Another week, another GNOME Foundation update! This week was slightly quieter than the last two, but there’s still plenty going on. Here are some of the highlights.

GNOME 49

GNOME 49 was released this week ! Huge congratulations to the GNOME community. It’s a really strong release and the release notes are a testament to everyone’s hard work .

It’s notable that some of the new features in this release have been in the works for much longer than 6 months – in some cases, probably years. This speaks to an amazing level of dedication by the contributors involved.

Given that this is a GNOME Foundation update, I am obliged to mention the role our organisation played in the release. By providing the project’s development infrastructure, organising events where planning discussions happen, and providing other general support to the project, we played a significant role in the making of GNOME 49.

Our goal is to increase the amount of support we provide for GNOME development, but we can only do that with the support of donors. So, if you want to help GNOME, donate today .

Fundraising committee

Maria Majadas, who is our current board chair, has organised the first meeting of the new fundraising committee this week. I’m hugely grateful to Maria for taking on this important task, and it’s exciting to see our community fundraising effort starting to take shape. Hopefully there will be more details to share once the committee has had its first meeting.

Lawyering

We have a few legal questions that we’re looking to get answers to right now, around requirements for our governance arrangements. That led me to have conversations with a few lawyers this week.

The GNOME Foundation has the good fortune of being able to tap into a network of legal advisors who are also open source experts, and who are very supportive of our organisation. I find it very humbling that we have this support, and I think we can be very grateful to have friends in the legal space.

Matrix hosting

Historically, Element Matrix Services (EMS) has generously hosted GNOME’s Matrix homeserver. However, this week Bart has started the process of moving our Matrix service to our own infrastructure. This will offer a few advantages in the future, such as integration with our SSO. Stay tuned for updates as the migration rolls out.

Bookkeeper meeting

We had our monthly meeting with our bookkeeper this week, which was great as usual. We love our bookkeeper! She helps us to keep our accounts in order, address issues as they come up, and makes sure that we are ready for our annual tax filings. Accounting is a big part of what the GNOME Foundation does, and our books are in great shape thanks to this work.

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Thanks for reading! See you next week.