Outreachy Applications Now Open For Their 2017 Summer Internships

[eidolon]

For individuals, perhaps. For a non-profit U.S organization, the consequences are pretty clear. They will be shutdown.

Organizations are often better resourced and positioned than individuals to make an impact.

When people blanketly preach against corporate involvement in open source development, I usually roll my eyes, because I recognize benefits of that involvement. However, _in this particular case_, I do wonder if corporate involvement in GNOME does make it more susceptible to actively doing nothing to perturb the status quo or affect change. Or even move.

[Larsk]

Now more than ever we need to support minority causes. ... does Gnome need to get involved? Gnome should stay clear. They should make decisions based purely on technical merits to maximize their limited resources.

Actually, Outreachy has been administered by the Software Freedom Conservancy for 2 years now. And in fact the decision process is made on technical merit, by the projects. This works in two ways: some projects fund some Outreachy internships and decide entirely by themselves who gets the internships. Then there are a number of shared slots amongst all projects where mentors rank candidates and the program administrators facilitate the process based on mentors input.

[Larsk]

However, _in this particular case_, I do wonder if corporate involvement in GNOME does make it more susceptible to actively doing nothing to perturb the status quo or affect change. Or even move.

I just wanted to point out that Outreachy is not run by GNOME. Since 2015 it has been run by the Software Freedom Conservancy, which I think you can hardly accuse of too much corporate involvement. And yes, the risk of being shutdown, in particular considering the current political climate in the US a very real.