Hi Membership Committee!
Hi Allan,
The board is working on a proposal to allow more software projects
that use GNOME technologies to get support from the Foundation. The
idea is that apps that are using the GNOME platform, or libraries that
extend that platform, can apply to be members. Contributors to those
projects will then be eligible for Foundation membership, along with
other forms of support like promotion.
That makes sense, a popular app using GNOME technologies is a form of advocacy for the stack.
What about the other side, libraries/tools (developed for example as part of freedesktop) but which are used by the GNOME platform, is providing those tools also considered a contribution to GNOME?
I think usually this is not a problem as people will contribute to their integration in GNOME in addition to contributing to them but it may be worth calling out.
One crucial detail is that these extra projects won't need to be
hosted on GNOME infrastructure.
More details will be shared publicly soon, but I wanted to give the
Membership Committee a heads up and check that the plan sounds OK to
you.
In practical terms, there would be a list of member projects on a
GNOME webpage. Contributions to these projects would count towards
Foundation membership, the same as contributions to core GNOME
modules.
Does that make sense? Any thoughts or questions
I am worried about about the maintenance of the list and the feeling that it will necessarily be arbitrary/incomplete at any time and get worse over time (what if it includes some major software using GNOME technologies and next year they decide to rewrite it using qt?)
On our side if we see people applying who mostly work on something not on the list but which we feel could belong there, will the rules be flexible enough or will there be a simple escalation path?
