Re: Current state of Foundation finances

[Matthew Garrett <mjg59 srcf ucam org>]

On Sat, Apr 12, 2014 at 01:45:15AM +0200, Mathieu Duponchelle wrote:
> I'll play devil's advocate here:

Hi Mathieu,

I'll start by saying that playing devil's advocate isn't really likely 
to be a helpful way to contribute to this discussion. The board should 
consider the opinions that the GNOME community genuinely holds, not 
opinions that exist purely to be argued. If you really feel this way 
then you're not playing devil's advocate - if you don't, then do you 
believe that this is a genuinely beneficial contribution to the 
discussion?

> Couldn't GNOME use funds from these various sponsors to fund activities
> more directly beneficial to its future than OPW?

GNOME exists because people contribute to it. OPW has demonstrated a 
strong track record of creating long-term contributors. The mere 
existence of OPW has caused people who might otherwise not be 
enthusiastic about contributing to GNOME to contribute to GNOME, even 
without the board spending any money on them. Spending money on creating 
the impression that GNOME is a safe space is an excellent way to 
increase the pool of potential contributors, and this has succeeded far 
beyond spending the same amount of money on full-time developers.

So, by every reasonable metric, OPW has proven to be directly beneficial 
to the goals of the project. I'm sure that the board is willing to 
consider alternatives, as long as those alternatives are equally 
compelling. So far, I haven't seen any.

-- 
Matthew Garrett | mjg59 srcf ucam org