How do you suggest the GNOME Foundation could contribute more to
advance the cause of free software and users' freedom, over and above
what GNOME contributes by being useful free software?
I am not sure whether you feel I answered your question either. I think it could be useful if you could be more specific about what you mean, especially as there are a fair few restrictions on what we at GNOME can do to contribute to the advance of free software under the bylaws and CNPBC so we are obliged to stick to the mission if we are to continue to enjoy 501(c)(3) status as a public benefit corporation (i.e. a charity).[1,2,3]
With that said, at the moment we are technically “delinquent" so we have lost our tax exempt status for not submitting required 990 forms.[4,5] Assuming that has been a mistake and that we do actually want to benefit from 501(c)(3) status, then I think we would be obliged to sort all that out and just stick to the original mission of the GNOME Foundation which essentially allows us to continue to do things like produce useful free software and educate people all about it.
I would be pretty open to hearing any ideas on what we can do above and beyond being useful free software which does fall within GNOME’s remit, though. I am just not sure I really understand what you’re asking about correctly! Do you have any related ideas which you would like us to think about, concerning this?