GNOME Foundations's Five Year Plan - Potential Ways to Integrate with Fedora Strategy 2028?

Project Discussion
, , , ,
1

The GNOME Foundation has just released a draft for their 5 Year Plan for the project , focusing on expanding to a more diverse board and community, brainstorming ways to reach out to new users and developers through programs and partnerships, better integrate their technologies to create a better environment, among others.

Reading it the first thing that came to mind is Fedora Strategy 2028, our own 5 year plan for the project. Considering that many of the points mentioned in GNOME’s align with our goals, and considering some of the partnerships we already have with hardware companies, I believe it’d be nice to start a discussion on where we could step up to contribute and where they could help with our own plans, specially considering that GNOME is the desktop environment of our main edition.

Here’s a couple of key points that I believe we could help with:

Activate more diverse, under-served, female, transgender, and younger users and creators worldwide through direct outreach, relevant programs, and new commercial and nonprofit partnerships.

Our DEI team could get in touch to help on that front.

Create GNOME Pathways Initiative (“Pathways”), an education program that recruits, mentors, educates, involves, and elevates as leaders new creators from Africa, Latin America, Asia, and other regions of world, amplifying the past work of our Engagement Committee and mentoring efforts (Highly fundable).

We already have some contributors that were/are active parts of Outreachy that could help them create and model what this initiative could be.

[…] users can buy GNOME approved device

Our partnership with Slimbook already results in donations towards the Foundation, maybe we (and I include myself on the Marketing Team) could help them get in touch with them (and maybe Lenovo) to find ways to make that move forward?

Quantify our impact in numbers through charts and graphs and a portfolio of specific things we have created, using stories and numbers.

This is more on their side, but I believe we could have some data on Fedora Workstation and Silverblue that could help them on that front.

3 Likes
2

There is not a single bad idea in this thread. The GNOME Foundation strategy is exciting and I also see some natural tie-ins to work underway. You called them all out.

My only specific question is, which one of these would be consider as most important to focus on right now? We know there is a lot of things happening already and we cannot do everything. But we could probably pick one area of the GNOME strategy that we want to support as a collaboration point.

We also want to have that conversation with GNOME people… but before we get their feedback, we should know what we would like to prioritize on our end of the bargain too.

On this front, we already are. @jonatoni and I participate in the GNOME DEI Team meetings and hang out in the Matrix room for the GNOME DEI Team. Together, we contributed our knowledge and experience to help the team draft their team charter, with a vision and mission statement. For reference, here are the five areas that the GNOME DEI Team is hoping to focus on this year:

  1. Events: Organizing diverse and inclusive events such as D&I hackfests, Diversity Birds of Feathers, meetings within and outside the community. Pathways integrates and builds upon multiple activities to create a more powerful, logical, fundable, and impactful initiative. In order to help make GNOME events more inclusive and diverse, we’ve started a wiki page to collect ideas and checklists for event organizers. Check it out and help us continue to build this resource: How to Host Inclusive Events.

  2. Mentored Projects: Make sure to support Outreachy and Google Summer of Code initiatives. Recruiting mentors and leaders from Africa, Latin America, Asia, Europe, North America, and other key regions to amplify our work in GNOME.

  3. Supporting programs and initiatives dedicated to fostering diversity and inclusion in Free and Open Source Software communities, such as workshops held at GUADEC/GNOME.Asia and also participating in other initiatives or events outside our community.

  4. Onboarding: Help newcomers and women in tech with their open-source journey. We want to make sure that the organization’s diversity, equity, and inclusion work constantly activate more diverse, underserved, female, LGBTQ+, and younger users and creators worldwide in our organization

  5. Outreach: Social media campaigns, contributor highlights, etc. GNOME wants to ensure that high-level organizational messages are defined and communicated consistently. We would also like to ensure that we have a clear and transparent communication plan to reach potential partners, funders, press, donors, corporate sponsors, volunteers, potential board and advisors, and the general public.

This feels like an easy and natural integration point. I would love to help GNOME be a part of the Fedora Ready initiative. With our interns coming on board soon, this is something @joseph and I hope to see through over the summer.

An easy tie-in with the Community Operations Initiative and trying to improve the method of how we tell stories from the data we already have.

3 Likes
3

Since the DEI collaboration is already pretty solid, I’d say the hardware side. We already have quite a successful partnership with 2 hardware companies and a developing one with Framework, we could be a good way to bridge both together and the GNOME Foundation could provide some insight on what we’d need for the Fedora Ready brand (or potentially a bigger brand we could be directly involved with, along with them, maybe?).

2 Likes
4

Something to watch for sure, though we want to be sensitive to the differences between what we’re trying to do and what their expectations are. They may be trying to develop a certification program while we are not. However, doesn’t hurt to put our vendor friends in touch with GNOME if they’re interested. More to think about for sure.

2 Likes