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Some more background: https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/CurrentBudgetFAQ https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/CurrentBudgetFAQ https://gnome.org/opw/ h

Some more background: https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/CurrentBudgetFAQ https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/CurrentBudgetFAQ https://gnome.org/opw/ https://gnome.org/opw/ Reading this, I don't understand: * Why was "The Outreach Program for Women" allowed to so significantly impact Gnome's primary mission? * Why is the Gnome Foundation is funding and administering this program to begin with? It falls far outside their foundation's purview, and is undeniably gender exclusionary: "The Outreach Program for Women (OPW) helps women (cis and trans) and genderqueer get involved in free and open source software." If an organization dedicated to "cis, trans, and genderqueer" members wishes to manage and fund an outreach program, that's their prerogative, and Gnome should be welcoming, but it makes little sense to manage it under the Gnome Foundation, and it absolutely should not financially impact Gnome's ability to ship Gnome. Given that the outreach program was started in response to the lack of women candidates for Google's Summer of Code, this program could (and given fiduciary responsibilities, should) have focused solely on non-exclusionary outreach to women Summer of Code candidates. The push for biased inclusion has lost the forest for the trees.

busterarm 13y ago
I would definitely like to know how OPW caused increased turnover.
- fhars 13y ago
  Increasing turnover it the whole point of internship programs.
- rdl 13y ago
  They meant cash turnover, not personnel turnover, I think. As in more money was coming in/going out, which led to cashflow issues.
  - busterarm 13y ago
    That makes sense. I misread that badly.
    - rdl 13y ago
      I read it exactly as you did the first time through; it was unclear as written.
- htns 13y ago
  They are hashing out the details on the email thread [1]. I don't know how correct it is but this post [2] in particular tries to give some numbers: >You mention an estimate of $400k as annual turnover for the OPW, which (according to the most-recently available annual report that I can find, the 2012 one at https://www.gnome.org/foundation/reports/ https://www.gnome.org/foundation/reports/) is very close to the turnover of the Foundation as a whole ($418k income and $409k expenditure). Those 2012 numbers include $106k of Women's Outreach expenses, so the turnover of non-OPW Foundation tasks seemed to be somewhere in the region of $300k. So apparently it caused turnover by being a huge source of growth. [1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnome.foundation.general/9824 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnome.foundation.general/... [2] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnome.foundation.general/9838 http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnome.foundation.general...
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
fhars 13y ago
If you had actually read the first few paragraphs of the first document you linked you would have noticed that the cause was bad management of cash flows for a successful program that has nothing to do with the nature of the program. So trying to use it as an argument to bolster your sexist world view is misguided.
- makomk 13y ago
  From what I can tell, the nature of the program was the reason that they couldn't handle the cash flows. They're a small narrowly-focused foundation aimed at supporting GNOME development, but for some reason they decided to run an outreach program aimed at women for the entire open source and free software community. They've since admitted they didn't have the resources to handle this and it's torpedoed the stuff they were actually meant to be doing. I'd entirely support them running an outreach program aimed at welcoming women into the GNOME community, though teacup50 might disagree. It's obvious that they should have said no to running one for everyone else though - but who wants to be seen to oppose outreach to women, other than sexists?
  - teacup50 13y ago
    > I'd entirely support them running an outreach program aimed at welcoming women into the GNOME community, though teacup50 might disagree. I'd argue that they should modify the program to target all underrepresented individuals, regardless of gender, but I otherwise agree that a program targeted solely at Gnome is within their purview.
unreal37 13y ago
It looks like the program should pay for itself, except they pay interns before the sponsors pay them. I imagine some sponsors go into arrears and it becomes a collections problem.
lambda 13y ago
> Why was "The Outreach Program for Women" allowed to so significantly impact Gnome's primary mission? One of the Gnome Foundations primary missions is "Fund Receipt and Disbursement": "The foundation will be in charge of disbursing these funds to the benefit of GNOME and, to the extent possible, in accordance with the wishes of the benefactor" (https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Resources/Charter https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Resources/Charter). The funding of the OPW sounds like it's completely appropriate here. Several benefactors and organizations have wanted to fund this activity, and the Gnome Foundation provides the means for them to do so. > Why is the Gnome Foundation is funding and administering this program to begin with? It is a multi-organizational program, between several different projects. It looks like rather than setting up a whole new organization just for this one program, they decided to have one group do the organization and running of the program, while the other groups contribute money to that one. It can be expensive and inefficient to set up too many new organizations; there is a lot of overhead to a new organization. It looks like the problem is that because the OPW funds internships, the Gnome Foundation winds up having to pay them at a steady rate, while it may get payments from the other organizations in lump sums. It sounds like the Gnome Foundation has not been keeping up with invoicing the other