The Gnome Foundation indicates increased belt tightening in its new budget due to continuing financial woes.
It’s beginning to appear as if Gnome needs to find a sugar daddy . I’ve been reporting here for a while now that Gnome’s in some deep financial doo-doo, which seems to be getting deeper.
On Monday the Gnome Foundation’s board posted a notice on its website announcing that due to cuts in the recently approved budget for the financial year that started on October 1, it had made “some tough decisions to ensure the foundation’s long-term financial sustainability.”
This started with some notable layoffs. Out the door are Caroline Henriksen, who’s been Gnome’s creative director for nearly five years, and director of community development Melissa Wu, who came on board at about the same time as Henricksen. The board said that the layoffs will necessitate some operational adjustments in areas such as event organization and representation, marketing initiatives, fundraising efforts, and graphic design — meaning that some of the laid off worker’s tasks will be handed off to others.
Additionally, the organization says that “unless additional funds are secured” it will make significant reductions on travel by board members and staff to events. “We’ll be reassessing which events are most critical for staff attendance,” it said.
The areas that won’t see cuts are mostly areas that receive specially earmarked outside funding. This includes Gnome’s two major conferences, GNOME.Asia and GUADEC, both of which are largely supported by corporate sponsors. Linux App Summit, which Gnome is hosting in partnership with KDE this weekend in Monterrey, Mexico, is unaffected.
Also unaffected are its internship programs, including the organization’s participation in Google Summer of Code, and other externally sponsored projects.
“Certain other projects, including all of the infrastructure, staff, legal and operating costs of Flathub; and ongoing development work on digital wellbeing/parental controls, are fully sponsored by an existing grant from Endless,” the board said. “We are also working with our team of contractors to complete the delivery of the remaining elements of the Sovereign Tech Fund contract. We are not able to divert these funds to different purposes, but equally, they are fully funded to continue even though we’ve had to reduce spending in other areas.”
The Sovereign Tech Fund contract refers to funding that Gnome’s received from a German government project to fund security improvements to open source software.
Gnome’s Ongoing Woes
These cuts should come as a surprise to no one. For many years the organization lived on a surplus of funds it’d accumulated and was able to spend more money than it raised. In April, Gnome Foundation’s president Robert McQueen reported that the surplus had been spent, and said that unless new revenue streams were found, drastic budget cuts would be necessary. At the time, Gnome had a newly minted executive director, Holly Million, who it had hired the previous October with a mandate to establish fund raising programs and develop new revenue sources to right the foundation’s financial ship.
Million’s hiring was met with much derision at the time, since previous to her hiring her source of income was as a professional shaman. However, because she came to the table with degrees from both Harvard and Stanford, it was hoped that she would have the right moxie to put Gnome on firm financial footing. She didn’t. Not only that, in July she suddenly resigned, two months after announcing some unimpressive fundraising plans.
At this point, the organization has no permanent executive director, although Richard Littauer, a community organizer, is serving as interim director. On September 13, a month-and-a-half after Million’s last day, the foundation announced in a press release that it had opened a search to find her replacement and that it would be accepting applications through October 15. It appears that now the foundation is also seeking to find a way to fund the $120k-$150k salary that comes with the job.
“We are actively searching for a new executive director,” the board said in Monday’s announcement. “This process is unaffected by the current budget constraints as we are exploring different ways to fund the role.”
Until adequate funding is found to replace laid-off staff, the foundation is hoping to be able to rely on volunteer help from the Gnome community.
“We are going to be looking to the Gnome community to help in the areas that are most affected by our reduced staffing,” the board said. “If you would like to help Gnome with its events, marketing, or fundraising, we would love to hear from you. We would also welcome the community’s input on the best ways to organize these activities, so please feel free to reach out to our interim executive director, Richard Littauer (richard@gnome.org), or the board if you have ideas.”
The board also said that in the coming weeks it will further explain “the reasoning behind various decisions” in a more detailed report that will cover the organization’s current finances as well as the approved budget.
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
