GNOME Continues Working On New Installer, "Major Issue" With STF

[phoronix]

Phoronix: GNOME Continues Working On New Installer, "Major Issue" With STF

This Week In GNOME is out with their newest edition to outline all of the interesting developments as we approach the end of May...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/GNOME-Memorial-Week-2024

[mirmirmir]

We did it boys, gnome STF funding is cancelled

[Volta]

We did it boys, gnome STF funding is cancelled

It's hard to tell without details, but I've got the feeling Gnome Foundation is sabotaging Gnome. Just like Mozilla foundation does when comes to Firefox.

[Sethox]

It's hard to tell without details, but I've got the feeling Gnome Foundation is sabotaging Gnome. Just like Mozilla foundation does when comes to Firefox.

Please provide sources for this claim.

[NekkoDroid]

We did it boys, gnome STF funding is cancelled

Even if this were the case, that wouldn't be good considering a decent chunk is distro agnostic security stuff (encrypted home and making it usable for Apps and DEs, mostly by extending systemd-homed and logind for secure locking vs regular locking where home would still be accessible, as well as security APIs in Wayland & Flatpak) and also a distro agnostic overhaul of the accessibility stack.

[V1tol]

distro agnostic security stuff [..] and also a distro agnostic overhaul of the accessibility stack

Wait, we are talking about GNOME here, right? Those distro agnostics don't want to participate in Freedesktop standards and there is nothing worse than Adwaita for accessibility. 50 shades of gray with giant whitespaces are definitely making wonders to eyesight.

[Daktyl198]

Please provide sources for this claim.

The source is people. Especially people who like money. Good people usually don't try to be elected to high management positions, the ones with agendas do. As soon as you have a "foundation" above the actual profit that handles money, marketing, etc, it's only a matter of time before those positions fill with corrupt people. Mozilla was a saint of the open web, but look at them now. Even the best of us fall to greed.

Which isn't to say it's necessarily happening yet, but it's only a matter of time. The Linux Foundation is already in this arc, and soon they'll be just as bad as Mozilla.

[NekkoDroid]

Those distro agnostics don't want to participate in Freedesktop standards

Other than the xdg-icon-naming specification (which is basically useless nowadays if you are writing any form of complex app, resulting in mismatching icons when you ship the icons for the missing ones), which other ones do they not follow?

Also that entire icon kerfuffle has the root cause that the xdg-icon-naming spec and xdg-icon-theme spec are 2 separate specs. And the reason the xdg-icon-naming spec support was dropped was because keeping the entire list of icons up-to-date with their current style is just a waste of resources due apparently other than KDE noone really still relies on them (KDE apps would still struggle outside of KDE https://imgur.com/a/dolphin-on-PUvU0ze now when they are shipping their legacy icons).

[skeevy420]

Please provide sources for this claim.

The GNOME 2023 expense report. Page 13. They spent $100K more than the previous year on conferences, increased that funding by 1/3, and spent $100K less than the previous year on support and infrastructure, which cut its funding in half. They spent nearly 3x as much on conferences compared to their next highest expense of support and infrastructure.

They're using Tech Funds for Vacations and calling them Conferences. Prices went up, but tickets, hotels, and conference venues didn't double in price from 2022 to 2023 to warrant that much of an expense change.

So reading this between the lines:

As part of the GNOME STF (Sovereign Tech Fund) initiative, a number of community members are working on infrastructure related projects.

We’re currently facing a major issue from the GNOME Foundation side. We hope it will be resolved before it impacts the coordination of the STF project, but if not, the future of parts of the project is uncertain.

It makes me think that the STF is worried about the GNOME Foundation wasting money like how Mozilla pays their board and executives millions of dollars a year instead of hiring more developers.

[NekkoDroid]

It's hard to tell without details, but I've got the feeling Gnome Foundation is sabotaging Gnome. Just like Mozilla foundation does when comes to Firefox.

Well, apparently GNOME development isn't really controlled by the GNOME Foundation, the GNOME Foundation is mostly just there to provide a Non-Profit for the project and helps organize Meetings and Events (that include also other desktop environment devs) to facilitate the actual development.

Do take this with a grain of salt, as that is mostly what I've just been hearing/reading and I don't know the actual internal operations. But if it is to be believed I am not too worried.