GNOME head honcho Holly Million steps down

The executive director of the GNOME Foundation has quit after less than a year in the role. The GNOME Foundation, the non-profit organization behind the GNOME desktop environment, has announced the departure of Holly Million, its exec director. We covered her appointment as recently as nine months ago, in late October. As we …

[Neil Barnes]

It's a difficult question

I make contributions to programs and the OS I regularly use (and it's probably time for some more) but to the foundations managing the libraries? Particularly when I frequently don't like the way a library is developing - that is, my desktop/distribution uses Gnome but I don't like a lot of the detail changes that Gnome has made to the UI in recent versions... I need to think more about this.

[robinsonb5]

Re: It's a difficult question

Be the change you want to see in the world. Encourage those who are doing things you do like, and ignore those who are doing things you don't like.

Will it make a meaningful difference? OK, probably not - but at least you'll be contributing while remaining true to yourself.

[drankinatty]

Re: It's a difficult question

I think the sentiment here, both in the "foundation as an entity" and the direction Gnome taken during the past decade squarely hits the proverbial nail-on-the-head of at least a significant part of the funding challenge the Gnome foundation now faces. You simply can't piss people off for a decade on one hand, and then extend the other asking for contributions. That never ends well.

I'll give them this, Gnome has definitely emerged as the winner in the race to dumb-down the Linux desktop into windows. That may work for RHEL customers, but it has left a bad taste in the mouth of the rest of the FOSS community -- at least the parts I kick around in. Not good for building a repeating stream of small-dollar donations from community members.

[Mockup1974]

Re: It's a difficult question

>I'll give them this, Gnome has definitely emerged as the winner in the race to dumb-down the Linux desktop into windows.

"Into Windows"? You probably mean "into iOS"

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: It's a difficult question

Does it matter? They're equally stupid, to a first approximation. Click-and-drool UIs that obstruct technically-inclined users, hide critical information, and reify the design philosophy of "we know better than you, so shut up and work the way we want you to".

[Pascal Monett]

So she didn't leave to "spend time with her family" ?

After barely a year ?

That feels to me like there were "creative differences" between her and the Foundation.µ

I wonder what those differences were.

[mattaw2001]

Re: So she didn't leave to "spend time with her family" ?

They suggested Gnome implement server side decorations.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: So she didn't leave to "spend time with her family" ?

> That feels to me like there were "creative differences" between her and the Foundation.µ

I think the work the Foundation wanted her to do turned out to not align well with her healing crystals... (hint: she's a shamen)

[dadbot5000]

Re: So she didn't leave to "spend time with her family" ?

She was brought on to raise money for GNOME. She probably got in there and realized that raising money is hard in a down economy and quit. Her LI page describers her as a down-to-the-bones healer, real hippie dippie stuff in San Fran. Cannot imagine what GNOME was thinking bringing her on except her Harvard background.

[Anonymous Coward]

Holly Million

I wonder if she managed to extract more or less than her surname's worth of cash from the GNOME project?

[Pierre 1970]

Re: Holly Million

My english is not good enough but at first sight the name looked like an old Robin line for the TV series ....and obviously I was close to assume that that must be a joke.

Holy millions, Batman!

[Dan 55]

Time to pay up

As Register sister site The Next Platform reported at the start of the year, both IBM and Red Hat are doing quite well. It does seem to us as if the company could afford to spend a bit more to support a key part of its commercial offering.

And this is why there should be open source licences which specify that large profit-making corporations should contribute money to the open source projects they use and profit from. It's ridiculous state of affairs when Red Hat and IBM are making billions off of RHEL and Gnome has to put out the begging bowl.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Time to pay up

Except such licenses don't work because Management. I worked in a big company whose management decided to ditch Docker Desktop for Rancher the minute Docker wanted some cash - even though it probably cost more in staff time to make the switch ("ah but time costs aren't my department" syndrome). And developers weren't allowed to touch non liberally licensed projects for any individual innovation that might have led to corporate use. You might get a tiny bit out of mid-sized companies, but the big ones just won't touch your project at all as soon as you stop saying they can have it for free. So you might as well let them have it: you won't get cash either way, but at least you might be able to brag about who uses your stuff.

