GNOME Recognized as Public Interest Infrastructure – The GNOME Foundation
foundation.gnome.org

The GNOME Foundation is thrilled to announce the GNOME project is receiving €1M from the Sovereign Tech Fund to modernize the platform, improve tooling and accessibility, and support features that are in the public interest.

This investment will fund the following projects until the end of 2024:

  • Improve the current state of accessibility
  • Design and prototype a new accessibility stack
  • Encrypt user home directories individually
  • Modernize secrets storage
  • Increase the range and quality of hardware support
  • Invest in Quality Assurance and Developer Experience
  • Expand and broaden freedesktop APIs
  • Consolidate and improve platform components
  • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
    122·
    1 year ago

    Huge congrats on everyone who got this working. €1M will really go a long way and GNOME absolutely deserves it!

    Expand and broaden freedesktop APIs

    I am very excite

    • KDE fanboi
  • SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml
    97·
    1 year ago

    I really do wish governments invested more in open source. If it’s a generic thing like an operating system that the public could benefit from at large, they would be doing the public a service.

    Edit: Germany does it again!

    • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
      28·
      1 year ago

      that would be a sound investment and we can’t have that, the government must focus on actively detrimental infrastructure projects to put money in the pockets of rich people.

    • pingveno@lemmy.mlEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      The US has the US Digital Service. Alex Gaynor, who has had involvement in a wide array of OSS projects, is employed there.

    • nexussapphire@lemm.eeEnglish
      1420·
      1 year ago

      Government ran distros in public schools and government offices wouldn’t be any more invasive than windows working with the government. Better yet there actually be some sort of education on using the os and exponential growth of the Linux desktop as a whole.

      I just wish KDE would get some love too. They work their asses off to make a desktop suit as many use cases and workflows as possible while maintaining a mostly polished experience. Their not afraid to implement stuff knowing it’s just a temporary solution till other projects catchup. They are actually willing to work with other projects on implementing standards and are developing standards like HDR on wayland for professional artists and gamers and are the first to jump on major features as soon as its solid.

      Gnome is just annoying mess great for smartphone users unwilling to learn anything new and had never touched a pc or Mac in their life. What’s the appeal of using something with half its features gutted for the sake of looks just to have everyone add it back in anyway. It’s an annoying Apple like philosophy of let’s implement counter intuitive interfaces to preserve a look and never change it back because we’re always right. You’d think they’d have improved the window snap feature since 3.0

      • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
        124·
        1 year ago

        Ffs I knew this submission would turn into a minority of Plasma users trying to piss on Gnome. Can you not just be happy that an open source project is receiving help and that this will be a big improvement for accessibility features?

        I never hear Gnome users crying about Valve heavily supporting KDE, so why are you angry about this?

        • MazonnaCara89@lemmy.ml
          103·
          1 year ago

          I never hear Gnome users crying about Valve heavily supporting KDE, so why are you angry about this?

          This does not happen because Gnome is the most supported desktop environment out there, they have Red Hat, Google, Canonical, OpenSuse even Microsoft donated to Gnome. Don’t get me wrong some of this company do support kde too, but Gnome get treated in a different way because it’s the default de for most of the distros out there.

          • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
            52·
            1 year ago

            Like you said, these companies help KDE too. KDE also has more hardware partners, and more contributors.

            Even ignoring all that though, it still doesn’t answer the question: why cry over Gnome getting money to aid in accessibility improvements?

            I have never once heard anybody cry about the companies that support KDE, yet some people here go on like Gnome fucked their girlfriend. It’s pathetic.

            Nobody’s forcing anybody to use Gnome or any any other DE. Just be happy when nice things happen in the FOSS word.

            • garam@lemmy.my.id
              3·
              1 year ago

              But I’m using xfce here… :‘) and It doesn’t even get some funds :’(

              Wayland on XFCE is still farr farrrrrr :')

        • nexussapphire@lemm.eeEnglish
          26·
          1 year ago

          I’m not complaining about gnome getting support, I’m complaining about kde being overlooked because gnome is the default desktop for Ubuntu. Kde is just a better tool for people wanting to just get things done. Gnome is pretty I’ll give you that but ask anyone, they are very hard to work with and stubbornly refuse compromise when working with others on creating useful tools and standards.

