news
GNOME Has Run Out of Money (IBM Divestment)
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GNOME ☛ GNOME Foundation News: Introducing the GNOME Fellowship program [Ed: GNOME is broke]
Sustaining GNOME by directly funding contributors
The GNOME Foundation is excited to announce the GNOME Fellowship program, a new initiative to fund community members working on the long-term sustainability of the GNOME project. We’re now accepting applications for our inaugural fellowship cycle, beginning around May 2026.
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Thibault Martin: TIL that GNOME has launched a fellowship program
When open source nonprofits ask for donations, one common answer is "I only want to fund code, I don't want to fund anything else." GNOME has created a Fellowship Program to fund direct work on GNOME, a program entirely funded by donations. This is a testament to the Foundation's maturity, as it becomes a direct contributor to the project it stewards.
Let's take a step back to address the code-only argument. It is a misguided reaction, but I can see where its proponents are coming from. In the world of proprietary software, you pay to get your software. You don't realize that this bundles the marketing, accounting, legal, and even HR costs.
GoL:
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GNOME Fellowship program announced to support "critical and under-resourced areas" | GamingOnLinux
The people behind GNOME recently announced the GNOME Fellowship program, to provide financial backing to those working on specific areas.
FOSS Force:
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GNOME Taps Two Longtime Contributors as First Foundation Fellows
The Gnome Foundation has announced the first participants in the new Fellowship program it announced in March.
Although Gnome continues to struggle with funding, it’s been able to afford a new fellowship program to put money in the pockets of some volunteer coders without having to rob Peter to pay Pauline. They’ve been able to do this through some special donations earmarked specifically for the new program it’s calling the Gnome Foundation Fellowship program.
“Gnome depends on contributors who squeeze in work between commercial priorities, jobs, life, and everything else,” Gnome said in its launch announcement. “Critical components and infrastructure are often neglected because no one has time to maintain them. The Gnome Foundation Fellowship program is our response: direct funding for contributors to do the work that wouldn’t get done otherwise.”
The organization said that “fellows” would be compensated at the rate of $70,000 to $100,000 per year, with the exact amount being based on experience and location. At the time, Gnome said it had initial funding to support one person full-time or two people part-time, with fellows receiving funding for 12 months. Evidently, the organization decided to start with the latter, because late last week it announced two participants.