News – Page 21 – GNOME Foundation

GUADEC 2015 Keynote Speakers Announced

Following the opening of registration, we’re glad to announce Pamela Chestek, Christian Hergert and Matthias Kirschner as keynote speakers for GUADEC 2015.

Pamela is the lawyer who worked with us during the trademark negotiations with Groupon. She is the principal of Chestek Legal in Raleigh, North Carolina, and counsels creative communities on open source, brand, marketing and copyright matters. At GUADEC, Pamela will share her thoughts on how the combined strength of the FOSS community made a difference in the Groupon case.

Christian has been involved in the Free Software community since the late 90s. He has worked on a wide range of desktop and server technologies for GNU/Linux,and is currently working on Builder, a new IDE created specifically with GNOME development in mind. In his talk, Christian will tell us more about Builder and his vision for development experience in the GNOME project.

Matthias is the Vice President of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE). He started using GNU/Linux in 1999, when he realized that software is deeply involved in all aspects of our lives. Matthias is strongly believes that technology has to empower society instead of restrict it, and will discuss the boundaries for how computers are programmed and socially function.

We’re truly honored to have a such a special cast of keynote speakers joining us in Sweden. If you haven’t yet, make sure to register to attend GUADEC 2015. We’re looking forward to see you!

Donations within the EU are now handled through the Wau Holland Foundation

The GNOME Foundation and the Wau Holland Foundation (Wau Holland Stiftung; WHS) have recently reached an agreement that will significantly improve the way donations to GNOME within the European Union (EU) are received and managed.

Prior to signing this agreement, the GNOME Foundation was able to receive donations through many payment methods (including wires, checks, and Paypal transfers or subscriptions), whether for one-time donations or recurrent (monthly) subscriptions as part of the Friends of GNOME program. However, donors needed to be residents of the United States for their contributions to be eligible for tax-deductibility, and wire transfers were prohibitively expensive from Europe.

The GNOME Foundation worked closely with the WHS to streamline the process for donations made within the European Union. Thanks to this agreement, Europeans donating to the GNOME Foundation through the WHS in support of GNOME will be eligible for tax receipts, allowing them to deduct donated amounts in their annual tax reports to the extent permissible by the law in their local jurisdiction.

The WHS has become a valuable ally to the GNOME Project, providing financial support, knowledge and infrastructure for strengthening GNOME’s ties with their European donors.

“Having an entity for collecting tax-deductible donations within the European Union is something the GNOME Foundation’s Board of Directors has been working on for a long time. I’m glad the current Board was able to sign the agreement that turned this dream into reality,” says Andrea Veri, Secretary of the GNOME Foundation’s Board of Directors.

The GNOME Foundation thanks the WHS for its continued support and help.

Useful links:

Ready to make a donation from within the EU? Look at the “Other ways to donate” page.
The GNOME Foundation Board of Directors values transparency, and thus made public the agreement between the GNOME Foundation and the WHS. Look here for a copy of the agreement.

West Coast Summit 2015 concludes

After three intensive days, West Coast Summit 2015 has concluded in San Francisco. The summit gathered core GNOME contributors and Endless employees, as well as elementary OS contributors.

Topics that were covered during the summit included:

Application sandboxing and xdg-app
Application development and Builder
GTK+ and multi-touch
App stores and AppStream
Mutter (Screen rotation)

Beside technical work the summit featured discussions about community and outreach.

We’d like to thank everyone who made West Coast Summit 2015 happen. Special thanks goes to Endless for providing the venue.

Students are busy improving GNOME this summer

GNOME is once again participating as a mentoring organization in Google of Summer Code (GSoC), which provides stipends for students to work on Free Software projects over the summer.

GSoC students will work on many improvements to GNOME, including: an image viewing widget for GTK+, additional event sources for GNOME Shell’s time and date menu and improvements to the Java ATK-Wrapper (with the aim to make the Orca Screen Reader fully function with Java apps).

GNOME is also participating in the summer round of Outreachy. Our intern for this period will be working with Jim Hall to conduct usability testing.

This summer’s students will be regularly posting to Planet GNOME, so stay tuned for updates.

GNOME is only be able to offer these internships thanks to Google and the sponsors of Outreachy. We wish the interns the best of luck with their projects!

Goodbye Marco

The GNOME project is sad to have learnt that Marco Pesenti Gritti recently passed away after a long fight with cancer. Marco made major contributions to GNOME, having been the original author of both the Epiphany (also known as “Web”) browser and Evince, the GNOME PDF reader. Besides his significant contributions and technical ability, Marco was known as a good friend who served as an inspiration to many within the community.

