2026 Board Candidate: Robert McQueen

Hi Rob!

As one of the people who got hit by the whole fuckup that was the ban of Sonny, I (together with the old team of STF contractors) was promised a public, written apology by you personally, going into detail on what went wrong and why. So far I haven’t seen that from you.

Repeatedly promising something and then not delivering burns through community trust.

Arguably this missing apology never was and still isn’t the most pressing issue the foundation has to solve, but to me it is something very personal until today.

Lots of trust has been burned through over the years, and given how few of your other promises have been delivered under your long-running leadership, I’m not sure I’m comfortable with you running things on the board one more time.

Hi Rob,

You mention fundraising as part of your goals, but it was under your stewardship of the Board that the foundation went almost bankrupt. What happened and what assurances are there that it won’t happen again?

You also mention the Executive Committee, but it was also under your watch that the Foundation hired a very, let’s say, unorthodox, pick for the Executive Directory position. Holly would later on leave before her term was concluded, in what only looks like a ragequit, and with many people blaming everything on her afterwards and avoiding taking any responsibility.

It was also you that personally unbanned Sonny, 2 weeks after his account was suspended by the Code of Conduct Committee, without notifying them at all. There were plenty of people that were interacting with Sonny regularly, mainly involving the STF grant, and none of them or the rest of the community was notified about what was happening and if it was okay to be interacting with him. Additionally he was even allowed to handle the STF invoices from the contractors for weeks, all while the CoCC thought he was banned.

This escalated further when the CoCC went looking for a loophole in order to bypass you, overriding their decision. This entire saga undermined a lot of credibility and trust the community had towards both the Board, the CoCC, and the entire process and has left us with a lot of unanswered question to this day. If the issue at hand was this severe that Sonny needed to be perma banned from community, why did you thought it was fine to unban him. If it was resolved and it was fine to interact with him and have him engaged in the community, why did the CoCC went rogue and banned him again, despite your decision?

Why did these events took place, what made you personally unban him, why didn’t you notify the CoCC committee and the rest of the community, what has happened since to address these issues?

In all these years since, to my knowledge, there hasn’t been any public acknowledgment of the responsibility of these issues and their causes.

Why should people trust you again and elect you to the board this time?

Hi Jonas,

Thanks for your direct and honest response. You are right: I did promise an apology. I committed to the board that I’d do that, and in a meeting with yourself and other impacted individuals. I wrote the apology, and we had it reviewed by the Foundation’s lawyer.

After this legal review, it came back as somewhat more generic than the words I originally wrote. I did more work on the announcement, but there wasn’t a clear consensus on the board that posting it would be a good idea, because it might just cause as many questions as it answered, and re-open debate and speculation within the community (and further afield).

One key problem is this “detailed” word. The catch 22 for the Foundation is essentially: is there enough detail I can share, such that someone such as yourself would read and feel that they had clear information to answer their questions (rather than trigger more), without making a statement which exposes the Foundation to liability? Liability can arise from different directions, such as legal duties as an employer to its (then) employees, or to someone involved who feels a statement is inaccurate or defamatory. It’s hard, and the safer thing for a lawyer to recommend is to say less, and as a director you are expected to avoid doing something that exposes the Foundation to financial and legal liability. Unfortunately, there is not a direct legal liability cost to appearing vague and evasive to the community - it costs in much more visceral ways.

With that limitation in mind, I can share a draft of what I wrote last year:

As President of the GNOME Foundation Board, during both the current and previous terms, I want to address the impact of these events on our community. I deeply regret how this situation has personally affected so many members of our community - particularly those who were working directly with Sonny on the STF project, the organizers of the GUADEC satellite event in Berlin, and mentors and mentees on our Summer of Code projects. While our external review confirmed that Code of Conduct procedures and Foundation bylaws were followed correctly and in good faith, there were significant failures in the Foundation’s communication and planning at the time that caused unnecessary disruption.

As the President at the time, I hold a significant personal responsibility for these shortcomings. Both our Code of Conduct Committee and the independent review highlighted that issues should have been escalated much sooner by the Executive Committee, which might have allowed for earlier interventions.

From the bottom of my heart, I apologize to everyone affected by how we handled this situation. The external review identified areas where we need to improve, and with particular thanks to Allan Day and those who have stayed engaged in dialog with the Foundation about their concerns, we’re committed to implementing these recommendations. This includes growing the community representation on our Code of Conduct Committee, enhancing our transparency, adding an escalation process to the Code of Conduct, and improving our crisis management procedures, to avoid this kind of situation arising again.

