News – Page 17 – GNOME Foundation

Happy 20th Birthday, GNOME!

ORINDA, CA. Today, the GNOME Project proudly celebrates its 20th Birthday. Founded by Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena Quintero on August 15, 1997, GNOME has since become a pillar of the Free Software community.

There have been 33 stable releases since the initial release of GNOME 1.0 in 1999. The latest stable release, GNOME 3.24 “Portland,” was well-received. “Portland” included exciting new features like the GNOME Recipes application and Night Light, which helps users avoid eyestrain. The upcoming version of GNOME 3.26 “Manchester,” is scheduled for release in September of this year. With over 6,000 contributors, and 8 million lines of code, the GNOME Project continues to thrive in its twentieth year.

Celebrate Twenty Years Strong with the GNOME Foundation: visit the 20th Birthday Party page to find a party — or even start your own. You can also support GNOME by making a donation or becoming a Friend of GNOME.

Enjoy a few of the many photographs from the 20th Birthday Party at this year’s GUADEC, where co-founder Federico Mena Quintero celebrated his own birthday alongside GNOME’s.

Happy 20th Birthday, GNOME!

A more detailed history of the GNOME project, fun facts, pictures, and more, can be found at http://www.happybirthdaygnome.org.

** Photos shared under CC-BY-SA 4.0 by Christian Hergert, Nuritzi Sanchez, and Behdad Esfahbod.**

GNOME Board of Directors Announced for 2017-2018

ORINDA, CA. The GNOME Foundation welcomes its new Board of Directors for the 2017 – 2018 term:

Alexandre Franke
Allan Day
Carlos Soriano
Cosimo Cecchi
Meg Ford
Nuritzi Sanchez
Zeeshan Ali

Congratulations!

This year we had 225 registered voters, 110 of which sent in valid ballots. Elections ran during the months of May and June, and the new Board was officially announced on June 21, 2017.

The Board of Directors is a team of volunteers who are elected for a one-year term by GNOME Foundation members. The Board is an important part of the GNOME Foundation and ensures the health of the organization by working on operational and legal items that help keep the Foundation in order. It also helps to manage the relationship with the Advisory Board and promotes the overall well-being of the GNOME Project. This year’s Board has experience that spans the GNOME project including expertise in design, development, newcomers initiatives, and communications.

Outgoing members of the Board are Jim Hall and Shaun McCance. The GNOME Foundation thanks them for their time on the Board, and for helping the Foundation navigate important matters during their term, like hiring the new GNOME Executive Director, Neil McGovern.

Since their official election in June, the new Board was onboarded by last year’s Board at GUADEC, taking on outgoing members’ responsibilities and adding new ones as a result of the full-day session before GUADEC opened. During that meeting, the following officers were elected, and later announced at the Annual General Meeting on July 29, 2017:

President & Chairperson of the Board: Nuritzi Sanchez
Vice-President & Vice-Chairperson of the Board: Allan Day
Secretary: Alexandre Franke
Vice-Secretary: Cosimo Cecchi
Treasurer: Carlos Soriano
Vice-Treasurer: Shaun McCance

While no longer a part of the GNOME Foundation Board, Shaun McCance will be sticking around as Vice Treasurer to help provide expertise and oversight as the new Treasurer ramps up. “We have a great group of people this term who are excited and passionate about finding more ways for the GNOME Foundation to help the GNOME Project thrive. We have already built some momentum from our meeting at GUADEC and I’m really looking forward to the year ahead of us.” – says Nuritzi Sanchez, who is serving her second term as President and Chairperson of the Board.

You can find out more about the GNOME Board by visiting the Foundation page of our website, or you can contact the Board directly by sending an email to board@gnome.org.

The GNOME Foundation thanks everyone who participated in this year’s Board of Directors elections, and extends a special thanks to the election committee for planning and executing another successful election process.

Welcome to our new Board!

The GNOME Foundation Statement on Immigration Ban

The GNOME Project is responsible for the software that is used by hundreds of thousands of people, companies, and organizations around the world. Anyone can participate in the development of our software, and that equality of opportunity is an essential part of GNOME’s mission.

Our project and our software exist thanks to the GNOME community: a diverse, multinational group of people who share a common interest and passion. We recognize and celebrate the strength we gain from our diversity and seek to defend and extend it wherever possible. In doing so, we reject discrimination including that based on nationality, race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation.

