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GNOME Businesses The Almighty Buck Linux

Mystery Donor Pledges $1 Million To The GNOME Foundation (betanews.com) 150

Posted by msmash from the secret-santa dept.
Brian Fagioli, writing for BetaNews: This week, The GNOME Foundation made a shocking revelation: a mystery donor has pledged $1 million dollars. We don't know who is promising the money -- it could be a rich man or woman, but more likely -- and this is pure speculation -- it is probably a company that benefits from GNOME, such as Red Hat or Canonical.

"An anonymous donor has pledged to donate up to $1,000,000 over the next two years, some of which will be matching funds. The GNOME Foundation is grateful for this donation and plans on using these funds to increase staff to streamline operations and to grow its support of the GNOME Project and the surrounding ecosystem. While the GNOME Foundation has maintained its position as a proponent of the GNOME Project, growth has been limited. With these funds, the GNOME Foundation will be able to expand and lead in the free software space," says The GNOME Foundation.
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Mystery Donor Pledges $1 Million To The GNOME Foundation More

Mystery Donor Pledges $1 Million To The GNOME Foundation

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  • Please don't encourage them (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 27, 2018 @01:11PM (#56683712)

    GNOME devs have their heads deeper up their own asses than pretty much any project in the history of software development.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by brickhouse98 ( 4677765 )
      Knew it wouldn't take long for some douche to come in and blast Gnome. Somehow they do what every other DE does (ie. design what they want) yet take the most flack for it, not least of all from some AC.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        That's because they killed the best desktop environment ever, Gnome 2, and at the same time made app the Gnome Apps suck, and at the same time turned GTK3 from being the coolest toolkit with the best tech, gobject-introspection, into an unstable API no one can trust.

        Add SystemD and PulseAudio to it, and I want everyone working for RedHat to die, or at least have all their fingers broken.

        • They killed a good one. Not the best. KDE is/was the best.
          • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • KDE is/was the best.

            Yah. They almost killed it with 4.0 but it bounced back and is the best again, including vs Windows and OS/X. Even Kmail kinda works again, RIP.

            Used Ark for the first time (always command lined that tell yesterday) and was blown away how smooth it is. There are just an endless number of nice surprises like that in KDE if you go explore. Mostly I just ignore everything fancy and use the basics, which are great.

        • Killed is a strong word. I run Ubuntu Mate on my laptop at home without any issues. Popular software doesn't die easily. If it's good enough people will pick it up.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by doom ( 14564 )

          Speaking of which, does anyone know a good way to revert libgtk? I'd like my old scrollbars back in firefox. And the old File-Save dialog was a hell of a lot better...

          I was wondering if firefox under MATE might work better.

      • Gnome would benefit from spending the money to hire people to fix bugs. It isn't so much the design that is bad, it's the weird bugs and awkward work flows that show up because no one really testef their stuff well. It's jusy quirky. Note that it's still better than the adfest Windows has become.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          https://www.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/22zaa3/the_gnome_foundation_spent_all_their_money_on/

        • Gnome would benefit from spending the money to hire people to fix bugs.

          Quickest way is, probably, port it to Qt.

  • The future of gnome (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 27, 2018 @01:13PM (#56683734)

    I heard that the gnome UI has devolved into a single large button labelled "NO" but I can't say if that's true. You know, so as not to confuse the users. The last time I looked at gnome it was headed in that direction.

  • Should pay for a resurrection of Gnome 1. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 27, 2018 @01:22PM (#56683786)
    Before the HIG, spatial file manager, shell, disabling of double click to launch executables and other Gnome groans. Despite given head starts by Microsoft with Me, Vista, 8 and 10 Gnome is still a major reason we haven’t had a year of the Linux desktop in the 20 years Gnome has existed.
  • Couldn't ever get used to the weird French ways of KDE

    • Re:Glad its GNOME and not KDE (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Teun ( 17872 ) on Sunday May 27, 2018 @03:48PM (#56684620)
      It seems we use our computer differently and the advantage of Linux is we both find what we like.
      There is fairly good proof KDE is the more complete and better thought out desktop environment.

      The biggest problem of Gnome is it is not a system but a whole bunch of loosely connected (or not!) applications.
      The desktop sucks at calling those applications and looks bad without options to reconfigure it.
      side from the configurability one of the biggest advantages of KDE Plasma is the file manager Dolphin, it is based on good old Konquerer but has more useful plug-ins.

      Regretfully no amount of money can make Gnome catch up, it was broken from the start.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        There is fairly good proof KDE is the more complete and better thought out desktop environment.

        And yet to fail to provide any. It’s almost as if you have no proof of anything.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Raphael ( 18701 )

        There is fairly good proof KDE is the more complete and better thought out desktop environment.

        You are a rather successful troll because you comment was quickly moderated to "+5 Interesting" although it is just a rant without substance. Congratulations for that!

        Regretfully no amount of money can make Gnome catch up, it was broken from the start.

        And of course you have a proof of that as well?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by rojash ( 2567409 )
        I think my wife would love KDE.

      • The biggest problem of Gnome is it is not a system but a whole bunch of loosely connected (or not!) applications.

        The biggest problem with Gnome (besides the developers) is, it's written in C. Its libraries are written in C. C that is trying to be object oriented and just ends up being a mess because, you know, C does not have classes. It can try to have classes, just as a dog can pretend to walk on its hind feet like a human, but kids are not fooled.

