Category: Press Release

GNOME 3.0 Rescheduled for March 2011 Release

The Hague, July 28, 2010 – The GNOME Release Team met at GUADEC on Monday, July 26 and discussed the state of readiness for GNOME 3.0. During these discussions the Release Team decided that GNOME 3.0 needed another release cycle to mature and have pushed back the GNOME 3.0 release to March 2011.

GNOME releases every six months to provide a reliable platform for its community and downstream partners. While it might be possible to release GNOME 3.0 in 2010 by slipping the schedule by a month or two, it makes more sense to stick to GNOME’s release schedule and ensure that GNOME 3.0 lives up to the quality that our community expects.

The GNOME Project will ship GNOME 2.32 in September, along with a preview release of GNOME 3.0. Several of the distributions will ship GNOME 3.0 components that can be used for user previews or developer testing.

GNOME is driven by its goals to provide a quality free software desktop, and we feel that our users and downstream community are better served by holding the GNOME 3.0 release until March 2011. This gives adequate time not only for feature development, but user feedback and testing.

The extra time will be used to improve performance for GNOME Accessibility support, GNOME Shell, and documentation for GNOME 3.0. GNOME 2.32 will still have a number of interesting new features such as color management and UPnP support as well as the usual performance enhancements and bug fixes that have marked GNOME’s timed releases for years.

Stay tuned to the GNOME.org Web site and announcements from the GNOME Project about the status of GNOME 3.0 and what’s coming in 2011.

About GNOME and the GNOME Foundation

GNOME is a free-software project whose goal is to develop a complete, accessible and easy to use desktop for Linux and Unix-based operating systems. GNOME also includes a complete development environment to create new applications. It is released twice a year on a regular schedule.

The GNOME desktop is used by millions of people around the world. GNOME is a standard part of all leading GNU/Linux and Unix distributions, and is popular with both large existing corporate deployments and millions of small business and home users worldwide.

Composed of hundreds of volunteer developers and industry-leading companies, the GNOME Foundation is an organization committed to supporting the advancement of GNOME. The Foundation is a member directed, non-profit organization that provides financial, organizational and legal support to the GNOME project and helps determine its vision and roadmap.

More information about GNOME and the GNOME Foundation can be found at www.gnome.org andfoundation.gnome.org.

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GUADEC is first event worldwide streamed in WebM by Flumotion and Fluendo

The Hague, July 27, 2010 – The GNOME Foundation is happy to announce that Flumotion is providing the live streaming in WebM of this year’s GUADEC conference, July 28-30. It is the first conference worldwide that will be streamed in the new WebM format, based on the VP8 codec, released as open source by Google last May.

Flumotion, a leading company in multi-format streaming technology, and Fluendo, an established leading provider of multimedia software, are both committed to the integration of open source formats and standards in their multi-format software. Within 20 hours of VP8’s release, Fluendo integrated the new codec, which was then included into Flumotion’s multi-format streaming software and streaming platform, only 48 hours after the release by Google.

“The speed of the VP8 integration illustrates the benefits of multi-format and open source based technology”, explains Julien Moutte, founder of the Fluendo Group, which consists of Flumotion, Fluendo and Fluendo Embedded. “We are proud to provide the world’s first live streaming in WebM for the GNOME’s foundation annual event”, he adds.

“We’re pleased that GUADEC has the honour of being the first event to be streamed live in WebM”, says Stormy Peters, GNOME Foundation Executive Director. “Allowing GNOME developers and users around the world to see GUADEC via WebM only months after its release shows how fast the open source community adopts new formats and drives technological innovation.”

Truly open formats, without patent encumbrance or license fees, are crucial for an open Web. Free software projects like GNOME can stand on a level playing field with proprietary software, and deliver full functionality for users on free software platforms.

The GUADEC conference is at the core of the open source movement and is the biggest gathering of developers of the GNOME project, a desktop environment and graphical user interface, used by businesses and governments worldwide. This year’s lectures focus is on developing products based on GNOME, demand from public institutions for a work environment based on free and open source software, and attracting talent to the open source culture and the industry surrounding it.

About Flumotion

Flumotion offers multi-format streaming solutions for the delivery of audio and video services over the Internet. Started in 2006 by a group of open source developers and multimedia experts as a Free Software project, Flumotion combines an innovative open source software package with GStreamer, the de facto multimedia framework on Linux.

