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GNOME Has a New Infrastructure Partner: Welcome AWS!

This post was contributed by Andrea Veri from the GNOME Foundation.

GNOME has historically hosted its infrastructure on premises. That changed with an AWS Open Source Credits program sponsorship which has allowed our team of two SREs to migrate the majority of the workloads to the cloud and turn the existing OpenShift environment into a fully scalable and fault tolerant one thanks to the infrastructure provided by AWS. By moving to the cloud, we have dramatically reduced the maintenance burden, achieved lower latency for our users and contributors and increased security through better access controls.

Our original infrastructure did not account for the exponential growth that GNOME has seen in its contributors and userbase over the past 4-5 years thanks to the introduction of GNOME Circle. GNOME Circle is composed of applications that are not part of core GNOME but are meant to extend the ecosystem without being bound to the stricter core policies and release schedules. Contributions on these projects also make contributors eligible for GNOME Foundation membership and potentially allow them to receive direct commit access to GitLab in case the contributions are consistent over a long period of time in order to gain more trust from the community. GNOME recently migrated to GitLab, away from cgit and Bugzilla.

In this post, we’d like to share some of the improvements we’ve made as a result of our migration to the cloud.

A history of network and storage challenges

In 2020, we documented our main architectural challenges:

Our infrastructure was built on OpenShift in a hyperconverged setup, using OpenShift Data Foundations (ODF), running Ceph and Rook behind the scenes. Our control plane and workloads were also running on top of the same nodes.
Because GNOME historically did not have an L3 network and generally had no plans to upgrade the underlying network equipment and/or invest time in refactoring it, we would have to run our gateway using a plain Linux VM with all the associated consequences.
We also wanted to make use of an external Ceph cluster with slower storage, but this was not supported in ODF and required extra glue to make it work.
No changes were planned on the networking equipment side to make links redundant. That meant a code upgrade on switches would have required full service downtime.
We had to work with with Dell support for every broken hardware component, which added further toil.
With the GNOME user and contributor base always increasing, we never really had a good way to scale our compute resources due to budget constraints.

Cloud migration improvements

In 2024, during a hardware refresh cycle, we started evaluating the idea of migrating to the public cloud. We have been participating in the AWS Open Source Credits program for many years and received sponsorship for a set of Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) buckets that we use widely across GNOME services. Based on our previous experience with the program and the people running it, we decided to request sponsorship from AWS for the entire infrastructure, which was kindly accepted.

I believe it’s crucial to understand how AWS resolved the architectural challenges we had as a small SRE team (just two engineers!). Most importantly, the move dramatically reduced the maintenance toil we had:

Using AWS’s provided software-defined networking services, we no longer have to rely on an external team to apply changes to the underlying networking layout. This also gave us a way to use a redundant gateway and NAT without having to expose worker nodes to the internet.
We now use AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) instances (classic load balancers are the only type supported by OpenShift for now) as a traffic ingress for our OpenShift cluster. This reduces latency as we now operate within the same VPC instead of relying on an external load balancing provider. This also comes with the ability to have access to the security group APIs which we can use to dynamically add IP addresses. This is critical when we have individuals or organizations abusing specific GNOME services with thousands of queries per minute.
We also use Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) and Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) via the OpenShift CSI driver. This allows us to avoid having to manage a Ceph cluster, which is a major win in terms of maintenance and operability.
With AWS Graviton instances, we now have access to ARM64 machines, which we heavily leverage as they’re generally cheaper than their Intel counterparts.
Given how extensively we use Amazon S3 across the infrastructure, we were able to reduce latency and costs due to the use of internal VPC S3 endpoints.
We took advantage of AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) to provide granular access to AWS services, giving us the possibility to allow individual contributors to manage a limited set of resources without requiring higher privileges.
We now have complete hardware management abstraction, which is vital for a team of only two engineers who are trying to avoid any additional maintenance burden.

Thank you, AWS!

I’d like to thank AWS for their sponsorship and the massive opportunity they are giving to the GNOME Infrastructure to provide resilient, stable and highly available workloads to GNOME’s users and contributors across the globe.

Registration Now Open for GNOME Asia 2024

Registration for GNOME Asia 2024 is now open! This year’s summit will be held from December 6-8, 2024, in the dynamic city of Bangalore, India, with both in-person and remote participation options.

GNOME Asia 2024 will feature a fantastic lineup of presentations and workshops centered around the latest innovations in the GNOME ecosystem and its community. Whether you’re attending on-site in Bangalore or joining online from anywhere in the world, there’s something for everyone.

