cassandras – Getting to know GNOME

Iulian Radu: GSoC student and GNOME Ambassador

Iulian Radu is in his final year at the University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest, and he has been involved in his on–campus open source community. Over the last couple of years, he has brought GNOME to his campus, and generated interest around encouraging other students to get involved in GNOME, contribute, and even apply for GSoC. Read on to learn about his experience in getting involved and spreading GNOME to his university in Romania!

Where are you from and where are you based now?

I’m from Romania and living there now.

How long have you been contributing to GNOME?

I made my first contribution 2 years ago during the summer and it was for Iagno.

How did you first hear about GNOME and become a user?

I was a user before I became a contributor. The first time I heard of GNOME was in university, and we had a course where we had a slide with different logos. We had to name those logos, which were all open source and Linux related. Soon after that I got to use Linux in my university classes; it was used and required almost everywhere, classes and homework. I got it installed for the first time during Linux Install Fest, an event where the community (students, teachers) helps first year students, and anyone interested, install Linux on their personal computer.

We know this year isn’t your first year with GSoC, how did you first get involved?

Yeah, my first year with GSoC was in 2015. I heard of it in university when my teacher and some colleagues a year above me told me about it. I actually tried applying in 2014 as well but the steps were not that clear at the time. I was under the impression that it was way too complicated for me and I just gave up on the idea. The next year, in 2015, I just asked around more and it was really different. Everyone was really supportive and everything made sense; I didn’t have many problems getting accepted. Then this year, in 2016, I already knew what I had to do and everything went smoothly.

What motivated you to join for a second year?

I was in between deciding whether to do GSoC again and getting a job at a company to experience office life, working in a team, and participate in meetings. Michael, my 2015 GSoC mentor, told me he wanted to be a mentor again and said he had a project on Epiphany for me. It sounded really interesting, so I applied again to GSoC.

What has been your project with Google Summer of Code?

My project was “Web: Bookmarks Subsystem Update“. I basically had to redo the bookmarks system in GNOME Web and I kind of started from scratch because the code was old.

Interns GUADEC 2016 — GSoC and Outreachy 2016 Interns, Photo by Bin Li, CC-BY-SA 4.0

You’re very active within your community, especially when it comes to planning events. What exactly is it that you have done?

I’m active within the open source community at my university. There’s a non-profit organization called ROSEdu (Romanian Open Source Education). That’s how I got into open source. They organize workshops, summer schools, mentor programs, and more. My first contribution was to an open source browser game organized at our school; a platform with questions related to linux designed for the first year introductory course to operating systems. You can play the game and learn more about the subjects studied throughout the course. I became a core contributor after a while then I applied to be part of the organization. I started helping out by mentoring students at different workshops and events they organize.. During those events we always talk about what we are working on and share our experience so I helped spread the word about GNOME (as I was also contributing to it during those times). Razvan, another GSoC student that worked on Nautilus, was one of the first that got really interested and asked me to give him directions. Then there was Gabriel, whom I helped with his first contribution and application process. There were also multiple students that started to seek me out to learn more about GSoC and my GNOME experience to whom I have offered help based on the intereset they showed. A community around GSoC already existed, but I helped with bringing GNOME to the campus and now we have a small community. Every now and then we get together to work on our projects, and I’d like to invite more people to join us in the future.

What are some challenges you have faced in planning events and unifying your local community?

The main challenge is keeping people interested. They usually become quite curious when you start telling them about the community, your work and your experiences, but they lose interest when they try to make their first contributions and realize that some things take longer than they initially expected. As the students that are reaching out are usually at the start of their open source experience, it’s even harder for them as they need to become used to different means of communicating (IRC, mailling lists), version control systems, bug trackers etc.

What is your favorite place on Earth?

My favorite place would be a cabin in a forest with fresh air and a nearby river. But there has to be a laptop and WiFi!

What is your favorite food?

Grilled food, probably a grilled steak. Nothing too special!

Favorite ice cream?

Anything with chocolate icing.

