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GNOME Launches New Round of Outreach Program for Women Internships and Improves Other Outreach Initiatives

The GNOME Foundation is pleased to announce its latest round of the Outreach Program for Women Internships, for which it has been able to accept ten outstanding applicants. GNOME’s efforts are made possible by the strong sponsorship that the program has received from free software companies and organizations committed to increasing the involvement of women in technology. Google and Mozilla have each sponsored two participants, Collabora, the Free Software Foundation and Red Hat have each sponsored one participant, and the GNOME Foundation has sponsored the remaining three from its general funds. The Software Freedom Conservancy adds an eleventh intern to the Outreach Program for Women. In addition, among 29 participants, GNOME accepted five women for Google Summer of Code, who all got involved through the outreach program.

John Sullivan, the Executive Director of the Free Software Foundation which joins this year as a new sponsor, commented, “The Free Software Foundation is proud to sponsor an internship in GNOME’s Outreach Program for Women. The free software movement is about freedom for everyone, but we have a long way to go to make that a reality. This program’s past achievements in expanding the community by welcoming and retaining newcomers have moved us closer to that goal, and we can’t wait to hear this summer’s success stories.”

This is also the Conservancy’s first participation in the program. It is sponsoring its own participant for the Twisted Project. Twisted maintainer and mentor Jessica McKellar said, “Programs like this encourage free and open source communities to reflect on how to be more welcoming and supportive of people of all backgrounds. The success of the GNOME Outreach Program for Women has been tremendously inspiring; I am pleased that Twisted is joining it in tackling stereotypes in open source head-on this summer while working with our new contributors on some exciting projects.”

Previous rounds of the program have been very successful, and have helped in other mentorship and outreach efforts of the project. When GNOME started the current Outreach Program for Women two years ago, it had an initial list of nine mentors from eight projects who were eager to help with the program. Connecting newcomers with mentors who can guide them in their initial contributions proved to be the most important aspect of the outreach effort. For that reason, GNOME recently moved the list of mentors that was built up for the Outreach Program for Women to be a part of the GNOME Love initiative. There are now 37 mentors from 22 projects who any newcomer can contact any time throughout the year in this ever-growing list. The GNOME team also started a page on the Google Summer of Code wiki that contains links to such lists of mentors in many free software organizations. That page currently has 15 organizations. In addition to being a general resource to point students looking for an organization to join to, the list is also used to spread the word about Google Summer of Code and mentorship opportunities among technical women groups at many universities.

The Outreach Program for Women demonstrated that an initial contribution to the project by an applicant increases their involvement with the project, prepares them for the work during the internship period, and serves as an important selection criteria. This year, GNOME also required the students applying for Google Summer of Code in GNOME to make a contribution to the project they are applying to work on, not just to supply a link to a bug they fixed in any free software project. As a result, all successful applicants demonstrated their ability to work on the project they proposed and discussed their proposal with their potential mentor.

The GNOME community is very proud of the accomplishments of the last round’s Outreach Program for Women participants, which include the following:

Kasia Bondarava committed Belarusian translations for 35 GNOME modules. With her help, Belarusian translation coverage went from 67% to 88%, making Belarusian a new officially supported language. She also made a comprehensive comparison of different translator tools and advocated for better translator comments.
Christy Eller has tremendously improved the web development process in GNOME and created the new Friends of GNOME pages.
Susanna Huhtanen created comprehensive developer documentation about writing GNOME applications in JavaScript.
Patricia Santana Cruz added support for sharing videos and images with different online services, improved hotplug connection of camera devices, and added recorded time when making a video in the Cheese webcam application.
Sophia Yu ported Swell Foop game from JavaScript to Vala, completely reworking its implementation, and updated several other games to use new GNOME APIs.

The detailed accomplishments of all 11 program participants can be found at https://live.gnome.org/GnomeWomen/OutreachProgram2011/Accomplishments

Over three quarters of the women involved in the program have stayed connected to the GNOME community. Better still, Outreach Program for Women participants have a strong tradition of becoming mentors in GNOME. Luciana Fujii Pontello and Ekaterina Gerasimova mentored Google Summer of Code and Outreach Program for Women participants in previous rounds. Tiffany Antopolski, Anita Reitere and Srishti Sethi mentored Google Code-In participants. This round, Christy Eller will co-mentor a Web Development intern and Tiffany Antopolski will mentor four Documentation interns, three of whom will be working on Developer Documentation along with Tiffany. Many former participants have also presented at free software conferences and local events to raise awareness about GNOME and their work. Many have helped with the outreach program by spreading the word about it, improving the materials available about the program, and guiding new applicants.