The full conference schedule, including session and speaker details, will soon be available on the event website.

Registration is open to everyone—whether you’re an experienced developer, new to the open-source world, or simply curious about what’s happening in GNOME. We look forward to welcoming you, both in person and online, from December 6-8!

Register Now

Become a GNOME Asia 2024 Sponsor!

We’re still looking for sponsors for this year’s summit. If you or your company are interested in sponsoring GNOME Asia 2024, please find more details and our sponsorship brochure on the event website or reach out to asia@gnome.org.

2024-2025 budget and economic review

Dear community members,

As promised in the previous communication the Board would like to share some more details on our current financial situation and the budget for our 2024-2025 financial year, which runs from 1st October 2024 to 30th September 2025.

Background

The Foundation needs an approved budget in place because our spending policies use the budget to authorise what staff and committees are allowed to spend money on. This year we passed the budget on time for the start of the financial year, which was thanks to a lot of detailed and particularly challenging work by Richard, which the board is grateful for.
We consider the budget in 2 distinct parts:
- Budget for our fiscally-sponsored projects. We consider their income, but not their expenses. The reason for that is that the Foundation takes a small part of the income as the fiscal sponsorship fee, supporting our administrative and operating costs. Funds received on behalf of other projects are tracked separately, called “reserved funds”, and the Foundation cannot spend money that belongs to the other projects.
- General operating budget for the GNOME Foundation, which is what this post is all about! At any later point, when talking about the budget, we’re talking about the general/unrestricted operating funds and it is safe to assume that income for fiscally-sponsored projects is not included.
The budget for the previous 2023-2024 fiscal year was presented to the board as a roughly balanced break-even budget, anticipating $1.201M of revenue and $1.195M of expenses. The board considered two fundraising scenarios proposed by our previous ED, with the most ambitious scenario planning to raise an additional $2M for the Foundation, and one more conservative which anticipated an additional $475k of revenue from various sources (donations, grants, event sponsorship). This more conservative scenario was included in the budget, but in practice things did not work out as planned. This additional funding was not raised, meaning that in practice the Foundation once again ran at a deficit over the past year and used funds from our reserves.
The new 2024-2025 budget considers a total income of $586k, and total expense of $550k. Two things are clearly different from last year: the expenses have been greatly reduced, and we have aimed for a surplus instead of the deficit we ended up with last year. Both things were a consequence of the budget from previous year not being executed as expected. Since our reserve policy requires us to retain enough money to sustain core operations without income for another year (specifically, 1.1 times core spending), we’ve had to reduce expenses to save money and restore our reserves.

So, let’s dig into the details:

Income

$205,100 in donations. This number is based on previous years income, of individual contributions ($75,000), Advisory Board fees ($105,800), and other small contributions ($7,800) like matching donations (where companies double what employees donate). It also includes $16,500 currently pending from Wau Holland Stiftung, an organization we had a historic agreement with to collect funds from European donors that is tax deductible. We believe that there is a great potential for the GNOME Foundation to increase the amount of individual contributions received, and this has been included in the Strategic Plan and many board discussions. Unfortunately, without a permanent Executive Director, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to establish a program to do so in the short-term, so we have decided to budget conservatively to ensure economic sustainability.
$64,500 from event sponsorship. Most of that money comes from GUADEC ($61,000), with some from LAS and GNOME Asia, which is one of the main reasons why we are able to maintain our events: because they are sponsored separately, they are mostly self-sustaining.
$65,500 in fiscal sponsorship fees. This is based on a % fee the GNOME Foundation takes for our operational costs from hosting GIMP and Black Python Devs. This number is uncommonly high due as we have been workng with the GIMP on financial and legal arrangements to receive approx $1M of historical Bitcoin donations. (And sell them immediately – holding Bitcoin assets creates a regulatory/reporting problem for US nonprofits and our accountants have advised us against it.)
$1,000 in interest from money in the bank account. This is budgeted higher than previous years, as work is already in progress to change bank accounts to increase this income, as recommended by our auditors.
$500 profit from selling T-shirts and other goods ($2,500 income, $2,000 in expenses).
$250,000 from the 2nd year of an Endless grant that was approved last year. This grant provides $50,000 for general funds that the Foundation can use at its discretion, and $200,000 that need to be spent on specific tasks. Currently, those are assigned to Flathub, Parental Controls, GNOME Software maintenance, and internships. Some of those will be detailed in the expense section.