We will do better in future.

Kind Regards,

Robert McQueen
(then) President, GNOME Foundation

From me, these words are true and sincere, but for you, I can also understand why they might not seem that way, or answer the questions you have. In any case, I thank you for your consideration and everything you do for GNOME.

Many Thanks,
Rob

Wait a moment, did that actually happened? I did not remembered this part. @ramcq can you confirm this happened? What is your explanation? This is shocking to hear.

Hi Jordan,

Thanks for your questions - I’m able to give much more detailed responses to specific concerns. As there are a number of topics covered, I will address each in turn as best I can.

The Foundation did not go almost bankrupt. The reserves policy and the annual budgeting process did what they were designed to do, and the Foundation met every financial obligation at all times. It wasn’t a comfortable ride, we had a deficit year that drew down reserves more than intended, but we had them and they worked.

During the financial year when Holly was ED, the board approved an ambitious fundraising budget. In practice that fundraising didn’t materialise, for a mix of reasons, leading to a deficit year which reduced the reserves. In the following years, I supported two EDs (strictly three, counting Allan as acting ED) and two treasurers in preparing two break-even budgets which right-sized the expenditure to the revenue, with all of the tough decisions that entailed for the board. Grant and fiscal-sponsorship income helped rebuild the reserves.

I supported Allan in discussions with Endless to secure an unrestricted grant in December 2024, which allowed the board to seek a new Executive Director who - knowing that there were very limited funds to support their salary beyond 12 months - would have fundraising as their top priority.

Being President doesn’t put me in charge of deciding the ED. The board created a hiring committee to run the search, that committee recommended Holly, the board considered her candidacy and authorised me to make an offer.

I was on the hiring committee. I can’t speak to the specific motivations of the other directors who cast their votes, but from my perspective, at a time when our need is “holy crap, we need to do a better job telling our story to the outside world, and raise funds ASAP, but we’re a bunch of FOSS hackers and don’t know a lot about nonprofit fundraising”, a storyteller / film maker and communicator who has turned around a number of nonprofits and written a literal book on fundraising, seemed like a reasonable choice.

I certainly don’t blame Holly for “everything” - I think she ended up in a difficult situation handling a complicated mixture of factors, and she did what she could. Where I do carry responsibility, and the lesson I take forward, is this: a legal process can resolve a conflict of interest on paper (a director who receives money recuses themselves from the decision), but that recusal is just for one meeting and doesn’t resolve the real-world power dynamics. Everyone involved was trying to make it work, but I was naive about the challenges of that structure, the extra caution that should have been taken, and how it played out.

The review was right to criticise the lack of communications from the Executive Committee here, and I accept that. Boards and committees are not designed for “real-time” operation, the Board meets monthly and the EC weekly, and this situation unfolded over a matter of hours and days through messages, emergency meetings and late-night calls.

I can shed some light: the board voted to temporarily lift the ban in order to give Sonny access to records (in GitLab, Etherpad, etc), because the bylaws require two separate hearings around removing a director, and about removing Foundation membership. I communicated this board decision to the infrastructure team to implement; it was a board decision, not my unilateral action. The EC had lined up someone to step in and coordinate the STF project for the Foundation (especially invoices, etc), but they turned out to be unavailable due to unforeseen circumstances. Holly parted ways with the Foundation during the following conversations. This left everyone in a very confusing limbo.

I didn’t consider the matter resolved, I considered it pending. I could see first-hand that the board’s action (to pursue removal of directorship, as well as accept the CoCC recommendation of indefinite suspension) was damaging the project and the community, and I was trying to find a path to de-escalate. After the director removal hearing, I brought a motion to the board that we arrange mediation, so we could properly evaluate other paths forward. Lifting the ban wasn’t a judgement that Sonny’s participation in the community was “fine”; and I did not have the authority to make that determination; it was a procedural step plus an attempt (supported by the board) to keep options open.

About the re-ban: the board and the CoCC were in different positions, and the authority for temporary suspensions is delegated, but permanent bans require the board. After the elections we had new directors re-examining everything from scratch, while the CoCC (the same people as before) continued to hold their original view. Once they learnt about the current status, and considering the time pressure the evening before GUADEC, they acted within their authority as they saw the need.