Thanks to its flexible and distributed design and its choice of Python as the high-level language for development, it is now the world’s easiest and most powerful streaming software and platform for open streaming. Flumotion’s end-to-end technology covers the entire streaming value chain and enables streaming in open as well as proprietary formats. Live and on demand streaming for new formats and devices is integrated in record time such as WebM, iPad and Android. Learn more atwww.flumotion.com.

About Fluendo

Founded in 2004 in Barcelona, Fluendo specializes in software development and consulting services. Fluendo employs several of the central developers of the GStreamer multimedia framework, which is quickly establishing itself as the de-facto standard multimedia framework for GNU/Linux and UNIX systems. Fluendo provides a wide range of products under and above GStreamer including proprietary codecs (together with their respective patent licenses), a streaming server, a DVD player, the Fluendo Media Center for Linux, and Moovida Pro media player for Windows.

Fluendo is an established leading provider of multimedia software and has succeeded in offering legal end-to-end solutions working with multiple formats and platforms. Fluendo, Influencing the Multimedia World. Learn more at www.fluendo.com.

About GNOME and the GNOME Foundation

GNOME is a free-software project whose goal is to develop a complete, accessible and easy to use desktop for Linux and Unix-based operating systems. GNOME also includes a complete development environment to create new applications. It is released twice a year on a regular schedule.

The GNOME desktop is used by millions of people around the world. GNOME is a standard part of all leading GNU/Linux and Unix distributions, and is popular with both large existing corporate deployments and millions of small business and home users worldwide.

Composed of hundreds of volunteer developers and industry-leading companies, the GNOME Foundation is an organization committed to supporting the advancement of GNOME. The Foundation is a member directed, non-profit organization that provides financial, organizational and legal support to the GNOME project and helps determine its vision and roadmap.

More information about GNOME and the GNOME Foundation can be found at www.gnome.org andfoundation.gnome.org.

About WebM and VP8

The WebM project (www.webmproject.org) is dedicated to developing a high-quality, open video format for the web that is freely available to everyone. WebM is an open, royalty-free media file format designed for the web. WebM files consist of video streams compressed with the VP8 video codec and audio streams compressed with the Vorbis audio codec (www.vorbis.org). The WebM file structure is based on the Matroska (www.matroska.org) media container.The WebM launch is supported by Mozilla, Opera, Adobe, Google and more than forty other publishers, software and hardware vendors.

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GNOME Targets Wider Audience at GUADEC

July 1, 2010 — The organisational committee of GUADEC 2010, the annual GNOME Users And Developers European Conference, has scheduled two extra sessions, to be held immediately before the main conference, which are expected to draw wide and international audiences.

The GNOME Open Desktop Day and the GNOME Developers Training aim to expose newcomers – particularly governments, businesses, and developers – to the plethora of open source software possibilities. These events will be of great interest for ICT companies, public sector organisations and entrepreneurs interested in exploring opportunities and development of open source and GNOME-based products.

GNOME is the desktop environment installed by default in many Linux, Unix and BSD environments.

The additional sessions will take place on Monday and Tuesday, the 26th and 27th of July, in The Hague, The Netherlands. The main GUADEC conference will be held on the 28th-30th of July.

GUADEC 2010 marks the conference’s 11th year. This is the first year it will be held in The Netherlands. GUADEC has previously been held in locations such as Paris, Copenhagen, Birmingham, Istanbul and Seville. Conference organisors expect more than 500 attendees to participate over the week. Speakers for the conference include leading names from the open source development community and representatives from leading companies and public institutions in the open source area.

For more information on the event and registration, please visit the official GUADEC website:http://www.guadec.org/.

About GNOME and the GNOME Foundation

GNOME is a free-software project whose goal is to develop a complete, accessible and easy to use desktop for Linux and Unix-based operating systems. GNOME also includes a complete development environment to create new applications. It is released twice a year on a regular schedule.

The GNOME desktop is used by millions of people around the world. GNOME is a standard part of all leading GNU/Linux and Unix distributions, and is popular with both large existing corporate deployments and millions of small business and home users worldwide.

Composed of hundreds of volunteer developers and industry-leading companies, the GNOME Foundation is an organization committed to supporting the advancement of GNOME. The Foundation is a member directed, non-profit organization that provides financial, organizational and legal support to the GNOME project and helps determine its vision and roadmap.

