GNOME is a free and open-source desktop environment for Unix-like operating systems, including most major Linux distributions. GNOME’s own about page states that “the GNOME project was founded in 1997 by two students, Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena,” and describes the project as one that “provides the user experience for all the main Linux distributions” while continuing “to develop vital software which is relied upon far beyond the desktop.” The project produces around 120 software modules that together make up a complete graphical computing environment.
A central motivation for GNOME’s creation was licensing. The leading Unix desktop of the time, KDE, was built on the Qt toolkit, which in 1997 was distributed under a license that did not meet the Free Software Foundation’s definition of free software. For developers committed to software freedom, building on a non-free toolkit was unacceptable. GNOME instead adopted the GTK toolkit (originally written for the GIMP image editor), which was distributed under the GNU LGPL, ensuring that the entire desktop stack could remain free software.
The freedom motivation has remained explicit throughout GNOME’s life. The project’s own materials say that “Miguel and Federico’s vision of freedom remains at the heart of the GNOME project,” and the GNOME Foundation frames its mission around “a world where everyone is empowered by technology they can trust” achieved by “building a diverse and sustainable free software personal computing ecosystem.”
The project’s institutional home is the GNOME Foundation, which the foundation’s site describes as “the GNOME Project’s official non-profit corporation.” Its stated role is to provide “essential functions and support for GNOME, including managing the project’s funds and legal assets” along with “critical support for development infrastructure and events.” This separation between the volunteer-and-staff developer community and a nonprofit that holds assets and runs infrastructure mirrors the governance pattern adopted across much of the open-source movement.
GNOME and KDE went on to become the two dominant free desktop environments, and their long coexistence pushed both forward. The licensing dispute that helped spark GNOME also contributed to pressure that eventually led Qt to be relicensed under free-software terms, removing the original objection but leaving two mature desktops that continue to share many underlying technologies and standards.