As part of our work, the GNOME Project helps community members from all over the world come together at various conferences and events. The GNOME Project has hosted over a hundred such events, including many in the United States.

The immigration ban re-introduced in the United States tonight runs counter to the GNOME Project’s core principles. This ban stands in the way of collaboration and inclusion. We fear the immigration ban will have practical consequences for international members of the GNOME community who may be prevented from participating in GNOME events hosted in the United States. This would disrupt the GNOME Project’s productivity and innovation and could alienate valuable members of our community.

We stand with the affected individuals of the immigration ban and affirm our commitment to diversity, inclusion, and continued collaboration with members from all over the world.

GNOME.Asia Summit 2017 Call for Papers is now open

GNOME.Asia Summit 2017 invites proposals for presentations at the conference. 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, developers, foundation leaders, governments and businesses to discuss the present technology and future developments.

The conference will be held in Chongqing University, Chongqing, China from 2017-10-14 until 2017-10-16. We welcome proposals by newcomers and experienced speakers alike.

Coinciding with the 10 years anniversary of GNOME.Asia, 20 years since GNOME was born and the 20 years anniversary of Chongqing’s promotion as a province-level municipality, GNOME.Asia Summit 2017 arrives at the mountain city of Chongqing this year, which have an extraordinary significance.

Please submit yours at: http://cn.mikecrm.com/nhrytIP

Possible topics include, but not limited to:

Contributing to GNOME

Latest Developments in GNOME
Writing Applications for GNOME 3
GNOME UI Design
QA and testing in GNOME
GNOME Accessibility
GNOME Human Interface Engineering (Icons and Graphic
Design)
GNOME Marketing/Engagement
Asia success stories / Local GNOME Projects
GNOME and Education
FOSS Outreach Program
Developing GNOME on mobile devices (smart phones, tablets)
Developing GNOME on embedded systems or open source hardware
Google Summer of Code

Contributing to Linux and Open Source

Linux Kernel and Development
The development and promotion of open-source operating systems
About Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, Ubuntu, FreeBSD, and other distributions
The development and promotion of other open-source projects

Open Source Enlightenment and Related Story

The Knowledge and Spirit of Open Source
Open Source stories of your own
How to optimize the process and improve efficiency with the help of open-source tools
How to engage non-technical clightning talksontributors in Open Source Projects
How to engage more female contributors in Open Source Projects

Emerging Technologies

Artificial Intelligence
Deep Learning
AR & VR
Big Data
Distributed Systems
Open Source DevOps
DevOps with AI
Other Emerging Technologies

Other topics could include any topic related to Free and Open Source Software not listed above.

We are about to launch program to fund part of the speakers to cover their travel expense. Please fill in the related blank in the application form and follow the latest news at: https://linuxstory.org/tag/gnome . GNOME foundation members are encouraged to apply to GNOME Travel Committee for travel allowance.

A standard session will be scheduled for 45 mins (35 mins talk + 10 mins Q&A). The session could be a technical talk, panel discussion, or BOF. If you need more time or additional resources, feel free to get in touch with the organizing team.

For participants who would like to participate, but are not sure they’d like to do a full talk proposal, we have shorter lightning talks. These are a 10 minutes presentation to demonstrate your work or promote an interesting topic. These talks will be grouped together in a single session.

Please provide a short abstract of your proposal (under 150 words). Include your name, biographical information, a photo suitable for the web, a title, and a description of your presentation. The reviewing team will evaluate the entries based on the submitted abstracts and available time by following the schedule.

*Submission deadline: 2017-08-15
*Confirmation of paper acceptance: 2017-08-20 until 2017-08-25

All interested contributors are highly encouraged to send in talks.

The GNOME.Asia 2017 Team

*More information about GNOME Asia Summit 2017 is available at: https://2017.gnome.asia/

GNOME.Asia Summit 2017 to be hosted in Chongqing China

The GNOME.Asia Committee is proud to announce that the upcoming GNOME.Asia Summit 2017 will be hosted in Chongqing, China on Oct 14-Oct 16.