Last question… What is your spirit animal?

I guess it’s a panda, because I’m a bit clumsy and lazy!

If you’re interested in learning more about Google Summer of Code and submitting an application for Summer of 2017 check out their website here: https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/

And if you’re interested in learning more about GNOME Bucharest, or getting involved with GNOME in Romania, get in touch with Iulian and his colleagues via…

IRC: #gnome-bucharest on GIMPNet

Wiki: https://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeBucharest

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/GNOMEbucharest/

Thank you Iulian for answering all of our questions. We’re really looking forward to seeing how this local group grows!

GUADEC from a Newcomer’s Perspective: Meet Tom Pollok

This August, as you all know, was GUADEC. This year the annual European conference was held in Karlsruhe, a city in Southwest Germany. Much of the city’s culture revolves around KIT, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, whose campus hosted the conference. Not only did the conference attract GNOME contributors from around the world, but it also brought in newcomers who have been GNOME users, but had never contributed. During the BoF days, we sat down with a long time GNOME user, Tom Pollok, who shared with us his experience of coming to GUADEC as a complete newcomer. Read on to hear his story!

tom — Photo by Cassandra Sanchez, CC-BY-SA 4.0

Where are you from and where are you based now?

That’s complicated *laughs*, I was born in Poland but most of my life I have lived in Germany. I’ve have mostly lived in Karlsruhe but also spent a couple of years in Berlin.

How did you hear about GNOME?

When I started studying computer science, I was more interested in Linux, and one thing came after another. I used to use Windows before I started studying computer science, and I started trying out GNOME. I was studying in Cairo for a semester and my hard drive suddenly broke while working on my laptop. No one could give me an ISO file of Windows, so I thought to install Ubuntu since it was free. I started to use Ubuntu with GNOME. I had heard about it in my first semester, a while before.

How long have you been a contributor?

I contributed the first time during this GUADEC during the workshops.

What was it like to experience GUADEC as a newcomer?

It was very nice. All the people are so friendly and so into GNOME. You can see it in their eyes that they really like what they’re doing. I’ve really liked the GUADEC spirit!

Was there anything that surprised you about the conference?

I’ve been to other computer science related conferences, and compared to others I’ve felt especially welcomed here. At others I have felt not noticed, but here everyone has talked to me and it’s been very easy to talk to people and make new friends! And I was suprirsed that everyone spoke such great English! Everyone’s English is amazing!

Was there anything you were expecting or hoping for?

I haven’t had any expectations, I just wanted to see it. I really liked it, so I think I’ll join the next conference as well!

How did you hear of GUADEC and decide to come?

I was very active on the GNOME website and always reading the recent changes. I saw that GUADEC would be in Karlsruhe and knew I shouldn’t miss it! I really wanted to meet the people who developed GNOME and knew it would be a shame if I missed it. I was just lucky to find it!

What was your favorite part about the conference?

I don’t think there was anything specific, I’ve liked the whole package! I’ve enjoyed all of GUADEC.

28774493630_d9e049fae7_o — GUADEC 2016, CC-BY-SA 4.0

What is your favorite place on Earth?

I really love Cairo because the people are so friendly!

What is your favorite food?

Hmmm… Do I even have one? *laughs*

Käsespätzle??

No, no! Come on! *Laughs* I don’t have a favorite dish, but I like Arabic dishes and Northern Arabic dishes. I guess I’ll say Koshary.

What’s your favorite ice cream flavor?

I always ask for two or three, so I’ll say chocolate, mango, and cherry. There is such a great choice of different flavors so it’s not that easy to decide for a single one!

What is your spirit animal?

I’m like a Rhino, because if I want to do something and it doesn’t work I’ll ram against the wall until it I find a way through it! I’m sometimes a bit stubborn when I’m working on a goal.

Finally, our classic question; what do you think cats dream about?

I think they dream of dominating the world!

Thank you, Tom! We’re so glad to see you contributing and becoming a part of the GNOME community.