  • If you look at the strings attached to the donation, it should be obvious what's going on here.

    Gnome 4 needs to be the Gnome 3 of Gnome 3s! We want a user experience so new, bold and exciting that nobody will believe it! Not just out of the box but in a different galaxy as the box! Also, all applications must be fully usable on smartwatches!

    But hey, I for one welcome our open source sniff-and-spit smartwatches! ;)

  • Probably Puting (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rashkae ( 59673 ) on Sunday May 27, 2018 @01:35PM (#56683878) Homepage

    Probably Putin, trying to destabilize the Free Software movement and keeping the desktop fragmentation Gnome created (or, at least, greatly escalated) going.)

  • More general solution: Use a CSB (Charity Share Brokerage). People who want to use GNOME would be able to buy charity shares in related projects. Some projects might develop new features, others might pay for ongoing costs for the next budget period, other projects would provide support, and so on. If lots of people want to donate to GNOME, then it will flourish, but if not, then it will survive to the degree that some people are willing to cover the costs.

    This might remind you of Kickstarter, but it's actu

  • I could never do that (Score:3)

    by skoskav ( 1551805 ) on Sunday May 27, 2018 @02:13PM (#56684126)
    I'd be terrified that they'd spend it all on sweets and comic books. I would at least demand some old bugs to be fixed.

  • Microsoft? (Score:3)

    by whoever57 ( 658626 ) on Sunday May 27, 2018 @02:22PM (#56684174) Journal

    Look at what Gnome3 has done to fracture the user base.

    Microsoft benefits from more changes in Gnome.

    • Re:Microsoft? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by StormReaver ( 59959 ) on Sunday May 27, 2018 @02:47PM (#56684298)

      Microsoft benefits from more changes in Gnome.

      Microsoft doesn't need to do a whole lot to sabotage GNOME or KDE, as both desktops are cutting off their own noses to spite their respective faces. GNOME has always been largely unusable and so ugly that even its mother could be forgiven for wanting to drop it into an exploding volcano.

      KDE's decline began with the stagnation of the IO Slave architecture, the rise of Windows Explorer's bastard child, Dolphin, and the neglect of one of the world's best file managers, Konqueror. Since most of KDE's main features have been either neglected or mostly gutted, it really no longer matters which foundation gets the donation. At this point, they have already failed as a usable desktop (GNOME), or are well on the way to failing (KDE).

    • Look at what Gnome3 has done to fracture the user base.

      And they managed to do that all on their own, no reason to shake things up.

      Microsoft benefits from more changes in Gnome.

      It really just sounds like you're butthurt that this donation didn't go to the project of your choice and you're trying to come up with a way to make it seem like a bad thing. If it's a bad project and a large donation kills it off faster then great, if it's a bad project and a large donation improves it then that's great too.

  • I suspect the donation is by Microsoft or Apple, given the way Gnome3 has developed from Gnome2. There's also the increasing monolithic spread of systemd, and various other trends that I find "equally encouraging". Such as adaptations to facilitate running Linux as a subsystem under MSWindows.

  • For sure someone who just upgraded to ubuntu 18.04 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mugurel ( 1424497 ) on Sunday May 27, 2018 @04:38PM (#56684884)
    I hope 1M is enough to fix that mess. Successfully switching between user sessions is a matter of luck; Useful panel functionality is only provided through sometimes abandoned third party extensions; For anything other than the five-or-so options in the system settings you need to resort to something like a "tweak-tool"; Then there is the wildly unnecessary "swipe up screen" that get's in your way. All in all a very bad experience. I'm switching back to 16.04 for now.

  • Dear Anonymous Donor (Score:5, Insightful)

    by imperious_rex ( 845595 ) on Sunday May 27, 2018 @08:08PM (#56685818)
    Here's some other deserving open-source projects where $2M would have a wider benefit to the Linux community than GNOME:
    (in no particular order)
    1. Linux Mint/Cinnamon
    2. MATE
    3. GIMP
    4. Inkscape
    5. Firefox
    6. Scribus
    7. XFCE
    You're welcome.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by olau ( 314197 )

      Why? GNOME provides much of the infrastructure these projects are using? How would supporting a non-infrastructure project help the wider Linux community?

      Not disagreeing that more of these projects could need funding, perhaps except for Firefox which is funded by Mozilla. Look up their annual budget.

      • Good point. I often forget that GNOME and GNOME Shell are different things and I mistakenly conflate the two. GNOME is fine (more or less), but GNOME Shell 3.x is an unpleasant experience for many who prefer a more traditional desktop. You're right about Firefox/Mozilla. They're doing fine.

    • 8. Krita
      9. Blender
      10. Konqueror
      11. Kate
      12. Inkscape

  • I am a gnome 3 user since 2013. I have installed it on the computer of my (old) mother who lives far away. For remote administration, I use wakeonlan and x11vnc through a ssh tunnel. I often also connect remotely to my personal computer. This is already more complicated since 16.04 LTS. I wonder how gnome will again make my life more complicated with 18.04. Remote connection is a family of basic scenarios that should be clearly explained.
    If I want to add support to a new file extension (like http://torval [blogspot.fr]

  • The way Gnome have managed one of the most loved and used DE out there from simple to use to be a fsking nightmare of usability and feature-cropping simply left you wonder why inject all that big money there?

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