4 ms·

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 Berkowit

by 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?

by tedivm 5y ago

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?