Re: OPW; Where does the 500$ for each GSoC goes?

[Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com>]

hi Sébastien;

On 14 September 2014 13:07, Sébastien Wilmet <swilmet gnome org> wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 13, 2014 at 08:54:14AM -0700, Greg KH wrote:
> > Is there some specific objection you have with GNOME handling interns of
> > projects that are not specific to GNOME?
>
> That is another problem.
>
> What Philip Van Hoof said is that GNOME should focus less on outreach,
> and more on software. If our software is excellent, including our
> developer experience, the outreach will be done by itself,
> automatically. GNOME is already a well-known free desktop, it shouldn't
> be needed to spend lots of money on marketing.

I honestly don't think either you or Philip are aware of how outreach
works in the context of free software.

everything we do as a Foundation *is* outreach — including our
software, since we do make a social and political statement with its
license. unfortunately, that's not enough. the GNOME Foundation needs
to make even more effort at fund raising than it is doing now, in
order to sustain its operations and their expansion. if we ever wanted
to hire a software developer working full time on GNOME on the
Foundation's pay roll, we'd have to spend *a lot* of money on that. we
raised 40 thousand dollars on a part time system administrator, and
that's a fraction of the cost of a full time developer.

> For the GNOME Foundation, or other similar organizations, it is
> different in my opinion. It seems that the GNOME Foundation spends money
> on outreach. It *is* possible for the GNOME Foundation to decide to
> spend less money on outreach, and more money on something else, for
> example on the developer experience.

the Foundation spends money on outreach because it's demonstrably the
most convenient and effective way to increase the user base and, thus,
the contributors to the project. it's also the "cheapest", so to
speak, because it increases the volunteers working on the project in a
much more efficient way than hiring developers to work on single
aspects of GNOME.

do you have any number on how to hire developers to work on GNOME on
the Foundation's budget and cash reserves? have you factored in the
administrative cost of having 1 or 2 full time employees working on
software development?

ciao,
 Emmanuele.



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