Author: GNOME Foundation

Call for Proposals to Host GNOME.Asia Summit 2019

The GNOME.Asia Committee is inviting interested parties to submit proposals for hosting the GNOME.Asia Summit during the second half of 2019.

GNOME.Asia Summit is the featured annual GNOME Conference in Asia. The event focuses primarily on the GNOME desktop, but also covers applications and the development platform tools. It brings together the GNOME community in Asia to provide a forum for users, contributors, foundation leaders, governments, and businesses to discuss the current technology and future developments.

Over the last eleven years, GNOME.Asia Summit has been held in many cities throughout Asia, including Beijing, Ho-Chi-Minh City, Taipei, Bangalore, Hong Kong, Seoul, Beijing, Depok, New Delhi, and Chongqing.

The Committee’s preference is to find a new location each year in order to spread GNOME throughout Asia, and we are looking for local organizers to rise to the challenge of organizing an excellent GNOME event. The GNOME.Asia committee will assist in the process, but there is a definitive need for individuals to be actively involved and committed to the planning and execution of the event.

How to Submit a Proposal:

Interested parties are hereby invited to submit a formal proposal to the GNOME.Asia Committee. The deadline for the proposals is February 24, 2019. Please email your proposal to gnome-asia-committee-list@gnome.org. 

We might invite you to present your proposal in more details over our regular IRC meetings, or send you additional questions and requests. Results will be announced by the first week of April 2019.

The conference might require availability of facilities for 3-5 days, including a weekend, during the second half of 2019. Final event dates should avoid other key free software conferences or other events that may conflict. 

The key points that should be included in the proposal, and which will be used to decide among candidates, are.

  • Local community support for hosting the conference.
  • Venue details. Information about infrastructure and facilities to hold the conference should be provided.
  • Preliminary schedule with main program & different activities.
  • Information about how Internet connectivity will be managed.
  • Lodging choices ranging from affordable housing to nicer hotels, and information about distances between the venue and lodging options.
  • The availability of restaurants or the organization of catering on-site, cost of food/soft drinks/beer.
  • The availability and cost of travel from major Asian and European cities.
  • Local industries, universities and government support.
  • Please provide a reasonably detailed budget (sponsorships, expenses, etc).
  • Provide plans for local sponsorship.
  • Provide plans to encourage student and youth participation.

Below, we have included resources for people interested in submitting a proposal. Please do not hesitate to contact the GNOME.Asia committee with any questions at gnome-asia-committee-list@gnome org.

 We are looking forward to hearing from you soon!

– GNOME.Asia Committee

Resources for Interested GNOME.Asia 2019 Organizers: 

[1] Wiki about GNOME Asia: http://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeAsia
[2] Check list: https://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeAsia/SummitCheckList
[3] HowTo’s: https://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeAsia/HowToOrganizeGNOME.Asia%20Summit
[4] GNOME Foundation conference requirements: https://wiki.gnome.org/Foundation/Conferences
[5] Sample winning proposal: http://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeAsia/2012Summit/Bids?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Proposal_of_HongKong_GNOME_Asia_Hackfest_2012_20120124.pdf

Please help us spread the word! If you haven’t already, please follow us on Twitter: @gnome_asia and @gnome, and on Facebook.

2018 Year End Summary

With 2018 having ended, the GNOME project now enters another exciting year full of software releases, events, and computing excellence.

Looking back at the past year, 2018 brought us two large GNOME releases, versions 3.28 and 3.30, which delivered improvements across the board, particularly with performance, usability, and overall polish.

Continuing its long held tradition, the GNOME Foundation successfully hosted another iteration of its main conference, GUADEC, in Almería, Spain this past July, with over 200 people attending. In August, GNOME.Asia Summit took place in Taipei, Taiwan, and participants were able to spend time with over one thousand other free software enthusiasts at the co-hosted event with COSCUP and OpenSUSE.Asia. Later, while working with our friends in the KDE community, System 76, Purism, and others, the GNOME Foundation organized the Libre Application Summit (LAS) in Denver, Colorado. LAS hosted community members, developers, and designers from projects spanning the entire FOSS ecosystem to help chart the future for libre computing.

