Tag: foundation

GNOME on the Road: Linux Fest Northwest and OSCON

Linux Fest Northwest

Linux Fest Northwest took place back in April, and we were there! Sri Ramkrishna and I hung out in Bellingham, Washington (USA), meeting GNOMEies, free software contributors, and open source enthusiasts.

A photo of the GNOME booth at LFNW. Behind the booth sits one person, and another is standing in front of it. The table is blue.

At the GNOME booth we sold tshirts, gave away stickers, and signed up people to become Friends of GNOME. We got to have highly technical conversations about the intracacies of flatpak through to giving introductory descriptions of what a desktop environment is and why we think GNOME is the best one. Situated next to our friends at KDE, we also had a great opportunity to talk with them (and others) about the overall ecosystem of desktop environments. If you’d like to learn a little more about the intersection of GNOME and KDE, you can read about LAS, an event co-organized by the two communities.

In addition to tabling, I gave a talk on community guidelines, like codes of conduct and anti-harassment policies, and my experiences following through on them. You can watch the video online.

OSCON

OSCON is one of the major open source conferences in the US. We made our OSCON debut at this year’s conference, in Portland, OR. In addition to enjoying the coffee and comraderie we found in the Rose City, Neil, Sri, Rosanna, and I had a great experience in the Expo Hall and at the conference events.

We met a lot of people in the Expo Hall. Similar to LFNW, we talked about anything and everything related to GNOME: the Foundation, the community, the desktop environment, and associated tools like GTK, GStreamer, and flatpak.

Photo of a six people at the Expo Hall at OSCON. One of them is wearing a suit.

In addition to volunteering with us, Sri gave a talk on the future of FOSS on mobile. He talked about GTK+, a multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces that is part of the GNOME project.

Following OSCON, there was the West Coast Hackfest, where members of the Engagement, Documentation, and GTK teams got together in Portland to hack on GNOME and the GNOME community.

Photos courtesy of Sriram Ramkrishna, Licensed Creative Commons BY-SA.

Friends of GNOME Update – August 2019

Welcome to the August 2019 Friends of GNOME Update!

A photo of ten people on a stage. Many of them are smiling.

Where we went

Neil, Molly, and Rosanna went to OSCON, in Portland, OR. While there, we met with people from other free software projects and companies developing open source, or with open source programs offices. Following OSCON, there was the West Coast Hackfest, during which the Documentation, GTK, and Engagement teams met and got a bunch of work done. There are some photos you can check out on our Twitter account.

Molly attended FrOSCon, giving a keynote entitled “Open Source Citizenship for Everyone!” On September 17th, Molly will be at GitLab Commit in Brooklyn, NY.

Federico Mena will be at CCOSS in Guadalajara, México, September 14 – 15th. There he will run a workshop on GNOME and deliver a keynote presentation.

Update to the Bylaws

Like many non-profits, the GNOME Foundation is governed by a set of bylaws. Our bylaws cover such things as membership, the rights and responsibilities of board directors, and other important organizational and legal infrastructure. Changes in the bylaws must be approved by members of the Foundation. Announced in July, a vote on these amendments will take place at the 2019 AGM (Annual General Meeting) at GUADEC. Should it be passed, board member terms will be extended, and language in the bylaws will be changed to be gender neutral.

Interns, Interns, Interns!

Our Google Summer of Code and Outreachy interns have been active with their projects, making things and making things happen! We’d like to shine a spotlight on the work of Ravgeet Dhillon, who has been working on the GTK web site.

You can read more about our GSoC interns and their projects on the GSoC web site; Outreachy interns are highlighted on the Outreachy web site, where you can also find links to their project blogs.

Technical developments

With thanks to Matthias Classen for his help, a new constraint layout manager is ready for launch.

We’ve improved several pieces of GNOME project infrastructure, including GitLab runners, Pastebin spam removal, migrating mailing lists, and building up the GUADEC web site.

We have also updated Flathub infrastructure, namely the x86_64 builders. We have also made it so application and freedesktop.org maintainers can better test runtimes.

Working together for the community

The Inclusion & Diversity team officially launched! Initial efforts include events at GUADEC, including coordination around the Women’s Dinner, the Newcomer’s Lunch, an I&D BoF, and workshops on impostor syndrome and unconscious bias.

In preparation for GUADEC, community members, volunteers, and GNOME Foundation staff took an incident response training facilitated by Sage Sharp of Otter Tech.

LAS

Along with our friends at KDE, we’re organizing the Linux App Summit (LAS). LAS is taking place this year in Barcelona, Spain, November 12 – 15th.

The LAS CfP is open! You can (and should) submit a talk! It can relate directly to the conference tracks (listed on the CfP page), but tracks are designed to inspire ideas. Feel free to think outside of them and come up with a different topic.

GUADEC Update

GUADEC is happening as we speak (so to speak)! We want to extend an extra welcome to the event for those of you who are here! Please feel free to take this opportunity to meet the Foundation staff and talk with us about the work we’re doing, that you’re helping to support.

Thank you!

Are you a Friend of GNOME? If so, thank you! If not, become one today! Every month we deliver this newsletter to the inboxes of Friends of GNOME with a healthy dose of that warm, fuzzy feeling that comes with knowing you’re supporting software freedom for people all over the world.