The Board is interested in formalizing a policy for the release-team to have autonomy over evaluating whether a project is part of GNOME.
This is important because projects which are part of GNOME represent our brand, identity and community, and for that I believe we should have high standards.
Considering that we now have GNOME Circle, which enables third-party applications to (among other things) benefit from the GNOME infrastructure, we would like to propose a similar framework for the release-team to define what’s a GNOME component.
One example of this is the proposal at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-build-meta/-/issues/363#note_1064866 where some projects want to join the GNOME namespace and use the GNOME branding.
A great start could be to review our existing Software Policy and then define a [somewhat] formal process for evaluating a proposal. This could potentially involve:
- Define a set of technical requirements and expectations, such as https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-build-meta/-/wikis/home#technical-conditions-to-enter-gnome-core
- follow release cycles
- respect decisions made by GNOME teams (release team, design team)
- accept contributions from the community
- broad support for distros
- etc…
- Having a vote/process in the release-team to accept/reject a proposal
- etc…
The desired outcome for this discussion is for us to put together a proposal formalizing this process, to be presented to the Board.