On the technical side of things, significant developments were made to better support Rust for use in the GNOME platform, GJS (GNOME’s JavaScript Engine) was upgraded to support Mozilla’s SpiderMonkey 52, and GNOME made the important decision to move to GitLab. The switch to GitLab is of particular importance due to the overwhelming enhancement it adds to the development process of GNOME software. Most notably, it replaced Bugzilla as a far more usable issue tracking system, and has provided GNOME teams with Continuous Integration (CI) for their projects.

Over the past year, the use of Flatpak for app usage and deployment has grown significantly, making it easier to distribute the latest and greatest software to users without any risk to system stability. This growth was brought about by advancements made to the technology driving Flatpak under-the-hood, and with the maturity of this technology overall. However, the most exciting point of progress came from the launch of Flathub.org as a central web front-end for users to browse and install apps directly from their browser. Flathub is a distro-agnostic centralized software repository that, above all else, has made installing and managing software easy, intuitive, and fun.

The growth of GNOME over 2018 is thanks to GNOME’s talented developers, designers, contributors, and community. Furthermore, the GNOME Foundation was fortunate to receive large donations which will enable it to expand its operations going forward, beginning with several individuals being hired to fill necessary roles in the organization.

The Foundation would like to give special thanks to all of GNOME’s supporters and advocates, and to GNOME’s advisory board members, for their support.

We are looking forward to an exciting 2019! Stay tuned.

GUADEC participants walking outside the 2018 year venue

photo by guillefuertes /CC BY-SA 2.0

GUADEC 2019 to be in Thessaloniki, Greece!

The GNOME Foundation is excited to announce that GUADEC 2019 will take place from the 23rd to 28th of August in Thessaloniki, Greece. GUADEC, the GNOME User and Developer European Conference, brings together hundreds of users and developers every year to further the GNOME Project, and it is one of our longest-standing and most noteworthy events.

Thessaloniki, the second largest city in Greece, is an ancient city with over 2,300 years of history. Located right on the northern coast, it has beautiful waterfront promenades and seaside gardens where visitors can enjoy themselves. Likewise, for those who enjoy quality food and drink, Thessaloniki is highly regarded as a cultural hotspot in Greece and hosts a great supply of trendy bars and restaurants that are scattered throughout the city, along the pedestrianised streets, and along the coast with sea views.

The GNOME Foundation looks forward to hosting GUADEC 2019 in Thessaloniki and has launched a website where those interested in participating can find more information: guadec.org. To stay up-to-date with the latest conference deadlines and registration dates, news, activities, and more, follow @GUADEC and @GNOME on Twitter.

Whether you wish to present your work, take part in the workshops, or simply attend the talks, the GNOME Foundation hopes to see you there!

Thessaloniki from Aristotle University CC-BY-3.0 Nikolaos Oikonomou

GNOME 3.30 Released

The latest version of GNOME 3 has been released today. Version 3.30 contains six months of work by the GNOME community and includes many improvements and new features.

This release features some significant performance improvements. The entire desktop now uses fewer system resources, which means you can run more apps at once without encountering performance issues.

Other highlights include a new content reader mode in the Web application, search enhancements in the Files application, and  improvements to screen recording and screen sharing. The Settings application now has a Thunderbolt panel to manage devices and dynamically shows hardware-related panels only when relevant hardware is detected.

The many other improvements in GNOME 3.30 are in the release notes.

GNOME 3.30 is code-named “Almería” in recognition of the most recent GUADEC, held this past July in Almería, Spain.

The GNOME Project is supported by the GNOME Foundation. We rely on donations to continue to drive the project forward. If you appreciate the work we do, please consider joining as a Friend of GNOME.

Press

This article can be freely reproduced with no attribution required. Press queries should be directed to gnome-press-contact@gnome.org. A screenshot pack is available for download.

GNOME.Asia 2018 and COSCUP, openSUSE.Asia launch co-host press conference in Taipei

Since its founding in 2006, COSCUP (Conference for Open Source, Coders, Users and Promoters) has been the leading promoter of open source and innovation in Taiwan. GNOME.Asia 2018 will co-host with COSCUP and openSUSE.Asia in Taipei!

We launched our Press Conference in Taipei Humble House Hotel on Aug 7, and honorably invited former Simon Chang San-Cheng (former Premier of Republic of China, Chairman of the Taiwan Mobile Foundation), Chen Hsien-Li (CEO of Breaktime Inc), Wu Han-Chang (CEO of Asus Cloud Corporation).

