Sonny Piers Finally Spills the Beans on GNOME Cover-up, Points Finger at Robert McQueen, Misusing "Defamation" to Silence Critics of Wrongdoing
Robert McQueen, who is extremely connected to Garrett (they share digital nests).
Piers has decided to speak out and take the risk (in the face of threats). He did not promote or "provoke" this; it began with other people "in the know"*.
In his own words (this week):
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 :grin:) 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.
:heart:
Sonny Piers
[..]
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.
IBM then stepped in and decided to delete what he had to say:
That is what the CoC is for: censorship by the likes of IBM! It is typically called "cover-up", not "censorship". █
____
* Other comments from other people, serving to more or less affirm what Piers said:
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.
Another person:
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?
So this is not one person's biased account. Many people kept silent on what was censorship gone awry and totally out of control (to save one person's face, not the Foundation).