GNOME Foundation

Month: March 2010

  • GNOME Project Updates Free Desktop with 2.30 Release

    BOSTON, Mass — March 31, 2010 — The GNOME Project is proud to announce GNOME 2.30, the latest stable release of the popular Free Software desktop environment and applications suite. GNOME 2.30 builds on previous GNOME releases and brings hundreds of improvements for users and developers, including enhancements for user management, Web browsing, support for Facebook chat, and new productivity features.

    GNOME contributors have added improvements across the board for GNOME 2.30 in accessibility, productivity applications, Web browsing, instant messaging, and games. This release includes hundreds of new features, enhancements, and improvements over the GNOME 2.28 release from September 2009.

    “I’m really pleased with all of the updates in GNOME 2.30,” said Stormy Peters, GNOME Executive Director. “I’m excited that I can automatically sync my Tomboy notes between my desktop and laptop computer, easily configure Facebook chat in Empathy instant messenger, and do more with PDFs in Evince. GNOME 2.30 provides everything I need for work and play.”

    The GNOME Project thrives by consistently improving on previous releases while retaining compatibility and delivering a user-friendly desktop environment and applications twice a year. GNOME combines a commitment to Free Software with a focus on usability and working well with downstream projects to deliver a high-quality suite of free software.

    “GNOME’s commitment to usability, quality and predictable delivery is a key contributor to Ubuntu’s success,” said Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical. “GNOME sets the standard for a diverse and vibrant community that shares the goal of a Free desktop that is both familiar to users from any computing background, and also innovative. Congratulations to the project on this significant release.”

    The 2.30 release contains significant user-visible improvements, adding numerous platform improvements for developers, and builds towards the upcoming GNOME 3.0 release with a preview of the revolutionary GNOME Shell. GNOME Shell, which will replace the existing GNOME Panel, changes the way users will interact with the desktop.

    “I’d like to congratulate the GNOME project on a state of the art GNOME 2.30 desktop release,” said Andreas Jaeger, program manager of openSUSE for Novell. “I’m glad that we are able to include it in our next release and also have it available for easy installation on openSUSE 11.2. We’ll be providing packages via the openSUSE Build Service to allow users to easily test drive the upcoming GNOME 3.0 features like the GNOME Shell.”

    GNOME 2.30 is immediately available via GNOME Live Media, and will soon be available from the many vendors and projects that support GNOME.

    “The GNOME environment and platform have been a central part of Fedora’s releases since our earliest days. Over that time, GNOME has matured into a vital and healthy project that consistently combines simple, beautiful, user-friendly features and a robust platform for community-driven development,” said Paul Frields, Fedora Project Leader. “It’s a point of great pride that Fedora community members including Red Hat’s Desktop engineering team have contributed significantly to GNOME. I’m excited that we’re already involved in planning for the next generation of desktop technologies, including GNOME, that will help us build the free software desktop of the future.”

    GNOME is also committed to delivering a Free desktop for all users, and translations and Accessibility work is an important part of the GNOME 2.30 release. This release includes a number of improvements in GNOME’s Orca Screen Reader that improve performance and use on netbooks, and platform improvements to ready GNOME’s Accessibility interface for GNOME 3.0. The 2.30 release also delivers comprehensive support for more than 50 languages, and partial support for many others.

    “I’m extremely excited with the number of different languages currently supported by GNOME,” said Og Maciel, Foresight Linux Community Manager. “If there is one single feat about GNOME 2.30 that I’m proud of is the great work done by the Asturian and Shavian translation teams! We now have more than 50 different languages with at least 80% of the user interface translated, which means that more people will be able to enjoy their favorite desktop environment in their native tongue!”

    About GNOME and the GNOME Foundation

    GNOME is a free-software project whose goal is to develop a complete, accessible and easy to use desktop for Linux and Unix-based operating systems. GNOME also includes a complete development environment to create new applications. It is released twice a year on a regular schedule.