The Outreach Program for Women is organized by Marina Zhurakhinskaya, with help and support from Karen Sandler, Rosanna Yuen and the GNOME Board of Directors. The essential work is done by the program’s mentors in helping the applicants and eventual participants contribute to their projects. For more information about the Outreach Program for Women, visit http://projects.gnome.org/outreach/women

GNOME was started in 1997 by two then-university students, Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena Quintero. Their aim: to produce a free (as in freedom) desktop environment. Since then, GNOME has grown into a hugely successful enterprise. Used by millions of people across the world, it is the most popular environment for GNU/Linux and UNIX-type operating systems. GNOME’s software has been utilized in successful, large-scale enterprise and public deployments, and the project’s developer technologies are utilized in a large number of popular mobile devices.

The GNOME community is made up of hundreds of contributors from all over the world, many of whom are volunteers. This community is supported by the GNOME Foundation, an independent non-profit organization that provides financial, organizational and legal assistance. The Foundation is a democratic institution that is directed by its members, who are all active GNOME contributors. GNOME and its Foundation works to promote software freedom through the creation of innovative, accessible, and beautiful user experiences.

Students accepted for Google Summer of Code in GNOME

The GNOME Foundation is happy to announce that 29 students have been accepted to work on GNOME through Google Summer of Code this year. The students will work on a wide range of projects improving the core GNOME 3 experience, GNOME technologies, and popular applications. Some applications that the students will work on are Documents, Web, Boxes, Calculator, Banshee, Getting Things GNOME!, Activity Journal, and GCompris.

Organizing the Outreach Program for Women helped GNOME improve the resources available for all newcomers and guidelines for the Google Summer of Code applicants. With the GNOME mentors list now available as part of the GNOME Love initiative and with each project idea on the GNOME Google Summer of Code ideas page including a potential mentor, we were able to ensure that the students connect with a potential mentor for the idea they were proposing. We also required the students to make a contribution to the project they are applying to work on. As a result, all successful applicants demonstrated their ability to work on the project they proposed and discussed their proposal with their potential mentor. The GNOME community is thrilled to have these talented and dedicated contributors have a chance to spend the whole summer working on GNOME!

The GNOME Foundation is deeply grateful to Google for its generous support of free software projects and for being included in the program for the eights year in a row! Also, a special thank you to the mentors who help guide the students!

For more information about the accepted projects please visit the GNOME project page on the Google Summer of Code website. The students will blog about their work on Planet GNOME throughout the summer.

Official Announcement and Invitation to GNOME.Asia 2012

GNOME.Asia Summit is Asia’s primier GNOME user and developer conference, spreading the knowledge of GNOME across Asia.

This year’s conference will be held in Hong Kong on June 9 and 10. The conference follows the release of GNOME 3.4, helping to bring new desktop paradigms that facilitate user interaction in the computing world. It will be a great place to celebrate and explore the many new features and enhancements to the groundbreaking GNOME 3 and help make GNOME as successful as possible.

To learn more or submit a paper, see the official GNOME.Asia 2012 website.

New GNOME Foundation Members for March

Last month, GNOME Foundation have had more members to join its warm family. We are happy to announce that the new members are as follows:

Dan Vrátil (Evolution’s porting to WebKit, Bugzilla contributions)
Stefano Candori (GNOME Activity Journal maintainer and Zeitgeist
Andres Gomez (Organized GUADEC in the past, sponsors GNOME through Igalia (co-owner), coded various GNOME Mobile apps)
Robert Nordan (Tomboy, Pinta)
Antigoni Papantoni (PiTiVi, participated in GStreamer hackfest, OPW
Javier Hernández Antúnez (Developer and member of the GNOME a11y Team, Accerciser co-maintainer, Contributor to the openSuse GNOME 3.2 live images)
Yuri Myasoedov (Coordinator of the Russian translation team, also maintain the GNOME russian website, gnome.org.ru)
Tim Waugh (CUPS printing system, GNOME Control Center and Gtk+ printing framework)
Chris Lord (Contributions to some GNOME projects, as Clutter, Pinpoint, grilo, libsoup, gtkhtml2, libjana, contacts, dates)
Susanna Huhtanen (GNOME’s OPW internship, GNOME Documentation)

They have all contributed significantly to the development of GNOME. Thank you all for your great help and welcome! You join our other amazing Foundation Members

If you contribute to GNOME, you too can become a member of the Foundation. See the membership page for details.

