According to German IT news site Heise, the financial cushion of the Gnome Foundation -non-profit organisation that furthers the goals of the GNOME Project, helping it to create a free software computing platform for the general public that is designed to be elegant, efficient, and easy to use – has declined so sharply that the organisation has frozen part of its expenditure. The success of the Gnome Outreach Program for Women (OPW) is said to be partly to blame for this situation (posts passim).
The situation was explained in an email to Foundation members over the weekend.
Dear Foundation members,
Due to a shortfall in the budget, the Foundation board voted on 2014-04-08 to freeze all expenditure which is not essential to the running of the Foundation. This freeze affects sponsorship expenses
which are unpaid at this time, but it does not affect the funds which we hold for other organisations.By keeping our expenditures to a minimum while we regain some delayed revenue, we aim to have things back to normal within a few months. All Foundation members who expect to receive reimbursements within the next three months have already been informed of the issue and most have responded positively. The board will prioritise these pending reimbursements over other expenses.
The issue has been caused by a number of factors. These include increased administrative overheads in the last few years due to the increased turnover which has been caused by to the Outreach Program
for Women (OPW), and the associated payments going out while the associated income has been slow to come in.The board expects that you may have some questions or would like to know more details about the problem, please read https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/CurrentBudgetFAQ and contact the board at board-list gnome org if you have any further questions.