How GNOME and KDE Spend Their Money 167
bluescarni writes 'A side-by-side analysis of GNOME's and KDE's quarterly reports sheds some light (and dispels some myths) on the nature and the quantity of the funds of the two projects.'
"If I do not want others to quote me, I do not speak." -- Phil Wayne
Since it is already down... (Score:5, Informative)
How GNOME and KDE spend their money
Sep 16, 2009 10:20pm GMT
Bruce Byfield
Quarterly reports are the stuff of business. In most people's minds, they are as far from the spirit of free and open source software (FOSS) as anyone can imagine. All the same, as non-profit organizations, many FOSS projects issue them. And while your first reaction may be to avoid quarterly reports, they can give some insights into projects, especially if you read between the lines.
For instance, if you have been assuming, as I have, that GNOME has more corporate support than KDE, and a larger budget, a look at the latest report for GNOME [gnome.org] and KDE [linux-magazine.com] may surprise you. Together, the two reports give an entirely different impression than you might assume.
Neither quarterly report has much in common with the glossy publications offered by multi-national publications. Both are PDF files with undistinguished layouts and a minimum of graphics. Even head shots of people mentioned or reporting are absent. Compared to corporate reports, those of both GNOME and KDE are practical, unadorned publications.
Of the two, GNOME's (its first, covering June, July, and August 2009) comes closest to the spirit of a corporate report. It includes not only the obligatory message from GNOME's executive directory, but also reports from the Release, Bugsquad, Marketing, Web, Usability, Accessibility, Documentation, Art and Localizations Teams. Although some of these reports were outdated by the time the report was released, their overall impression is of a multi-tiered multi-national's executives reporting in. In general, the report fits in well with GNOME's traditional tendency to favor the corporate side and with its recent interest in marketing. Like most quarterly reports, it is as much a public relations document as an effort to provide concrete information (although it does both). The one non-corporate note is at the beginning, when executive director Stormy Peters asks readers, "please let us know if you find it useful!"
In comparison, KDE's report for March through June 2009 is less than one quarter the size of GNOME's. Although it includes the usual redundant introduction -- this time by Aaron Seigo, it contains far fewer individual summaries from GNOME's report. These differences may reflect the greater experience that KDE e.V. -- the German non-profit that manages KDE -- has with the whole idea of reports, and has the advantage that it is more likely to be read completely. At the same time, because it is so short, the KDE report seems less corporate, an impression that is fitting for the project's more community-based orientation.
Beyond these general impressions, what is most interesting is the financial accounting in the reports. The two reports are not strictly comparable, given that many FOSS activities occur in the northern hemisphere's summer rather than spring. Nor is it always obvious in either report what falls under each line item. Still, some differences emerge.
For instance, GNOME lists an income of just over $102,000 for the quarter covered by its report. This income includes $65,000 from the Desktop Summit, $20,000 from "advisory board fees" (which I interpret mainly as donations from corporate sponsors), and $12,400 collected by the Friends of GNOME [linux-magazine.com], a promotional and fund-raising project.
Omitting the Desktop Summit as a one-time source of income, these figures mean that GNOME has traditionally relied on corporate supporters. Corporate supporters continue to provide the bulk of GNOME's income, but the total from Friends of GNOME suggests that GNOME may be switching to a more community-based source of income. However, given that GNOME reported an approximate income of $54,000 per quarter in 2008 (ht
Re:Since it is already down... (Score:2, Informative)
Or you can use the Coral Content Network [coralcdn.org]:
http://www.linux-magazine.com.nyud.net/Online/Blogs/Off-the-Beat-Bruce-Byfield-s-Blog/How-GNOME-and-KDE-spend-their-money
Re:Well, kind of obvious... (Score:5, Informative)
Last time I looked RHEL shipped with GNOME as the default. A quick search through redhat.com did nothing to disabuse me of that notion.
direct link to reports (Score:5, Informative)
If anyone is actually interested:
http://ev.kde.org/reports/ev-quarterly-2009Q1.pdf [kde.org]
http://foundation.gnome.org/reports/gnome-report-2009-Q2.pdf [gnome.org]
Re:Well, kind of obvious... (Score:2, Informative)
No "large enterprise distro" currently ships with KDE as the main DE. SUSE is the only one that has decided to ship KDE by default, and that too very recently.
Mandriva has long shipped with KDE as the preferred desktop and offer a good implementation of it, but they also offer a choice of several desktops.
Re:Well, kind of obvious... (Score:3, Informative)
That's only OpenSuSE. SLES defaults to Gnome these days. And the original comment was about "large enterprise distros", so you're still correct.
Re:Nitpick (Score:3, Informative)
He's probably thinking of corporate annual reports. The vast majority of the Fortune 1000 have really glitzed up their regulatory reporting over the past couple of decades. Random examples:
Ford Motor Company [ford.com]
Bank of America [corporate-ir.net]
Pepsi Corporation [pepsico.com]
Re:already slashdotted (Score:1, Informative)
>> A bird, a sheep and an australian sex-toy?
>Isn't the last item in your list just a synonym for sheep?
No, you'd be thinking of a *New Zealander* sex toy.