    The GNOME desktop is used by millions of people around the world. GNOME is a standard part of all leading GNU/Linux and Unix distributions, and is popular with both large existing corporate deployments and millions of small business and home users worldwide.

    Composed of hundreds of volunteer developers and industry-leading companies, the GNOME Foundation is an organization committed to supporting the advancement of GNOME. The Foundation is a member directed, non-profit organization that provides financial, organizational and legal support to the GNOME project and helps determine its vision and roadmap.

    More information about GNOME and the GNOME Foundation can be found at www.gnome.org andfoundation.gnome.org.

    Media Enquiries

  • Stormy’s Update: Week of March 22nd

    • Friends of GNOME ruler launched. The campaign has been a great success so far – thanks, everyone!
    • Jeremy Allison joined the GNOME Advisory Board representing Google.
    • Worked with a potential sponsor.
    • Met with Rosanna to discuss the things she’s got going on (invoices, reimbursements, bank stuff, etc) and the Friends of GNOME gifts. Proposed that maybe we could send gifts via a supplier like Amazon. Having too many gifts to send out is a good problem to have!
    • Met with Brian Cameron to discuss my work. It’s about time for a midyear review.
    • Sent lots of thank you’s to Friends of GNOME who donated. Thanks, everyone!
    • Discussed a couple of GUADEC things like press. Need to wrap up the sponsors.
    • Attended GNOME Foundation IRC meeting.
    • Discussed who could attend FOSS Nigeria as the person who was going to attend on GNOME’s behalf had to cancel for work.
    • Organized a Women in Technology happy hour with Julie Bort in Fort Collins. Not GNOME related all though all GNOME women are welcome!
    • Reviewed GNOME 2.30 release notes and Project Accessibility & GNOME press release.
    • Wrapped up an advisory board interview for GNOME Journal.
    • Decided to move the Meet the Funders event to the fall. That will avoid conflict with lots of summer conferences and enable us to plan in person at OSCON.
    • Interviewed with a Northern California radio show on women and Unix and Linux.
    • Met with an analyst trying to figure out how many Linux mobile devices there will be.
    • Attended FSF Women’s IRC meeting. Sounds like the women’s track at Libre Planet was a great success!
    • Attended Open World Forum committee meeting. Haven’t yet committed to helping any particular track.

    For this week:

    • Review my very long todo list and make sure I’m working on the most important stuff.
    • Start a conversation on GNOME Mobile about what to do with the Nokia funding.
    • Try to close with all GUADEC sponsors.
    • Work out a schedule for the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit desktop track.
    • Annual report letter.

  • Stormy’s Update: Weeks of March 8th and 15th

    Attended Open Mobility. Was on a panel about the desktop and the cloud. There was lots of audience participation and the conversation took a couple of strange turns with Google and Google apps being a good piece of the conversation.

    While I was there I met with Gabi Schindler from Azingo and Morgan Gillis and Andrew Shikiar from the LiMo Foundation. Plus quite a few other people.

    While in San Francisco I also met with Adam Dingle and Jim Nelson from Yorba and had lunch with the whole crew. I was really impressed with their mission to create easy to use multimedia software (for GNOME!) for artists. Check out Shotwell.

    Blogged about Friends of GNOME results.

    Simon Phipps left the GNOME advisory board as he left Sun. Thanks to Simon for all the help over the years. Good luck to him in his future endeavors!

    Got access to our Google Checkout account and added Jaap so we can add it to Friends of GNOME. We can receive donations without fees through Google Checkout thanks to our Google Grant.

    Blogged about GNOME and Project:Possibility – students are working on GNOME accessibility!

    Attended Board meeting. (Didn’t attend the advisory board meeting as I was on a plane.)

    Thanked new subscribers and one time donators to Friends of GNOME.

    Talked to InitMarketing about GNOME and marketing and how they might be able to help.

    Reviewed Juanjo Marin’s GNOME SWOT Analysis which should be published wider soon. Please comment on it when it is.