The GNOME.Asia committee has decided on the city of Chongqing because it uniquely represents an important theme: open source without any restriction of time, space, or location. Chongqing is located in the southwest of Mainland China and is surrounded by mountains and rivers and used to be difficult to reach in ancient China. Nowadays, however, Chongqing is a modern city well known for its IT industry as well as its leadership in the development of Western China which attracts more and more great minds and talents. Just as Chinese ancient poetry mentioned “No matter how high the mountain is, one can always ascend to its top”, there are a great many students and people interested in open source software and devote themselves in open source program no matter what difficulty they meet.

The Chongqing City, image licensed use by Sushiyico

The venue for this year’s GNOME.Asia Summit is Chongqing University, which is a key national university and a member of the “Excellence League”, located in Chongqing, Southwest China, cultivating tens of thousands of leading minds in the field of Technology. Chongqing University always welcomes open and free minds.

The image comes from Chongqing University

Organization of GNOME.Asia Summit 2017 will be carried out by Chongqing LUG (https://chongqinglug.org) and Linux Story (https://linuxstory.org) and School of Software Engineering of Chongqing University(http://www.cse.cqu.edu.cn), Chongqing LUG is a very committed local team which has over 10 years of significant experience in organizing over 20 successful events.

GNOME.Asia Summit will provide great opportunities to learn and exchange ideas about free and open technologies as well as to meet and talk with other contributors and users face to face. GNOME.Asia Summit 2017 welcomes everyone to participate, have fun, and enjoy the event!

For more information about GNOME.Asia Summit 2017, please visit https://2017.gnome.asia/

For news contact, sponsorship or other further opportunities to cooperate, please contact

Anna Yin: anna.yin@chongqinglug.org (English)
Qixiang Wen: bootingman@chongqinglug.org (Chinese)

GUADEC 2017 Call for Papers

GUADEC is GNOME’s main annual conference. This year it is being held in Manchester, UK, from 28 July to 2nd August, and the call for papers is open until April 23rd.

This is a great opportunity to share your ideas with the GNOME project, as well as the wider open source community. You don’t have to be an existing member of the GNOME project to submit a talk: if you have something interesting to say about software or technology, we want to hear from you!

Subjects that we are particularly interested in include:

Design of user and developer experiences
Operating system plumbing
Application development and deployment
Use of GNOME technologies outside the desktop
Outreach to new contributors
Project organisation and governance
Privacy and security
Developments in open source/Free Software
The GNOME developer experience

However, if there is another subject that you would like to talk about, we would still love to receive your submission. Talks can be either 25 or 40 minutes in length, which includes time for questions.

Talks can be submitted through the GUADEC registration website. In case of questions regarding the call for talks, please contact the papers team at guadec-papers@gnome org. For general questions regarding the conference, please consult the GUADEC web site or contact the local GUADEC organizing team at guadec-organization@gnome.org.

GNOME 3.24 Released

GNOME 3.24, the latest version of GNOME 3, is now available. Introducing an updated platform and applications, the release includes a number of major new features and enhancements, as well as many smaller improvements and bug fixes. 3.24 represents another step forward for GNOME, and has much to offer both users and developers.

Night Light is one of the new features being introduced in this release. This subtly changes the screen color according to the time of day, which can help to reduce sleeplessness if you use your computer at night. Another new feature that will make a lot of users happy is the incorporation of weather information into the notifications area. This shows a simple summary of the day’s weather, and links to the Weather application.

This release also includes a new Recipes application, which contains recipes contributed by members of the GNOME community. It has an extensive set of features for adding and editing recipes, creating shopping lists, adjusting quantities and even has a hands-free cooking mode. Other GNOME applications that have been improved for 3.24 include Web, Photos, Polari, Games, Calendar and the Calculator. The Settings application also has a total of three updated settings pages.

The increasingly mature state of Builder and Flatpak makes GNOME 3.24 a particularly exciting release for developers. Builder makes it possible to use Flatpak as an incredibly easy and stable base for application development. With GNOME’s increasing adoption of Flatpak, this is revolutionizing the GNOME developer experience.

GNOME 3.24 is codenamed “Portland”, in recognition of last year’s LAS GNOME organizing team.

More detailed information about GNOME 3.24 can be found in the release notes.

Press

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

GNOME to participate in Google Summer of Code 2017

GSoC2016Logo

We are happy to announce that GNOME has been accepted to participate in Google Summer of Code 2017. GNOME has participated in the program every year since its inception in 2005 and it’s a pleasure to be participating once again!

