Imagine a punchy, news-broadcast-sounding intro tune and probably some 3D text swinging around a shiny, silver globe. Dun da da dun: The June 6th, 2025 GNOME Foundation Report!
Sorry. These reports need a little colour or I’m going to get bored of writing them. Also sorry this one is late again! Busy week.
## Fundraising
This week’s big activity (for me) was preparing a fundraising proposal for the Board of Directors at a special meeting on Tuesday. The day before, everyone on staff patiently listened to me shout and spit and sweat and then patiently gave me feedback. Thanks y’all.
Sidenote: I love the notion of a “special meeting.” I know it’s not meant to feel cute and silly, but it feels very cute and silly. That said, we got a lot done!
The Board is on-board. Yay. We had a project kickoff the next day. We have a repo, we have some early work done already. I’m not allowed to make any promises. 😉 So you’ll just have to watch this space, I guess.
## Treasurer
During the special meeting, it was voted that we would make an offer to a new Treasurer. I’m really looking forward to this announcement if they accept!
## Project Wall!
The Staff project wall is really taking off, and it feels like we have some momentum with it now. Too many things in flight and too many cards in the “blocked” column, but we’re steadily improving.
## Vaultwarden
Bart’s hooked us up with Vaultwarden for the Foundation’s shared passwords, as our tooling was a little broken and/or scattered previously. Yay! Thanks Bart.
## Digital Wellbeing Frontend
We held a Digital Wellbeing meeting on Tuesday and we now have a Call for Proposals up:
https://discourse.gnome.org/t/request-for-proposals-digital-wellbeing-frontend/29289
If you still know C and you want to help take this project over the line, it’s a neat piece of integration work.
## 501(c)3s
I met my friend Brihas, who is also an Executive Director of another 501(c)3. It was good to pick his brain about:
- Limits to capital retention: Despite a widely-held misconception, there aren’t any.
- 990 Schedule B redactions: When and why. The GNOME Foundation fully redacts our Schedule Bs… that seemed weird to me at first but he says it’s fairly common, which agrees with what others have told me.
- How to keep the Board engaged: Whether one has a Working Board or not (we do), “engagement” in this question refers to the level of governance, not execution. He said his organization has found real benefit in a stricter adherence to Policy Governance. I’m inclined toward a stricter form of this model myself, and would encourage potential Board members (this year and in future years) to glance through that Wikipedia page.
- How to take vacation: He prepares a year in advance. Seems about right.
## Meeting The Matts
I had a chance to sit down with an old friend (Matt Godbolt, of Compiler Explorer fame) and a new friend (Matt Hartley, of Framework Computer fame). We talked variously about how to raise money, the future of the Linux desktop, the “sandwich problem” (that GNOME neither has the name recognition of Linux nor the product recognition of distros), and the fact that every cool kid at Strange Loop 2024 was running a Framework, not a Mac.
I left both calls super excited to talk to them both again. Great folks. (I also just noticed their respective website have very similar gear favicons.)
## Grants
I got to talk to Richard! He’s still very busy. He had some grant suggestions. It was nice to see him.
## End of 10
I’ve still got an eye toward the https://endof10.org/ project. Increasingly, I have a fantasy of a simple, brightly-coloured A4 that explains how to get started with GNOME, in ~6 steps, if you’re coming from Windows:
- what’s the equivalent of the “start” button? (do they still… call it that?)
- how do I run a program?
- how do I install a program?
- how do I start the web browser? which one should I use? how do I get chrome[ium]?
- where are my files?
- where are my settings?
Extras for the back side of the paper:
- “modern” apps: Discord, Slack, Spotify, Telegram, Signal, etc.
- how to install games
- GNOME-specific features (virtual desktops and such)
- core platform apps
- “everyday” settings: wifi, bluetooth, light/dark mode, etc.
- GNOME Online Accounts and Office files
What do you think? Would you want to help with this? Is this a silly idea? Does this already exist somewhere?
## Meeting People
I had a nice conversation with Lorenz, as he’s the only Board candidate I hadn’t spoken to yet. I met Sumana Harihareswara, who is extremely cool and I ran out of time while picking her brain about the various ways the GNOME Foundation can start its own grants program. I got some advice from Federico about how to improve our docs-creation process… among other things, he had the pretty sensible idea of just letting people barf streams of consciousness at me (or other folks comfortable with reStructuredText) and letting the documentation gnomes clean it up before publishing it. Seems legit! I had my first formal feedback session with Rosanna — she had prepared a 5-point structured document and I had to admit to her it was the most rigorous feedback I’ve ever received. 🙂
## UN Open Source Week
I found a couch to crash on in NYC and a cheap flight, so I’ll be there! If you’re in NYC the week of the 16th to the 20th, reach out!
That’s all for this week. See you in the next one and I’m sorry I didn’t make it in time for TWIG again.
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