Meet the 2016 Pants Winner – Alex Larsson

Every year at GUADEC, the Board of Directors presents the prestigious Pants award. It recognizes a GNOME contributor who has made significant contributions and who has really embodied the GNOME spirit. Among recipients are Emily Chen, Alexandre Franke, and Allan Day, the three most recent winners. This year, the Pants were presented to Alex Larsson, who was recognized for contributing since 1998 to a number of technologies, being the “fixer” who always gets to the root of a problem, and his invovlemt with GTK, GDK, the old GDM greeter, hi–dpi support, Nautilus, Spice, GIO, and Flatpak. We sat down with him shortly after the announcement was made, to learn a bit more about him.

Where are you from and where are you based now?

Alex Larsson — Photo taken by Cassandra Sanchez, CC-BY-SA 4.0

I’m from Sweden, born in Stockholm and I live there now. I spent a year in North Carolina during my first year at Red Hat in 2001.

How long have you been contributing to GNOME?

My first contribution was in 1998 to Dia.

How did you first get involved in contributing?

I wrote that app because I needed it for school. It’s a diagram app that I needed in university and there wasn’t anything like it. Plus, I wanted to learn GTK and toolkit programming.

We know you’ve worked on a lot of different important projects. You have made a lot of important changes. We’re wondering how you decide what to work on.

I just work on what I think is interesting. Curiosity, interests, also bug reports and requests from customers or the general public. Actually, I mostly see feature requests coming in from bug reports. I have a huge backlog of things I know we need to fix.

You were the developer of Nautilus for 8 years and wrote a lot of code for it. What made you switch from Nautilus to now working on Flatpak?

I maintained Nautilus for a long time, and it was using gnome-vfs and that was problematic, so I spent some time writing GIO and GVfs to replace it. After that I moved to Spice, a protocol for connecting to VMs, because it needed a tech lead. I was on that for 2 years, and I worked on various aspects of it. After that I did mostly GTK, but I’ve had a long history of interest in bundling stuff. That led me to be one of the Red Hat developers working on Docker. Docker was becoming very popular and we needed it to work for Red Hat. All this experience working on the Docker infrastructure inspired my work on Flatpak, and that’s why I chose that time to prioritize the project. I had been experimenting with three other bundling systems before, but they had always been prototypes.

This is the very early beginning of Flatpak, how do you see it evolving in terms of features?

I think the core doesn’t necesarily have to be that much larger, and it’s more about evolving the infrastructure around it. The application store, developer portal, making it easier to build and distribute flatpaks, and eventually include some sort of donation/payment system. I think we also need more work on portals, but the basic core is good enough. Obviously there will be bugs and minor changes, but I don’t expect anything huge.

What’s next after Flatpak?

I am interested in Emmanuele‘s work on the scene graph. I’m reviewing that and looking at it a bit, but I’m focusing on Flatpak for the forseeable future.

Alex Larsson 2 — Photo taken by Bin Li, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

What has been keeping you at Red Hat for the last 15 years?

It’s just a great place to work. I get to work on what I love, and I have the freedom to choose what to work on. And there’s not a lot of bullshit.

How do you see the interaction between companies like Red Hat and GNOME?

Historically we had more companies involved, and I wish we had more again, to have more opinions and more resources in general. The ones we have now though are interacting quite well with the community. There was a time in the early 2000s when there was more corporate interest, but now desktops don’t have as much interest, it’s more about mobile. I‘d like to see more companies investing in the desktop.

Alex Larsson Pants — Photo Taken by Rosanna Yuen, CC-BY-SA 4.0

What do you think about having won the Pants award? The Pants award is quite prestigious and now you’re part of a sort of hall of fame!

I was really glad to get the pants, but I haven’t really thought about it much. It was moving and I’ve seen people getting them over the years, so it shows that there’s interest in what I’m doing. It means I’m doing the right thing.

We hear you play pokemon GO! What team are you on?

Team blue, of course!

What is your favorite place on Earth?

Home.

What is your favorite food?

Beef and french fries are good!

