Category: News

  • GNOME starts campaign to protect its trademarks

    GNOME has launched a campaign to raise funds for protecting the GNOME trademarks.

    Recently, Groupon launched Gnome, a tablet-based point of sale (POS) system that Groupon describes as a “platform” and an “operating system”.

    The GNOME Foundation is concerned and sees their long-established mark for Free Software, GNOME, endangered. The GNOME Foundation asks for ideological and monetary support to cover the costs of opposing the marks Groupon applied to register, which were estimated to be around 80,000 USD.

    “I cannot believe Groupon was not aware of GNOME, the Free Software desktop environment and application suite, when it chose the name. Especially as they claim to be ‘fueled by open source‘,” said Tobias Mueller, one of the directors of the GNOME Foundation.

    “We will not give up but fight their use of our name which we have established over the last 17 years to provide users all over the world with high quality Free Software solutions.”

    “Millions of people who use GNU/Linux based systems use GNOME or GNOME-related technologies, such as GLib or GTK+. We must not let a billion-dollar-company take the well-established name of one of the biggest Free Software communities,” Tobias added. “If you want to help GNOME defend its trademark and promote Free Software, visit the campaign’s page, share the link, and let Groupon know that they behaved terribly”.

    GNOME also made a press contact available for further questions or interviews.

  • Engagement team members will gather at FSCONS this weekend

    Several members of the GNOME Engagement Team will gather this weekend at FSCONS.
    FSCONS is an annual gathering for free software in the Nordic countries, taking place in Gothenburg Sweden.

    GNOME will be present with a booth where contributors will show the latest version of GNOME,
    answer questions and help new people get involved. There are also plans for an Engagement
    hackfest.

    “We are excited to have this many GNOME contributors attending FSCONS 2014” -Oliver Propst FSCONS organizer and Engagement team contributor

    Details about the event are available on the wiki.

     

    -FSCONS Logo
  • GNOME Boston Summit 2014 starts tomorrow

     

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    GNOME Summit 2014 starts tomorrow. The GNOME Summit is an annual gathering of contributors from around the world that features three-days of discussion and working sessions. After the last summit, held in Montreal it’s this year back in Boston.

    Scheduled topics include: Wayland, App development, Privacy and the GNOME Continuous build system. The summit is an informal event and everyone is welcome.

    On Saturday Richard Stallman, President of the Free Software Foundation will be delivering an address. More information about the 2014 edition of the summit can be found on the wiki.

    The foundation wants to thank MIT for providing the venue and Red Hat for sponsoring breakfasts.

  • GNOME 3.14 Video Published

    With GNOME 3.14 just released, the GNOME project has published a video that demos the new GNOME version. The short film is a great way to learn about the new features – and see some of the attention to detail – in the new release.

    As always, more details can be found in the release notes.

  • GNOME 3.14 Released

    GNOME 3.14, the latest version of GNOME 3, has been released. Announcing the new version, Matthias Clasen said: “This is another exciting release for GNOME, and brings many new features and improvements.”

    The new release is the result of six months’ work by the GNOME project, and includes 28,859 changes by 871 contributors. Highlights for 3.14 include:

    • New animations in the Activities Overview, along with new window animations.
    • Automatic handling for Wi-Fi hotspots that require you to login (so called “captive portals”).
    • A redesigned Weather application, which uses geolocation to show the weather for your current location.
    • Support for browsing Google pictures in Photos.
    • Improved touchscreen support, with multi-touch gestures for both the system and applications.

    The latest GNOME release also includes major improvements for developers, including GTK+ Inspector (a new utlity to examine and modify running GTK+ applications), the ability to use SVG assets as a part of GTK+ themes, improved touchscreen support, and major progress towards Wayland.

    More information about the latest version, including details on all the new features, can be found in the release notes.

    Additional details, including links to the 3.14 screenshot pack and test image, can be found in the press release.

  • GNOME Foundation publish 2013 Annual Report

    The GNOME foundation are pleased to publish the 2013 Annual Report . In the Report you can read about the foundation activities during 2013, some of the highlights include details about the continuous success of the OPW program and the many hackfests that took place during the last year.