More information about GNOME and the GNOME Foundation can be found at www.gnome.org andfoundation.gnome.org.

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Sugar Learning Platform and GNOME Desktop Now Shipping on the One Laptop per Child XO-1.5

ASUNCIÓN, June 14, 2010 – Sugar Labs, the GNOME Free Desktop Project, and One Laptop per Child (OLPC) have announced an update to the software offered on the OLPC XO-1.5. The 1.5 million children already using Sugar on the original XO-1 can also benefit from the update, since Paraguay Educa has backported the software.

The Sugar Learning Platform promotes collaborative learning through child-friendly Activities that encourage critical thinking. The GNOME free desktop is a hallmark of all major GNU/Linux distributions, suitable for older children and grownups. Switching between the two environments takes only a single click. With GNOME on the XO laptop, the door is opened to thousands of additional educational and productivity applications.

The XO-1.5 has the same industrial design as the original XO-1. Based on a VIA processor, it provides 2× the speed of the XO-1, 4× DRAM memory, and 4× FLASH memory. OLPC has announced the availability of a high-school edition of the XO-1.5, the XO-HS, with a newly designed keyboard, more comfortable for older students. The first deployment of the XO-HS is set to begin in Uruguay under the highly successful Plan Ceibal in September.

Children familiar with the XO-1 will naturally grow into the XO-1.5 with its expanded functionality. “One Laptop per Child promotes open-source software so that it can grow and adapt to the needs of the child. The Sugar platform on the XO is key to our educational mission because it gives students a unique and intuitive learning software environment,” said OLPC Association CEO Rodrigo Arboleda.

Stormy Peters, Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation, said, “We’re really excited to be working with Sugar and OLPC to provide desktop software to children of all ages. GNOME’s mission is to provide a free desktop accessible to everyone. Children from Uruguay to Ghana will be able to use their XOs to learn and to show their friends and families how to use Sugar and GNOME.”

Walter Bender, Executive Director of Sugar Labs, said “the fluidity of movement between the two desktops gives learners the ability to transition from a learning environment – Sugar – to a production and productivity environment – GNOME. They have the means of honing the creative skills acquired in an elementary education setting into entrepreneurial skills in a secondary education setting.”

“Sugar on a Stick” allows children who don’t have an XO laptop to benefit from this new software. Available for download from Sugar Labs in the new, v3 Mirabelle flavor, it can be loaded onto an ordinary USB thumbdrive and used to start a PC in Sugar without touching the hard disk. The XO laptops and Sugar on a Stick run Fedora GNU/Linux

About Sugar Labs

Sugar Labs, a volunteer-driven, nonprofit organization, is a member project of the Software Freedom Conservancy. Originally part of the One Laptop Per Child project, Sugar Labs coordinates volunteers around the world who are passionate about providing educational opportunities to children through the Sugar Learning Platform. Sugar Labs is supported by donations and is seeking funding to accelerate development.

For more information, please visit http://www.sugarlabs.org/.

About GNOME

GNOME is a free-software project which develops a complete, accessible and easy-to-use desktop standard on all leading GNU/Linux and Unix distributions. Popular with large corporate deployments and millions of small-business and home users worldwide, it includes a development environment to create new applications. The nonprofit GNOME Foundation is composed of hundreds of volunteer developers and industry-leading companies.

More information can be found at http://www.gnome.org/ and http://foundation.gnome.org/.

About One Laptop per Child

OLPC is a non-profit organization created by Nicholas Negroponte and others from the MIT Media Lab to design, manufacture and distribute laptop computers that are inexpensive enough to provide every child in the world access to knowledge and modern forms of education.

For more information, please visit http://www.laptop.org/.

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Collabora Joins the GNOME Foundation Advisory Board

UK software consultants to help in mission to create a free software computing platform.

May 5, 2010 — UK-based open source software consultancy Collabora is joining the GNOME Foundation advisory board today. A long time supporter of GNOME and member of the GNOME community, Collabora contributes directly to GNOME projects like Empathy, PiTiVi, Totem and Epiphany.

The GNOME Foundation works to further the goal of the GNOME project — to create a computing platform for use by the general public that is completely free software. On the advisory board, Collabora will work with the GNOME Board of Directors to help set vision and direction for the GNOME Foundation.