Google Summer of Code allows students to work for the summer on a Free Software project. Accepted students receive a stipend to be able to focus on their internship, instead of having to find a summer job (“flip bits, not burgers” as they say), and are mentored by experienced project contributors. It is an excellent way to get involved in a wide range of Free Software projects.

Interested students and mentors can get more info about the program on our Google Summer of Code page. Students will soon be able to apply (registration opens on March 20th) and should be getting in touch with mentors now.

Image provided by Google Summer of Code under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0.

GUADEC 2017 Registration is Open!

This year, the GNOME project’s annual European conference will be taking place in Manchester, UK. Happening between 28th July and 2nd August, it will be the biggest and most important GNOME event of 2017. The conference will provide an opportunity to find out about the latest technical developments, learn new skills and tools, attend talks and participate in workshops and discussions. Everyone is welcome to attend – see the GUADEC 2017 website for more details.

If you are planning on attending GUADEC, please register via the GUADEC registration website as soon as possible. Dedicated GUADEC accommodation places are available to book at registration time. There is a limited supply of these rooms, and it might be difficult to secure more after the end of March. So, if you want a room at the GUADEC accommodation, please register and book before April.

The GUADEC team have also published the sponsorship brochure for this year’s conference, which includes some exciting opportunities for partners. Interested parties are invited to get in touch.

We hope to see you in Manchester. It’s going to be great!

(Image by Zuzanna Neziri, CC-BY 2.0.)

Neil McGovern Named New GNOME Foundation Executive Director

The GNOME Foundation is pleased to announce the appointment of Neil McGovern as its new Executive Director. McGovern officially starts work for the GNOME Foundation on February 15, 2017 and will operate from the United Kingdom.

McGovern is an experienced leader in Free Software projects and is best known for his role as Debian Project Leader from 2014-15. He has been on the Boards of numerous organizations, including Software in the Public Interest, Inc. and the Open Rights Group.

Announcing the appointment, Nuritzi Sanchez, GNOME Foundation President, said: “The GNOME Foundation Board of Directors is thrilled that Neil will be joining in the capacity of Executive Director. Neil was a very strong candidate, and we have high hopes for what he will enable the GNOME community to achieve.”

GNOME’s new Executive Director has a strong technical background. He has contributed to Debian as a developer for over twelve years, and comes most recently from Collabora, a respected open source consultancy, where he worked as an Engineering Manager.

“Through the past five years, Neil has helped us grow, develop, and maintain our strong engineering team. His technical knowledge and dedication to Open Source will be a great asset to the GNOME Foundation.” says Philippe Kalaf, CEO of Collabora.

The GNOME project is responsible for a number of important technologies, many of which have a role beyond the desktop. McGovern’s experience at Collabora, coupled with his technological expertise, means that he has the knowledge to promote these technologies further. He joins GNOME at an exciting time, with the emergence of new technologies such as Flatpak, Builder, and GTK+4.

McGovern is also in a good position to foster greater collaboration between GNOME and other Free Software projects. Mehdi Dogguy, the current Debian Project Leader, hopes that GNOME’s new Executive Director will help to forge closer relations between the two projects: “Neil’s commitment to free and open source software over the years make him a great asset to the community. I believe his new role as Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation will help to make a stronger link between GNOME and the Debian project.”

It has been three years since the GNOME Foundation lost its previous Executive Director, Karen Sandler. Previous holders of the role include Stormy Peters and Tim Ney. McGovern’s job will be to support the GNOME project, particularly in terms of fundraising, outreach, and strategy.

“As former Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation, it’s clear to me that Neil is a fantastic choice for the position,” said Karen Sandler, now Executive Director of the Software Freedom Conservancy. “His insights into both the community and corporate sides of GNOME are impressive. I know GNOME will thrive under his leadership!”

McGovern will be attending this year’s FOSDEM in Brussels this weekend (February 4 – 5). Members of the GNOME community, and the wider Open Source community, are encouraged to speak to him and offer a warm welcome.

Press

An official press release is also available. Both the press release and this news item can be freely reproduced and modified without permission. For further comments and information, please contact gnome-press-contact@gnome.org.

Photo credit: CC-BY-SA Guy Lunardi