GNOME needs to get its act together

Sam Varghese
Thursday, 31 December 2009 16:08

Opinion and Analysis

As the year ends, it is fair to say there have been many free and open source software organisations that have made rapid strides, not merely in 2009 but right through the noughties. But one organisation badly needs to get its act together.


That organisation is the GNOME desktop project and its foundation. At the end of 2009, it is still struggling and trying very hard to convince itself that its lack of a sense of identity derives from wrong perceptions rather than fundamental internal issues.

This has been illustrated most recently in the way the GNOME members reacted to the publication of news that one of its senior developers had called for a re-evaluation of its links to the GNU Project.

To understand the significance of these links, one must go back to 1997 when GNOME was set up by Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena Quintero. The only rationale that they had for setting up a project to create a second desktop environment for a small number of users - KDE was a thriving desktop by then but it used a non-free library for development - was that it would be totally free.

GNOME was set up under the aegis of the GNU Project. The name says it all: the GNU Network Object Model Environment.

For GNOME to raise the topic of cutting its ties from the organisation that gave it its raison d'etre is certainly worthy of note.

The debate wasn't just covered in these columns. There was plenty of coverage out there, so for GNOME members to cast it as information that was not newsworthy is behaviour that an ostrich would find hard to emulate.

It's a measure of the way the project chooses to hide its head in the sand that some members portrayed this incident as a matter of perspective - in other words, they felt it needed to be "spun" better by media management.

For as long as I can remember, GNOME has had a problem dealing with the media. Nearly eight years when I first wrote to the organisation, seeking an interview with de Icaza about Mono, the response I got was that the FAQ which he maintained would answer all my questions.

The gem that I remember was this: "Miguel de Icaza is pretty diligent about updating this site, as he feels horribly about the fact he sometimes does not have time to respond to incoming requests."

Of course, even at that time he could find time to speak to people who swallowed his spin and showed a willingness to print anything he spouted. Perhaps he made them sign a non-disclosure agreement - the same as he has done with Microsoft.