Members of the GNOME community have expressed their sadness at Marco’s death. Xan López, the current Epiphany maintainer, wrote: “I remember fondly working with Marco on Epiphany many years ago. His patience and good character were instrumental in getting me involved with GNOME and Free Software”. Another contributor, Tomeu Vizoso, said: “He reviewed my first patches ever to a free software project and his contagious enthusiasm was what put into motion my career in open source.”

GNOME wasn’t the only community that Marco was a part of: he also played an important role in the development of Sugar, a platform which focused on education and the developing world.

Our thoughts are with Marco’s family and friends at this difficult time.

Pictures from GNOME.Asia Summit 2015

Last week GNOME.Asia Summit 2015 concluded in Depok, Indonesia. We now have a gallery with pictures from the Summit to share. Again, many thanks to everyone (including sponsors) who made the 2015 Summit possible!

With pictures like these its easy to feel optimistic about GNOME’s future in Asia.
Photo license note: CC BY-NC 2.0 by Herpiko Aguno if not otherwise noted

GNOME.Asia Summit 2015 concludes

After three intensive days the GNOME.Asia Summit 2015 have concluded in Depok, Indonesia.

The 2015 Summit started off with a series of workshops with a focus on how to start contribute to GNOME.

The second day included presentations about about Bug Triaging (Andre Klapper), Application Sandboxing (David King) and Using GStreamer in GNOME Apps (Nirbheek Chauhan).

In addition to the many presentations and workshops that covered GNOME there was several presentations about local Free and Open Source Software initiatives including the role of Free Software in the Shoe Industry (Iwan S. Tahari) and a presentation about BlankOn (Mohammad Anwari), a local distribution.

On the third day of the Summit representatives of the foundation held a open question and answer panel. Later on the afternoon there was series of lightning talks where Julita Inca and Bin Li presented their efforts of promoting GNOME in their respective country (Peru and China).

With over 300 people participating the organizers considered the 2015 edition of the Asia Summit a success.

“With hosting GNOME.Asia Summit 2015 we have hopefully contributed to increase awareness about GNOME and free software in Indonesia and the in region in general. It was a fun, interesting experience organizing the event, we hope everyone who participated had a great time.” – Estu Fardani local organizer

The foundation wants to thank everyone who made the 2015 Summit possible.

*Photo by Herpiko Dwi Aguno

GNOME.Asia Summit 2015 has started

The 2015 Edition of the GNOME Asia Summit that is taking place in Depok, Indonesia started today.

GNOME Asia Summit 2015 promises several days of learning, community building and fun.

In addition to the many local speakers, several established contributers including Tobias Muller, David King and Ekaterina Gerasimova participate. The Summit covers a wide range of topics related to GNOME and GNU/Linux operating systems, a complete schedule is available on the conference website.

“It feels great that the schedule includes a mix of talks from local speakers and speakers based in other countries. We hope everyone who attend the Summit will have a great time.” – Utian Ayuba, local organizer

The foundation wants to thank the volunteers and sponsors which make the Summit possible.

GNOME 3.16 Released

The GNOME project has released GNOME 3.16, the latest version of GNOME 3. The new version is the result of six months work, and includes 33,525 changes by 1043 authors.

Speaking on behalf of the Release Team, Javier Jardón said: “It’s great to see the fantastic results of our hard work, and it goes without saying that this could not be possible without all the effort from great the GNOME community! I definitely think this is the best GNOME release yet.”

GNOME 3.16 brings a brand new notification system and updated calendar design, which helps you to easily keep track of what’s happened, and includes useful information like world times and event reminders. Other features include overlaid scrollbars, updated visuals, improved content views in Files, and a redesigned image viewer.

Major additions have also been made to the GNOME developer experience: GTK+ support for OpenGL now allows GTK+ apps to support 3D natively, a new GLib reference counting feature will help with debugging, and GTK+ Inspector has also had a major update.

The release notes contain more details on these new features, as well as the many other improvements in the new release. If that’s not enough, a live image is available, so you can try it yourself. Additionally, more information can be found in the 3.16 press release.

GNOME supports GPL compliance through VMware suit

The GNOME Foundation supports the Software Freedom Conservancy in its efforts to ensure compliance with the GNU General Public License (GPL) through Christoph Hellwig’s lawsuit against VMware. Like the Linux kernel, the GNOME Project chooses the GPL (as well as the LGPL) to license our software. Working in Free Software is a collaborative effort where all parties benefit, but this outcome is only realized if there is cooperation. Both the GPL and copyleft make this collaboration possible. The GPL is an important tool for safeguarding Free Software and when other avenues for cooperation have been exhausted litigation is the only recourse.