GNOME has a major governance problem; the devs don't seem to care about anyone else in the GNOME ecosystem. Thumbnails in the file picker is such an egregious example it's become a huge joke in the linux community.
It amazes me that GNOME is still the default DE on so many distros, especially as KDE has so many sane defaults and makes for a smoother transition for users coming from Windows.
I see many comments to this effect, but I think it's a misconception. I really doubt changing the governance is going to get issues like thumbnails fixed. From my perspective, what is actually missing is a lack of money and/or qualified volunteers.
Maybe if they'd quit genuflecting to boondoggles like OPW to the point of bankruptcy they'd have more money? And even better, maybe more people would donate?
I don't understand how this is related, the FAQ explains that was a one time accounting error that was resolved.
"As a result of these issues, we have only just now finalized our 2014 budget. In the meantime, we made assumptions based on previous years' incomes and expenditures, and we authorized expenditures for this year based on those assumptions. Those assumptions proved to be more optimistic than reality. In addition, while our outgoing payments to interns must be strictly timed, the incoming payments from sponsoring organizations are very fluid, thus we have had to front the costs of OPW. Fronting these costs has resulted in a budget shortfall.
"The situation has already improved as some 2014 Advisory Board fees and outstanding OPW invoices have been paid. The board expect more to be paid within the next 4 weeks. If there are no unexpected issues and no delays, the freeze should be lifted by July."
The foundation didn't go bankrupt. Also:
1. The foundation doesn't (currently) even fund any developers despite having resolved those issues, because developers are pretty expensive.
2. I wasn't referring to the foundation specifically anyway. If you don't want to support the foundation you can just donate to a developer/project individually, if they are open to it.
3. I don't think the issue can be reduced to lack of donations. Donations are good but aren't really a reliable funding source. A healthy project usually needs other funding sources than just donations.
It amazes me that GNOME is still the default DE on so many distros, especially as KDE has so many sane defaults and makes for a smoother transition for users coming from Windows.