organizations, so while they'll be in the black once everyone settles up, right now they've run short of cash on hand due to all of the outstanding balances. > it absolutely should not financially impact Gnome's ability to ship Gnome. Is shipping Gnome the job of the Gnome foundation? As far as I can tell, the foundation is there to organize conferences, run the server infrastructure, and run programs like the OPW. Actual development is mostly done by member companies, like Red Had and SUSE. > Given that the outreach program was started in response to the lack of women candidates for Google's Summer of Code, this program could (and given fiduciary responsibilities, should) have focused solely on non-exclusionary outreach to women Summer of Code candidates. That's not necessarily the best way to address the problem. It may be that certain aspects of how Google's Summer of Code works inherently biased towards men; or at least, people who are already fairly comfortable in the community and with open source software, which given the current substantial gender imbalance in the community, can mean that it's not really a suitable way to encourage more women to get involved. Running the internships separately from the Google Summer of Code is perfectly fine; they just need to do a better job of managing the finances.
- 13y ago
lnanek2 13y ago
Maybe they need to end this internship program if they don't have the money for it? Bizarre.
- kevingadd 13y ago
  The only reason they don't have the money for it is that they failed to invoice the organizations that fund them. That's a temporary issue caused by coordination problems, and ending the internship program won't do anything to solve those problems. It'll just mean that once those invoices get processed, they have a big pile of money sitting around unused (and then people can complain that the Foundation isn't using its funds.)
  - hga 13y ago
    That might not turn out to be the case, because "once those invoices get processed" they have a big pile of accounts receivable, which can be very far from having a "big pile of money". No matter how good the faith is of these other organizations, if you wait long enough, the money that might have once been there might be mostly gone now, or otherwise allocated, and many might only be in a position to pay you over some period of time. Some might be dead by now.
kevingadd 13y ago
When your contributor list is like 98% white males, creating a program to encourage diversity in your contributor base is not 'gender exclusionary' or discriminatory: it's promoting diversity. They're not driving any white males out and they're not forcing anybody to quit, they're just expanding the contributor pool. This is a good thing. If the contributor base was 98% female and you were getting a paid internship, you would not be bitching in a HN post right now. The fact that the budget FAQ largely describes invoicing failures during the operation of an internship program makes it confusing that you spend your whole post railing against an entirely imaginary evil plot where the GNOME Foundation's money is drained away by a supposedly exclusionary program that recruits and pays qualified interns. If you feel so unfairly discriminated against, maybe you should prove your inherent superiority by outperforming all these supposedly unqualified interns as a programmer and contributor. GSoC outreach alone would not necessarily address defects in the administration of GSoC. It is possible Google's administration of that program has systemic issues that result in the exclusion of qualified women (and men, for that matter!) Having multiple groups running internship programs and sponsorships is good because it means they can compete to find the best way to run things. Your closing statement demonstrates your flawed thinking: Of course a push for inclusion is biased, because it focuses on the people that are excluded in order to include them. The program doesn't care about you because you don't need any help from the program! Focusing your efforts on the people that benefit the most is not 'exclusionary', especially if you are attempting to include people who are already excluded.
- teacup50 13y ago
  The Gnome Foundation exists for a very specific reason, documented by their charter. It was not remotely within the purview of the Gnome Foundation's charter to administer the OPW program for external organizations, and it's is unclear whether the Gnome subset of the OPW program itself was within their charter to begin with. This is especially true given their apparent prioritization of OPW payments over all other foundation obligations to the extent that they actually spent down their cash reserves to near zero. > If the contributor base was 98% female and you were getting a paid internship, you would not be bitching in a HN post right now. If the board had so severely damaged their ability to fulfill their chartered objectives through any other out-of-charter overreach, nothing would be different here. > Your closing statement demonstrates your flawed thinking: Of course a push for inclusion is biased, because it focuses on the people that are excluded in order to include them. The program doesn't care about you because you don't need any help from the program! How are you so certain that I, and other individuals, don't need any help from the program purely on the basis of my gender? A number of very bright ("white", male, not that it should matter) South American developers have a lot of trouble participating in open source due to travel laws, visa difficulty, language barriers, and budgetary and technology access limitations. This has very much limited their career and personal growth, is something that warrants active intervention, and is still outside the purview of the Gnome Foundation. There is an almost infinite axis of diversity, none of which are within the purview of the foundation's charter. The mission statement is quite clear.
slowmotiony 13y ago
See, what I fail to see is the point of such programs. We have had two female programmers in our company - they applied, they were good, so we hired them. They didn't need any outreach programs or upper hands, and there was no need for us to waste money on such stuff. We focus on shipping code. Why can that not be the case here?