“We are proud of the work we’ve done in the past on GNOME projects and are happy to join the advisory board and contribute to the GNOME Foundation as well,” said Robert McQueen, director and co-founder at Collabora Ltd. “We’re passionate about open source and we look forward to the chance to help shape the future direction of the GNOME project alongside the other advisory board participants.”

“As a member of the GNOME community and the employer of key GNOME contributors, we are delighted to welcome Collabora to our advisory board,” said Stormy Peters, Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation. “They are already a key part of the GNOME community and their perspective on the advisory board will be of huge benefit to both the GNOME project and the other companies represented on the board.”

Collabora was a founding member of GNOME Mobile in 2007 and their technologies form key parts of the GNOME Mobile stack. In addition they work on many technologies that benefit the GNOME project like GStreamer, Telepathy, Farsight, D-Bus, X.Org and Webkit Gtk+. Their work is key in realising the GNOME vision of a free, accessible desktop and mobile platform for everyone.

“I’ve enjoyed working with Collabora since they joined the GNOME community, and they’ve made some significant contributions over the past few years, so it’s great to see them joining the GNOME Foundation too.” says Michael Meeks, Linux Desktop Architect at Novell, Inc. “Their frank insight and dynamism will be most welcome in the advisory board.”

GNOME technology forms a key part of mobile platforms such as Nokia’s Maemo, Intel’s Moblin and their merger to form the Linux Foundation’s MeeGo platform, launched at Mobile World Congress 2010. Companies like Collabora work with the GNOME community and the platform companies to deliver free and open source solutions. Members of the GNOME Advisory Board help the GNOME Foundation work with partner companies effectively and get the chance to collaborate with each other on their use of GNOME technologies.

About Collabora Ltd

Headquartered in Cambridge, UK with a network of developers worldwide, Collabora Ltd. is a software consultancy specializing in delivering the benefits of open source to the commercial world. Collabora combines years of open source software expertise with hard-won experience from working in the mobile and consumer electronics industries. They help clients effectively take open source technologies from the community to real-world consumers, re-using existing components to reduce time to market and focus on product differentiation.

For more information please visit www.collabora.co.uk.

About GNOME and the GNOME Foundation

GNOME is a free-software project whose goal is to develop a complete, accessible and easy to use desktop for Linux and Unix-based operating systems. GNOME also includes a complete development environment to create new applications. It is released twice a year on a regular schedule.

The GNOME desktop is used by millions of people around the world. GNOME is a standard part of all leading GNU/Linux and Unix distributions, and is popular with both large existing corporate deployments and millions of small business and home users worldwide.

Composed of hundreds of volunteer developers and industry-leading companies, the GNOME Foundation is an organization committed to supporting the advancement of GNOME. The Foundation is a member directed, non-profit organization that provides financial, organizational and legal support to the GNOME project and helps determine its vision and roadmap.

More information about GNOME and the GNOME Foundation can be found at www.gnome.org andfoundation.gnome.org.

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GNOME Project Updates Free Desktop with 2.30 Release

BOSTON, Mass — March 31, 2010 — The GNOME Project is proud to announce GNOME 2.30, the latest stable release of the popular Free Software desktop environment and applications suite. GNOME 2.30 builds on previous GNOME releases and brings hundreds of improvements for users and developers, including enhancements for user management, Web browsing, support for Facebook chat, and new productivity features.

GNOME contributors have added improvements across the board for GNOME 2.30 in accessibility, productivity applications, Web browsing, instant messaging, and games. This release includes hundreds of new features, enhancements, and improvements over the GNOME 2.28 release from September 2009.

“I’m really pleased with all of the updates in GNOME 2.30,” said Stormy Peters, GNOME Executive Director. “I’m excited that I can automatically sync my Tomboy notes between my desktop and laptop computer, easily configure Facebook chat in Empathy instant messenger, and do more with PDFs in Evince. GNOME 2.30 provides everything I need for work and play.”

The GNOME Project thrives by consistently improving on previous releases while retaining compatibility and delivering a user-friendly desktop environment and applications twice a year. GNOME combines a commitment to Free Software with a focus on usability and working well with downstream projects to deliver a high-quality suite of free software.

