Questions were asked on a candidate page but that was more about the past and I can understand why other candidates would not wish to participate there, but I think most users of gnome are interested in how this can move forward.
After the first year of funding by STF, Gnome has not participated in the following years of funding (2025,2026).
It is suggested that the STF were eager to continue collaborating with gnome.
The work done using previous funding was very visible in funding gnome development. Do any of the candidates for the board have plans to re-engage with the STF to fund further development.
Thanks @NaheemSays. Adrian and Julian know the delivery side way better than me, but I can hopefully add some useful thoughts on fundraising and structuring side. STF’s support was incredibly beneficial for GNOME and I’d love to see another bid in future.
Some context on capacity: beyond the board, who commit maybe 5 to 10 hours a month, the Foundation’s team is small, roughly one infrastructure, one events, and one ops/admin person, and Allan has been carrying the executive management as acting ED. Preparing, scoping and submitting a large STF proposal is easily dozens or hundreds of hours, plus a lot of coordination to line up contractors to deliver. STF is also structured as a contract for services rather than a grant: work is scoped, money is paid as it’s delivered, and reporting runs throughout, not just at the end. That is more demanding to plan and run than a grant where the funds usually arrive up front against a high level budget and plan.
So honestly, the Foundation isn’t currently set up to lead a bid like that on its own. What it is much better set up to do than before is to support one: we now have systems and policies that let projects make their own decisions and approvals, which weren’t in place last time. So the realistic near-to-mid-term path is for the people who do have the expertise and time to lead bids and run the projects, with the Foundation working as an effective fiscal host behind them. I’d actively support getting STF-funded development going again on that basis, and I think it’s well worth doing.
There’s a governance point underneath this: the Foundation isn’t GNOME’s vendor. It doesn’t have its own roadmap where it decides GNOME should grow AR support plus a vertical panel and then goes off to raise funds for it. That has to come from people in the project who want to be the do-ers. In a healthier future, you could imagine the Foundation building its own technical and grant-writing capacity, so it could pick work off the project’s roadmap, through the governance process, and go and fund it. That’s a great future to build towards but we’re not there yet.