Google and Motorola Promote Gnome
The Gnome Foundation welcomes Google and Motorola as sponsors and new members of its advisory board.
With this new sponsorship, the search engine king and mobile device vendor can now join IBM, Novell and Sun, among others, along with community organizations such as the OLPC project, the Free Software Foundation and the Software Freedom Law Center.
The Gnome Foundation's Advisory Board is not a decision-making body, but reports in an advisory capacity to members and foundation executives. Decisions are made by the board of directors elected annually by (and from) foundation members (list here).
Membership in the Gnome Foundation is free, which does not generally hold for membership on the advisory board. Exceptions are non-profit organizations serving the public good by invitation, but in most cases the advisory board reflects paying members whose logos are displayed prominently on the foundation website. Annual membership fees are between five and ten thousand dollars.