News – Page 9 – GNOME Foundation

Neil McGovern to Keynote at Open Source Summit Europe

GNOME Foundation Executive Director Neil McGovern will deliver a keynote at Open Source Summit Europe.

In the talk “Patently Obvious: The Year Open Source Got Sued”, Neil McGovern will discuss the GNOME Foundation’s triumphant legal settlement with Rothschild Patent Imaging, a non-practicing entity. In September 2019, Rothschild Patent Imaging alleged that GNOME was in violation of one of its patents. In May 2020, the case was resolved under the representation of Shearman and Sterling LLP. You can read more about the resolution online.

Open Source Summit Europe is a conference hosted by the Linux Foundation, traditionally taking place in Europe. This year’s conference will be October 26 – 29, taking place entirely online. Previous years have brought together thousands of attendees from all over the world.

While Neil McGovern’s session is not yet scheduled, we will update you once it is. If you can’t wait for Open Source Summit Europe, you can watch “The Growth of GNOME” from GUADEC 2019 or check out a more recent interview with OpenUK.

GNOME Welcomes Two Technical Writers from Season of Docs

GNOME is participating in another round of Google Season of Docs! We have a long history of mentoring and outreach, and consider Season of Docs to be a continuation of those efforts. Season of Docs was started by Google in 2019 to bring technical writers and free and open source projects together. Projects will allow writers to gain experience in contributing to FOSS while learning about the technical complexities and helping projects improve their documentation. This year we welcome two new technical writers.

Our first writer, Pranali, will be working on updating GNOME Applications Help Documentation. Pranali has experience in technical writing and documentation and has worked with organizations like Haiku OS and Red Hat in the past. This project will be mentored by longtime GNOME Foundation members and contributors, Shaun McCance and Petr Kovar.

Our second writer, Wisdom, will focus on GObject Tutorial Consolidation. Wisdom is a member of our GNOME Africa community and has a background in writing, development, and UX/UI Design. This project will be mentored by GNOME Foundation GTK Core Developer Emmanuele Bassi.

Google Season of Docs projects were announced on August 16 and our technical writers will now begin the community bonding period during which they’ll learn more about the GNOME community and the people in the projct. Docs development will start on September 14 and run through to early December when the writers will submit their final projects for evaluation.

See all projects selected for this year’s Season of Docs: https://developers.google.com/season-of-docs/docs/participants.

Linux App Summit 2020 Call for Talks now open!

Linux App Summit. Online, November 12-14, 2020

GNOME has teamed up with KDE to bring the Linux App Summit (LAS) online for 2020! LAS is THE conference for people interested in establishing Linux as a great end-user platform. At the Linux App Summit, we work on making app creation for users easy and worthwhile.

LAS will be a virtual conference this year and will run from Thursday, November 12th to Saturday, November 14th. Our goal is to engage people in multiple time zones throughout the event and make the content available online afterward.

The Call for Talks is now open! Please take a look at the suggested topics and send in your ideas by September 15th. We encourage new speakers, so don’t hesitate to submit a talk!

We hope to see you at LAS 2020!

Learn More

GUADEC starts today!

GUADEC starts today, July 22nd! GUADEC is the main GNOME conference, bringing together users and enthusiasts from all over the world. GUADEC 2020 takes place online.

This GUADEC will feature an exciting set of speakers and sessions, which will bring you the latest news and updates about the project; introductions to open source collaborations; and explorations into free software thinking. Later in the week there will be Birds of a Feather sessions, where people get together around a shared interest, and workshops. After regular conference activities, there will be some special social events.

The full schedule for GUADEC 2020 is available online. If you would like to join the conference please register online and check your email for the links and access codes needed to join the conference.

You can learn more at the GUADEC web site and by following us on social media at @GNOME and @gnome@floss.social.

GitLab is a GUADEC 2020 Silver Sponsor

GitLab is joining GUADEC as a Silver Sponsor. Several years ago GNOME made the move to use GitLab for managing contributions including everything from conference organizing to code. GitLab provided invaluable support during this process. They continue to be there for the GNOME community with their Silver Sponsorship of GUADEC 2020.

GitLab provides Git infrastructure which you can host your own, or use their hosting. It includes wikis, issue-tracking, and a continuous integration/continuous deployment pipeline.