Expenditures

$10,000 interim ED salary. This is to be able to pay Richard to continue managing the Foundation and staff team until 10th December.
$100,000 for development contractors for work associated with the Endless grant. This work includes improvements in Parental Controls and GNOME Software, and is being executed by Philip Withnall (development), Sam Hewitt (design) and potentially one more developer over the coming year. Philip gave an update on the work in his presentation at GUADEC.
$110,600 in contractor costs for program staff, including events and infrastructure. This covers Kristi’s work which is the backbone of events such as GUADEC, LAS and GNOME.Asia, and Bart’s work running GNOME and Flathub infrastructure. The Flathub portion of this work is funded by the Endless grant.
$32,000 in Outreachy interships. This is a long-term partnership with Conservancy and commitment by the GNOME Foundation as the original birthplace of the Outreachy initiative. They are supported this year by reallocating some of the Endless grant, with their permission. This will pay for a total 4 interns between the winter and summer cohort.
$20,000 in contractor support. This is allocated for part-time contracting of Thibault Martin and Dawid Jankowiak to support the STF team and work on a crowdfunding platform for our development fundraising. Some of this is funded by the Endless grant and will be spent on coordinating the next steps of the Flathub payments/donations launch.
$158,000 in employment/contractor costs for operations and admin staff, supporting the GNOME Foundation across finances, events and community initiatives.
$47,500 in professional services, ie legal and accounting. These include a reserve for legal fees ($10,000), an external accounts audit for the previous financial year ($17,500), which is required due to our income (mostly due to STF) being over the $2M threshold, and accounting fees ($20,000). Some of the financial and legal costs are driven by work setting up Flathub LLC and are covered by the Endless grant.
$3,200 in office expenses, mostly related to postal expenses required for sending material between contractors, staff, and event organisers.
$54,000 in conferences and travel. These include the budget for the conferences themselves ($30,000), which includes GUADEC, GNOME Asia, and hackathons around the globe, but also travel for staff ($12,000) and community ($12,000). Travel particularly has been significantly reduced from previous year, but should still allow for staff/organisers to attend our events, and for the travel committee to support some community travel to GUADEC and GNOME Asia.
$15,000 in other fees. These include banking costs for sending money from the US to Europe, PayPal fees, and insurance. They might seem high, but are in total less than 1.5% of the cash flow of the Foundation, which is within the expected value for any organization.

Balance

As of the preparation of this budget, we have approx $140,000 in GNOME Foundation reserves. There’s a lot more money in the bank, but they are reserved funds held for GIMP and BPD.
We need to ensure that we meet our reserve policy of retaining 1.1 times core spending. Unfortunately, core spending is fairly loosely defined. This year, we have considered: Events and minimal staff travel, part-time infrastructure support, minimal staff, and some fees and professional services. In total, we accounted that we would need at least $158,000 at the end of the year to be able meet the policy.
The approved budget should put our reserves around $176,000 at the year end, which is slightly above our reserve policy. Considering we used a very limited interpretation of the reserves policy, it’s better to include a small safety margin for any unanticipated costs.

Conclusion

With limited time from our interim Executive Director (ED), Richard Littauer, who is working part-time, the board is prioritising: recruiting our new ED, delivering our current project/grant commitments (to STF and to Endless), and fundraising for development work. This includes working with the community to launch our development fund crowdfunder/platform and plan a follow-up project for STF grant, so that the GNOME Foundation can support and grow its direct investment in project development.

Keen readers will note that there is nothing in the current budget for the ED’s salary. We are in discussions with a potential donor to see whether we can find support for the salary for the ED for the first year. In any case, transparently sharing our financial situation and fundraising needs is an essential part of any ED recruitment process, so we could still recruit somebody with “raise money for your own salary” being their first priority.

Hopefully this additional detail helps to show the challenges of our current situation, and why we had to make really tough decisions, like parting ways with some greatly appreciated members of our staff team. We hope this sheds some more light on why those decisions were taken, provides confidence on the work done by the board and the ED, and where we currently stand. We are also very relieved to be able to provide a surplus budget for the first time in many years, and doing so while still being able to support the community: events, infrastructure, internships, travel funding, and meeting our commitment to donors for work done in some parts of the stack, e.g.: Flathub, parental controls and GNOME Software.

We welcome any feedback and questions from the GNOME community. Thanks to all of our GNOME members, contributors, donors, sponsors and advisory board members!

The GNOME Foundation Board of Directors

GNOME Foundation Announces Transition of Executive Director

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.

