4 ms·

When GNOME was raising the 150k they said they would not settle and would battle until the patent was overturned. People donated based upon this and then GNOME

by tssva 5y ago

When GNOME was raising the 150k they said they would not settle and would battle until the patent was overturned. People donated based upon this and then GNOME settled. This is why when things like the he said/she said argument with System 76 have come up I am mystified that some people are ready to believe GNOME's take. They have already shown that they are a project whose leadership's word can't be trusted.

tedivm 5y ago
According to the Gnome website they didn't have to pay their lawyers, so I'm wondering where that money went. > GNOME was represented pro-bono by Matt Berkowitz, Kieran Kieckhefer, Joy Wang and Larry Crouch from Shearman & Sterling LLP. https://foundation.gnome.org/2020/05/20/patent-case-against-gnome-resolved/ https://foundation.gnome.org/2020/05/20/patent-case-against-...
- JamesBarney 5y ago
  There are lots of expenses in a legal case besides just the lawyers, like expert witness, process servers, etc..
- gralx 5y ago
  I suspect it went into the settlement payment. Wouldn't it be ironic if so many principled advocates of open source and supporters of the GNOME project had their funds paid directly to a patent troll by GNOME themselves?
  - perihelions 5y ago
    GNOME did not pay in the original settlement. - "I can confirm that we have not paid RPI or Leigh Rothschild for this settlement." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23264806 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23264806
    - robocat 5y ago
      > not paid RPI or Leigh Rothschild for this settlement That statement still leaves a lot of people that they could have paid for that settlement (or paid RPI/Leigh for a different settlement).
      - ncmncm 5y ago
        Probably paid the troll's lawyer, instead. Which is of course also the troll.
- hda2 5y ago
  > I'm wondering where that money went. I was wondering the same about the $1M donation they got in 2018. Turns out they misallocated a significant portion of it to things like social outreach programs. There is nothing wrong with having SRPs if you're a multi-billion tech giant, but a underfunded open source product shouldn't be wasting money on social programs when their primary product was broken (which, in 2018, gnome3 certainly was). At the very least, they could have used it to hold proper user-focus groups to find out how their users actually used their product. I think the organization is suffering from a serious mismanagement issue.
  - throwaway82652 5y ago
    This comment makes no sense at all, every open source non-profit I've ever seen has made social outreach programs their main goal. There's nothing else to spend the funding on. They can't spend a ton of money on focus groups specifically because it's not a multi-billion tech giant and these foundations legally can't be making decisions based on how to make some product profitable. You need to ask a company to do that. These foundations have to make decisions based on their stated mission which is almost always solving a social issue. So in that sense the "primary product" of the foundation is really the community around the project, it actually can't be the project itself. If you want to start another organization that only does user focus groups then by all means do it, but otherwise you're barking up the wrong tree. The designers (not the foundation) already do user studies regularly anyway, the reason they don't do full focus groups all the time is because it gets expensive real fast.
    - nerdponx 5y ago
      > making decisions based on how to make some product profitable Who said anything about profit? How about paying devs & designers, awarding bug bounties, and user testing?
      - throwaway82652 5y ago
        Paying devs and designers to do what? Testing for what? To make a product more profitable so you can further grow the foundation? If it's not doing social outreach or otherwise fulfilling the social mission of the nonprofit then I hope you understand it falls in that category and they can't legally do that, go to any of the member companies if you want that. When these nonprofits hire actual engineers and designers it's usually only on a contract basis to fix very specific problems that have to do with social issues around the project. It's otherwise hard for them to justify hiring staff to do that.
- tssva 5y ago
  The GNOME Foundation defense fund donation website for this case is still open and accepting donations. In fact donations have been made to it recently. Why hasn't the site been shutdown or the text at the site modified to reflect that the suit has been long settled by the GNOME Foundation?
throwaway82652 5y ago
>I am mystified that some people are ready to believe GNOME's take I won't comment on the issue itself, but the way you're framing this is total and complete nonsense. GNOME didn't have a "take", it was a blog written independently by one developer. You're confusing the Foundation itself with random developers. AFAIK System 76 also never put out any official statements, it was again more random unofficial statements by random employees. I would actually be more disappointed if either of these organizations' management was wasting their time making official statements on pointless open source drama.
- tssva 5y ago
  I'm not confusing a lone developer with the GNOME Foundation. I was referencing statements made in a GNOME Foundation press release.
  - throwaway82652 5y ago
    I have no idea which press release you're talking about, every search I did on the subject turned up this news article or another one with very similar content, where there's no official press release: https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/10/system76_gnome_desktop_fight/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/10/system76_gnome_deskto... Searching through the foundation's news posts shows only one press release about system76, which is positive in tone and isn't related to any argument: https://foundation.gnome.org/?s=system76 https://foundation.gnome.org/?s=system76 If you could post this press release so I could read it, that would be great. Maybe I'm just stupid and I missed something obvious. But I think you may be misremembering this.

by tssva 5y ago

tedivm 5y ago

According to the Gnome website they didn't have to pay their lawyers, so I'm wondering where that money went. > GNOME was represented pro-bono by Matt Berkowitz, Kieran Kieckhefer, Joy Wang and Larry Crouch from Shearman & Sterling LLP. https://foundation.gnome.org/2020/05/20/patent-case-against-gnome-resolved/ https://foundation.gnome.org/2020/05/20/patent-case-against-...