Software Freedom Conservancy Joins GNOME Outreach Program

The GNOME Foundation is thrilled to welcome the Software Freedom Conservancy to its 2012 Outreach Program for Women. The Outreach Program for Women seeks to engage women in the development, documentation and general improvement of open source and free software. Concurrently with the Google Summer of Code, the Outreach Program for Women additionally funds internships for women to spend the summer participating in and contributing to free software projects while being mentored by an experienced member of the free software community.

The deadline for applications to both the Outreach Program for Women internships and Google’s Summer of Code is April 6th. GNOME has made available a list of Google Summer of Code project ideas that are suitable for either this outreach program or Summer of Code. Conservancy’s internship is with the Twisted project, which has also made available full details and application requirements on the internship on its wiki. The Conservancy’s internship will follow the internship rules outlined by the GNOME Foundation’s Outreach Program for
Women.

Conservancy and the GNOME Foundation urge women who aspire to get involved with free software projects this summer to act fast! The deadline for applications for all these programs is just days away!

GNOME 3.4 Released

The GNOME Release Team has announced the availability of GNOME 3.4. This latest version comes six months after the last GNOME release and includes major new features, significant updates to a host of GNOME applications, and a huge number smaller fixes and refinements. Matthias Clasen, who oversaw the completion of the release, described it as “a great leap forward for GNOME 3”, adding “we hope that our users enjoy it.”

GNOME 3.4 introduces a range of new features. A new document search facility allows quick access to content stored both on your device and online. Smooth scrolling means that moving through content is slick and graceful. New application menus, which are located on the top bar, provide a useful way to access application options and actions.

The new release includes big enhancements to GNOME’s applications. The GNOME web browser, now known as Web, has been given a beautiful new interface for 3.4, as well as significant performance improvements. Documents and Contacts also sport updated interfaces and new features. These application enhancements are the result of a major development drive which is in the process of creating a new suite of modern and stylish GNOME 3 applications.

Polishing and refining GNOME 3 has been a big focus for this release. This effort has resulted in a multitude of bug fixes and many other minor improvements. There are updated interface components, a much more polished visual theme, better hardware support, and much more. These changes add up to a major step forward in the quality of the GNOME 3 user experience.

Full details of the changes found in GNOME 3.4 can be seen in the release notes.

The new release continues GNOME’s tradition of regular and predictable releases, and incorporates an amazing 41,000 contributions made by 1275 people. Planning has already begun for the next GNOME release. If you want to be a part of our community, you can join us. You can also support us by becoming a Friend of GNOME.

Those wanting to try GNOME 3.4 are advised to wait until it is made available through distributions. More information about how to get GNOME 3 can be found on our website.

Read the press release: GNOME 3.4 Released: a Big Leap Forward

GNOME 3.4 Released: a Big Leap Forward

Groton, MA, March 28 2012: The GNOME project is happy to announce the release of GNOME 3.4, the second update to GNOME 3.0, originally released in April 2011. This new version of GNOME 3 combines six months of development effort, resulting in major new features, updated applications, and a raft of subtle refinements. GNOME 3 has taken a major leap forward with this new release.

Matthias Clasen, who oversaw the completion of the release, said: “The GNOME Release Team is proud to present this latest release of GNOME 3. The GNOME project has been delivering major improvements with every release since 3.0, and our emphasis on feature-driven development is yielding excellent results. The new version includes some significant new features, as well as many smaller enhancements. In all, 3.4 is a great leap forward for GNOME 3 and we hope that our users enjoy it.”

New features being introduced in GNOME 3.4 include a new documents search facility, smooth scrolling, new application menus, video calling, and Windows Live online account integration.