The mediation was carried out later, but didn’t generate any new paths forward: the new board needed to decide what they wanted to do to resolve the ambiguity in light of the independent review. I wrote and proposed the motion to lift the permanent ban, and leave the temporary ban in place (and also to formally end the membership removal process, because that hearing had not taken place). What I’ve written here as a few paragraphs is a summary of dozens of hours of meetings with directors scrutinising and debating what to do.

Not notifying the CoCC of the ban being suspended for the hearings was an oversight which happened on my watch. That’s my fault, and it hurt a lot of people, particularly around the time of GUADEC 2024. By way of an explanation - no excuse - I was trying to work out how the Foundation could support the STF project without an ED or program/project manager.

I linked above to Update from Board of Directors on Sonny Piers' Status and I stand behind what’s written there. My view is that how people conduct themselves as an official legal representative or while in a position of authority, and how people act as a project member and contributor, are two separate tracks.

Real improvements have definitely been made. We’ve updated the CoC to ensure that impacted parties are informed about decisions. We’ve now got ethical conduct and board responsibilities guidelines which equip the board to guide and handle the conduct of directors. But ultimately, this way that the CoCC can recommend a permanent ban to the Board, but also has policies (for very good reason) to prevent information being shared out from the CoCC, is still very buggy. This is tracked on a list of improvements in the Board GitLab, and Allan has been working with a consultant to design a more comprehensive review to fix these outstanding issues.

I did speak to many members and offer my personal apology during last year’s AGM, in the meeting which Jonas mentioned, and again in my candidacy post above, where I said that I got things wrong and didn’t communicate quickly and transparently enough. I understand that real harm was caused to the good work and trust of many people, and I am genuinely sorry.

These aren’t the kind of issues you expect to arise in a nonprofit board, and they aren’t anything like situations that I had dealt with personally in a work capacity so I had no prior experience or template. But: I don’t believe in resign and leave others to clean up. That is not a useful version of accountability in my eyes, and would not have helped the Foundation. I stood for election in 2024, because I knew the Foundation needed steadying, I came to the AGM in 2025 to face the music, and I stepped back from being President.

As I said in my original post, my time to work on GNOME was already limited when these situations hit. They took up all of my available time (and more) and left me drained (I know I have no monopoly on that, and I certainly don’t diminish the far greater toll on others). With new officers in place, who I fully support and am very grateful to, I want to be clear I’m not trying to step back into a leadership role.

I thought long and hard about whether to stand at all. One director is just one voice amongst nine, and the board was expanded precisely to allow a broader background of experience and perspectives. I do think my financial, commercial, legal, managerial and nonprofit experience, plus context and continuity from my previous terms, is something worth having in the mix. Other directors can tell you whether they agree.

I also completely respect and understand if you don’t, and you can vote as you see fit. Thanks for everything you do for GNOME.

Many Thanks,
Rob

I also second his candidacy - I really want to see flathub’s financial transaction goal realized and I believe that Rob is our best chance to get it out the door. While I understand that there has been a lot of folks that might have not liked the way things progressed over the few years - I think we should understand that these things are beyond most people’s experiences. There are real legal hurdles here.

In any case, Rob is not interested in an officer position and here the people running the show are going to be the same people you trust.

Hello all,

I’m not currently a foundation member but since my name keeps popping up and claims are being made, I feel invited to (finally) share what happened with members of the GNOME Foundation.

Long story “short”; (this is back from 2023/2024)

Rob assured and insisted to Tobias and I that the Foundation would make an effective fiscal sponsor for the 1M€ STF grant. We knew that under Rob’s (long) presidency and directorship it was dysfunctional but we chose to trust them rather than looking for another fiscal host or creating a new entity because we hoped it would bring the community together.

Shortly after joining as a director I realized the situation was even worse than I thought. I won’t go into detail here, I believe that new directors are aware and working hard on the issues.
I took my mission as a director seriously, in particular the responsibility of care and of loyalty, including to the foundation members who elected me in hope for change.

Something as basic as processing incoming emails and paying invoices was not working; over and over. I tried my best for weeks to be understanding and helpful.
Eventually I was assured the problem was solved and invoices would be paid on time.