    Worried about GNOME representation at Texas Linux Fest and Idlelo – looks like all will be good! (Backup plan would be for me to go to Ghana.)

    Announced dates for marketing hackfest.

    Attended marketing IRC meeting.

    Did some paperwork – some to officially get on GNOME’s bank account, expense reports, etc.

    Reviewed several press releases. Very glad we have Zonker on board!

    Was on multiple threads about the event box – glad we have Larry Cafeiro on board!

    Met with Fluendo and Flumotion to talk about GUADEC.

    Met with Bharat Kapoor and Paul Cutler to talk about the mobile texting donations campaign, reviewed agreement from company, got legal review on it, setting up a meeting to discuss concerns.

    Met every week with Rosanna.

    Met with several board members individually. Some to discuss my goals, others finance, and some other topics.

    Experimented with Inbox 0. Usually I use my inbox as a todo list, even emailing myself action items. The last two weeks I’ve played with keeping my inbox at 0 at keeping my todo list more uptodate. I think it’s resulted in a different set of things getting done. Things that are more of a pain to add to the todo list than they are todo get done quickly. Those that are a little more involved get moved to my todo list where they are less visible in some way. Maybe I need to spend more time studying and rearranging my todo list! I’m going to continue the experiment for a bit.

    Took an extra long weekend to hang out with family from out of town.

  • GNOME Teams Take Top Rankings in Code for a Cause Competition

    BOSTON, Mass — March 22, 2010 — GNOME Teams working on GNOME Caribou have taken top rankings in the Code for a Cause competition hosted by Project:Possibility. In the initial sprints on Feb. 27 and 28, GNOME’s team took 1st place at UCLA and 2nd place at USC. In the head-to-head competition on March 6, GNOME’s UCLA team placed 2nd and GNOME’s USC team placed 3rd. Teams now have the opportunity to present their projects at the 2010 CSUN Conference on Saturday, March 27.

    SS12 is a programming competition run jointly by Project:Possibility and local Association of Computing Machinery chapters where teams of students compete to develop open source software for persons with disabilities over the course of a weekend.

    On Feb 27-28, eighty-four students formed eight USC teams & six UCLA teams and coded throughout the entire the weekend. Coding began at 9am on Saturday, and ended at 5 p.m. on Sunday. The competition was fierce at the event, and some teams continued coding as late as 3 a.m. Sunday morning to work on their projects.

    Students were selected for teams based on the project preferences they indicated at the beginning of the weekend. GNOME’s accessibility (a11y) team collaborated by recommending a number of potential project ideas. Two teams chose to add binary input capabilities to GNOME Caribou, and were guided throughout the weekend by GNOME programmer Ben Konrath remotely through IRC. Other GNOME accessibility developers including Willie Walker, team lead, dropped by during the competition to provide support in person.

    GNOME Caribou provides text entry and computer control for users who do not use a keyboard. This allows access by those who only use a pointer device, such as head mice or eye trackers, and those who can only perform very simple gestures with primitive on-off switch devices. The code added by the students adds critical facilities for access with basic switch devices.

    The students faced the added challenge of acquainting themselves with a code base they were unfamiliar with, and familiarizing themselves with the GNOME platform and Caribou software early on in the competition before they could even get to the coding. Fortunately, they were up to the challenge and impressed the judges with their presentations.

    The weekend culminated in teams presenting their work to a panel of judges at each campus. Projects were evaluated based on their thorough documentation, completion of the task at hand, and addressing the challenge factor or difficulty of the project. The judges awarded the USC team second place overall out of eight teams, and the UCLA team first place overall out of six teams. Both teams were also recognized as top-3 teams at the Finals round the following weekend.

    In addition to winning prizes and being recognized for their work over the weekend, students working on the GNOME projects also gained a positive experience developing code for an existing open source project.

    “For me, SS12 was a great experience in designing and coding a feature from scratch in a short timeframe. It was a great project to work on, and we just sent our work up as a patch to be possibly included in the next release of the Caribou on-screen keyboard,” said Ben Walker, a member of the USC GNOME team. “I didn’t think I’d actually be contributing in a meaningful way to open source projects as only a Junior in college, but thanks to GNOME and Project:Possibility, I’ve had a fantastic time doing so.”

