Allow me to use an example to show you how I arrived at these questions and how I think this differs from GNU. Going to
https://www.gnu.org/home.en.html tells me in the first line what GNU is trying to accomplish: "GNU is an operating system that
is
free software—that is,
it respects users' freedom. The development of GNU made it possible
to use a computer without software that would trample your freedom." As a random person, I can understand what they are trying to do: build the components required for an operating system.
However, when we go to
https://www.gnome.org/foundation/ we see: "The GNOME Foundation is a non-profit organization that furthers the
goals of the GNOME Project, helping it to create a free software
computing platform for the general public that is designed to be
elegant, efficient, and easy to use." So the GNOME Foundation furthers the GNOME Project. But nothing I can find on the website mentions what the GNOME Project is about.
I can find the GNOME Project on wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_GNOME_Project which lists the project's goals. I will copy them here:
The project focuses on:
- Independence – the governing board is democratically elected and technical decisions are made by the engineers doing the work.
- Freedom – development infrastructure and communication channels are
public, the code can be freely downloaded, modified and shared and all
contributors have the same rights.
- Connectedness – work spans the entire Free software stack.
- People – emphasis on accessibility and internationalization. GNOME is available in more than 40 languages (at least 80 percent of strings translated)[11] and is being translated to 190 languages.
But this still does not give a definitive, concrete view of the actual programs under the GNOME umbrella. Why does GNOME have gtk+ and desktop UI programs but also a calculator and cookbook? Is a goal of GNOME to support all non-critical software of a computer (that is, pieces GNU is not supporting)? Can a math library be apart of GNOME? Video games? Is there anything keeping LibreOffice or Octave from becoming a part of GNOME?
I don't mean for all those to be answered, but meant to be guide for discussion and thought.