What is your spirit animal?

It would probably be a cat. I’m a cat person. Right now I have 2 cats, but I’ve had cats my whole life, more or less.

Finally, our classic and important question; what do you think cats dream about?

I’d say they’re chasing something. My cats are not chasing mice, I can tell you that! So I’d say they’re chasing toys probably.

Thank you, Alex, for spending time answering our questions. And, once again, congratulations on being the 2016 Pants winner!

Catch Alex talking more about Flatpak at LAS GNOME this September 19th in Portland, Oregon! Find out more on: las.gnome.org

Get to Know Julita Inca – Building a GNOME Community

As GUADEC draws near, we’ve been curious about the people behind community events. We’ve sat down with Julita Inca to learn more about what it takes to rally a community and organize and plan events. Julita is a professor in Peru, teaching database and operating systems, and is also involved in High Performance Computing (HPC) research. She’s been organizing and hosting events in Peru for the last 6 years. Read on to learn more about what it was like to start and build GNOME’s community presence in Peru!

Where are you from and where are you based now?

I’m from Perú, and I’m based in Lima.

How long have you been contributing to GNOME?

Since 2011. Before joining I began preparing myself by learning more about Linux Programming starting in 2009. I officially started contributing in 2011. I started getting involved in communities. In universities here they have the philiosophy to share knowledge, so I started getting in touch with friends at other universities who were also studying Linux, and I met a member of the board in 2010, Diego Escalante, who is also Peruvian. He started to get me interested in combining both work with Linux and communities, and he told me about GNOME. I was using GNOME, but I didn’t know it! So I applied in 2010, read more, got to know more about the community, and entered officially in 2011.

You’re very active within your community, especially when it comes to planning events. What motivated you to become so involved?

I won an internship, and it was my first travel abroad. I went to Cincinatti because Shaun McCance organized Open Help 2011 and gathered all of the GNOME Documentation guys there in his event. I started understanding how people behaved, which was different from how Peruvians do. Three months later I traveled to Germany to present my work with GNOME. There I met more people, and attended GUADEC, and I saw a very active and huge community. I hadn’t seen that here- the conferences in Peru were just based around lectures, but at GUADEC it was more about people, how they knew each other. In Peru we just didn’t have that. I’m trying to get that here.

What are some challenges you have faced in planning events and unifying your local community?

I have faced many ones. The first one is to get partnerships or allies. Every year I try to get bigger and bigger events. The first one in 2011 was with 13 people. I was contacting friends, “Come on, we’re going to do Linux!” The first ones all said, “No, thank you, not today!” Those first 13 were a challenge for me. The next year I went to Spain for GUADEC and it was different, with different resources, so I started applying those. In 2012 I organized a Linux camp. GNOME sponsored my event with $400, and we celebrated Linux for one day, in a place 2 hours outside of Lima, and that was with 30 people. I knew the best way to start projects was by having a good time. The third year in 2013, I hosted one at my university with 86 people, in 2014 at IBM with more than 200 people, and in 2015 it was the biggest, with more than 300 people. Wherever I am I try to get along well with authorities so they let me host my events. Now it’s part of my life. When I worked at IBM, it took me 6 months to convince the authorities to let me host the event there. They were hesitant to have the IBM name paired and partnered with GNOME. I knew their name would attract people, and we had more than 200 people that year!

Linux Camp 2012, Image courtesy of Julita Inca — Linux Camp 2012, Courtesy of Julita Inca

I also want to get more Peruvians involved in GSoC and other things like that, but it has been a challenge. I’ve known 13 countries because of GNOME, and I try to tell people my story. I’ve realized that people don’t come just for install parties, they want more than that. I started to develop strategies. For example, the 6 of us who organized the event in 2013 presented our jobs and how they relate to GNOME. There was a movement, the Harlem Shake, and we did that there! This year my camp was 5 days long, and I helped them do everything for their applications for GSoC, even fill out the forms! I got more people applying to GSoC, nobody was chosen, but they promised me that they will apply again next year. So I have a plan now- it’s not just one event, its a plan with many different projects.

