abborations of troubled youths, immigrants, homeless, religious affiliations. The world wasn't destroyed by that 18 yr old Irish boy who fought for your country.


/end angry feminist rant


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