Notices by Cassidy James :ea: :gg: :fh: (cassidy@mastodon.blaede.family)

The latest @gnome Foundation Board of Directors election has officially been announced, so I’ll go ahead and announce: I’m running! :)

https://cassidyjames.com/blog/elect-gnome-foundation-board-directors-2025/

If you contribute to GNOME, go make sure you’re a Foundation member so you can vote in this upcoming election. :gnome:

#GNOME #GNOMEFoundation #OpenSource #FOSS #FLOSS #governance

No, I will not come onto your podcast to “address” your wild accusations against me or my friends, especially if you have a history of turning everything into a negative hit piece. It also doesn’t help if you repeatedly deadname and misgender people, have a history of directing hate towards open source projects, and make a living out of stoking fake controversies.

Please join me in a very warm welcome to the new @gnome Foundation Executive Director, @deobald!

https://blogs.gnome.org/steven/2025/05/06/introducing-myself/

I’m excited to work with Steven and see him help steer the GNOME Foundation going forward. He’s a great guy and I’m already excited by his framing and deep understanding of what GNOME is—and needs to be.

#GNOME #Linux #OpenSource #FOSS #FLOSS

As someone drowning in Google Drive hell, I’m constantly fighting against my urge to say planning, tracking, and documenting *everything* at an org should happen on a git forge—but then elementary, Hack Club, GNOME, and probably others come along and do it effectively. So… maybe?

The problem is that telling non-nerds to use something like Markdown for writing docs—even when using something like a GitLab or GitHub web UI—is a huge barrier. And real-time collaborative editing has big advantages.

I guess the GNOME way at least could be considered using something real-time/collaborative like HedgeDoc for planning/note-taking, and then publishing the notes (and/or filing the relevant issues) for posterity. That’s not a terrible approach, I suppose.

Still doesn’t completely solve the “make regular humans use a git forge” problem, though.

I’m also tired of these “everything apps” that all individually want to do *all the things*, like note-taking, task tracking, calendars, documentation, publishing websites… because inevitably you end up using FIVE DIFFERENT everything apps. And now you can’t find where that one conversation happened.

No, not everything needs its own comment thread! Not everything needs to be able to “assign” things! Not everything needs real-time rich collaborative text editing! Stop it!

I’m continuing to accidentally become a Godot to Flathub pipeline expert, stumbling through GitHub Actions on the way. Chaining all of this stuff together is actually pretty fun and powerful. :D

If you have a free¹ Godot game you want help getting onto the biggest Linux app store, let me know! I wrote a blog post² but could probably update it with what else I’ve learned.

¹Free because Flathub doesn’t support payments… yet

²https://cassidyjames.com/blog/publish-godot-engine-game-flathub-flatpak/

#GodotEngine #Flatpak #Flathub #LinuxGaming

If you contribute in some way to GNOME, are you already a GNOME Foundation member? If not, you should apply ASAP: https://foundation.gnome.org/membership/

Once you do (or if you’re already a member), don’t forget to VOTE in the upcoming Foundation elections!

The GNOME Foundation Board of Directors is elected by Foundation members. If you want to influence how the Foundation is run, one of the most effective things you can do is to become a member and vote.

#GNOME #Linux #OpenSource #FOSS #FLOSS

@killyourfm @avojak @micahilbery @ryanleesipes

@avojak @killyourfm @micahilbery @ryanleesipes

@ryanleesipes @micahilbery @killyourfm

@mattdm ha, I didn't know Fedora did this! It's not an uncommon pattern, but I think it could be tweaked to be just as useful to maintainers while being more welcoming to issue reporters.

A simple solution could be to label *untriaged* issues as stale (or better: “Needs Attention”) after some time of inactivity with a gentler comment about, “Sorry we haven't been able to triage this. If you know it’s still an issue in the latest release, feel free to comment to help us triage it.”

I get that issue trackers are hard, but I feel like stale bots that *close issues* come off as so hostile. I shouldn't have to come back to the issue tracker every month to confirm, “Yes, this is still an issue!” to prevent the issue from getting closed.

Tag an issue as “stale” for easier triage—that’s fine! But “oops you aren’t engaged enough, sorry, your issue doesn’t exist anymore” feels like a bit of a slap in the face. Especially if it gets closed as “not planned.”

I’m honored to have been appointed to the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors! This is a midterm appointment due to a vacancy; I had expressed interest in running for the board, and was graciously offered the appointment for the remainder of this term.

I’m thrilled to roll up my sleeves and get to work as a director to help operate GNOME Foundation day to day, and I look forward to the opportunity to earn Foundation members' votes when the regular term elections come up.

Time to get to work. 💪

@aardrian @fedijedi THANK YOU. I always find “a11y” shorthand ironic for accessibility. It doesn’t save *that much* time or space, it only introduces difficulty for people not in the “in group.” It is its very self an accessibility issue!

@Conan_Kudo I just don’t see where in the post I suggest we gut the essence of what GNOME is, that we give up on personality, etc. That seems like a huge stretch from what I actually wrote, which is why I questioned if you’d read it. I’m explicitly saying we should retain personality, and I think I lay out a fairly natural evolution of *what the community has already been doing* design-wise.

@Conan_Kudo did you read the blog post?

@Conan_Kudo the foot is quirky—and actively hard to work with. Rather than use a logo at all, we've repeatedly seen it just completely dropped from spaces _anyway_.

Instead, I'm proposing we come up with something better, even if whimsical and quirky, but that actually works in the contexts we need to use it.

I don’t think any of the modern GNOME design work has been “giving up the ‘personality’ of projects and communities.” In fact, quite the opposite as I feel like GNOME’s is strongest now.

Friday night? Perfect time to drop a blog post that might sound like clickbait, but that I genuinely hope can help forge a path forward while making everyone happy—or at least pissing everyone off equally (sometimes the best you can ask for!)

https://cassidyjames.com/blog/gnome-foot-logo-rebrand/

#GNOME #OpenSource #Linux #GNOMEdesign

@jorge @downey not explicitly, but a growing number of GNOME Foundation members and volunteers have been hoping we could improve the brand. The foot has a legacy but also has practical issues.

Nobody has explicitly approved getting rid of it, but also the board approved the new website design afaik; they could have said, “Looks great, but it needs the foot,” but as far as I’m aware, that didn’t happen.