Meet the GNOMEies: Sammy Fung

Sammy is a freelancer, community organizer, and GNOME enthusiast from Hong Kong. For almost 20 years, Sammy has been using, GNOME and building community in Asia.

A photo of Sammy Fung holding up two firefox signs. He is wearing a suit jacket and a blue collared shirt. He has glasses and his hair is sticking up.

Tell us a little bit more about yourself.

Currently, I am a freelancer which works on web scraping, python, data analytics, Linux, and networks. I was an owner and the director of small IT business, with my experiences in the open source, technology, community, and business, I organise local and regional open source communities and conferences in Hong Kong and Asia, travel between Asian and US cities to attend, speak, and organise open source events.

What is your role within the GNOME community?

I co-lead at GNOME Asia committee

Do you have any other affiliations you want to share?

I’m a Mozilla Representative, the President at Open Source Hong Kong, organiser of PyCon HK, and founder of Hong Kong Open Source Conference.

Why did you get involved in GNOME?

I am a GNOME user since 2000, and I think that GNOME is the most important software for Linux desktop. I thought that we should organise an event in Hong Kong for Linux desktop to promote and develop it. GNOME is the key.

Why are you still involved with GNOME?

As a user in Hong Kong, we embrace the different cultures from West and East. I keep my contributions to link up with East and West in different Asia cities when my living and income allows me to do so.

What are you working on right now?

After I take over the leadership at GNOME Asia Committee, I called for meetings for the GNOME.Asia Summit. I communicate with the local team for it.

What are you excited about right now – either in GNOME or free and open
source software in general?

It is not easy to sustain a desktop project, but GNOME is still the number one desktop environment on Linux!

What is a major challenge you see for the future of GNOME?

To sustain and grow GNOME, I hope that more GNOME contributors can be employed to achieve different missions of the project, to create more resources (e.g. marketing and documentation) for GNOME. On the other hand, we should also consider how to integrate GNOME and the open web seamlessly. I hope GNOME can become software that is not just a desktop environment, but a desktop ecosystem. It is not only in technical but also in business, the community, and the market.

What do you think GNOME should focus on next?

  1. Community building;
  2. Educating youth about the open desktop; and
  3. Turning the desktop environment to the desktop ecosystem.

Edited for content and clarity. Photo provided by Sammy Fung.

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