“GNOME’s commitment to usability, quality and predictable delivery is a key contributor to Ubuntu’s success,” said Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical. “GNOME sets the standard for a diverse and vibrant community that shares the goal of a Free desktop that is both familiar to users from any computing background, and also innovative. Congratulations to the project on this significant release.”

The 2.30 release contains significant user-visible improvements, adding numerous platform improvements for developers, and builds towards the upcoming GNOME 3.0 release with a preview of the revolutionary GNOME Shell. GNOME Shell, which will replace the existing GNOME Panel, changes the way users will interact with the desktop.

“I’d like to congratulate the GNOME project on a state of the art GNOME 2.30 desktop release,” said Andreas Jaeger, program manager of openSUSE for Novell. “I’m glad that we are able to include it in our next release and also have it available for easy installation on openSUSE 11.2. We’ll be providing packages via the openSUSE Build Service to allow users to easily test drive the upcoming GNOME 3.0 features like the GNOME Shell.”

GNOME 2.30 is immediately available via GNOME Live Media, and will soon be available from the many vendors and projects that support GNOME.

“The GNOME environment and platform have been a central part of Fedora’s releases since our earliest days. Over that time, GNOME has matured into a vital and healthy project that consistently combines simple, beautiful, user-friendly features and a robust platform for community-driven development,” said Paul Frields, Fedora Project Leader. “It’s a point of great pride that Fedora community members including Red Hat’s Desktop engineering team have contributed significantly to GNOME. I’m excited that we’re already involved in planning for the next generation of desktop technologies, including GNOME, that will help us build the free software desktop of the future.”

GNOME is also committed to delivering a Free desktop for all users, and translations and Accessibility work is an important part of the GNOME 2.30 release. This release includes a number of improvements in GNOME’s Orca Screen Reader that improve performance and use on netbooks, and platform improvements to ready GNOME’s Accessibility interface for GNOME 3.0. The 2.30 release also delivers comprehensive support for more than 50 languages, and partial support for many others.

“I’m extremely excited with the number of different languages currently supported by GNOME,” said Og Maciel, Foresight Linux Community Manager. “If there is one single feat about GNOME 2.30 that I’m proud of is the great work done by the Asturian and Shavian translation teams! We now have more than 50 different languages with at least 80% of the user interface translated, which means that more people will be able to enjoy their favorite desktop environment in their native tongue!”

About GNOME and the GNOME Foundation

GNOME is a free-software project whose goal is to develop a complete, accessible and easy to use desktop for Linux and Unix-based operating systems. GNOME also includes a complete development environment to create new applications. It is released twice a year on a regular schedule.

The GNOME desktop is used by millions of people around the world. GNOME is a standard part of all leading GNU/Linux and Unix distributions, and is popular with both large existing corporate deployments and millions of small business and home users worldwide.

Composed of hundreds of volunteer developers and industry-leading companies, the GNOME Foundation is an organization committed to supporting the advancement of GNOME. The Foundation is a member directed, non-profit organization that provides financial, organizational and legal support to the GNOME project and helps determine its vision and roadmap.

More information about GNOME and the GNOME Foundation can be found at www.gnome.org andfoundation.gnome.org.

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GNOME Teams Take Top Rankings in Code for a Cause Competition

BOSTON, Mass — March 22, 2010 — GNOME Teams working on GNOME Caribou have taken top rankings in the Code for a Cause competition hosted by Project:Possibility. In the initial sprints on Feb. 27 and 28, GNOME’s team took 1st place at UCLA and 2nd place at USC. In the head-to-head competition on March 6, GNOME’s UCLA team placed 2nd and GNOME’s USC team placed 3rd. Teams now have the opportunity to present their projects at the 2010 CSUN Conference on Saturday, March 27.

SS12 is a programming competition run jointly by Project:Possibility and local Association of Computing Machinery chapters where teams of students compete to develop open source software for persons with disabilities over the course of a weekend.

On Feb 27-28, eighty-four students formed eight USC teams & six UCLA teams and coded throughout the entire the weekend. Coding began at 9am on Saturday, and ended at 5 p.m. on Sunday. The competition was fierce at the event, and some teams continued coding as late as 3 a.m. Sunday morning to work on their projects.

