Author: GNOME Foundation

Today, the GNOME Foundation announces that Holly Million will be departing from her role as Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation. An Interim Executive Director, Richard Littauer, has joined the Foundation this week. This arrangement ensures a smooth transition and continuity as we prepare for a new Executive Director search. Holly’s last day will be July 31, and she and Richard will be able to coordinate their efforts during this period. 

“I’m very proud of what I have accomplished in my time with GNOME,” Holly said, “and I am dedicated to working with Richard through a transition to ensure that everything I have been working on is handed off smoothly. I will be pursuing a PhD in Psychology and dedicating myself to my own private practice. I want to thank all the wonderful people I have had the pleasure of connecting with here at GNOME, including the staff, board, advisors, founders, and volunteers. You have created something of real value in the world, and I look forward to seeing what you do next.”

On behalf of the whole GNOME community, the Board of Directors would like to give our utmost thanks to Holly for her achievements during the past 10 months, including drafting a bold five-year strategic plan for the Foundation, securing two important fiscal sponsorship agreements with GIMP and Black Python Devs, writing our first funding proposal that will now enable the Foundation to apply for more grants, vastly improving our financial operations, and implementing a break-even budget to preserve our financial reserves. 

The Foundation’s Interim Executive Director, Richard Littauer, brings years of open source leadership as part of his work as an organizer of SustainOSS and CURIOSS, as a sustainability coordinator at the Open Source Initiative, and as a community development manager at Open Source Collective, and through open source contributions to many projects, such as Node.js and IPFS. The Board appointed Richard in June and is confident in his ability to guide the Foundation during this transitional period.

The Board will be meeting next week to set up a search plan for a permanent Executive Director, which will be announced after GUADEC. The Foundation looks forward to talking with GNOME members and the community and answering any questions next week at the Annual General Meeting (AGM) GUADEC in Denver, as well as asynchronously with those in Berlin and around the globe.

The GNOME Foundation and Black Python Devs are proud to announce that our organizations have entered into a fiscal sponsorship agreement for the mutual benefit of our communities and the greater open source world. We are thrilled to share that the GNOME Foundation will now serve as the nonprofit umbrella for Black Python Devs (BDP). The GNOME Foundation will hold BPD’s assets, accept and process donations, and perform administrative functions on behalf of BPDs, in exchange for a fee that supports the GNOME Foundation.

The GNOME Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, envisions a world where everyone is empowered by technology they can trust. Since its inception as a project in August 1997 and its establishment as a foundation in August 2000, GNOME has been dedicated to creating a diverse and sustainable free software personal computing ecosystem. Our open source software guarantees certain freedoms for end users, ensuring they have control over their computing environments. With two annual releases, the GNOME desktop is the default environment for many major Linux distributions.

Black Python Devs(BPDs) is a global community hoping to increase the participation of Black and Colo(u)red Pythonistas in the greater Python Developer Community. Our goal is to become the largest community of Black Python Developers in the world and establish our community as a source for diverse leaders in local, regional, and global Python communities. The organization works to establish guidance, mentorship, and career support for Black Pythonistas around the world, and it also creates opportunities for the Python community to invest in local communities of Black Python Devs members. The organization aims to increase the participation of Black Python Devs members in existing Python community programs, events, and initiatives, and it also continues the development and growth of Black Python Devs members by establishing open-source programs.



This new partnership will support Black Python Devs in their fundraising efforts, membership growth, and program development while also providing fiscal support to the GNOME Foundation. By joining forces, we aim to foster a more inclusive tech community and empower more individuals through open source software.

“I saw a post on the FOSS Foundation email list sharing that Black Python Devs was seeking a fiscal sponsor for their important work. I immediately reached out to Jay Miller to offer the GNOME Foundation as a place where BPDs could find a welcoming home. I was impressed with Jay’s leadership and his vision for BPDs. One of my key goals for the GNOME Foundation is to create more channels to nurture and include diverse groups in the GNOME community and in the OS world, in general, to create a more inclusive, more representative, more empowered community for our shared work. I am very enthusiastic about this fiscal sponsorship and look forward to seeing BPDs continue to grow and have a positive impact,” said Holly Million, executive director of the GNOME Foundation.

“We were pleasantly shocked when the GNOME foundation reached out to us!” said Jay Miller, Founder of Black Python Devs. “Our community leaders were excited and strongly supported our partnership plans. It’s Important that we push beyond our comfort in order to regularly make an impact. The guidance we’ve received in this process already has better prepared Black Python Devs for the journey ahead.”

This partnership allows Black Python Devs to accept donations as a US nonprofit. Those who want to help financially support the BPDs can now do so at https://blackpythondevs.com. For more information about Black Python Devs, contact leadership@blackpythondevs.com.