Later; I get an email from a partner saying that not only the past few monthly invoices were never paid but that they did not receive a reply from the person in charge of it at the Foundation.
I sent a letter demanding the executive committee to start addressing the structural and operational failures (some of which may breach California nonprofit law and hold board members accountable) or I would have no other choice than to resign and inform the GNOME community and partners.

The initial response was positive, we started working on a path forward until during a meeting with Rob, he had the audacity to blame the STF team for the unpaid invoices. I lost my temper.
I apologized to all parties immediately after but that didn’t stop the 3rd participant of that meeting to file a complain against me.

This led Federico to send a letter to the board of directors demanding to ban me permanently with accusations of “Intimidation”, “Disruption of discussions” and “Influencing or encouraging inappropriate behavior”.
I don’t know how we got there. What I do know is that I was never contacted by anyone with concerns about my behavior or my directorship. It’s also worth noting the CoC committee back then was composed of 4 people including Federico, the person who filed the complain and past (at the time current) staff members.

The meeting we had planned to inform the full board about the operational failures got canceled. I was informed that the board followed the CoC recommendation to ban me. The board at the time was largely disengaged, one director challenged both the procedure and its content but to no effect.

Rob escalated with an offer to sign a non disparagement agreement (aka gag procedure) which would expose me to a fine should I criticize any of the foundation staff or directors. If I refused, a defamatory statement about me would be published. Since the defamatory statement had no ground I chose not to sign the agreement.

Knowing that the fallout of this was going to harm the foundation, community, project and my reputation; I spent a lot of good will trying to de-escalate: I asked the CoC committee for a meeting, I apologized to the board, I suggested the mediation, I supported the Foundation in taking over STF and so on.

Things lingered, Rob sabotaged the mediation by refusing to take any responsibility, there was an “independent review” about the processes (not the content AFAIK as I wasn’t asked a single question), people argued, Rob kept everything quiet, got re-elected then published the announcement I had been removed from the board.

After reviewing the case, the new board undid my ban which prompted Federico to propose a motion to ban me permanently again - which didn’t receive any support. Immediately after, Federico acted as member of CoC committee to ban me for 1 year (the maximum allowed).

If you have doubts about my story, please refer to comments by people in the know and who don’t have to work with Rob or Federico. Such as Steven who shared the same fate (I did last longer though ) or Tobias who witnessed it all.

Back to 2026 and Rob’s candidacy; beyond his overwhelming responsibility in the state of the Foundation it’s worth noting that

• Despite everything that happened, Tobias and I handed everything related to STF over to Rob — including an agreement in principle from STF for a second funding round — but he was unable to get anything moving. KDE did.
• Rob was already promising Flathub payments in 2024 and 2022, all the way back to 2019. While I was on the board the only thing I remember Rob doing in that direction was setting up a meeting with KDE folks and not show up - embarrassing me and the Foundation once more.

@ramcq you don’t need to be on the board to contribute or make your expertise available should it be required, especially when you don’t have time for GNOME, as mentioned in your candidacy.

To all of my friends, colleagues and mentees at GNOME; I hope you are well and I’m sorry that the ban made me disappeared from one day to an other. I am well and I hope to show up once in a while.

Thanks to new blood, lucidity and some courage; the Foundation is finally moving in the right direction to support the project and the community. There is still a lot to do so don’t rest on your laurels.

I guess the Internet won’t care about this anymore but stating the obvious just in case: nobody should be harassed. If you’re a GNOME foundation member, pass this along and vote accordingly. Otherwise, thanks for reading, please let GNOME Foundation members handle this.

Sonny Piers

Thank you, Sonny. I’m sorry for the toll this took on everyone caught up in it.

As this is an election process, I’m replying in a personal capacity, but as a director I want to be honest about the limits of what I can say individually. I’m still bound by confidentiality and by my duties to the Foundation. I won’t set out the board’s deliberations, seek to characterise anyone’s conduct, or speak for other directors or the CoCC.

One point of context, because it runs through your questions about me. With an Executive Director in post, the President’s role is to act as the board’s spokesperson and to bring matters to the Executive Committee or the full board for their decision. Broadly speaking the function of the Board is to hire and fire the ED, oversee the finances, set the budget, guide and agree the strategy and goals. Everything else is exception handling of some form or another. The decisions and actions here were not mine to make or unmake alone; behind each call or email with “me” is hours of meetings. These actions were the decisions of two successive boards, two different Executive Directors, various external professional advisors, reached through their processes and revisited on multiple occasions. I have my understandings or beliefs why the board voted in certain ways at certain times, but I can’t explain individual directors’ reasons without putting words in their mouths and it is not my place to do so.

