GNOME Foundation seeks to hide its dirty linen

Sam Varghese
Tuesday, 15 December 2009 21:09

Opinion and Analysis

A few members of the GNOME Foundation have submitted a petition to the board, asking for a referendum to be held on making the Foundation's mailing list archives private and limited to its members only.


The petition was launched by Foundation member Behdad Esfahbod, after first kicking off a long discussion on the foundation's mailing list.

Most of those taking part in this discussion did not appear to be in favour of Esfahbod's proposal.

According to the petition, private archives are being requested in order to "discourage trade journalists from making awful claims out of individual Foundation members' opinions and extending it to GNOME Foundation or GNOME Community at large..."

This follows the publication on iTWire of details of a discussion during which one senior developer, Philip Van Hoof, called for a vote on whether GNOME should continue to be part of the GNU Project.

Van Hoof was supported by GNOME advisory board member David Schlesinger. The iTWire report did not attribute Van Hoof's call to the Foundation, but only to him.

Nine members of the Foundation have appended their names to the petition. One of the nine, Baris Cicek, has mentioned that he does not favour archives being private.

Those who have signed the petition want the archives to either be made private and limited to Foundation members or else, at the discretion of the Foundation board, they want a new list that has private archives and is limited to Foundation members.