GNOME Foundation's new executive director is Canadian, a techie, and a GNOME user

Steven Deobald certainly talks the talk

The GNOME Foundation has hired a new executive director to lead the organization, acting as GNOME's public face and leading the non-profit's fundraising efforts.

In a post simply titled "Introducing Myself," new boss Steven Deobald does just that. He takes over a tough job from interim executive director Richard Littauer, who had the job for nearly a year. Littauer's valediction, pleasingly titled "So long, and thanks for all the fish," explains how he took on a job he didn't want at a difficult time.

Deobald indirectly takes over from GNOME's last full-time ED, Holly Million. As someone who practiced an unusual minority religion, Million received some nasty vitriol in some of the lower circles of FOSS, and left the role about nine months later. We can't blame her.

As a white male and a long-term GNOME user himself, the initial reaction to Deobald is much more positive. On the face of it, that's a good thing, but probably for the wrong reasons (not least his skin color or gender). The executive director of the GNOME project isn't in charge of the design or implementation of the GNOME desktop, any more than Linux Foundation boss Jim Zemlin (with whom this vulture chatted in 2016) guides the direction of the Linux kernel.

In fact, if there's a more important aspect, we think it's his mention of his problems with eyesight following what sound like horrific injuries (we write as someone with pretty bad injuries from bike crashes ourselves). Accessibility in Linux is a Reg FOSS desk bugbear. Firstly, because Free Software should be a tool that helps with equity and inclusion. Sadly, it often isn't. macOS has better bundled tools, and some of the third-party Windows ones are superb. People with disabilities often find it harder to earn a living, and that makes Free Software even more important. Secondly, but equally, because tools that enhance usability for those with sensory or motor issues benefit everyone (and everyone reading this will be disabled in some way eventually, unless we die first).

A good keyboard UI means power users don't have to hunt around with pointing devices to click tiny targets. Rich display settings let us all disable designers' overdone flights of fancy. Spoken reminders or prompts can be very handy even if you see perfectly fine.

Deobald's job involves talking to people, raising the profile of GNOME, and most important of all, raising money by doing so. Yes, wealthy companies such as Red Hat, Oracle, and SUSE ship GNOME as their default or only desktop, but it's not a primary focus – most servers don't have graphical desktops. Having a nice, shiny GUI is almost an afterthought, relegating accessibility to a footnote to a postscript.

The GNOME Orca screen reader is an important tool here, and it's also used in Elementary OS and even in Commodore Vision OS. Wayland is a significant stumbling block in this area. For an overview of some of the issues, we really recommend Lukáš Tyrychtr and Vojtech Polasek's talk, "Enhancing Linux Accessibility: A Unified Approach" from last year's DevConf.

Accessibility matters to everyone, and a leader who cares about it enough to specifically call it out in his introduction has to be a good sign. Deobald is a serial entrepreneur who has started several companies, and he's lived and worked in India. He has been around several blocks, including some significant metaphorical ones, and we hope he can help GNOME on to greater things.

Bootnote

We find the last post on Deobald's personal site to be touchingly honest: "I am looking for work (Taylor's Version)."

The bit in brackets is, we think, a reference to wildly successful songstress Taylor Swift, who is re-recording her older material and re-releasing it thus subtitled due to a dispute with her former record label. Somehow, Swift also finds time to work as a part-time IT security consultant, which is how The Reg FOSS desk became familiar with her, and thus – some years later – with the output of her day job. We recommend her work in both roles. ®