busterarm 13y ago

I would definitely like to know how OPW caused increased turnover.

fhars 13y ago
Increasing turnover it the whole point of internship programs.
rdl 13y ago
They meant cash turnover, not personnel turnover, I think. As in more money was coming in/going out, which led to cashflow issues.
- busterarm 13y ago
  That makes sense. I misread that badly.
  - rdl 13y ago
    I read it exactly as you did the first time through; it was unclear as written.
htns 13y ago
They are hashing out the details on the email thread [1]. I don't know how correct it is but this post [2] in particular tries to give some numbers: >You mention an estimate of $400k as annual turnover for the OPW, which (according to the most-recently available annual report that I can find, the 2012 one at https://www.gnome.org/foundation/reports/ https://www.gnome.org/foundation/reports/) is very close to the turnover of the Foundation as a whole ($418k income and $409k expenditure). Those 2012 numbers include $106k of Women's Outreach expenses, so the turnover of non-OPW Foundation tasks seemed to be somewhere in the region of $300k. So apparently it caused turnover by being a huge source of growth. [1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnome.foundation.general/9824 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnome.foundation.general/... [2] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnome.foundation.general/9838 http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnome.foundation.general...
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

fhars 13y ago

If you had actually read the first few paragraphs of the first document you linked you would have noticed that the cause was bad management of cash flows for a successful program that has nothing to do with the nature of the program. So trying to use it as an argument to bolster your sexist world view is misguided.

makomk 13y ago
From what I can tell, the nature of the program was the reason that they couldn't handle the cash flows. They're a small narrowly-focused foundation aimed at supporting GNOME development, but for some reason they decided to run an outreach program aimed at women for the entire open source and free software community. They've since admitted they didn't have the resources to handle this and it's torpedoed the stuff they were actually meant to be doing. I'd entirely support them running an outreach program aimed at welcoming women into the GNOME community, though teacup50 might disagree. It's obvious that they should have said no to running one for everyone else though - but who wants to be seen to oppose outreach to women, other than sexists?
- teacup50 13y ago
  > I'd entirely support them running an outreach program aimed at welcoming women into the GNOME community, though teacup50 might disagree. I'd argue that they should modify the program to target all underrepresented individuals, regardless of gender, but I otherwise agree that a program targeted solely at Gnome is within their purview.

unreal37 13y ago

It looks like the program should pay for itself, except they pay interns before the sponsors pay them. I imagine some sponsors go into arrears and it becomes a collections problem.

lambda 13y ago

> Why was "The Outreach Program for Women" allowed to so significantly impact Gnome's primary mission? One of the Gnome Foundations primary missions is "Fund Receipt and Disbursement": "The foundation will be in charge of disbursing these funds to the benefit of GNOME and, to the extent possible, in accordance with the wishes of the benefactor" (https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Resources/Charter https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Resources/Charter). The funding of the OPW sounds like it's completely appropriate here. Several benefactors and organizations have wanted to fund this activity, and the Gnome Foundation provides the means for them to do so. > Why is the Gnome Foundation is funding and administering this program to begin with? It is a multi-organizational program, between several different projects. It looks like rather than setting up a whole new organization just for this one program, they decided to have one group do the organization and running of the program, while the other groups contribute money to that one. It can be expensive and inefficient to set up too many new organizations; there is a lot of overhead to a new organization. It looks like the problem is that because the OPW funds internships, the Gnome Foundation winds up having to pay them at a steady rate, while it may get payments from the other organizations in lump sums. It sounds like the Gnome Foundation has not been keeping up with invoicing the other organizations, so while they'll be in the black once everyone settles up, right now they've run short of cash on hand due to all of the outstanding balances. > it absolutely should not financially impact Gnome's ability to ship Gnome. Is shipping Gnome the job of the Gnome foundation? As far as I can tell, the foundation is there to organize conferences, run the server infrastructure, and run programs like the OPW. Actual development is mostly done by member companies, like Red Had and SUSE. > Given that the outreach program was started in response to the lack of women candidates for Google's Summer of Code, this program could (and given fiduciary responsibilities, should) have focused solely on non-exclusionary outreach to women Summer of Code candidates. That's not necessarily the best way to address the problem. It may be that certain aspects of how Google's Summer of Code works inherently biased towards men; or at least, people who are already fairly comfortable in the community and with open source software, which given the current substantial gender imbalance in the community, can mean that it's not really a suitable way to encourage more women to get involved. Running the internships separately from the Google Summer of Code is perfectly fine; they just need to do a better job of managing the finances.