[Dan 55]

Re: Time to pay up

For some reason that didn't happen to Qt, but even so, suppose that did happen, I wouldn't like to be the person at RH writing the press release that said RHEL was moving away from Gnome because of a new licence which made corporates pay a nominal payment for it.

It'd be interesting to see what would happen if say there were a wholesale move to e.g. "GPLv2+" and "GPLv3+" where the "+" specified payments for large corporations. Would everything be reinvented but badly like the "enterprise apps" of yore? Would BSD suddenly be hugely popular?

[Charlie Clark]

Re: Time to pay up

QT is good enough to be used in some commercial applications.

[Dan 55]

Re: Time to pay up

So is Gnome, according to RH.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: Time to pay up

And the Faint Praise Award for today goes to...

[Charlie Clark]

Re: Time to pay up

Suggesting dual-licensing is little more than an invitation for lawyers and something most developers don't want to get involved with. When we make something open source, we know what we're doing and this includes the warning – if this stops working, you can have a go at fixing it yourself. This is the "under a bus" risk for any commercial user which they should be prepared to try and insure against just like they would for a commercial library. We've yet to see how it works in practice, but the new EU regulation on cybersecurity does at least identify this risk.

As for RedHat, I'm not sure how much the commercial side really relies on a GNOME desktop, which might explain their lack of financial engagement.

[Doctor Syntax]

Nominative determinism

"Last November, the GNOME Foundation reported that it received a million euros ... from the German Sovereign Tech Fund"

I wonder why GNOME rather than KDE which is based in Germany.

[ovation1357]

Re: Nominative determinism

.. or MATE which is a valiant attempt to keep the GNOME 2 desktop environment alive after the GNOME project stuck two fingers up at all of its users worldwide and dumped GNOME 3 on them in a half-baked, barely usable state accompanied with condescending lectures about how we're all just using it the wrong way because, you know, their way is the best way and the only true way!

I believe they the core MATE developers are based in Germany, so I'm certain that they'd be very deserving of a bit of that cash.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Nominative determinism

[Author here]

> I believe they the core MATE developers are based in Germany

I have not looked at anything recent but the project began in Argentina, by a programmer called Perberos.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140821024415/https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=121162

It is named "MATE" after the popular Latin American drink _yerba mate_.

(Spelled "maté" in English to make it clear it's not talking about "mate" as in friend, but in Spanish there's no need for the é because in Spanish "mate" sounds like /ˈmɑˌteɪ/ – MAT-ey.)

[fandom]

Re: Nominative determinism

That would be : 'mɑˌte just like it's written.

[chololennon]

Re: Nominative determinism

As an Argentinian I can certify every word of Liam about MATE ;-)

[Liam Proven]

Re: Nominative determinism

> As an Argentinian I can certify every word of Liam about MATE ;-)

¡Muchas gracias! No hablo muy mucho de la idioma, pero creo, suficiento aqui.

[johnandmegh]

Re: Nominative determinism

At the very least, the ability to apply for said funding was one factor:

https://invent.kde.org/utilities/kate/-/issues/115

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Nominative determinism

>I wonder why GNOME rather than KDE which is based in Germany.

Because currently Germany has the most inept government since 1945 (1990 in the East), so of course they'd get this bit wrong too.

[steelpillow]

Really?

Not sure I agree about the /ought to/ contribute. GNOME is the GNU's Not Unix Object Model Environment. Its ethos is not about profit, but availability. It was RMS's first big project after EMACS, or something like that. I'd be sad to see IBM graft it onto their money tree and leave a community fork struggling, like Oracle did with Java and MySQL. And I'm an old grump who deserted it for MATE many moons ago. By all means let them infuse lifeblood if they find it useful, more a /would do if they had any brains/ than an /ought to/.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Really?

[Author here]

> Not sure I agree about the /ought to/ contribute.

No problem, that is your call to make.

But...

> GNOME is the GNU's Not Unix Object Model Environment.

No, it is not. You are getting your acronyms muddled and recursing too far.

G.N.O.M.E. = GNU Network Object Model Environment

GNU as in GPL.