Introducing the GNOME Foundation’s Five-Year Strategic Plan Draft

We are thrilled to share the GNOME Foundation’s Draft Five-Year Strategic Plan proposal, a roadmap that sets the stage for our collective journey towards a brighter, more sustainable future. This comprehensive plan encompasses our goals, priorities, and strategies aimed at propelling the GNOME ecosystem forward in an exciting new direction. This draft was created over a six-month period through a process that involved research, individual interviews, and group discussions with staff, board, and members. This draft has been reviewed by the Board and is now ready to share with the greater community.

We invite all members of our community to review this strategic plan, which outlines our vision for the next five years. Your insights, perspectives, and expertise are crucial as we move forward together. Your feedback will play a pivotal role in shaping the future of GNOME, ensuring that our work continues to empower our users worldwide and drive open-source innovation.

Please take the time to review the strategic plan and share your thoughts with us. Whether you’re a developer, designer, user, or advocate, your voice matters. Your input will be collected ahead of GUADEC, where we will provide additional opportunities to ask questions, give feedback, and offer ideas. Together we can create a stronger open source ecosystem that meets the diverse needs of our global community.

Read the Strategic Plan

Black Python Devs Join the GNOME Foundation Nonprofit Umbrella

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.

Application Open for GNOME Foundation Software Engineer

The GNOME Foundation is seeking qualified candidates for an open Software Engineer position.

About The GNOME Foundation

The GNOME Foundation is a leader in open source software development, advocating for a free and open computing environment. We are looking to enhance the GNOME platform, with a focus on families and younger users. We seek a software engineer to contribute to this project.

About the Software Engineer Position

Scope of Work

Core Maintenance: Maintain and improve essential components, notably Glib.
Digital Wellbeing & Parental Controls: Develop features for internet content filtering, screen time monitoring, and other digital safety measures.
Usability & Reliability: Enhance GNOME Software for user-friendliness and efficiency.

Qualifications and Experience

English fluency.
Proven contributions to the GNOME community.
Experience with Glib, GNOME Software, GNOME Settings, and relevant freedesktop.org components.

Key Attributes

Passion for open source.
Excellent problem-solving skills.
Effective remote work capability.
Proficiency in C (required) and Rust (preferred).
Familiarity with open source development tools (Git, GitLab) and practices.
Strong communication skills and ability to present at community events.

Compensation and Position Details

Location: Remote
Duration: 1 year (fixed term remote contractor position with potential to extend based on funding)
Salary: Up to $50,000 USD per year, experience-dependent

How to Apply

Send your resume and cover letter detailing your GNOME community contributions to careers+sw-eng@gnome.org.
Application Deadline: January 26, 2024.

The GNOME Foundation is an equal-opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusivity. Join us in shaping the future of the GNOME platform!

GNOME Foundation Welcomes Holly Million as Executive Director

We are thrilled to announce a significant milestone for the GNOME Foundation as we welcome Holly Million to our team as the new Executive Director. Holly is a multi-talented individual with a diverse background in nonprofit leadership, filmmaking, teaching, public speaking, and writing. Her commitment to empowering individuals to make a positive impact aligns perfectly with the values and goals of the GNOME Foundation.

“Holly’s unique blend of passion for empowering individuals and organizations and depth of experience fundraising at a diverse set of non-profits is precisely what the GNOME Foundation is looking for as we enter this new chapter.”
Jonathan Blandford
GNOME Foundation Hiring Committee

Holly brings three decades of invaluable experience in nonprofit management, having served as a consultant, director of development, executive director, and board member for numerous organizations. Notably, she founded the nonprofit organization Artists United, dedicated to empowering individual artists and fostering collaboration across artistic disciplines for the collective good. Additionally, Holly served as the Executive Director of the BioBricks Foundation, an international, open-source biotechnology nonprofit.

Holly holds a Master of Arts in Education from Stanford University and a Bachelor of Arts in English from Harvard University. Her academic background, combined with her extensive professional journey, equips her with a unique perspective that will undoubtedly contribute to the growth and success of the GNOME Foundation.

“I am impressed by the international reach of the GNOME community and the diversity of the individuals involved in creating all of this amazing output. Together, you have created something so powerful that can be further harnessed to create even more social benefit.”
Holly Million
GNOME Foundation Executive Director

We are confident that Holly’s visionary leadership and wealth of experience will guide the GNOME Foundation to new heights. Her passion for fostering self-sufficiency and empowering individuals to create positive change aligns seamlessly with our mission to create a free and open source desktop environment for all.

