It was started by a Mexican guy (Miguel de Icaza) who eventually went to work for Microsoft, oops.
this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2026
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Miguel also developed Xamarin and Mono (his company was acquired by Microsoft).
RMS labeled him as "Traitor to the Free Software Community" which has to be some kind of badge of honor, lol
He's also an egotistical dick who will do anything to try and "prove" he's right. And the initial reason I personally stopped using gnome.
A dime a dozen in FOSS it seems.
Eh, I'd say thats mostly just the ones you hear about. There are some amazing, humble, brilliant folks in FOSS that no one notices because they just don't generate the kind of drama that gets attention.
My comment is mostly a reflection of people who are not project maintainers. FOSS users are known to be insufferable bunch. We tend to want to crucify people who are trying something different (just see the comments in this thread, for example). The ”community” is toxic, as the kids say.
Wow someone in charge of a fairly big project who is a dick. Stop the presses.
Eh, there are different kinds.
Miguel fit into the "pretty much just a dick" territory. Won't admit to mistakes or underlying issues, just talks about himself and how great he is to deflect criticism.
Federico is pretty awesome though.
Edit: If you weren't aware, Miguel also declared Linux was dead and moved to MacOS.
He's been pretty much a jackass for decades, his technical contributions and capability dont really change that.
why does it seem like it's a requirement for such projects?!
and Federico Mena, both have cool contributions to libre software.
I assume Microsoft hired that guy, because they started to be more towards Open Source and Linux.
In February 2016, Xamarin announced being acquired by Microsoft.[14] One month later at the Microsoft Build conference, it was announced that the Mono Project would be relicensed to MIT, Visual Studio would include Xamarin (even the free versions) without restrictions, and Xamarin SDKs would be opensourced.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Icaza#GNOME,_Ximian,_Xamarin_and_Mono
Fuck, now I can't hate on GNOME anymore.
the gnome foundation, however, is a u.s. organization, based in california.
Gnome is highly international, and has been for most of its existence.
True, it became an international citizen like all libre software. Im just proud that it was born in Mexico, in Latin America not much public recognition is had for local software. There's a perception that most services are from abroad. Thats why i phrased the original post title like that (cross posted). More like a "if it had a nationality, it would be mexican" kinda thing.
Icaza is a MS drone. That may explain why Gnome Project is so stubborn.
Miguel is out of GNOME for many years.
The Gnomisms remain.
They put the foot down.
Bonjour hermano