On the mediation: it was an intensely stressful time, and I advanced the idea to the board in good faith, to give the board space and time to work through several distinct strands at once. The conduct of directors sits with the board, the conduct of staff and employees with the Executive Director, and the conduct of community members with the Code of Conduct Committee. The ultimate limitation of this approach is that mediation looks for common ground between parties; it was never a sufficient route to overturn such a decision. In a process of deciding sanctions, regardless of the extent to which the other party agrees, they are by definition imposed unilaterally. The mechanism for revisiting such a decision was the independent review (or in future, an appeals process where authority rests with an independent party) which is a different process. With hindsight I can see how holding both open at once caused confusion, and I’m sorry for my part in that. In the mediation process, I acted within the remit given to me by the board.

Given that new directors were still learning about the situation in the first annual meeting of the new 2024 board, the motion to re-enact the permanent ban on the 18th July was not fully debated or put to a vote before the meeting was adjourned. The board’s decisions, and the order in which they were taken, are set out in the statement I linked earlier, and I’d point anyone who wants the record to there rather than repeat it again now. Throughout, the board upheld the original decision to remove directorship, and upheld the sanctions implemented by the CoCC.

On time: I do have /some/ time for GNOME. The honest position is that the time I’ve had has been taken up by reacting to and handling situations I would much rather not have been engaged in. Nothing would please me more than to spend the time I can give on the positive things this community wants to see.

As I said already, I did get things wrong, particularly in not communicating quickly or openly enough, and I stand by that. I won’t relitigate the rest. These are matters for the membership to weigh. I trust them to do so, and I am happy with whatever is decided.

With respect, and gratitude for everything you gave to GNOME,
Rob

Considering the fact you made this public, I’m gonna ask you something. What did you said in that meeting that he decided you should be permanently banned? I imagine CoCC doesn’t give perma bans left and right just because someone felt so.

During my time, I couldn’t talk about staff safely because an employee was attending all board meetings.
Rob had promised to organize a meeting without staff. It never materialized.

When I got mad in the meeting I had Rob admit shamefully he has been hiding crucial information about staff to directors for years.

Thank you for your interest. It feels good to answer to people genuinely interested in understanding.

On “about you”:

A responsibility can be shared but unequally. I can excuse directors who didn’t know better or who were being misled.

When I joined the board, on our first meeting, you appointed yourself as president and every other officer into position. When I raised a concern that perhaps we should discuss this, you ignored my request. The other directors didn’t budge.

I can elaborate but I think that alone is enough to explain the power dynamic of the Foundation at the time.

On the mediation and the months around it:

If you had acknowledged your responsibility fully and sooner, things could have gone in much different ways.

Be well.

Sonny, thank you for shedding some light!

Please know that you have a lot of support from your friends in the GNOME community. And your contributions, both technical and organizational, are valued.

Hi Rob,

Thanks for the lengthy response, it’s much appreciated.

I believe we have the same view of reality but speak about it differently. Not looking to argue on the wording of it. In any case, one of the common topics during GUADEC 2025 was if the foundation will exist in 2 months on not. Technically it didn’t go bankrupt and instead recovered, in large parts due to further laying off staff.

That said, it wasn’t a single year or two. The issues had started long before that during Neil’s term as ED, and for the majority of that period you were the President of the Board and the Acting Directory at time since Neil’s departure.

I agree, but you were part of said committee in addition to being the President of the Board. You said in your previous message that the Board’s role is to keep an eye on finances and hire the ED. I would expect some more ownership over the issues.

To be clear I wasn’t implying you specifically did, I was referring to a common sentiment I got from various people when, more or less we were gossiping about the foundation, during events. But there was still a clear pattern that left an impression on me.

The same week that the Board vaccanted the seat, without telling anyone, I was co-organizing a series of hackfests in Thessaloniki. The attendance list was public, as it usually is so we can accommodate people with dietary restrictions and have a headcount, and Sonny was on it.

Neither me or any other ogranizer was contacted, later I found out that the event wasn’t even on the radar of neither the Board or the CoCC. I remember sitting next to Sonny, I think it was June 1st, when we both found out live his gitlab account got banned.