“We are delighted to welcome Holly to the GNOME Foundation. With her experience managing nonprofits, and passion for working with diverse communities of creators and technologists, she can strengthen the Foundation’s unique position as a partner and collaborator at the heart of the GNOME community. And, as an experienced communicator and fundraiser, she can tell our story to the outside world and position the Foundation in the wider ecosystem of nonprofits to raise the profile and impact of our incredible work.”
Robert McQueen
GNOME Foundation Board President

Please join us in extending a warm welcome to Holly Million as she takes on the role of Executive Director. We look forward to working together under her guidance to continue advancing the GNOME Foundation’s mission and creating a vibrant, accessible computing experience for users worldwide.

Exciting times lie ahead for the GNOME community, and we are grateful to have Holly Million leading the way.

Application open for GNOME Foundation Executive Director

The GNOME Foundation is looking for qualified candidates for the position of Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation. We are looking for an individual with existing experience in the wider nonprofit community, ideally with prior experience establishing and raising funds for programs that deliver impact through technology. Working closely with the existing members, contributors, volunteers, and the wider GNOME community, and managing our relationships with the Advisory Board and other key Free and Open Source Software partners, we hope to find a candidate that can build public awareness and help people learn about, use, and benefit from what GNOME has built over the past two and a half decades.

The GNOME Foundation is a non-profit organization that believes in a world where everyone is empowered by technology they can trust. We do this by building a diverse and sustainable free software personal computing ecosystem. The GNOME community is an influential social and technical contributor to the Free Software and Open Source software stack that continues to leave its mark on every piece of hardware that runs Linux across all technical market segments.

As Executive Director for the GNOME Foundation, you will assume both strategic and execution responsibility for our organization. You have a passion for using your strategic skills to make a difference within the technology space. You will play a key role in identifying and building partnership networks and relationships for strategic gain. You are powerfully skilled in steering innovative thinking, to develop strategy, to facilitate change and impact. You lead with empathy and can effectively connect and collaborate both with team members internally from diverse disciplines and backgrounds, and with partners in the wider for-profit and nonprofit ecosystem who are essential for achieving our goals. You are comfortable with technology, and ideally familiar with Open Source or other collaborative Open Culture organizations and values, giving you a solid basis to understand and work with our project and community to achieve real impact in the programs you are responsible for.

For more details, please see the full Job Description. Please apply via e-mail with a covering letter and a resume to careers+executive-director@gnome.org by the 29^th of August.

GNOME Foundation and Endless Launch Inaugural Community Engagement Challenge

Up to $65,000 in cash prizes to be awarded for projects that encourage open-source coders

The GNOME Foundation, in conjunction with Endless, is proud to announce that starting April 9th, entries will be accepted for the inaugural Community Engagement Challenge, an exciting new opportunity to submit a project that will engage beginning coders with the free and open-source software (“FOSS”) community.

The Challenge is a three-phase competition designed to generate stimulating ideas that will help connect the next generation of coders to the FOSS community and keep them active and engaged for years to come. Up to $65,000 in cash prizes are available to the individuals or teams with the best entries.

“Through the Challenge we hope to reach a diverse audience, to encourage beginning coders to get involved with the FOSS community to help ensure that free software is available long into the future,” said Neil McGovern, GNOME Foundation Executive Director. “What better way to do that than to reach out to the community itself to come up with creative ways to inspire the next generation?”

“Our mission at Endless has evolved initially from working with underserved populations in emerging markets and giving them access to important computing tools,” said Matt Dalio, Founder, Endless. “It has now become important to us to help the youth of today shape their technology, rather than be shaped by it. This initiative with The GNOME Foundation is the perfect partnership to further our mission.”

The Challenge will ask entrants to devise creative ways to promote open-source software to coders typically in high school and college. How a submission will achieve this goal has deliberately been left open-ended to encourage unique, novel approaches.

The first phase of the Challenge asks entrants to submit a written proposal for their concept no later than July 1, 2020. Twenty entries will be chosen to move to the next round and receive $1000 each. The second phase of the Challenge will require proof of concept, with four entries receiving $5000 and moving onto the final round. The final round will call for a deliverable end product, with the winner receiving $15,000 and the second place finisher receiving $10,000.

Apart from what is outlined in the Challenge Rules, there are no restrictions on the form submissions must take: they may be software projects, educational materials, videos, games, presentations, events, or anything else that promotes engagement of beginning coders with the FOSS community. Creativity is highly encouraged of all entrants!

The winner of the final round is currently scheduled to be announced in the spring of 2021.

The Challenge is supported by Endless, an organization comprised of companies, initiatives, and philanthropic endeavors with the singular mission to help children take control of their digital worlds, not be controlled by them.

For media assets, please click here. For questions about the Challenge, please contact us at cechallenge@gnome.org or visit www.gnome.org/challenge.