Re: Mission Statement

On 08/06/2014 11:57 AM, Ryan Lortie wrote:
> I was disappointed (but not completely surprised) to learn that,
> although OPW has expanded to many projects beyond GNOME, GNOME is left
> handling all of the money for all participants at all organisations.
> This hasn't only exposed us to substantial financial risks; it has
> caused actual financial problems for the project.  This year, GNOME
> temporarily ceased funding of hackfests in order to recover from the
> cashflow problems caused by the size of OPW.

I'm sensing a general lack of information in your post (which should 
absolutely be provided to you) about the program and its affect on GNOME 
and its finances, so I thought it would be worth pointing out that GNOME 
does charge a per-intern administrative fee to each non-GNOME project 
participating in OPW. So GNOME is far from taking on this extremely 
helpful and beneficial work without compensation.

> I also came to appreciate during conversations at GUADEC the amount of
> time which members of the engagement team, the board, and others are
> spending fighting against harmful and distracting messaging from various
> corners of the net, and how much OPW has become involved in some of the
> stranger criticisms being leveled toward us.  It's no secret that OPW is
> controversial, even within the project.  I feel at the very least, it is
> a distraction from what should be our core goals.

Do you understand that the many -isms that negatively impact GNOME and 
open source in general do not disappear when you sweep them under the 
rug? These are not problems that can just be washed away from 
disengaging OPW from GNOME.

> I think that the time has come to split OPW out from the GNOME
> foundation.

I can't resist saying this:

I think GNOME has a lot of problems, and OPW is most certainly NOT one 
of them.

~m