GNOME’s applications have received significant updates for this release. The GNOME web browser, which is now known as Web, has a beautiful new interface for 3.4, as well as significant performance improvements. Documents and Contacts, both of which integrate with online accounts, have also received updated interfaces and new features. These application enhancements are the result of a major development drive which is in the process of creating a new suite of modern and stylish GNOME 3 applications.

3.4 takes the quality of GNOME 3 to a new level, and includes a huge number of smaller changes and refinements. There are updated interface components, a much more polished visual theme, better hardware support, a multitude of bug fixes and many other minor improvements. This all adds up to a major step forward in the quality of the GNOME 3 user experience. A new GNOME initiative, called “Every Detail Matters” has been instrumental in accelerating this enhancement drive.

You can find out more about the changes that are included in GNOME 3.4 in the release notes, which were made available today.

GNOME 3.4 has been already been greeted with enthusiasm. Jos Poortvliet, openSUSE community manager said, “openSUSE congratulates the GNOME community on another milestone in the 3.0 series. It is great to see how the innovative vision underlying GNOME 3 is showing more and more with each release. GNOME forms an important part of the openSUSE distribution and we look forward to shipping this as part of our next release!”

GNOME was started in 1997 by two then-university students, Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena Quintero. Their aim: to produce a free (as in freedom) desktop environment. Since then, GNOME has grown into a hugely successful enterprise. Used by millions of people across the world, it is the most popular environment for GNU/Linux and UNIX-type operating systems. GNOME’s software has been utilised in successful, large-scale enterprise and public deployments, and the project’s developer technologies are utilised in a large number of popular mobile devices.

Official screenshot packs of the release are available to download.

GNOME 3.4 Release Candidate Finalized

The GNOME Release Team’s Javier Jardón announced the availability of the 3.4 Release Candidate yesterday. This is the final development version of GNOME 3.4, and puts the next version of GNOME 3 on track for completion next week. GNOME 3.4 promises to deliver major new features, updated applications and wide-scale improvements to the GNOME 3 user experience.

The remaining time until the GNOME 3.4 release will be devoted to testing and essential bug fixing.

Members of the press who would like details about the release should contact gnome-press-contact@gnome.org.

GNOME to Participate in Google Summer of Code 2012

GNOME will be participating in Google Summer of Code (GSoC) once again this year. GSoC gives students from around the world the chance to work on free and open source software projects. Since its inception in 2005 more than 6000 students from 100+ countries have had a chance to learn from some of the best hackers in the world. The GNOME Project has enabled more than 160 students to take part in GSoC in the past, and this will be the 7th year in a row that the project has participated.

Google Summer of Code is a great opportunity for post-secondary students to contribute to free and open source software projects during their summer vacation, for which they receive financial support. This year’s GSoC will run between May 21 – August 24.

GNOME will once again be offering exciting and interesting projects to work on. You can see our list of suggested projects on the GNOME wiki. The deadline for applications is April 6. For more information see the GNOME Summer of Code page. You can also find information on the Google Summer of Code website.

Many thanks to Google for continuing to support free and open source software through this fantastic scheme.

The GNOME Foundation Continues to Grow

The GNOME Foundation Membership Committee is proud to announce our newly approved Foundation Members. Welcome, and thank you for your valuable contributions so far!

So here we go with our newly approved members:

Simon Schampijer (PyGobject patches, Bugzilla contributions, GNOME Hackfests)
Rūdolfs Mazurs (GNOME Latvian translator)
Peteris Krisjanis (GNOME Latvian translator)
Giovanni Campagna (GNOME Shell Developer)
Felipe Erias Morandeira (GNOME Design and UI development)
Erick Pérez Castellanos (GNOME Contacts App code contributions)
Daniel Mustieles Garcia (GNOME Spanish Translation Team Coordinator and Translator)
Debarshi Ray (Strong code contributions to many GNOME modules: Gnote, Tracker, Libchamplain, Solang, GNOME Fedora packager)
Luis Menina (GNOME French translator, GNOME-FR secretary, and contributor, Bugs triager)
Juan Suarez (contributions to Epiphany, Totem, Glib)

Information about the GNOME Foundation can be found on its webpages. If you would like to become a member, check out the membership page.