13y ago

lnanek2 13y ago

Maybe they need to end this internship program if they don't have the money for it? Bizarre.

kevingadd 13y ago
The only reason they don't have the money for it is that they failed to invoice the organizations that fund them. That's a temporary issue caused by coordination problems, and ending the internship program won't do anything to solve those problems. It'll just mean that once those invoices get processed, they have a big pile of money sitting around unused (and then people can complain that the Foundation isn't using its funds.)
- hga 13y ago
  That might not turn out to be the case, because "once those invoices get processed" they have a big pile of accounts receivable, which can be very far from having a "big pile of money". No matter how good the faith is of these other organizations, if you wait long enough, the money that might have once been there might be mostly gone now, or otherwise allocated, and many might only be in a position to pay you over some period of time. Some might be dead by now.

kevingadd 13y ago

When your contributor list is like 98% white males, creating a program to encourage diversity in your contributor base is not 'gender exclusionary' or discriminatory: it's promoting diversity. They're not driving any white males out and they're not forcing anybody to quit, they're just expanding the contributor pool. This is a good thing. If the contributor base was 98% female and you were getting a paid internship, you would not be bitching in a HN post right now. The fact that the budget FAQ largely describes invoicing failures during the operation of an internship program makes it confusing that you spend your whole post railing against an entirely imaginary evil plot where the GNOME Foundation's money is drained away by a supposedly exclusionary program that recruits and pays qualified interns. If you feel so unfairly discriminated against, maybe you should prove your inherent superiority by outperforming all these supposedly unqualified interns as a programmer and contributor. GSoC outreach alone would not necessarily address defects in the administration of GSoC. It is possible Google's administration of that program has systemic issues that result in the exclusion of qualified women (and men, for that matter!) Having multiple groups running internship programs and sponsorships is good because it means they can compete to find the best way to run things. Your closing statement demonstrates your flawed thinking: Of course a push for inclusion is biased, because it focuses on the people that are excluded in order to include them. The program doesn't care about you because you don't need any help from the program! Focusing your efforts on the people that benefit the most is not 'exclusionary', especially if you are attempting to include people who are already excluded.

teacup50 13y ago
The Gnome Foundation exists for a very specific reason, documented by their charter. It was not remotely within the purview of the Gnome Foundation's charter to administer the OPW program for external organizations, and it's is unclear whether the Gnome subset of the OPW program itself was within their charter to begin with. This is especially true given their apparent prioritization of OPW payments over all other foundation obligations to the extent that they actually spent down their cash reserves to near zero. > If the contributor base was 98% female and you were getting a paid internship, you would not be bitching in a HN post right now. If the board had so severely damaged their ability to fulfill their chartered objectives through any other out-of-charter overreach, nothing would be different here. > Your closing statement demonstrates your flawed thinking: Of course a push for inclusion is biased, because it focuses on the people that are excluded in order to include them. The program doesn't care about you because you don't need any help from the program! How are you so certain that I, and other individuals, don't need any help from the program purely on the basis of my gender? A number of very bright ("white", male, not that it should matter) South American developers have a lot of trouble participating in open source due to travel laws, visa difficulty, language barriers, and budgetary and technology access limitations. This has very much limited their career and personal growth, is something that warrants active intervention, and is still outside the purview of the Gnome Foundation. There is an almost infinite axis of diversity, none of which are within the purview of the foundation's charter. The mission statement is quite clear.

slowmotiony 13y ago

See, what I fail to see is the point of such programs. We have had two female programmers in our company - they applied, they were good, so we hired them. They didn't need any outreach programs or upper hands, and there was no need for us to waste money on such stuff. We focus on shipping code. Why can that not be the case here?