GNOME Foundation

Author: GNOME Foundation

  • Further Investments in Desktop Linux

    The GNOME Foundation was supported during 2020-2021 by a grant from Endless Network which funded the Community Engagement Challenge, strategy consultancy with the board, and a contribution towards our general running costs. At the end of last year we had a portion of this grant remaining, and after the success of our work in previous years directly funding developer and infrastructure work on GTK and Flathub, we wanted to see whether we could use these funds to invest in GNOME and the wider Linux desktop platform.

    We’re very pleased to announce that we got approval to launch three parallel contractor engagements, which started over the past few weeks. These projects aim to improve our developer experience, make more applications available on the GNOME platform, and move towards equitable and sustainable revenue models for developers within our ecosystem. Thanks again to Endless Network for their support on these initiatives.

    Flathub – Verified apps, donations and subscriptions (Codethink and James Westman)

    This project is described in detail on the Flathub Discourse but goal is to add a process to verify first-party apps on Flathub (ie uploaded by a developer or an authorised representative) and then make it possible for those developers to collect donations or subscriptions from users of their applications. We also plan to publish a separate repository that contains only these verified first-party uploads (without any of the community contributed applications), as well as providing a repository with only free and open source applications, allowing users to choose what they are comfortable installing and running on their system.

    Creating the user and developer login system to manage your apps will also set us up well for future enhancements, such managing tokens for direct binary uploads (eg from a CI/CD system hosted elsewhere, as is already done with Mozilla Firefox and OBS) and making it easier to publish apps from systems such as Electron which can be hard to use within a flatpak-builder sandbox. For updates on this project you can follow the Discourse thread, check out the work board on GitHub or join us on Matrix.

    PWAs – Integrating Progressive Web Apps in GNOME (Phaedrus Leeds)

    While everyone agrees that native applications can provide the best experience on the GNOME desktop, the web platform, and particularly PWAs (Progressive Web Apps) which are designed to be downloadable as apps and offer offline functionality, makes it possible for us to offer equivalent experiences to other platforms for app publishers who have not specifically targeted GNOME. This allows us to attract and retain users by giving them the choice of using applications from a wider range of publishers than are currently directly targeting the Linux desktop.

    The first phase of the GNOME PWA project involves adding back support to Software for web apps backed by GNOME Web, and making this possible when Web is packaged as a Flatpak.  So far some preparatory pull requests have been merged in Web and libportal to enable this work, and development is ongoing to get the feature branches ready for review.

    Discussions are also in progress with the Design team on how best to display the web apps in Software and on the user interface for web apps installed from a browser. There has also been discussion among various stakeholders about what web apps should be included as available with Software, and how they can provide supplemental value to users without taking priority over apps native to GNOME.

    Finally, technical discussion is ongoing in the portal issue tracker to ensure that the implementation of a new dynamic launcher portal meets all security and robustness requirements, and is potentially useful not just to GNOME Web but Chromium and any other app that may want to install desktop launchers. Adding support for the launcher portal in upstream Chromium, to facilitate Chromium-based browsers packaged as a Flatpak, and adding support for Chromium-based web apps in Software are stretch goals for the project should time permit.

    GTK4 / Adwaita – To support the adoption of Gtk4 by the community (Emmanuele Bassi)

    With the release of GTK4 and renewed interest in GTK as a toolkit, we want to continue improving the developer experience and ease of use of GTK and ensure we have a complete and competitive offering for developers considering using our platform. This involves identifying missing functionality or UI elements that applications need to move to GTK4, as well as informing the community about the new widgets and functionality available.

    We have been working on documentation and bug fixes for GTK in preparation for the GNOME 42 release and have also started looking at the missing widgets and API in Libadwaita, in preparation for the next release. The next steps are to work with the Design team and the Libadwaita maintainers and identify and implement missing widgets that did not make the cut for the 1.0 release.

    In the meantime, we have also worked on writing a beginners tutorial for the GNOME developers documentation, including GTK and Libadwaita widgets so that newcomers to the platform can easily move between the Interface Guidelines and the API references of various libraries. To increase the outreach of the effort, Emmanuele has been streaming it on Twitch, and published the VOD on YouTube as well. 

  • Support GNOME on Giving Tuesday and Through the End of the Year

    Support GNOME on Giving Tuesday and Through the End of the Year

    As the end of the year approaches, we wanted to take a moment to thank our community for supporting GNOME! It is because of contributions from our Friends of GNOME, one-time donors, and project contributors that we were able to:

    Thank you to everyone who completed our “What is your Why” survey. We loved hearing why GNOME is so important to you. Have you shared your Why with us? If not, there’s still time!