    As a final accolade, the winning teams will have the opportunity to present their projects at the 25th Annual International Technology & Persons with Disabilities Conference (2010 CSUN Conference) on Saturday, March 27, where they will also meet the GNOME accessibility developers in person.

    Project:Possibility is a nonprofit community organization that enables students to learn about accessibility and open source through competitive events where they develop open source accessibility software. For more information about Project:Possibility and the SS12, check out our website athttp://www.projectpossibility.org.

    About GNOME and the GNOME Foundation

    GNOME is a free-software project whose goal is to develop a complete, accessible and easy to use desktop for Linux and Unix-based operating systems. GNOME also includes a complete development environment to create new applications. It is released twice a year on a regular schedule.

    The GNOME desktop is used by millions of people around the world. GNOME is a standard part of all leading GNU/Linux and Unix distributions, and is popular with both large existing corporate deployments and millions of small business and home users worldwide.

    Composed of hundreds of volunteer developers and industry-leading companies, the GNOME Foundation is an organization committed to supporting the advancement of GNOME. The Foundation is a member directed, non-profit organization that provides financial, organizational and legal support to the GNOME project and helps determine its vision and roadmap.

    More information about GNOME and the GNOME Foundation can be found at www.gnome.org andfoundation.gnome.org.

    Media Enquiries

  • Friends of GNOME February 2010 Update

    Good news:

    • From last year: 2009 was an awesome year thanks to our Friends of GNOME. We brought in $29,578!!!
    • February 2010 was an outstanding month. We brought in $2,826. (Compare to $1,587 in January and $2,663 in December.)

    Challenge:

    • A large part of February’s donation was do to one, one time $1500 donation from an individual. (Thank you!)
    • We lost 12 subscribers. I asked them all why they cancelled. Few have responded but I imagine that it’s because they finished their year and they are getting a tshirt.

    Corrections:

    • These reports currently don’t include $100 a month that we receive in donations via checks.

    And some graphs so you can see what is going on …

    Percentage from subscriptions:

    We did really well year over year in February. (Not so much in January – but last year we launched the Friends of GNOME subscriptions in January, so that was an unusual month.)

    And as you can see, 2009 was a stellar year. We have a lot to live up to!

    Promote Friends of GNOME with a badge like this:

    Become a Friend of GNOME

  • GNOME Foundation and KDE e.V. to Co-Host Conferences in 2011

    BOSTON, Mass — March 16, 2010 — Following the successful Gran Canaria Desktop Summit in 2009, the GNOME Foundation and KDE e.V. Boards have decided to co-locate their flagship conferences once again in 2011, and are taking bids to host the combined event. The Desktop Summit 2011 will be the largest free desktop event ever.

    In July of 2009, the GNOME and KDE communities came together for the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit, the first co-located KDE/GNOME event. It was a major success, and was a fantastic opportunity for the leaders of the free software desktop efforts to share talks, communicate on common issues, and attend combined social events. The attendees from both projects expressed great interest in repeating the event and merging the programmes to synchronize schedules and make the event an even greater opportunity for the KDE and GNOME teams to learn from each other and work together.

    “The Gran Canaria Desktop Summit was a great first event,” said Vincent Untz, GNOME Foundation Board Member. “We enjoyed working with our KDE friends at GCDS in 2009, and want to increase our cooperation in 2011. We plan to go beyond simple co-location this time, and actually plan a combined schedule in 2011 so that KDE and GNOME contributors have every opportunity to work with and learn from each other.”

    The combined summit is also an opportunity for commercial sponsors of the GNOME and KDE projects to meet with the contributors from KDE and GNOME and to help foster faster collaboration and development of the free software desktop. Sponsors of the first Desktop Summit have expressed great interest in seeing both communities working together again.

