Re: The Goal of Gnome

Allow me to use an example to show you how I arrived at these questions and
how I think this differs from GNU.  Going to
https://www.gnu.org/home.en.html tells me in the first line what GNU is
trying to accomplish: "GNU is an operating system that is free software
<https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html>—that is, it respects users'
freedom. The development of GNU made it possible to use a computer without
software that would trample your freedom."  As a random person, I can
understand what they are trying to do: build the components required for an
operating system.

However, when we go to https://www.gnome.org/foundation/ we see: "The GNOME
Foundation is a non-profit organization 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."  So the GNOME Foundation furthers the GNOME Project.  But nothing I
can find on the website mentions what the GNOME Project is about.

I can find the GNOME Project on wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_GNOME_Project which lists the project's
goals.  I will copy them here:

The project focuses on:

   - Independence – the governing board is democratically elected and
   technical decisions are made by the engineers doing the work.
   - Freedom – development infrastructure and communication channels are
   public, the code can be freely downloaded, modified and shared and all
   contributors have the same rights.
   - Connectedness – work spans the entire Free software stack.
   - People – emphasis on accessibility
   <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_accessibility> and
   internationalization
   <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalization_and_localization>.
GNOME
   is available in more than 40 languages (at least 80 percent of strings
   translated)[11]
   <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_GNOME_Project#cite_note-gnome312releasenotes-11>
   and is being translated to 190 languages.

But this still does not give a definitive, concrete view of the actual
programs under the GNOME umbrella.  Why does GNOME have gtk+ and desktop UI
programs but also a calculator and cookbook?  Is a goal of GNOME to support
all non-critical software of a computer (that is, pieces GNU is not
supporting)?  Can a math library be apart of GNOME?  Video games?  Is there
anything keeping LibreOffice or Octave from becoming a part of GNOME?

I don't mean for all those to be answered, but meant to be guide for
discussion and thought.

Thanks!
-Josh

On Thu, Feb 9, 2017 at 5:26 PM, Richard Stallman <[email protected]> wrote:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
> Since a similar question arises for the GNU system as a whole, our
> experience
> might be pertinent to discuss here.
>
> --
> Dr Richard Stallman
> President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
> Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
> Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.
>
>

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