    Take the Survey

    Here are some of the responses we received:

    “I believe in using and supporting software that protects my freedom. The ongoing strength of the free software community lies not in large efforts by a few, but in small contributions by many.”

    “Beautiful, simple, private, and stable DE is what I need for my work. And I always prefer FOSS over proprietary software because it gave me the opportunity to use and test the software for free and then decide how much I want (or can) donate to keep supporting the project.”

    “FOSS is important to be because I believe everybody has the right to access to software. It is a tool with which people can build wonderful things. GNOME has an elegance and a vision about it. GNOME is exactly how I imagine my desktop should be.”

    “After >20 years of professional computer usage, I like the simplicity and style of the GNOME user interface. It matches my ergonomic needs well. Keep on doing good work and keep the vision clear.”

    “As I’m a user (not developer), helping the GNOME Foundation annually, sending money, is a way of supporting FOSS. I’m a Linux user since the nineties, and as a professor, I spread the word of FOSS to all the non-believers (most of them are my students).”

    We’ve said it before but think it’s worth repeating — there are many ways to help support our fundraising.

    Here are some non-financial ways you can help: 

    • Like/share/repost GNOME social media messages. Help us get the message out!
    • Make a donation request on behalf of GNOME! Ask friends and family to contribute to an organization that is important to you.  Remember to share why GNOME is important to you. Start your own campaign today:  https://www.gnome.org/donate/
    • Use the upcoming holidays to ask for contributions in lieu of presents. This is a great thing to do for birthdays and the upcoming holiday season! https://www.gnome.org/donate/

    We are excited for the 2022 year and hope we can count on your support during Giving Tuesday and our annual campaign drive which is taking place through the end of the year. Let’s build another great year at GNOME together!

    Thank you from all of us at the GNOME Foundation

    About Giving Tuesday

    Giving Tuesday is a global day of generosity that takes place today, November 30, 2021. It was created in 2012 as a simple idea: a day that encourages people to do good. Over the past nine years, this idea has grown into a global movement that inspires hundreds of millions of people to give, collaborate, and celebrate generosity.

    Learn more at https://www.givingtuesday.org/

  • GNOME 41 Release

    GNOME 41 Release

    We are pleased to announce the official release of GNOME 41. This release, the second to use our new version numbering scheme, comes after six months of work by the GNOME community and brings an improved Software app, new multitasking settings, enhanced power management features, and many smaller updates. GNOME 41 also includes significant improvements for developers and is available in 38 languages.

    GNOME 41 will be available shortly in many distributions.

    More information about the changes in GNOME 41 can be found in the release notes.

    GNOME 41 would not exist without our community of contributors, supporters, friends, and users. Thank you, everyone! If you’re interested in joining the GNOME community learn more about contributing on our Get Involved page, developing apps for GNOME 41 on our new developer site, or donating and becoming a Friend of GNOME on our Donate page.

    Our next release, GNOME 42, is planned for March 2022. Until then, enjoy GNOME 41!

    Read More

    GNOME 41 also comes with a new release video! Thank you to our friends at Freehive for their work on this project.

  • GNOME ASIA 2021 Registration is Open

    We’re excited to announce that registration for GNOME Asia Summit 2021 is open! You can now register online here.

    GNOME Asia Summit 2021 will take place online from November 20th– 21st. Talk topics will include the GNOME desktop and a range of other GNOME-specific, free and open source software, and tech topics.

    The summit brings together the GNOME community in Asia to provide a place for users, developers, leaders, governments, and businesses to discuss present technology and future developments. More information about the GNOME Asia 2021 Summit is available on our official website. The GNOME Asia Summit will be two days of stand-out keynotes, engaging and educational sessions, so register today!

    Register Now
  • Annual Report 2020

    Annual Report 2020

    2020 was a very unique year! Throughout the past year, we have navigated through many challenges, implemented many changes and new technologies, and come through it with better ways to help us work together and gather the community remotely. We’re excited to share these challenges and changes along with some of our best moments and achievements in our 2019-2020 annual report.

    Highlights include:

    • We launched our inaugural GNOME Community Engagement Challenge with the support of Endless in spring, receiving 149 proposals in Phase One from applicants all around the world
    • We released Gresik (3.36) and Orbis (3.38)
    • We combated a patent infringement suit from patent assertion entity, Rothschild Patent Imaging, LLC, with the help of our lawyers at OIN and all of our supporters and contributors throughout the GNOME Community
    • We held our first fully remote GUADEC, utilizing new systems for video conferencing with Big Blue Button, event management and registration with Indico, and live streaming on YouTube. These developments also helped us support and host 4 additional remote events
    • We hosted 14 Google Summer of Code students, 2 Outreachy students, and 2 Google Season of Docs students

    For more details please see our annual report.

