GNOME plans to introduce a formal Request for Comments process to make major project decisions easier to discuss, coordinate, and document. The proposal is now in its final comment period, and active GNOME Foundation members can share their concerns until October 4, 2026.
GNOME contributor Sophie Herold suggested this framework mainly for big changes that impact several teams or large parts of the GNOME ecosystem. Instead of having important discussions spread out across different chat rooms, logs, and trackers, RFCs would create a lasting record of what was proposed, why it was considered, what alternatives were discussed, and how the final decision was made.
Importantly, this process is not meant for every code change or as a roadmap that must be approved before starting development. GNOME developers have said it should stay simple, with the main goal of helping teams work together and keeping a record of why important decisions were made, even years later.
Some examples of changes that might use this process are adopting a new symbolic icon format in GTK, switching from GdkPixbuf to Glycin for image loading, or moving developer documentation from gtk-doc to gi-docgen. Bigger or more debated decisions, like setting a GNOME policy on AI or changing the default Git branch to main, could also go through the RFC process.
With this proposal, an RFC would start with a discussion among the people involved. This last stage usually lasts 14 days.
However, for RFC-0001, GNOME is giving much more time than usual. Since this proposal sets up the RFC process itself, it is being used as a test. GNOME will accept concerns until October 4 at 23:59 UTC, instead of using the normal 14-day period.
There has also been talk about how RFCs should be approved or rejected, and where longer discussions should happen. Contributors have considered both GitLab and GNOME Discourse, comparing GitLab’s close link to Foundation membership with Discourse’s usefulness for longer conversations.
If GNOME adopts this new RFC framework, it will provide a more organized way to handle decisions that affect more than one app or team. It will also create a searchable record explaining why each decision was made, which would greatly improve transparency for end users.
