On GNOME and its Foundation: an interview with Luis Villa

From my perspective (as an observer previously involved in the GNOME Foundation), Stormy's done an excellent job in improving the visibility of the GNOME Foundation, particularly with the corporate sponsors and building up the marketing team again. She has massive industry experience and is always a pleasure to work with (both during her time on the Advisory board, and now as ED), and I believe she's a great fit for the GNOME Foundation.

You've also got to consider that GNOME is a registered non-profit in the US - having a US employee as ED is very useful, if not essential IMO.

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And that's a very unrealistic viewpoint to have. Even if Stormy loved GNOME more than her
own mother, she would have to be the dictionary definition of "idiot" to work a job that time
consuming when corporations would gladly pay six figures a year for her skills.
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If she's doing such a fantastic job, why are they short on money? Yes, I read the spin regarding
that point in the interview. But it doesn't look like she's been effective enough even to pay her
own salary. I can certainly understand someone being effective enough to justify a large salary
for that job description. But where is the evidence that that is the case in this particular
instance? Quite the contrary, the evidence suggests that it is *not* the case here.

Their "Please send us money to pay Stormy" cause just doesn't seem particurly compelling to
me.

"she would have to be the dictionary definition of "idiot" to work a job that time consuming when corporations would gladly pay six figures a year for her skills."

Then call me an idiot. I was making six figure salaries prior to being involved in Free software and had all the fun stuff that goes along with it. However, I decided that there were more important things than just making money, and I thus compromised somewhat on my take home to do something that is satisfying to my soul and which I know I can remain proud of being involved in to my dieing days.

This takes nothing away from what the GNOME Foundation or Stormy is doing, just commenting on your opinion that people don't make such kinds of choices.

To Luis: we had a bead on the user benefits from day -1, which is how we were able to take the unfocused KDE3 and deliver a revamped KDE that is now delivering compelling user benefit. It takes years of focus and effort and doesn't pay off immediately or at the "dot oh" (look at GNOME one dot oh or two dot oh if you balk at that). While you may not have been privy to our thoughts (nearly impossible when you aren't palling about with us day to day; I know I don't know your inner machinations either :), I hope there's a realization that what we are accomplishing today is the result of setting a course years ago.

It's interesting how the major F/OSS projects are no longer extremely nimble. We are very, very quick but we carry great inertia due to our heft and accomplishments to date. Speed we have, agility in maturity we are working on.

Personally, I see what the GNOME Foundation is working through to be a good example of that. Best of luck, and I'm sure you'll pull through just fine. :)