GUADEC is the GNOME community’s annual conference. The 2020 conference will take place entirely online, running July 22 – 28. The event will feature talks, workshops, Birds of a Feather Sessions, social events, and lots of space to collaborate and get to know the GNOME community. Register today!

Announcing openSUSE as a Silver Sponsor for GUADEC

OpenSUSE has joined GUADEC as a Silver Sponsor! OpenSUSE creates a Linux distribution and supports a community of contributors developing tools.

OpenSUSE, another longtime supporter of GUADEC, has joined us in many cities across Europe and Asia, with their sponsorships of GNOME.Asia. They continue to support GNOME and the GNOME community as we gather this year online.

We appreciate openSUSE’s ongoing interest in the GNOME community and dedication to building a strong free and open source ecosystem.

FOSS Responders joins GUADEC 2020 as a Gold Sponsor

We’re so happy that FOSS Responders is joining us as a Gold Sponsor at GUADEC 2020! FOSS Responders is an initiative powered by a group of individuals who “came together to support and celebrate our Free and Open Source Community affected by the COVID-19 economic fallout”. They are supported by a group of over twenty organizations and companies to help free and open source software (FOSS) projects through funding; connecting volunteers to projects; advising around moving events online; and momentum building for projects that no longer have the opportunity to do so through in-person events.

Sponsorship for GUADEC was provided by a coalition of companies and individuals, including: Indeed, Open Source Collective, Open Collective, Linux Fund, GitHub, Google, Sentry, Ethereum Foundation, Digital Ocean, and the Sloan Foundation.

In addition to the respect we hold for their efforts and thoughtfulness towards the FOSS community, we appreciate their generosity to GNOME.

Red Hat is a Gold Sponsor of GUADEC 2020

Red Hat is supporting GUADEC 2020 as a Gold Sponsor! Red Hat has long been a supporter of GNOME. They are a member of the Advisory Board, they are active contributors to many facets of the GNOME ecosystem,and they have sponsored GUADEC for many years. We’re excited to welcome them back for GUADEC 2020.

“As an active contributor within the vibrant GNOME community, Red Hat is very pleased to be among the sponsors of this year’s GUADEC event,” shared Veronica Cooley-Perry from Red Hat. “Community is about connections, and if this year has demonstrated anything, it’s that those connections are more important than ever. GNOME remains a vital part of the open source ecosystem, and the connections and 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 2020 online event!”

Throughout the conference, Red Hat will be hosting office hours, where you can speak directly with them about the exciting things they’re doing with GNOME. More details will be coming soon.

We must all speak up.

GNOME has long believed that we are stronger with a diverse contributor base. This mixing of ideas from a wide range of backgrounds is something that has improved free and open source software, and it should be highly valued.

Historically, free software has failed at engaging with Black, ethnic minorities, and marginalized communities. This is especially a problem when those who could benefit the most from a free and open software stack—to be in control of their own computing—are marginalized in their efforts to contribute towards that computing.

Thus, GNOME stands firm with #BlackLivesMatter. The exclusion and prejudice that is faced by millions of black and ethnic minority communities throughout the world is something that GNOME takes a stand against. We must all work together to ensure a future that is fair, equitable, and open for all, no matter what the color of your skin, your accent, or your background.

Annual Report 2019

What a wonderful year 2019 was!

We are excited to share some of our best moments, achievements, and great events that happened throughout the year in our annual report

Highlights include:

We increased the foundation’s staff with three new employees: a GTK Core Developer, a Program Coordinator and a Strategic Initiatives Manager.

We released Taipei (3.32) and Thessaloniki (3.34)

Technical achievements including GNOME Flatpak runtime, VM images, and Continuous Integration improvements.

Accessibility achievements including new ARIA support in ATK and AT‑SPI2, improving the accessibility of web browsers; Orca support for Chrome/Chromium; and a “Pointer Location” feature for Wayland sessions.

GNOME moved to communications to Discourse, a free web forum software. We have over 500 registered users making 70 posts per day.

We organized 10 events 13 hackfests.

We attended 11 conferences, where we presented, hosted a booth, and represented GNOME.

GNOME hosted eight students who successfully finished the Google Summer of Code and three who successfully completed Outreachy internships.

In August 2019, a patent assertion entity, Rothschild Patent Imaging, LLC, charged GNOME with patent infringement.

For more information and details please see the Annual Report

2019 wouldn’t have been this awesome without you!
Cheers and looking forward to coming years.