Students were selected for teams based on the project preferences they indicated at the beginning of the weekend. GNOME’s accessibility (a11y) team collaborated by recommending a number of potential project ideas. Two teams chose to add binary input capabilities to GNOME Caribou, and were guided throughout the weekend by GNOME programmer Ben Konrath remotely through IRC. Other GNOME accessibility developers including Willie Walker, team lead, dropped by during the competition to provide support in person.

GNOME Caribou provides text entry and computer control for users who do not use a keyboard. This allows access by those who only use a pointer device, such as head mice or eye trackers, and those who can only perform very simple gestures with primitive on-off switch devices. The code added by the students adds critical facilities for access with basic switch devices.

The students faced the added challenge of acquainting themselves with a code base they were unfamiliar with, and familiarizing themselves with the GNOME platform and Caribou software early on in the competition before they could even get to the coding. Fortunately, they were up to the challenge and impressed the judges with their presentations.

The weekend culminated in teams presenting their work to a panel of judges at each campus. Projects were evaluated based on their thorough documentation, completion of the task at hand, and addressing the challenge factor or difficulty of the project. The judges awarded the USC team second place overall out of eight teams, and the UCLA team first place overall out of six teams. Both teams were also recognized as top-3 teams at the Finals round the following weekend.

In addition to winning prizes and being recognized for their work over the weekend, students working on the GNOME projects also gained a positive experience developing code for an existing open source project.

“For me, SS12 was a great experience in designing and coding a feature from scratch in a short timeframe. It was a great project to work on, and we just sent our work up as a patch to be possibly included in the next release of the Caribou on-screen keyboard,” said Ben Walker, a member of the USC GNOME team. “I didn’t think I’d actually be contributing in a meaningful way to open source projects as only a Junior in college, but thanks to GNOME and Project:Possibility, I’ve had a fantastic time doing so.”

As a final accolade, the winning teams will have the opportunity to present their projects at the 25th Annual International Technology & Persons with Disabilities Conference (2010 CSUN Conference) on Saturday, March 27, where they will also meet the GNOME accessibility developers in person.

Project:Possibility is a nonprofit community organization that enables students to learn about accessibility and open source through competitive events where they develop open source accessibility software. For more information about Project:Possibility and the SS12, check out our website athttp://www.projectpossibility.org.

About GNOME and the GNOME Foundation

GNOME is a free-software project whose goal is to develop a complete, accessible and easy to use desktop for Linux and Unix-based operating systems. GNOME also includes a complete development environment to create new applications. It is released twice a year on a regular schedule.

The GNOME desktop is used by millions of people around the world. GNOME is a standard part of all leading GNU/Linux and Unix distributions, and is popular with both large existing corporate deployments and millions of small business and home users worldwide.

Composed of hundreds of volunteer developers and industry-leading companies, the GNOME Foundation is an organization committed to supporting the advancement of GNOME. The Foundation is a member directed, non-profit organization that provides financial, organizational and legal support to the GNOME project and helps determine its vision and roadmap.

More information about GNOME and the GNOME Foundation can be found at www.gnome.org andfoundation.gnome.org.

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GNOME Foundation and KDE e.V. to Co-Host Conferences in 2011

BOSTON, Mass — March 16, 2010 — Following the successful Gran Canaria Desktop Summit in 2009, the GNOME Foundation and KDE e.V. Boards have decided to co-locate their flagship conferences once again in 2011, and are taking bids to host the combined event. The Desktop Summit 2011 will be the largest free desktop event ever.

In July of 2009, the GNOME and KDE communities came together for the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit, the first co-located KDE/GNOME event. It was a major success, and was a fantastic opportunity for the leaders of the free software desktop efforts to share talks, communicate on common issues, and attend combined social events. The attendees from both projects expressed great interest in repeating the event and merging the programmes to synchronize schedules and make the event an even greater opportunity for the KDE and GNOME teams to learn from each other and work together.

“The Gran Canaria Desktop Summit was a great first event,” said Vincent Untz, GNOME Foundation Board Member. “We enjoyed working with our KDE friends at GCDS in 2009, and want to increase our cooperation in 2011. We plan to go beyond simple co-location this time, and actually plan a combined schedule in 2011 so that KDE and GNOME contributors have every opportunity to work with and learn from each other.”

The combined summit is also an opportunity for commercial sponsors of the GNOME and KDE projects to meet with the contributors from KDE and GNOME and to help foster faster collaboration and development of the free software desktop. Sponsors of the first Desktop Summit have expressed great interest in seeing both communities working together again.

