I wanted to post his as a side note. But that’s a bit too much.
I dropped GNOME years ago. Back in the days when they dropped tons of cash on people creating shitty confusing companies like Eazel and HelixCode. I said Nautilus would never amount to anything and it never did. I said Miguel de Icaza was taking a very questionable path and he ended writing proprietary software. If it werent so sad, it would be kind of funny to see that nothing changed since then. Their Foundation is going more or less bankrupt while their financial reports shows that, for instance in 2012, they spent 1/4 of their resources to the pet project of their “executive director” Karen Sandler, some sexist bullshit called “Women’s Outreach” (I’m waiting for the “Black’s Outreach”, etc).
You don’t know who is Karen Sandler? Typical GNOME character. That’s just someone that never achieved anything related to computing but has been selected to be some sort of speaker nonetheless. I’m not saying only people that produced something that actually serve or served a purpose are entitled to speak. But to put people in position of “director”/whatever, at some point, there should be some knowledge, abilities, even just ideas, that makes the person stand out to be entitled to represent or lead the others.
So what could she speak of? About bad management?
More like, on GNOME.org “Announcing her departure, Karen said: “Working as the GNOME Foundation Executive Director has been one of the highlights of my career.” She also spoke of the achievements during her time as Executive Director: “I’ve helped to recruit two new advisory board members… and we have run the last three years in the black. We’ve held some successful funding campaigns, particularly around privacy. We have a mind-blowingly fantastic Board of Directors, and the Engagement team is doing amazing work. The GNOME.Asia team is strong, and we’ve got an influx of people, more so than I’ve seen in some time.””
Typical GNOME bullshit? Indeed: pompous titles, bragging, claiming. “Successful funding campaings”? Seriously? “Amazing work”. “Mind blowing”. It’s sad for the few GNOME developers that are worth it, because the main thing is a fucking joke. It’s just empty words, no damn facts that matter that are even slightly true.
Not convinced? Too harsh maybe? Keep on reading. On her blog you’ll get her statement. The one quoted on GNOME.org.
“I think I have made some important contributions to the project while I have been Executive Director. I’ve helped to recruit two new advisory board members, and we recently received a one time donation of considerable size (the donor did not want to be identified). Financially the Foundation is in good shape, and we have run the last three years in the black. We’ve held some successful funding campaigns, particularly around privacy and accessibility. We have a mind-blowingly fantastic Board of Directors, and the Engagement team is doing amazing work. The GNOME.Asia team is strong, and we’ve got an influx of people, more so than I’ve seen in some time.
I hope that I have helped us to get in touch with our values during my time as ED, and I think that GNOME is more aware of its guiding mission than ever before.”
Yes, you can skip the fact that she consider recruiting advisory board members as an achievement (!!!). It seems that she thinks that a Foundation should focus on itself and not on the project it is derived of, seems that she does not even for a second mention anything that the software project GNOME would benefit of directly.
GNOME.org quoted her putting three dots and skipping “Financially the Foundation is in good shape”, and this just one week before we’re told they are definitely not.
She’s right one one thing though: now GNOME is definitely “more aware of its guiding mission than ever before”, since they are forced to cut on all unnessary expenses like the one she promoted.
I’m not sure to understand why someone smart as Bradley Kuhn recruited her at the Software Freedom Conservancy.
# cd /scratch 