    The GNOME and KDE projects will hold independent events in 2010. GUADEC, the GNOME Project’s annual conference, will be held in The Hague, Netherlands on July 24 through July 30 of this year. KDE’s Akademy will be located in Tampere, Finland from July 3 to 10 this year. Both groups will likely hold smaller sprints through 2010 and early 2011 to prepare for the combined 2011 Desktop Summit.

    “The KDE e.V. board felt that GCDS was a fantastic event, and we learned what works well and what can be improved when co-hosting an event with our GNOME friends,” said Cornelius Schumacher of the KDE e.V. “KDE and GNOME share a lot of goals for the free desktop, as well as technology, so we’re excited to make use of this experience and have an opportunity to co-locate again in 2011.”

    More than 850 contributors to the GNOME and KDE projects gathered in Gran Canaria last July. The event brought together attendees from 50 countries, and helped raise local awareness of free software and had a measurable impact on the local community. The impact of the event continues to be felt even after the event, with nearly 2 million hits to the summit Web site following the event.

    “We were thrilled to have GCDS right here, and felt that it was an enormous boost for our local commitment to free software,” said José Miguel Santos Espino, Director of IT at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. “It’s hard to overstate how important it was to have the opportunity to meet with contributors from GNOME and KDE and learn more about what’s possible on the desktop with free software.”

    The projects are seeking a host in Europe at a location that can handle more than 1,000 participants. For detailed requirements, prospective hosts can see the requirements for Akademy (http://ev.kde.org/akademy/requirements.php) and GUADEC (http://live.gnome.org/GuadecPlanningHowTo/CheckList). Applications are welcomed before May 15th and should be sent to the KDE e.V. (kde-ev-board@kde.org) and the GNOME Foundation (board@gnome.org) boards.

    About GNOME and the GNOME Foundation

    GNOME is a free-software project whose goal is to develop a complete, accessible and easy to use desktop for Linux and Unix-based operating systems. GNOME also includes a complete development environment to create new applications. It is released twice a year on a regular schedule.

    The GNOME desktop is used by millions of people around the world. GNOME is a standard part of all leading GNU/Linux and Unix distributions, and is popular with both large existing corporate deployments and millions of small business and home users worldwide.

    Composed of hundreds of volunteer developers and industry-leading companies, the GNOME Foundation is an organization committed to supporting the advancement of GNOME. The Foundation is a member directed, non-profit organization that provides financial, organizational and legal support to the GNOME project and helps determine its vision and roadmap.

    More information about GNOME and the GNOME Foundation can be found at www.gnome.org andfoundation.gnome.org.

    Media Enquiries

  • GNOME & Project:Possibility

    Project:Possiblity just hosted the first ever SS12: Code for a Cause. SS12 is a programming competition where teams of students compete to code open source software for persons with disabilities over the course of a weekend.  Teams of students working with GNOME’s Caribou took first place at UCLA and second place at USC!

    Thanks go to Stanley Lam and Steve Lee for not only making the project happen but getting GNOME involved. Thanks go to GNOME accessibility hacker Ben Konrath for mentoring the students over the weekend.

    You can read more about it in this newspaper article, the “existing on-screen keyboard” is GNOME Caribou.

    And some pictures:
    http://picasaweb.google.com/projectpossibility/UCLAVsUSCSS122010Day1#
    http://picasaweb.google.com/projectpossibility/UCLAVsUSCSS122010Day2#
    http://picasaweb.google.com/projectpossibility/UCLAVsUSCSS122010FINAL#

    The students from the winning teams will be at CSUN,  the 25th Annual International Technology & Persons with Disabilities Conference, where they will meet with the GNOME developers attending CSUN and the GNOME a11y hackfest.

    I hope they decide to continue their work on GNOME accessibility – they are doing a great job!

  • Magnatune donates $600 thanks to Rhythmbox integration

    Magnatune is an independent record label that aims at treating both its musicians and its customers fairly. There is a Rhythmbox plugin that enables users to browse the Magnatune music store, listen to full tracks, and purchase albums. Our friends at Magnatune decided that 10% of every purchase made through Rhythmbox will go back to the project, and after some discussion, the Rhythmbox team decided to donate this money to the GNOME Foundation.