          Just think how many times they broke extensions without any regard for the individuals using it. Their efforts to make other projects wait for them to deside what’s best for gnome like they are the only desktop that matters. The projects like portals usually say their going to implement the standard despite what gnome wants and kde often helps with the brunt of that work.

          • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
            51·
            1 year ago

            I’m not complaining about gnome getting support

            You literally are.

            I’m complaining about kde being overlooked

            KDE isn’t overlooked. KDE gets funding too. Valve and others have put so much into KDE. KDE has the most hardware partnerships. KDE has more contributors.

            Kde is just a better tool for people wanting to just get things done

            In your opinion…

            I do all my work on Gnome because it’s got an amazing and highly productive workflow, minimal distractions, and it’s extremely stable.

            I like Plasma, I like the options it has, I have it on one of my laptops, but it’s not what I’d use for work. The last thing I need is for kwin to crash and take all the programs I had open with it, losing hours of work. Yes, I’m aware this should be fixed in Plasma 6, but as of right now it’s a massive showstopper.

            stubbornly refuse compromise when working with others on creating useful tools and standards

            Gnome has championed a lot of open standards, and worked with others. You’re just repeating a Reddit meme. They’ve done so much flatpak, portals, open-desktop stuff in collaboration with KDE and others.

            Just think how many times they broke extensions without any regard for the individuals using it.

            You’re showing a complete lack of understanding about what extensions are.

            Extensions are impossible not to break from time to time. Extensions don’t use some unchanging API to work - they’re modifications on the DE itself. That’s why they’re so powerful.

            There’s no way around DE mods sometimes becoming borked when the DE gets a big update.

            Why are you acting like Gnome is against portals lmao, they’ve been massively pushing portals and open desktop standards, even going as far as refusing to implement features unless there’s a cross-desktop standard way of handling it (e.g. accent colours, which they are only now putting in place now that they and KDE have hammered out a sensible standard for it. Or a better system tray, which they’ve been trying to spearhead an open, cross-desktop solution for for years now, although little progress has been made by everyone). Of the DEs, Gnome has pushed for things like portals and flatpaks the most lol

            We get it. In your mind, Gnome = bad and evil and nasty, KDE = good quirky and kool.

      • SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml
        22·
        1 year ago

        Oh I see, I didn’t realize there was such a contrast between the cultures of KDE and GNOME. Idk why ppl are downvoting you

        • Audacity9961@feddit.ch
          7·
          1 year ago

          They are being downvoted because it is utter nonsense, spouted as authoritative fact.

          Anyone who has ever used gnome seriously, knows that although it can be used for touch it is heavily keyboard oriented.

          While not undermining the work of KDE devs who I have great admiration for, GNOME devs also work heavily on standards that benefit all of linux, and arguably do just as much if not more, as they are a very well resourced project.

      • this_is_router@feddit.de
        111·
        1 year ago

        My comment wasn’t meant as a jab against systemd or gnome, I was just curious if there are different solutions for an encrypted homedir.

        I really like the direction linux, systemd and gnome are going! Big thank you to all the developers! <3

        • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          You can use Fuse to encrypt files on the fly using a wide assortment of schemas. The trick is to make it available at the right time to all the desktop apps (as the environment is starting up).

          All of this is available already, for example I’m encrypting the files I sync to Dropbox and I mount the decrypted version to a dir on my desktop on startup. It’s not the entire home dir but you get the idea. It’s just gonna need some polish to become really smooth and user friendly.

          • this_is_router@feddit.de
            2·
            1 year ago

            Im most interested in encrypted homedirs for servers. Since all my collegues are to lazy to use encrypted ssh keys, i hoped that systemd-homed makes it possible to secure them from the root user.

            Is systemd-homed already useable for such usecase? If gnome will do the same for desktops, that would be a big plus, thinking about firefox profiles and such. Hopefully also using pam or kerberos for decryption.

            I’ll look into fuse though, thanks for the hint

    • pingveno@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Sovereignty as in it is sponsored by or own by a nation-state. Similarly, Norway has a sovereign wealth fund derived from its oil profits.

      • caesaravgvstvs@feddit.de
        1·
        1 year ago

        Yes! I just kinda posted it as a rethorical question. I think it’s important to know where the money is really coming from :)

  • GrappleHat@lemmy.mlEnglish
    251·
    1 year ago

    This is fantastic! Gnome is such a great project! Well done!