Do you have any tips for people who want to plan events or get their local community interested and involved in GNOME?

One is getting good sponsors that believe in Linux. That Linux is education. Sponsors give gifts and little things, but they have to believe in the event, so it’s important to present benefits and give a talk on it. For Peru it’s a social thing. I opened my mind with Linux, it fostered me to do my PhD, and it has encouraged me to want to use Linux in all aspects of my life, it developed the sharing philosophy, and to be grateful with the people that helped me, contacts from around the world.

The last event that I did this year, I didn‘t want just users, I wanted developers too. I had contact with HackSpace Perú, which does similar things, training people, and doing volunteer things related to any operating system. I decided to do the event with them. They gave me people who develop, I showed them Linux. And something that really helped me a lot to have more audience to my conferences was local news. One of my tips, besides having people that believe in you, have the same interests, it’s also kind of a business. It’s important to have those allies and partnerships.

And now for some fun questions…

What is your favorite place on Earth?

The beach. Anywhere with sand, beach, a laptop… and wifi if possible!

If you were an ice cream flavor, which one would you be, and why?

Maybe Lucuma, because it’s native from Peru, originally. It’s so intense, like me!

What is your spirit animal?

A bee. I’m always in movement, I like to do many things, and I believe that if people do something together as a team they do many amazing things. Alone you cannot do anything. …And I like sugar! *laughs*

Finally, our classic and important question; what do you think cats dream about?

They’re thinking about what to do next… they’re cold thinkers. Calculating what’s next! They are mischievous, they are so smart!

A huge thank you to Julita for taking the time to answer all of our questions, and for all of her hard work in organizing events and building GNOME’s presence in South America!

GNOME Peru Fest 2015, Image courtesy of Julita Inca

Cosimo Cecchi: Long-time GNOME contributor, first-time GNOME Board member

Meet Cosimo, a first-time member of the GNOME Board

Cosimo has a long history of contributing to GNOME, beginning in 2007. Since then, he has remained active in various development projects. Just this last year, in July of 2015, he joined the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors. Read on to learn more!

Cosimo Cecchi — Image CC-BY-SA 2.0 by Jakub Steiner

Where are you from and where are you based now?

I am originally from Florence, Italy, but I have been living in the US for the past few years. I am based in San Francisco, California.

What has been the most exciting part of being in the GNOME community?

It’s hard to find one single thing that made GNOME exciting for me.
I’ve been involved in many development projects over the years, and more recently with the Board of Directors, which made me approach the community from a very different angle.

I think the constant among all of this has been working with amazing people; who works in GNOME mostly does so because they chose it and not because someone told them so. That, together with the lack of hierarchy and the diversity of backgrounds creates an unique group that is hard to find otherwise. I feel like I always keep learning!

GNOME Board 2015 GUADEC — GNOME Foundation Board of Directors at GUADEC 2015. From left to right: Allan Day, Cosimo Cecchi, Jeff Fortin, Andrea Veri, Christian Hergert [no longer on Board], Ekaterina Gerasimova, and Shaun McCance. Missing: Alexandre Franke. Image CC-BY-SA 4.0 by Garrett LeSage.

What is your main role being on the board?

Technically I am vice-secretary, which means I’m responsible for taking minutes when the secretary (Andrea Veri) can’t attend the meeting. But I’ve also been involved with various other initiatives related to sponsors, fundraising and PR.

What have you learned from your time participating on the board?

Being on the board is a very different involvement than being a developer.
As an engineer, I’m always drawn to find optimal solutions to problems, and most of the times it’s very clear what can be a good or a bad way to face an issue.

However, most of what is discussed on the board are not technical issues, and sometimes a lot more care and empathy are needed to navigate them.
I feel that my time on the board has taught me to be more nuanced in the way I express my judgement, and more understanding of positions that are different from mine.

It also opened up a different perspective of how much goes on behind the scenes to organize events such as GUADEC, which are easy to take for granted when you’re just an individual contributor to a development project.