    John Buckman announced yesterday that he will therefore send a $614.20 check to the GNOME Foundation, which was a great surprise! John’s post has some more interesting statistics about how many albums were purchased.

    We’re really grateful to Magnatune for their support, and we’d like to also thank the Rhythmbox team for choosing to donate this money to the GNOME Foundation! We think such inventive ways to help fund free software projects are promising, and we will make sure to use this money to help make a difference for the GNOME project. Christophe Fergeau, one of the Rhythmbox hackers, has a post on how you can contribute to improving Rhythmbox with hardware donations.

  • Stormy’s Update: Week of March 1st

    Followed up on several sponsors for GUADEC. It is looking good from a sponsorship perspective! (Don’t forget to submit your talk proposal!)

    Michael Meeks joined the GNOME Foundation Advisory Board representing Novell, replacing Gary Ekker.

    Set up some surveys for the board directors to give feedback on each others’ performance.

    Way too much time and energy on Foundation List threads. Really liked Dave’s post about consensus driven conversations. Hopefully everyone follows Vincent’s advice and refocuses on making GNOME rock and making the GNOME project a fun place to work.

    Short meeting with Jorge Castro who’s been really busy in his new board role!

    Board meeting.

    Meeting with Rosanna. She’s adding info to the CRM system. I’m trying to help her with Friends of GNOME. Planning a trip to Boston to get on the GNOME Foundation’s bank account.

    Looking for someone to help out with the GNOME booth at Texas Linux Fest.

    Meeting with Jeffrey Altman about the Meet the Funders event in New York.

    Set up some meetings for my trip to San Francisco and Open Mobility next week.

    Helped/asked/pushed for some press releases. Hopefully you’ll see some of them soon. (Thanks to Zonker for leading the GNOME press team!)

    Wrote thank you emails to people that donated to GNOME.

    Generated Google Adwords Campaign Tracking code. Gave it to Jaap and Claus to add to our Friends of GNOME pages.

    Sent questions to advisor interviewee for Board of Advisors GNOME Journal interview.

    Generated Friends of GNOME February data. Need to blog about it on Foundation blog.

    Tried to take a day off to deal with doctors’ appointments and dentist appointments and accountants among other things.

    Next week:

    • Trip to San Francisco. Speaking on a panel at Open Mobility.
    • Get the Meet the Funders event planning moving. We’ve scheduled them for May.
    • Continue to work on GUADEC sponsorships.
    • Try to touch base with a few GNOME Board of Advisors folks.
    • Write letter for annual report.
    • Blog about February Friends of GNOME data.

  • Earthquake in Chile

    This last February 27th Chile was hit by a 8.8 magnitude earthquake.
    GNOME is not removed from this tragedy since it has always relied on the invaluable friendship and collaboration from developers and users in Chile.

    This value became evident when just moments after the earthquake when people in the GNOME community first started to express concern and worry about our friends in Chile.

    From GNOME we would like to send all our sympathy and support to our friends in Concepción, Curicó, Talca, Santiago, Viña del Mar, Valparaíso and everyone in Chile.

    Fuerza Chile.

    El último 27 de Febrero Chile fue golpeado por un terremoto de magnitud 8.8.

    GNOME no es ajeno a esta tragedia ya que por años el proyecto ha contado con la invaluable amistad y colaboración de desarrolladores y usuarios chilenos.

    Esta gran importancia fue evidente cuando apenas a momentos de sucedido el terremoto los mensajes y llamadas de preocupación por ustedes comenzaron a circular y no se han detenido aún.

    Desde GNOME queremos enviarles todo nuestro cariño y apoyo a nuestros amigos en Concepción, Curicó, Talca, Santiago, Viña del Mar, Valparaíso y todo Chile.

    Fuerza Chile.

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