    This will sound silly, but I didn’t realize that governments support open source like this. But it’s such a good idea! It’s similar to governments funding a park or a road any other public resource. Open source projects fit very nicely there!

  • andruid@lemmy.ml
    23·
    1 year ago

    Awesome stuff! This is something that major already know, but governments are learning. You can actually invest in FOSS, and unlike renting software you can make improvements that will better fit what you need it to do and not have to pay more for privilidge in the future.

    And for everyone saying KDE as opposed to Gnome, they work together you dinguses! It’s a friendly competition at times, but being FOSS they can and do easily learn and grow from each other.

  • Pantherina@feddit.de
    269·
    1 year ago

    I prefer KDE currently, because

    • normal application tray and buttons for close, maximise and minimize
    • dolphin ! (But any capable filemanager with spacesaving UI, extensions, an editable location bar, drag/drop dialogs, selection mode, preview, pinned favourites, kfind integration,… would do)
    • spectacle
    • kate
    • systemsettings (keyboard shortcuts, theming, mouse speed, Graphic tablet, flatpak permissions, system info, …)

    are all simply better than the GNOME counterpart. Also things like the clickboxes of decorations actually reaching to the top corner is something so obvious its crazy that GNOME simply ignores that and you need to directly point to the “x”.

    I like that Gnome is untraditional though.

    • M137@lemm.ee
      121·
      1 year ago

      As the first paragraph says: “The GNOME Foundation is thrilled to announce the GNOME project is receiving €1M from the Sovereign Tech Fund to modernize the platform, improve tooling and accessibility, and support features that are in the public interest.”

      Let’s hope that means improving all that.

    • milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee
      8·
      1 year ago

      I’m also on KDE at the moment, but I appreciate the money going into FOSS desktop experience. Most importantly as keeping things viable for the future. Also KDE and GNOME both, one presumes, learn from each others successes.

      • Pantherina@feddit.de
        2·
        1 year ago

        Did the windows before not have regular menu with all that? I think its an okay concept, even though I can imagine something like workspaces could make sense too.

  • Shatur@lemmy.ml
    17·
    1 year ago

    Wow, 1M it’s a lot! I wish we could have more organizations like this in more countries.

  • jack@monero.town
    15·
    1 year ago

    I’m very interested in the secrets storage. Hopefully that includes integrating programs with GNOME Secrets, especially firefox

  • warmaster@lemmy.world
    121·
    1 year ago

    I wonder if any of this will improve Wayland/mutter, I love GNOME’s UI… but I had to move to KDE for a better gaming experience.

    • AProfessional@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      I don’t think that’s the focus. I know you won’t like this, but the Shell is already in a good place.

      HDR is in progress. VRR does have patches In progress.

      • warmaster@lemmy.world
        3·
        1 year ago

        If I use GNOME I get the most beautiful desktop UI, if I use Plasma I get a better gaming experience. I wish I could have both.

      • Sentau@feddit.de
        31·
        1 year ago

        VRR does have patches In progress.

        This has been the case for years at this point

        • AProfessional@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          1 year ago

          The gap between “nothing has been done for this task” and “multiple developers have written, reviewed, and discussed patches for this” is immense and positive.

          • Sentau@feddit.de
            1·
            1 year ago

            These discussions took place several years ago if I remember correctly. The problem seems to be that cursor seems to want to refresh at a different rate than the content in screen and the people at gnome want the cursor to not feel choppy by being refreshed at the vrr determined refresh rate

            • AProfessional@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              1 year ago

              The MR has multiple commits about 4 months old. It’s a bummer it’s moving slow but I believe it will land someday. I hope at least.

              • Sentau@feddit.de
                2·
                1 year ago

                I am also sure that it will land as well. As a gnome user I hope it lands sooner than later. I am just frustrated because the pursuit of perfection is keeping us from having a better experience now. It’s the calculator on iPad situation. Just because the perfect solution has not been found yet does not mean there should be no implemented solution at all.

  • Vincent@kbin.social
    111·
    1 year ago

    Great work by Sonny and Tobias. Really happy to hear that more effort will be invested into accessibility, as I feel it’s really been lagging over the past couple of years.