The GNOME and KDE projects will hold independent events in 2010. GUADEC, the GNOME Project’s annual conference, will be held in The Hague, Netherlands on July 24 through July 30 of this year. KDE’s Akademy will be located in Tampere, Finland from July 3 to 10 this year. Both groups will likely hold smaller sprints through 2010 and early 2011 to prepare for the combined 2011 Desktop Summit.

“The KDE e.V. board felt that GCDS was a fantastic event, and we learned what works well and what can be improved when co-hosting an event with our GNOME friends,” said Cornelius Schumacher of the KDE e.V. “KDE and GNOME share a lot of goals for the free desktop, as well as technology, so we’re excited to make use of this experience and have an opportunity to co-locate again in 2011.”

More than 850 contributors to the GNOME and KDE projects gathered in Gran Canaria last July. The event brought together attendees from 50 countries, and helped raise local awareness of free software and had a measurable impact on the local community. The impact of the event continues to be felt even after the event, with nearly 2 million hits to the summit Web site following the event.

“We were thrilled to have GCDS right here, and felt that it was an enormous boost for our local commitment to free software,” said José Miguel Santos Espino, Director of IT at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. “It’s hard to overstate how important it was to have the opportunity to meet with contributors from GNOME and KDE and learn more about what’s possible on the desktop with free software.”

The projects are seeking a host in Europe at a location that can handle more than 1,000 participants. For detailed requirements, prospective hosts can see the requirements for Akademy (http://ev.kde.org/akademy/requirements.php) and GUADEC (http://live.gnome.org/GuadecPlanningHowTo/CheckList). Applications are welcomed before May 15th and should be sent to the KDE e.V. (kde-ev-board@kde.org) and the GNOME Foundation (board@gnome.org) boards.

About GNOME and the GNOME Foundation

GNOME is a free-software project whose goal is to develop a complete, accessible and easy to use desktop for Linux and Unix-based operating systems. GNOME also includes a complete development environment to create new applications. It is released twice a year on a regular schedule.

The GNOME desktop is used by millions of people around the world. GNOME is a standard part of all leading GNU/Linux and Unix distributions, and is popular with both large existing corporate deployments and millions of small business and home users worldwide.

Composed of hundreds of volunteer developers and industry-leading companies, the GNOME Foundation is an organization committed to supporting the advancement of GNOME. The Foundation is a member directed, non-profit organization that provides financial, organizational and legal support to the GNOME project and helps determine its vision and roadmap.

More information about GNOME and the GNOME Foundation can be found at www.gnome.org andfoundation.gnome.org.

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Mozilla Sponsors GNOME Accessibility Efforts

BOSTON, Mass — February 4, 2010 — The GNOME Foundation is happy to announce a substantial donation from the Mozilla Corporation to benefit the GNOME Project’s accessibility efforts. The donation will help continue the collaborative efforts between GNOME and Mozilla on Accessibility.

The Mozilla Corporation is granting the GNOME Foundation $10,000 for 2010. The funds will be used in part to send GNOME developers to the 25th Annual International CSUN Technology & Persons with Disabilities Conference. The CSUN Conference is one of the premier technology conferences for people with disabilities, and by holding a GNOME accessibility hackfest at the conference, GNOME can ensure a diverse group of GNOME developers are immersed in the accessibility space with direct hands-on interaction with end users.

The recent donation from Mozilla continues a long partnership between GNOME and Mozilla for accessibility. The GNOME Foundation received a $10,000 grant in 2008 that was used for the GNOME Accessibility Outreach Program, and resulted in major accessibility improvements.

“The direct impact of the Mozilla funding has allowed GNOME to add Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) support to the Orca screen reader and other accessibility enhancements in GNOME,” said Willie Walker, lead of the GNOME Accessibility Team. “All these helped make GNOME/Firefox a compelling free alternative to commercial products for the visually impaired. As a result, we’re seeing users around the world using GNOME as their every day solution.”

The GNOME Project has worked hard to ensure that all users have the opportunity to enjoy a Free Software desktop. Just as GNOME has had great success making internationalization part of the core platform, accessibility is also taking its place as a core value of the platform. Sending GNOME developers to CSUN will help to ensure that developers working on all areas of GNOME are well-educated on accessibility issues and continue to build accessibility features and functions into GNOME rather than “bolted-on” features.