    “The 2013 Annual Report highlight how vibrant the GNOME project is and represents itself a real community effort.” Oliver Propst, Annual Report coordinator.

    The foundation want to thank Friends of GNOME and advisory board members who support the foundation and its operations.

  • Call for GNOME.Asia Summit 2015 Host Proposals

    The GNOME.Asia Committee is inviting interested parties to submit proposals for hosting the GNOME.Asia during the 2nd quarter of 2015.

    The 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 both the present technology and future developments.

    GNOME.Asia Summits have been held in Beijing, Ho-Chi-Minh City, Taipei, Bangalore, Hong Kong Seoul and Beijing respectively over the last seven years. The Summit’s preference is to find a new location each year in order to we 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.

    You can learn more about GNOME.Asia Summit at our website: http://www.gnome.asia

    Interested parties are hereby invited to submit a formal proposal to the gnome-asia-committee-list<at>gnome<dot> org . The deadline for the proposals is September 1, 2014. Please email your proposal to gnome-asia-committee-list<at>gnome<dot> 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 third week of September, 2014.

    The conference will require availability of facilities for 3-5 days, including a weekend, during the 2nd quarter of 2015 (between March and June). Final event dates should avoid other key free software conferences or other events that may have conflict and will be confirmed together with other GNOME teams which might get involved. Key points which each proposals should consider and which will be taken into account when deciding 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’s

    Please refer to the official web site of GNOME.Asia [1]. Please also check the GNOME.Asia Summit check list [2], howtos [3] and the winning proposal for 2012 [4] when putting together a proposal.

    You are welcome to contact gnome-asia-committee-list<at>gnome<dot> org if you have any questions.

    Please help to spread the word and we are looking forward to hearing from you soon!

    GNOME.Asia Committee

    [1] http://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeAsia

    [2] http://2011.gnome.asia/about/gnomeasia/event-organization-checklist

    [3] http://2011.gnome.asia/about/gnomeasia/summit-planning-howto

    [4] http://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeAsia/2012Summit/Bids?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Proposal_of_HongKong_GNOME_Asia_Hackfest_2012_20120124.pdf

  • GUADEC 2014, In Pictures

    GUADEC 2014 ended last week, and we’ve put together a gallery of images from the conference. Thanks again to the conference organisers, as well as all our sponsors, for making this fantastic event possible.

    Many thanks to Garrett LeSage, Jakub Steiner, Hylke Bons and Allan Day for the photos.

  • GUADEC 2014 Core Days Finish

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    The main part of GUADEC 2014, the premier annual GNOME conference, has just ended in Strasbourg, France. The core days are made up of talks, keynote presentations, as well as the GNOME Foundation Annual General Meeting.

    The GUADEC core days have been packed with exciting, interesting talks. There were presentations on important initiatives in GNOME, such as Wayland and continuous performance testing. GTK+ had a strong presence, with talks on GTK+ dialogs, CSS, and the GTK+ Scene Graph Toolkit. There was also a whole day of talks on GTK+ applications.

    The final core day ended with an enthusiastic lightning talk session (these are short, five minute talks on a subject of the presenter’s choosing), followed by a conference closing which included a standing ovation for the local organising team. The final day also included the third GUADEC keynote, delivered by Matthew Garrett, on the future of the desktop.

    GUADEC would not be complete without social events, of course, and this year’s event was no exception. Highlights included a a snooker and pool evening and the regular GUADEC football match, which was followed by a picnic.

    Another regular feature of GUADEC is the annual pants award, where one individual is picked out for their special efforts over the year. This year, that award went to Alexandre Franke, who was the brains behind this year’s GUADEC, and who also works to coordinate GNOME’s presence at FOSDEM.

    GUADEC has been fantastic, as usual. There have been a lot of important, exciting discussions and talks, and the conference has been an opportunity to make important plans for the future. Though the core days are now over, the GNOME community will be busy in Strasbourg for three more days, as the schedule switches to working sessions (known as BoFs, or Birds of a Feather sessions).

    Many thanks to the sponsors of this year’s GUADEC: Google, Red Hat, Igalia, SUSE, Ubuntu, Seafile, code.csdn.net, and GitCafe. This wonderful event would not have been possible without your help.

