the officers do not strictly need to be directors, i.e. the Board may
appoint anybody to hold those offices after a vote, but it's the Board
that votes, not the general membership of the Foundation; the members
of the Foundation elect the Board, though.
> As far as I am aware, nobody does any statistical research at GNOME. What
> informs strategic decisions?
we don't do statistical research to decide what to work on. we're a
volunteer-driver project, and volunteer work is not fungible — i.e.
even if we did do statistical research and determined strategic
decisions, we'd still need somebody to volunteer to implement them,
and we could not rely on those decisions in a timely manner, thus
defeating the whole point.
what we usually do is rely, for technical direction, on the
maintainers that comprise the larger GNOME ecosystem; what they want
to work on, what kind of directions they want to impel to the project.
we have special interest groups that drive various aspects of the
project — accessibility, documentation, internationalization, etc. —
as well as other entities that work on the infrastructure and
outreach. finally, we have the board, which is concerned with the
overall ability of the project to sustain itself financially, as well
as protect itself legally.