JamesBarney 5y ago
There are lots of expenses in a legal case besides just the lawyers, like expert witness, process servers, etc..
gralx 5y ago
I suspect it went into the settlement payment. Wouldn't it be ironic if so many principled advocates of open source and supporters of the GNOME project had their funds paid directly to a patent troll by GNOME themselves?
- perihelions 5y ago
  GNOME did not pay in the original settlement. - "I can confirm that we have not paid RPI or Leigh Rothschild for this settlement." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23264806 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23264806
  - robocat 5y ago
    > not paid RPI or Leigh Rothschild for this settlement That statement still leaves a lot of people that they could have paid for that settlement (or paid RPI/Leigh for a different settlement).
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      Probably paid the troll's lawyer, instead. Which is of course also the troll.
hda2 5y ago
> I'm wondering where that money went. I was wondering the same about the $1M donation they got in 2018. Turns out they misallocated a significant portion of it to things like social outreach programs. There is nothing wrong with having SRPs if you're a multi-billion tech giant, but a underfunded open source product shouldn't be wasting money on social programs when their primary product was broken (which, in 2018, gnome3 certainly was). At the very least, they could have used it to hold proper user-focus groups to find out how their users actually used their product. I think the organization is suffering from a serious mismanagement issue.
- throwaway82652 5y ago
  This comment makes no sense at all, every open source non-profit I've ever seen has made social outreach programs their main goal. There's nothing else to spend the funding on. They can't spend a ton of money on focus groups specifically because it's not a multi-billion tech giant and these foundations legally can't be making decisions based on how to make some product profitable. You need to ask a company to do that. These foundations have to make decisions based on their stated mission which is almost always solving a social issue. So in that sense the "primary product" of the foundation is really the community around the project, it actually can't be the project itself. If you want to start another organization that only does user focus groups then by all means do it, but otherwise you're barking up the wrong tree. The designers (not the foundation) already do user studies regularly anyway, the reason they don't do full focus groups all the time is because it gets expensive real fast.
  - nerdponx 5y ago
    > making decisions based on how to make some product profitable Who said anything about profit? How about paying devs & designers, awarding bug bounties, and user testing?
    - throwaway82652 5y ago
      Paying devs and designers to do what? Testing for what? To make a product more profitable so you can further grow the foundation? If it's not doing social outreach or otherwise fulfilling the social mission of the nonprofit then I hope you understand it falls in that category and they can't legally do that, go to any of the member companies if you want that. When these nonprofits hire actual engineers and designers it's usually only on a contract basis to fix very specific problems that have to do with social issues around the project. It's otherwise hard for them to justify hiring staff to do that.
tssva 5y ago
The GNOME Foundation defense fund donation website for this case is still open and accepting donations. In fact donations have been made to it recently. Why hasn't the site been shutdown or the text at the site modified to reflect that the suit has been long settled by the GNOME Foundation?

throwaway82652 5y ago

>I am mystified that some people are ready to believe GNOME's take I won't comment on the issue itself, but the way you're framing this is total and complete nonsense. GNOME didn't have a "take", it was a blog written independently by one developer. You're confusing the Foundation itself with random developers. AFAIK System 76 also never put out any official statements, it was again more random unofficial statements by random employees. I would actually be more disappointed if either of these organizations' management was wasting their time making official statements on pointless open source drama.

tssva 5y ago
I'm not confusing a lone developer with the GNOME Foundation. I was referencing statements made in a GNOME Foundation press release.
- throwaway82652 5y ago
  I have no idea which press release you're talking about, every search I did on the subject turned up this news article or another one with very similar content, where there's no official press release: https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/10/system76_gnome_desktop_fight/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/10/system76_gnome_deskto... Searching through the foundation's news posts shows only one press release about system76, which is positive in tone and isn't related to any argument: https://foundation.gnome.org/?s=system76 https://foundation.gnome.org/?s=system76 If you could post this press release so I could read it, that would be great. Maybe I'm just stupid and I missed something obvious. But I think you may be misremembering this.