    2020 was a success thanks to all of you! Your contributions and donations support GNOME and allow us to continue working towards a world where everyone is empowered by technology they can trust. We look forward to continuing this work with you in the coming years.

  • GNOME.ASIA 2021 Call for Papers is now Open!

    GNOME.Asia Summit 2021 invites you to participate as a speaker at the conference on the 20th and 21st of November 2021 by submitting your abstract.

    GNOME.Asia is the featured annual GNOME conference in Asia and focuses primarily on the GNOME desktop, applications, and platform development tools. The Summit brings together the GNOME community in Asia to provide a forum for users, developers, foundation leaders, governments, and businesses to discuss current technology and future developments. Possible talk topics are suggested below, but topics are not limited to this list.

    Suggested Topics

    • Contributing to GNOME
    • UI design
    • Accessibility
    • Human Interface Engineering (Icons and Graphic Design)
    • Marketing/Engagement
    • Developing GNOME on embedded systems or open hardware
    • Contributing to Linux and FLOSS
    • Linux kernel and development
    • The development and promotion of open-source operating systems
    • Distributions, including Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, Ubuntu, and FreeBSD
    • The development and promotion of other open source projects
    • We are also interested in other topics related to Free/Libre and Open Source Software which are not listed above.

    Sessions will be scheduled for 25 or 50 minutes (Q&A included). The session could be a technical talk, panel discussion, or Birds of a Feather session (BoF). If you need more time or additional resources, feel free to get in touch with the organizing team by emailing asia@gnome.org.

    Submission Criteria

    • Please provide a short abstract of your presentation (under 200 words). Also include your name, biographical information, title, and desired length of session. 
    • Please submit your proposal to the following link: https://events.gnome.org/event/94/abstracts/
      The reviewers team will evaluate the entries based on the submitted abstracts and available time by following the schedule.

    Submission deadline: September 28th, 2021

  • GUADEC 2021 starts this week!

    GUADEC 2021 starts this week!

    Our largest community conference, GUADEC, starts in just a few days and we couldn’t be more excited. This year’s conference will be held virtually and runs from Jul 21-25. Registration is open and by donation so let us know you’re coming by signing up online.

    Register Now

    Schedule

    This year’s schedule is packed full of great talks, BoFs, Workshops, and social events so make sure to check out our full schedule for all the details. All times are in UTC, however, you can change the timezone by clicking the clock icon at the top right of the timetable page.

    The conference is organized into two tracks. On the schedule Track 1 activities and talks are shown in the left column, and Track 2 activities and talks are shown in the right. Both tracks require a pin code to enter, this can be found in the attendee update email sent to everyone already registered, or in the registration confirmation email for new registrations.

    Track links and instructions for connecting to Big Blue Button can be found on guadec.org.

    This year’s conference has two fantastic Keynote Speakers, Shauna Gordon-Mckeon and Hong Phuc Dang. Learn more about both on guadec.org.

    Recordings and Captioning

    All talks will be recorded under the license CC-BY-SA and added to the GNOME YouTube channel after the conference is over. We will also be providing live captioning for both tracks. For links and more details on live captioning visit guadec.org.

    Conference Chat and Hallway Tracks

    Each track will have its own chat within Big Blue Button, we welcome attendees to chat there as well as in our hallway track which will be open for the entire conference. Track links and more information can be found here.

    Social Events

    Don’t forget about the social events! We’ve scheduled activities for each conference day, from wine tasting to tea parties, there’s something for everyone, find the details for each here.

    We’re kicking off the conference with a Welcome Party!

    Grab your favorite drink and meet your fellow GNOMEies at our pre-conference party on Tuesday at 19:00 UTC in TRACK 1 for an informal chat and socialize hour. 

    Thank You to Our Sponsors

    Special thanks goes to our awesome sponsors, Red Hat, Canonical, openSUSE, Arm, AWS, Codethink, Dell, Fedora, Igalia, Centricular, and GitLab!