We are grateful to have such honored guest represent and share their passion for open source. We want to break down the misconception that only engineers/developers can benefit from the open source community. Our hope is to share the open knowledge and community that COSCUP has to offer to all fields of discipline.

COSCUP is the largest open source event in Asia that will soon take place on August 11-12, 2018 at the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology. To top it off, this year we are fortunate to have GNOME.Asia and openSUSE.Asia help kickoff our event.

The mission of COSCUP is to create an open source community that promotes the sharing of knowledge and code amongst users and developers. We are a group of volunteers passionate about sharing the idea of open source to others. Only with this sort of commitment, is COSCUP able to continue on for 13 straight years.

We started in Taipei and our hope is to connect users and developers from all over the world, putting Taiwan on the map as an important distributor of open code.

As for our partners, GNOME.Asia is currently the world’s most popular open source user interface. The GNOME Foundation in Asia was first established in 2008, and shares our passion for open source software.

The openSUSE Asia Conference is an important event in the open source community that promotes the use and application of the highly popular operating system, Linux. This is the 5th year that the openSUSE Asia conference was held in Beijing. Every year, they invite participants from around the world to share open source knowledge and experience to users and developers alike.

Thus, we are excited to have both GNOME.Asia and openSUSE Asia attend this years’ 2018 COSCUP event.

2017 was the first year we invited honored speakers to come to speak at COSCUP by sharing their open source story and experiences. Fast forward to 2018, COSCUP took on the challenge to invite Mr. Simon Chang San-Cheng, chairman of Taiwan Mobile Foundation, and Mr. Chen Hsien-Li, executive of Breaktime Inc., and Mr. Wu Han-Chang, director of Asus Cloud Corporation, to represent the 2018 COSCUP press conference leading up to our main event.

The press conference is an opportunity to showcase the 13 – year journey of COSCUP, and also invite speakers to share how greater society can benefit from an open source community.

Our open source representative, Mr. Simon Chang shares what it means to have the “open source spirit” and applications that are not exclusive to software development. He mentions an example of open source farming that takes place in Hualien, and touches upon the potential and opportunities of open source.

Further, Executive, Chen Hsien-Li shares how he benefited from open source with his teaching background.

Director Wu claims that ,” from the use of Linux to EeePC 10 years ago, the market has been well received. In recent years, the development of the Asus cloud platform has used a large number of Open Sources. Asus has always been a loyal supporter of Open Source; Open Source is a very important platform for connecting developers, through sharing, feedback and Solving problems allows technology to progress faster and lays a good foundation for Taiwan’s system software.”

Finally, we will have a ceremonial breaking of the ice to represent our desire to reach out to other industries and not be limited to engineers/developers. We hope to share the value of open source to all areas in the world. We firmly believe that the values of open source will contribute to the greater good in the world. While the concept of open source may have started from programming, the open source spirit is surely not limited to it.

This Article is translated from Chinese, if you want to read original newsletter, please refer to:

正體中文：Tradiational Chinese https://openingsource.org/3180/zh-tw/
简体中文：Simplified Chinese https://openingsource.org/3180/

GNOME Foundation receives $400,000 from Handshake.org

Today (2nd August) has seen the launch of handshake.org – a decentralized certificate authority and peer-to-peer DNS service. As part of this, the organisation has pledged significant donations to free and open source projects.

The GNOME Foundation is pleased to be one of these recipients, receiving $300,000 for the GNOME Project and $100,000 for GIMP. Neil McGovern, Executive Director of the Foundation said “I am very grateful to handshake for this pledge. Ensuring that free software can be sustainably funded is a key challenge, and this donation helps fund further development. Further, GNOME cares deeply about privacy and the ability for all to communicate securely and looks forward to further development in the Handshake project”

“Firstly, this pledge serves as a long overdue thank you to the open source community both for the immeasurable contributions to the world, as well as making decentralized currencies and of course, Handshake possible in the very first place.

Secondly, the pledge ensures that any economic gain from this project will be directly beneficial to the open source community, while the distribution of the vast majority of the genesis block to the open source community ensures that they will have the incentive, whereabouts and deep influence in the long term governance of this protocol.” commented the Handshake Team.

GUADEC 2018 concludes

After a few intensive days GUADEC 2018 concluded in Almeria, Spain. GUADEC 2018 included many talks, a lot of fun, intensive hacking and discussions.

