GNOME Foundation wants your money

Sam Varghese
Monday, 04 May 2009 05:53

Opinion and Analysis

The global economic crisis has hit the GNOME Foundation to the extent that it is now seeking public money to ensure that it can keep an executive director, who was recruited last year, on its rolls.

An appeal to this effect has been made by John Palmieri, a member of the current board which will be in office until June. The Foundation's role vis-a-vis the GNOME Desktop project is detailed here.

The success or failure of this appeal will depend on a number of factors, chief among them the perception of whether GNOME has been open to suggestions from the community. One can't suddenly ask for money from people if one's attitude to them has been hostile.

The Foundation recruited Stormy Peters, who was formerly director of community and partner programmes with OpenLogic , as its executive director in July last year.

The projected budget for 2009 is a little over $US300,000. For an organisation to hire an executive director and pay the individual nearly a third of this amount is surprising - unless, of course, the person in question brings in enough money to cover his or her salary.

But that does not appear to be the case. Palmieri's appeal says the Foundation will be able to meet the budget for this year because of "healthy" surpluses over the past couple of years. His post does not explicitly state how much money Peters has brought in, merely saying, "...Stormy has managed to get a number of new corporate sponsors..."

Thus one can only infer that from July till April 30, Peters has not been able to bring in enough to cover the salary she is paid - $US96,000 plus 25 percent of whatever is raised beyond projected income. This means that the budget for 2010 will be in the red.

Most of the Foundation's income comes from fees paid by corporates who are on its advisory board. Though the Foundation website says that small companies (1-49 employees) have to pay $US5000 and medium and large companies (50 or more employees) $US10,000 to be on the advisory board, several companies pay much more.

Google, for example, pays $US30,000 as does Intel. Red Hat and Nokia pay $US15,000 each while Novell pays $12,5000. The Foundation will lose one corporate from its advisory board this year as Sun Microsystems no longer exists. Oracle is not a member of the advisory board.