  • Interview with Jim Hall, GUADEC Keynote Speaker

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    The curtains are up on GUADEC 2014, and the first keynote was delivered by Jim Hall. Jim is the Director of Information Technology at Morris, University of Minnesota, and he presented his work on usability in GNOME. We took some time to talk to Jim about his keynote and about his research on GNOME.

    Nowadays many designers are interested in user experience rather than usability. Do you believe that usability alone is still relevant?

    Usability and user experience are related, but different. Usability is about getting something done; user experience is about the user’s emotional impression. Lots of things can affect the emotional experience of a graphical desktop like GNOME. Colors, fonts, location of elements, and window decorations are just some of the things that can influence how a person feels about using GNOME. That’s the user experience.

    Usability focuses on the user. The general rule about usability is that people use programs to be productive, and they are busy people who are trying to get things done. Through usability testing, the user decides when a product is easy to use. Because if a program is hard to use, no one will want to use it. And if they don’t use the software, then they won’t have an emotional experience about it.

    So I believe that usability and user experience go hand-in-hand. Programs need to be pleasant (user experience) but people need to be able to use them, too (usability).

    In your experience, what are the biggest difficulties you can incur in arranging an user testing?

    It is critical to plan a usability test around the users. Who are the users? Do you only expect programmers to use it, or is it intended for a general audience? With GNOME, that means everyone, so any usability test of GNOME must be designed for “general users with average knowledge.”

    The next step is to decide what tasks those users need to do in GNOME. What are these general users trying to get done? In this usability test, we wanted to focus on new design patterns, but we first had to work out a set of tasks that real people would probably do: manage some folders and files, browse the web, take some notes, and so on.

    Once you figure out what the usability test should cover, the hardest part is to make sure the tasks are realistic. You want each task to be something a real person would probably do in GNOME. But avoid using words or terms that actually appear in the program. That would only test if the user can match your task description to a menu item. Instead, you want to describe things using general terms. For example: when I asked testers to increase the font size on a website, I didn’t use the word “font.” Instead, the task was:

    “You don’t have your glasses with you, so it’s hard to read the text on the website. Please make the text bigger on the website.”

    You have done a lot of work on improving usability in GNOME: what was the hardest issue you found and the biggest satisfaction you have got?

    I was really glad to see Allan and the other GNOME folks create entries in the GNOME Bugzilla. It’s really satisfying to see GNOME developers taking usability seriously.

    In doing the usability test, it is hard to watch someone struggle to complete a task. You can’t give hints; you almost have to sit on your hands to keep from saying “the menu item you’re looking for is right there.” You must let the tester explore for themselves, in order to understand how users interact with your program.

    I was surprised by some of the test results. For example: installing a program using Software. When testers searched for the program (“Robots”) they got a list of programs that matched the search, and a convenient “Install” button they could click. But if they navigated through the categories to find the program, the “Install” button was in the upper-right corner, and users didn’t see it. Instead, they clicked on the link to visit the program’s website, which got them totally off track. So testers either completed this task very easily, or they were not able to do it at all.

    What do you expect from this GUADEC?

    This is my first time at GUADEC, so I really don’t know what to expect. I have attended other similar conferences, so I expect to meet lots of interesting people. I am a very friendly person, so if you see me, please do say hi.

    While I’ve visited other countries, this is my first trip to France. Unfortunately, I don’t have any French, so I am hoping someone will help help keep me from getting lost. I also speak conversational Spanish and a little bit of Klingon, but neither will help me in France. 🙂

    Can you give us a quick introduction to your GUADEC keynote?

    My keynote will be a summary of my usability research with GNOME. This is based on my Master’s capstone project, which you can download from my blog: “Usability Themes in Open Source Software.”

    The presentation walks through the usability test of GNOME. I think folks will be very interested in the “heat map” of the usability test, which shows how testers fared in the test. It’s a new way to share results of a usability test, and I think it helps to make issues more clear.

    I will wrap up with a discussion of five themes from this usability test: how GNOME developers can extend this usability test to help them with other GNOME programs.

    Many thanks to Jim for all his work, and for his excellent keynote presentation.

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