The foundation wants to thank the participants, the organizers and sponsors all who helped make the conference possible. The results of the conference is expected to greatly benefit the foundation going forward.

 

GUADEC 2018 group photo – “A great time in Almeria Spain” 

Photo: CC BY-SA 2.0 by Guille Fuertes (guillefuertes)

GUADEC 2018 has started in Almeria Spain

GUADEC, the largest annual gathering of GNOME users and developers, has now started in the lovely city of Almería, Spain.

GUADEC 2018 will feature talks on a wide range of subjects relevant to GNOME. In addition to the talks, hackfests, workshops, and birds of a feather (BOF’s) sessions will follow after the core conference days. Community members will come together and hack on projects relevant to GNOME.  Specific info regarding the BoFs and Hackfest sessions is available on the GNOME wiki.

There will also be a lot of fun with a range of social activities planned. Detailed info about GUADEC 2018 including schedule and venue locations is available on the GUADEC website.

The Foundation thanks all the sponsors and volunteers who make GUADEC possible!

GNOME Foundation opens recruitment for further expansion

Orinda, CA.

Today, July 6th 2018, the GNOME Foundation has announced a number of positions it is recruiting for to help drive the GNOME project and Free Software on the desktop. As previously announced, this has been made possible thanks to a generous grant that the Foundation has received, enabling us to accelerate this expansion.

“These positions are key to ensuring that the Foundation remains sustainable and that we are able to support the community in key areas,” said Neil McGovern, Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation. “It is my hope that we can continue to grow the Foundation so that these posts will continue to be funded, but to allow further positions to become available”

The Foundation is currently recruiting for four posts:

  • Development Coordinator
    • This will ensure that we receive sufficient funds to continue our work delivering free software
  • Program Coordinator
    • The Program Coordinator will free up time from those involved in organizational, administrative and logistical problems
  • Devops/Sysadmin
    • The systems and services we run need proper maintenance and care. As Flathub continues to grow, more support is needed to achieve this.
  • GTK+ core developer
    • GTK+ is core to our entire platform. Investing in development and maintenance of this toolkit will benefit the whole GNU/Linux ecosystem.

The Foundation is keen to hear from any person who is interested in applying for one of these posts. Details on how to apply and the application deadlines can be found on the Foundation’s Positions Available page.

Call for Participation – Libre Application Summit hosted by GNOME – Sept 6 – 9th 2018

Call for Participation in the Libre Application Summit 2018
Presented by the GNOME Foundation

Denver, CO. The GNOME Foundation is pleased to announce the Call for Participation in the 2018 Libre Application Summit (LAS). The conference will be held from September 6th – 9th in Denver, Colorado, and brings together developers, entrepreneurs, and free and open source (FOSS) enthusiasts for discussion and debate around the future of the open source application ecosystem.

The conference will be held at the Parkside Mansion, situated immediately next to the Denver City Park, with direct access to downtown, public transport, restaurants, and nightlife. With the beautiful Colorado summer weather, there really is no better spot for our community to come together to chart the collective future of our projects.

Whether you represent a large or small project, the Libre Application Summit is the perfect opportunity to collaborate towards building a new and successful market for the proliferation of FOSS software. We need persons such as you to lend your voice and expertise, so if you would like to be considered for a presentation we are now accepting abstracts.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
Universal App Packaging – I.e. Flatpak or Snap
Toolchains, Toolkits, and Resources for Developers
Application Design and UX
Legal/Licensing/Community Management/Open Source Education
State of the Application Ecosystem

Proposals by newcomers and experienced speakers alike are welcome. When submitting your proposal please keep in mind that talk slots are 45 minutes long. Please kindly keep your abstract to 500 words or less.

The call for presentations will have the following timeline:
July 25th: deadline for submitting your talk proposals through https://las.gnome.org
August 1st: all speakers will be notified if their talk has been accepted
September 6th-9th: core conference days in Denver, Colorado

The Papers Team is looking forward to your talk proposal. In case of questions regarding the call for talks, please contact the Papers Team at papers@las.gnome.org. For general questions regarding the conference, please consult the LAS GNOME website or contact the LAS GNOME organizing team.

If you would like to become a sponsor of LAS GNOME please contact sponsors@las.gnome.org

This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0.