    See You Soon

    Don’t forget to grab your GUADEC 2021 shirt from the GNOME Shop and make sure to share your GUADEC experience with us on social media by using our hashtag, #GUADEC2021. Follow GUADEC updates on Twitter from @GUADEC and @GNOME, or on Mastodon from @gnome@floss.social

  • Red Hat Joins GUADEC 2021 as a Gold Sponsor

    Red Hat Joins GUADEC 2021 as a Gold Sponsor

    Red Hat is a Gold Sponsor of GUADEC 2021! We’re pleased to welcome them back to GUADEC for another year. As a Gold Sponsor, they will be hosting office hours on Wednesday, July 21. This will provide an opportunity for attendees to talk directly with Red Hat, about a range of topics, including the many GNOME-related activities they have going on.

    “As one of the many active contributors within the vibrant GNOME community, Red Hat is very pleased to also be among the sponsors of this year’s GUADAC event,” said a representative from Red Hat. “Community is about connections, and as we move into a world that is waking up from decreased social contact, those connections are more important than ever. GNOME remains an incredible part of the open source ecosystem, and the conversations made at GUADEC amongst users and contributors are a big reason why GNOME continues to be successful! We are thrilled to be a part of these conversations and look forward to participating in the GUADEC 2021 online event.”

    Kristi Progri, lead organizer of GUADEC, says “On behalf of everyone at GUADEC organizing team, I would like to express our sincere gratitude for the generous sponsorship to GUADEC, We’re happy they’re joining us again at GUADEC to help build GNOME and show the community what they are working on.”

    About Red Hat

    Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to provide reliable and high-performing cloud, Linux, middleware, storage and virtualization technologies. Red Hat also offers award-winning support, training, and consulting services. As a connective hub in a global network of enterprises, partners, and open source communities, Red Hat helps create relevant, innovative technologies that liberate resources for growth and prepare customers for the future of IT.

    About GUADEC

    GUADEC is the GNOME community’s largest conference, bringing together hundreds of users, contributors, community members, and enthusiastic supporters together for a week of talks and workshops. It takes place July 21 – 25 and will be online. This year’s keynote speakers are Hong Phuc Dang and Shauna Gordon-McKeon. Registration for GUADEC 2021 is open, please visit guadec.org to sign up.

    About GNOME

    GNOME is a free and open-source software environment project supported by a non-profit foundation. Together, the community of contributors and the Foundation create a computing platform and software ecosystem, composed entirely of free software, that is designed to be elegant, efficient, and easy to use.

    The GNOME Foundation is a non-profit organization that believes in a world where everyone is empowered by technology they can trust. We do this by building a diverse and sustainable free software personal computing ecosystem.

  • GUADEC 2021 Call for Participation: BoFs, Workshops, and Lightning talks


    We are happy to announce that we have officially opened the call for workshops, BoFs and lightning talks.
     
    We highly encourage everyone to submit a session. These sessions are a great way to share your thoughts with others, discuss various topics, receive feedback and help specific projects move forward. Bofs and Workshops can be either 1 (one) or 2 (two) hours and lightning talks are 10 minutes.

    Each session is self-organized and it is up to the hosts and participants to decide if the session is to be loosely oriented around a set of topics, or have a well-defined agenda. Lightning talks will be scheduled by the organizing team.

    All requests are due by June 6th, late requests will not be scheduled.

    Available Times

    • BoFs and workshops: July 23 and 24 
    • Lightning talks: July 24 from 15:00-16:00 UTC 
    • Intern talks: July 23 from 15:00-16:00 UTC

    Spots are limited. We will do our best to accommodate all requests, but please note that we may not be able to fit every proposed session into the schedule. If your session request is accepted and added to the schedule you will be notified by email.

    To submit a request please fill out the short form online.

    Submit a Proposal

    Definition of Terms 

    Lightning Talks

    Lightning Talks describe works in progress, new and untested ideas, or opportunities for collaborative work. Lightning talks are an excellent way to spark discussions and get feedback on an idea.

    Workshops

    A workshop is a period of discussion or practical work on a particular subject in which a group of people share their knowledge or experience. 

    Birds of a Feather

    Birds of a Feather (BoFs), provide an environment for people with similar interests to meet for informal discussions. 

  • GUADEC 2021 – Registrations are now open!

    (GUADEC 2019 –CC BY-SA 4.0 by Oliver Propst)

    The GUADEC organizers are pleased to announce that the Registrations for GUADEC 2021 are now open!

    GUADEC is the the largest annual gathering of GNOME developers and community members. 
    This year it will take place on July 21th-25th, and because of the Covid-19 pandemic it will be online.
    If you are planning to attend please register here https://events.gnome.org/event/9/registrations/34/

    This year we are organizing our Social Events online with all the participants from our wonderful community.
    If you’d like to host an activity or have an idea to share please let us know in the registration form.

    In case of any question please write to: guadec@gnome.org

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