GNOME makes me sad

The GNOME Foundation seems to be ...kind of a train wreck. And that makes me sad because it represents such a vibrant group of people who make cool shit and give it away for free. Every time I stop by the GNOME forums I come away grimacing. The community always seems to be in some state of discontent. One day it's feature requests that devolve into "feel free to see yourself out". Another day it's a former director airing dirty laundry about being unduly banned. Most recently there's been a thread where the foundation's president fumbled a condemnation of hostility toward queer community members. This one really spiraled, resulting in the resignation of at least one prominent contributor. Aside from basic common sense1, I don't have much to bring to the table on these specific incidents. All I can say is that they all congeal into a general sense of something's wrong over there. And it's a damn shame, because the GNOME desktop environment and its circle of open-source applications is…