German STF Foundation's Investment and GNOME Project's Issues

TapTechNews May 27th news, previously the German SovereignTechFund (STF) foundation announced an investment of 205,000 euros (TapTechNews note: currently about 1.593 million Chinese yuan) in projects such as PHP and GNOME to improve the long-term sustainability and security of the relevant ecosystem.

However, according to the GNOME official blog, recently there have been some major issues between the German STF foundation and the GNOME project. The official did not explain what the specific problem is, but claimed that the relevant problem will make the future of the GNOME project full of uncertainties and is likely to affect the subsequent development of the project:

As part of the GNOME STF initiative, many of our community members are engaged in projects related to the infrastructure.

But now we are currently facing a major problem from the GNOME foundation side. We hope it can be solved before affecting the coordination of the STF project, and if it cannot be solved, the future of some parts of this project will be full of uncertainties.

Also referring to TapTechNews' previous report, the annual report of GNOME shows that the foundation had a deficit of 119,900 US dollars (currently about 866,000 Chinese yuan) in 2023, and the chairman of GNOME foundation, Robert McQueen, posted that the foundation has been in a deficit state for more than 3 years (annual expenditure is higher than annual fundraising), and mainly operates relying on the reserve funds raised 4-5 years ago. In order to ensure the sustainable development of GNOME, the foundation will strengthen the fundraising efforts.