G.N.U. is GNU is Not Unix, but that's irrelevant here: the point of GNOME was that it was all-GPL because at the time Qt was not GPL and KDE was built around Qt, meaning that KDE was *not* all-GPL. KDE was not a 100% GNU-compliant project, and in response, GNOME set out to be.

> Its ethos is not about profit, but availability.

Whose?

> It was RMS's first big project after EMACS, or something like that.

No, you're muddling your historical timelines here because you expanded G.N.O.M.E. too far.

GNOME is nothing directly to do with GNU.

GNU is the RMS project. Linux distros used lots of GNU but remember GNU != Linux and Linux != GNU.

The GNU OS is GNU HURD, not Linux.

RMS had nothing directly to do with GNOME or indeed with Linux.

> And I'm an old grump who deserted it for MATE many moons ago.

MATE being GNOME 2, of course.

[ovation1357]

Re: Really?

> MATE being GNOME 2, of course.

MATE being a massive saving grace after GNOME itself decided to throw a stable and mature desktop environment in the bin in order to go chasing after unicorns (or something).

MATE was based on a fork of GNOME 2 but it's continually developing and is a world away from where it started. It's a bit disingenuous to suggest that the two desktops are equal.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Really?

[Author here]

> MATE was based on a fork of GNOME 2 but it's continually developing and is a world away from where it started.

Er, OK, if you say so. I only try it occasionally. I wasn't a big fan of GNOME 2 and I am not one of MATE today. For me the killer failing is that it _still_ can't do vertical taskbars properly.

Given that rules it out of contention for me, I do not monitor it very closely. Apart from the cosmetically invisible move to Gtk3, what is there new that it couldn't do before?

[steelpillow]

Re: Really?

RMS, Miguel de Icaza, what's in a name? You have to admit it was a long time ago. ;-)

But "do vertical taskbars properly" is an oxymoron. Yecch!

[Will Godfrey]

Re: Really?

On the other hand, I find a vertical taskbar is extremely useful in these days of ridiculously wide monitors, and claws back a little of the lost virtical space.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: Really?

Agreed. If I must have a taskbar, let it steal from the less-scarce resource.

That said, I wouldn't use a taskbar-based "desktop", or indeed a "desktop" at all, on Linux. X11 plus a minimal window manager does just fine, if I'm not just ssh'ing into it from some other OS.

[Hardrada]

Re: Really?

@steelpillow "RMS, Miguel de Icaza, what's in a name? You have to admit it was a long time ago. ;-)"

Quite a long while indeed, given that RMS' surname was Titanic.

[ovation1357]

Re: Really?

I personally hate vertical task bars so I've never tried them on MATE.

I never said it was perfect and it's not entirely fair to judge it based on one single feature.

Come to think of it - if you use the mate tweak utility to set it to look and feel like the Unity desktop then I'm sure they has a vertical taskbar.

Anyhow I'm glad there's a selection of DEs available. MATE meets my needs exceedingly well. I have friends who swear by Cinnamon, others XFCE or KDE.

My huge gripe with GNOME is that the fundamental changes it keeps making to the GTK library are removing functionality and/or changing stable behaviours in other desktops and that is unacceptable.

I get that they own GTK but as it underpins a vast amount of software that runs on non-GNOME desktops, they have a duty of care to not trash other people's systems whilst adding whatever they want for their own.

[Yankee Doodle Doofus]

Re: Really?

< "they have a duty of care..."

Good luck getting a court of law to agree with that statement. It seems to be common knowledge that those behind GNOME and GTK don't play well with others. I'd say that any other desktops or applications that use GTK should know that they do so at their own risk. You might feel they owe you something, but they don't. That's just how open source works (and rightly so). If you want to use someone else's project for free, it's on you to deal with any compatibility issues, not them.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Really?

> if you use the mate tweak utility to set it to look and feel like the Unity desktop then I'm sure they has a vertical taskbar.

No, it has a vertical _dock_. They are not the same thing.

Desktops built around the Mac-like Dock model typically also have a horizontal panel at the top, often (but not always) containing a global menu bar, but critically, it also contains a row of small status icons, usually plus a clock, and these are controls which can be used for adjusting volume, network connections, etc. The point being that the dock does not do that stuff. Note that when Mac OS X gained a global menu bar, they removed the clock app from the dock.