Overall, it has been a great experience so far, and since elections are upcoming, I encourage others that may be interested to take the plunge and run as candidates!

Do you have any advice for newcomers or for those who have been less engaged lately?

It’s never too late to start contributing, or to get back to contributing, if one has been involved in the past already.

While approaching a large and established project like GNOME can naturally be intimidating, we take pride as a community for welcoming everyone and any contribution.

One may also think that coding is the only way to get into the project, but that’s far from true! There are countless ways that one can make a difference, from translations to documentation to organizing a local event, and they’re all equally important in the eyes of the community.

And now to switch gears and ask you some silly questions…
If you could have any superhero power, what would it be?

Teleportation!! Wouldn’t it be cool?

What is your favorite dessert?

I usually like simple desserts. One of my favorites is an Italian fruit tart called “Crostata di frutta”.

What is your spirit animal?

Parrot. I have always loved how cheerful and colorful they are!

Finally, and this one is important; what do you think cats dream about?

I think they dream about being big tigers or lions, hunting large preys and just generally being a big boss!

Thanks Cosimo, for all that you do on the board, and for taking the time to answer our questions!

Learn more about Carlos Soriano, the main contributor of Nautilus

We sat down with Carlos Soriano, the main contributor of Nautilus in 3.20, to learn more about the man behind the project.

Where are you from and where are you based now?

I’m from Spain. I grew up in a city called Girona in Catalonia. Now I’m living in Brno, in Czech Republic.

How long have you been contributing to GNOME?

Three and a half years.

How and why did you get started at GNOME?

During the second or third year of university I joined a computer graphics research group and discovered the Linux world. I knew I wanted to gain practical knowledge, and when I saw Allan Day’s mock ups for GNOME shell, I knew that was what I wanted to do. I was really excited about it! I started reading the GNOME Wiki, and it took me about two weeks to get up and running.

A lot of hard work has gone into Nautilus for 3.20; what is your favorite feature?

The search! We have provided some new tools and interface, and almost everything we did revolves around the search. It’s the biggest work we did on 3.20.

What about Nautilus are you most excited about? Do you have any ideas on where it will go from here?

I joined Nautilus one and a half years ago. My dream goal was to rework the views. The icon view’s code is 16 years old, so it holds us back with everything. It makes it difficult to have the capabilities that phones and web have, like adjusting the number of items shown or the spacing between them. Also, we can’t use GTK inside icon view, so we cannot add any smart visuals, widgets, or animations. We’re set back because of the code, and need to redo all of it. It’ll take a lot of time, so as to implement new features, but it will be worth the effort, and we will likely have icon view for the file chooser as well. Making progress towards this goal is what makes me most excited.

How many contributors have been involved this release?

2 with GNOME. I have been the main contributor, along with Georges, my GSoC student. And around 10 people helped with random patches, including developers from distros and also newcomers.

We see you’re again a mentor for this year’s round of GSoC. How has mentorship factored into your own life and career?

I have always liked to teach. I started teaching IT to children in a school, and I would also teach a bit of math, physics, and other similar subjects. Whenever I have the opportunity to be a mentor, that’s the first thing I want to do. Because I love to teach. Last summer I had a really great student named Georges Estravacas, and we created a great relationship. Not only my student learns, but I also learn how to teach and how to make people happy about contributing to GNOME. It’s something that helps both the student and me to make progress.

And now to switch gears and ask you some silly questions…

What is your favorite color?

Azul marino! (navy blue)

Favorite food?

I went vegan 4 months ago. It was sushi before, but now I would say vegan burgers.

What is your spirit animal?

Dog! They’re always cheerful, they have a great attitude, and they always try to cheer everyone up.

Finally, and this one is important; what do you think cats dream about?

I think they’re always conspiring to take over the world!

Thanks to Carlos for answering our questions during such a busy time of the release cycle. We can’t wait to see what he and the rest of the Nautilus team have in store for us next!