Having no idea what was going on, nor having an announcment be posted, and with only a day left (the rest were self organized social days with no venue) we procceeded as we had the past days. If you read the CoCC’s statements and stated reasons on the matter you’d get the impression that Sonny was an individual that was extremelly unsafe to be around. Yet nobody bothered to contact us, or inform the community for two months. Even worse, nobody even bothered to inform the CoCC about the infrastructure issues you mentioned for a whole month.

Now luckily for all of us, it wasn’t a case of Sexual Assult, or other physically threatening behavior and no participants were ever at risk.

Operational procedures are not an excuse to keep the community in the dark if supposedly the individual is an active threat to others. When the ban was lifted, everyone was assuming that whatever the matter was, it got resolved. The community members in Berlin organized the entire Mini-Guadec 2024 event with him and as far as I know nobody knew about anything taking place, let alone being contacted by the Board or CoCC.

The CoCC found out that Sonny was unbanned because he was co-organizing the Berlin mini-guadec, at which point they rushed to ban him again. Was it such a serious matter or not? Was he a threat to the rest of the community? Cause forgetting to talk to each or even double check what’s happening in the community leaves a lot to be desired. Even with the glorious fuck up of the unban and reban, did nobody really raised an eyebrow that Sonny was still active in community spaces and was even handling matters for the foundation for a month and change?

If we assume the CoCC assessment was correct, and that’s a big If at this point, the entire community was knowingly put at risk due to extreme neglect from both the Board and the CoCC.

This keeps being referenced, any chance we could see the report that came out from this independent review of the situation?

Does this mean that before this, and assuming Sonny station as well, the parties were unaware about decision being taken and why? Including things such as Sonny’s ban with no explanation in sight.

Is his claim that he was never contacted true? Was he ever presented with what he was accused of? Were the claims verified?

Is any of this mentioned in the external third-party report?

Thank you for your work and answers so far,
Jordan

I’m not entirely sure I’m supposed to reply to this, given that I’m not particularly involved in the GNOME community, but Discourse apparently is configured to let me post, and there is an aspect of this I would like to ask a question about.

Unless I’m misunderstanding, this sounds like a form of extortion/blackmail, which can in some instances be a crime in the US. Is this likely to be as bad as it sounds on the surface to someone who is not a lawyer?

This in combination with the above is especially disturbing since it would mean that all of these people were (potentially) involved in blackmailing Sonny (assuming that they were involved in this specific decision and the decision is as bad as it sounds).

I think I’m past the date for officially seconding, but I wholeheartedly support Rob’s candidacy.

I’ve seen Rob working tirelessly behind the scenes for years, juggling countless priorities and managing to help make serious progress on several fronts. Much of the turnaround of the Foundation over the past year or so has been thanks in large part to Rob’s work on the Executive Committee alongside the other members. He’s admirably navigated complicated issues that were dropped onto the Foundation with interwoven practical, legal, financial, and interpersonal clashes—and I genuinely believe he has always pushed for the highest level of ethics and kindness in everything he has done with the Foundation.

A year ago he stepped back from the role of President in order to focus more strongly on getting things done behind the scenes, and in that time we revamped Foundation policies for the better, balanced our budget and massively improved our financial reporting, relaunched Friends of GNOME, increased our recurring donations to fund future initiatives, delivered a Digital Wellbeing project that paid contributors to work on GNOME, and launched the GNOME Fellowships program funded by those donations. Of course this is not the work of a single individual, but Rob was absolutely deeply involved in getting each of those—and a bunch more—done.

I want to continue to see the Foundation follow this positive upward trajectory, and I think Rob is well-suited to help us do so.

I’m not a Foundation member and therefore can’t vote, but a point has come up in this discussion that I think deserves clarification for the benefit of those who can.

Rob, Sonny states that the STF team handed over “an agreement in principle from STF for a second funding round” and that this was passed to the Foundation, but that the funding never materialised. My understanding from various comments over the years is that a second round of STF funding was at least being actively discussed and appeared plausible at one stage.

Could you please explain what happened? Was there in fact an agreement in principle or other concrete path toward a second STF funding round? If so, what steps were taken by the Foundation to pursue it? At what point did it stop progressing, and why? Were there organisational, operational, legal, or strategic reasons that prevented it from moving forward?

Given the scale of the funding involved and its potential impact on GNOME, I think Foundation members would benefit from a clear account of what occurred.