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Gnome Foundation Welcomes Holly Million as Executive Director

foundation.gnome.org

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Re: Gnome Foundation Welcomes Holly Million as Executive Director

#3
Why did they feel it necessary to have such a role? I mean Gnome is one of the oldest OSS projects, and has been functioning reasonably well in the past 20-some years without it (as a project at least, I mean. I don't want to go into DE-preferences). The post announcing the job opening doesn't make me smarter unfortunately.

Re: Gnome Foundation Welcomes Holly Million as Executive Director

#4

Why did they feel it necessary to have such a role? I mean Gnome is one of the oldest OSS projects, and has been functioning reasonably well in the past 20-some years without it (as a project at least, I mean. I don't want to go into DE-preferences). The post announcing the job opening doesn't make me smarter unfortunately.

fundraising maybe? Usually those people are hired as rainmakers of some sort or another

Re: Gnome Foundation Welcomes Holly Million as Executive Director

#6
post #4

Why did they feel it necessary to have such a role? I mean Gnome is one of the oldest OSS projects, and has been functioning reasonably well in the past 20-some years without it (as a project at least, I mean. I don't want to go into DE-preferences). The post announcing the job opening doesn't make me smarter unfortunately.

fundraising maybe? Usually those people are hired as rainmakers of some sort or another

That, and makes for a great low-impact scapegoat.

Re: Gnome Foundation Welcomes Holly Million as Executive Director

#7
post #6
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fundraising maybe? Usually those people are hired as rainmakers of some sort or another

That, and makes for a great low-impact scapegoat.

Finally someone to blame for GTK4 and Gnome Shell!

Re: Gnome Foundation Welcomes Holly Million as Executive Director

#8

Why did they feel it necessary to have such a role? I mean Gnome is one of the oldest OSS projects, and has been functioning reasonably well in the past 20-some years without it (as a project at least, I mean. I don't want to go into DE-preferences). The post announcing the job opening doesn't make me smarter unfortunately.

Like any project it needs to pay for its infrastructure and that comes from donations and sponsors.

The foundation also holds trademarks including the GNOME trademark that it is required to defend.

The foundation was setup to protect the project from legal issues, help fund the infrastructure,and build relationships that lead to fundraising and influence.

You might recall that GNOME had to defend its trademark at least once and was also hit with a patent troll.

Edited to add: The money also goes to help fund GUADEC and hackfests where maintainers meet to work on goals. So there is more than just the executive director - there is a whole team that manages events, finances, and brand.

Re: Gnome Foundation Welcomes Holly Million as Executive Director

#9
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That, and makes for a great low-impact scapegoat.

Finally someone to blame for GTK4 and Gnome Shell!

>> Finally someone to blame for GTK4 and Gnome Shell!

Having looked at moving from GTK3 to 4, I can understand the frustration. I also read a bunch of stuff and have concluded there are good reasons for the disruption, from making things more generic which allows new combinations of widgets (like images in menus) to allowing stuff to be in a different process. That does not mean the migration or support for doing it was handled well.

I was also disappointed to see they talked about having major releases at a regular cadence, which luckily they are way behind. Stability is a very important feature for toolkits and other infrastructure software. I would argue that being cross-platform and having stability are the 2 most important features of GTK and I hope it's a very long time before GTK5 comes along - if ever. The other major feature is the C API which allows it to have bindings to many languages.

Re: Gnome Foundation Welcomes Holly Million as Executive Director

#10
Looking at the qualifications and past experience of this pick I am starting to wonder what exactly was the rationale behind this? The only work history listed in her resume is as a consultant, and as "Holly Million the Shaman Artist".

This will be interesting to say the least.

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