Taskbar type interfaces combine these functions into one, and do not contain a menu bar but an app switcher instead. That is why the GNOME 3+ addon is called "Dash to panel" -- it turns the GNOME dock, called a dashboard because they want to be different or something, into a global panel.

One of the problems with many of these implementations, including dash-to-panel, is that a vertical taskbar should contain a _column_ of window buttons but _rows_ of status icons. Dash-to-panel, MATE, Cinnamon, and many others _get this wrong_. Status indicators are in a single column as well and suddenly half the panel is lost, given over to what should be tiny status indicators in a row or two at the bottom.

The FOSS folks have had _twenty nine years_ to work this out and get it right since Windows 95 shipped. I was running the beta _three decades ago_.

If they can't get simple details like that right, then it is a dead giveaway that other details will be wrong as well.

Windows 95 on floppy fit into 25MB. This is not a large or complex OS to copy. If someone wants to do an interface inspired by and reproducing that simple clean original, then *get it right*. If they don't notice stuff like this then it is a cast-iron certainty that there are lots of other things they did not notice as well and they _will_ screw them up as a result.

LXDE does it right, albeit without much customisation or flexibility. Xfce does it very well, although it's a fiddly version with a lot more knobs to twiddle than it needs... but it's still 1% as many options to frob than KDE.

Basically every other implementation gets this stuff wrong, and that tells me that they reverse-engineered it from a screenshot and didn't know how to use the original.

P.S. I agree re GTK.

[steelpillow]

Re: Really?

Upvoted.

But rows of status icons? A vertical taskbar should not contain rows of anything.

I am one of those sad freaks to whom words in my mother tongue mean more than arbitrary graphics. English words and vertical bars don't mix well.

Give me a menu bar / launcher at the top and a status bar immediately below it, any day of the week. MATE lets me do this.

Some here find it useful to move all this stuff to the side of their unpleasantly wide but low screens, and leave more vertical space. I spend a lot of time comparing documents side by side, and a typical wide screen is seldom quite wide enough for comfort (OTOH two-headed creates an annoying blank right in the middle).

A good UI should offer good configurability for everybody's use cases.

[Yankee Doodle Doofus]

Re: Really?

Upvoted you and Liam both, I don't want to use either of your preferred desktop layouts, but I can understand why you like them and how small things can be a dealbreaker for someone who knows exactly what they want. I want a Windows-style taskbar at the bottom, with a start menu on the left, quick launch icons and icons for open apps in the middle, and status/system tray on the right. I want it to be hidden when there is a full screen window or a floating window that wants the real estate. If using multiple monitors, I want an identical taskbar on each monitor (a change to one should change all, not a custom one for each monitor that I have to try to make work identically). In the last few years, I have discovered the advantages of auto-tiling windows, but I don't want a full-fledged tiling window manager, I want to be able to toggle between floating and tiling.

As of right now, I think GNOME with a handful of third-party extensions is the only way I can get everything I want. On a system that is almost always used with a single display, like my laptops, Cinnamon is perfectly acceptable, though. I am excited to try Cosmic, whenever it's finally ready. Perhaps I will finally be able to have everything I want without third party add-ons.

[ovation1357]

Re: Really?

Yep. MATE gets a monthly donation from me.

It's my daily driver and the least I can do is make a monthly donation for the software I rely on so critically.

GNOME on the other hand can go and do one at the moment. Until they change their attitude and stop trying to force everyone to do everything their way like religious crusaders violently converting all who dare to stand in their way, they certainly won't be receiving a penny from me.

[Charlie Clark]

Re: Really?

I think one of the things developers hate about GNOME is that it isn't object-oriented because it's written in C as opposed to C++ or even Objective C. Maybe someone will get round to rewriting in Rust at some point.

[Groo The Wanderer]

Gnome and RedHat's embedding of all things SystemD is an obscenity that should have been brought to a grinding halt years ago. Here's a chance to make that happen!

[steelpillow]

SystemG-NOME

Merge 'em! "SystemG-NOME" will make everybody cringe and run!

[Cliffwilliams44]

But, she was the most qualified candidate!?

So, the DEI hire failed, I'm shocked!