It is truly delightful to report on good news within the open source world. And today I get to do exactly that.
I've talked, a number of times now, about the finances of the GNOME project. Making two specific points:
- The GNOME Foundation has, historically, been astoundingly frugal and transparent about their finances. Impressively so.
- At the same time, The GNOME Foundation receives startlingly little funding considering their widespread usage -- bringing in far less than many open source projects with smaller impacts.
In 2021, for example, The GNOME Foundation brought in a total of only $298,000.
With that in mind, it is staggeringly awesome that GNOME has been granted $1 Million Euro -- to be paid through the end of 2024 -- from The Sovereign Tech Fund.
Right there, in fell swoop, The GNOME Foundation has more than trippled their yearly revenue (based on their most recent tax reports). And, perhaps even more spectacular, those funds will be used in some incredibly practical and useful ways.
No fluff. All real-world, practical stuff here.
According to the announcement, the following will be areas of focus:
- Improve the current state of accessibility
- Design and prototype a new accessibility stack
- Encrypt user home directories individually
- Modernize secrets storage
- Increase the range and quality of hardware support
- Invest in Quality Assurance and Developer Experience
- Expand and broaden freedesktop APIs
- Consolidate and improve platform components
Accessibility. End-user encryption and security. Hardware support. Better testing and QA.
These are all areas that GNOME (and related software) could certainly benefit from -- in very practical, real ways. At a time when some other software-related foundations are spending less and less on the actual software they produce... this is an absolute breath of fresh air.
Big thumbs up to both GNOME and The Sovereign Tech Fund. This is fantastic news for everyone.
As a side note, The Sovereign Tech Fund also supports a number of critical software projects -- things used by servers, desktops, and mobile devices far and wide. Stuff like:
- Curl
- OpenSSH
- WireGuard
This contribution will set up The GNOME Foundation to have, in 2024, their highest revenue year in history. With GNOME having a brand new Executive Director, who is only just now starting in the position, it will be interesting to see what improvements we see to GNOME in the coming year.