The GNOME Foundation and Mozilla are committed to open source, open standards, and open formats. Both organizations and their contributors contribute to numerous projects to ensure an open Web and open desktop platform for all users. Part of that effort is working hard to ensure users with physical disabilities are able to make use of a free desktop and Web browser.

“The GNOME Foundation’s commitment to accessibility improves the desktop and Internet experience for millions of people, and Mozilla is proud to support this work,” said Mitchell Baker, Chair of the Mozilla Foundation.

About GNOME and the GNOME Foundation

GNOME is a free-software project whose goal is to develop a complete, accessible and easy to use desktop for Linux and Unix-based operating systems. GNOME also includes a complete development environment to create new applications. It is released twice a year on a regular schedule.

The GNOME desktop is used by millions of people around the world. GNOME is a standard part of all leading GNU/Linux and Unix distributions, and is popular with both large existing corporate deployments and millions of small business and home users worldwide.

Composed of hundreds of volunteer developers and industry-leading companies, the GNOME Foundation is an organization committed to supporting the advancement of GNOME. The Foundation is a member directed, non-profit organization that provides financial, organizational and legal support to the GNOME project and helps determine its vision and roadmap.

More information about GNOME and the GNOME Foundation can be found at www.gnome.org andfoundation.gnome.org.

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GUADEC 2010 to be held in The Hague, Netherlands

BOSTON, Mass — November 30, 2009 — GUADEC, the annual GNOME conference, will be held in The Hague, Netherlands from the 24th through the 30th of July 2010. The conference is expected to draw more than 500 attendees to discuss and direct the future of the GNOME Project. GUADEC will draw members of the GNOME development and user community, as well as many participants in the overall FLOSS community from local projects, organizations, and companies.

The conference will lead up to the GNOME 3.0 release in September 2010. Keeping with the 3.0 theme, the three primary themes for GUADEC 2010 will be Government, education, and end users.

The Hague was one of several locations proposed for GUADEC in 2010. It was chosen in part due to the excellent facilities at the bid site, as well as easily accessible site for those traveling to GUADEC. The conference will be held at the Haagse Hogeschool, the higher vocational education institute in the region with an existing affinity for open source.

“Free Software is of great importance to culture in the digital age,” said Kees Vendrik, Green MP and advocate of open source and open standards in the Dutch public sector. “It offers a fertile feeding ground for education, innovation, and the economy at large. My party is delighted that the GNOME conference is coming to The Netherlands and we believe it will inspire our governmental bodies to put policy into practice.”

The core team of the winning bid consists of Vincent van Adrighem, Koen Martens, Sanne te Meerman, Fabrice Mous, and Reinout van Schouwen. Each of the core team members are well-rooted in the FLOSS community at large, with network spanning the most active FLOSS organizations in The Netherlands.

“We are very excited and honored to host GUADEC next year,” said Reinout van Schouwen. “With the upcoming release of GNOME 3.0, we’re confident that the conference will be one of the most important ones in the history of the GNOME project. We would like to invite the Free Software communities in our country and abroad to take advantage of this opportunity and show the world that open technology offers solutions for everyone!”

GUADEC is now in its 11th year, and follows a successful joint conference, the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit (GCDS), in 2009 with the KDE Project. As planned, GUADEC 2010 will be hosted on its own, but the door is open to another co-hosted event in the future.

Stormy Peters, Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation, said that GCDS was “a great conference, and an opportunity to work with our friends in the KDE Project on areas where both desktops can benefit. We hope to build on that experience this year with GUADEC.”

See the GUADEC Website for more information about the conference. Registration details and information on the call for papers will be up by January 6th. Look for another announcement at that time with more details about the CFP and tracks for GUADEC 2010.

About GNOME and the GNOME Foundation

GNOME is a free-software project whose goal is to develop a complete, accessible and easy to use desktop for Linux and Unix-based operating systems. GNOME also includes a complete development environment to create new applications. It is released twice a year on a regular schedule.

The GNOME desktop is used by millions of people around the world. GNOME is a standard part of all leading GNU/Linux and Unix distributions, and is popular with both large existing corporate deployments and millions of small business and home users worldwide.

Composed of hundreds of volunteer developers and industry-leading companies, the GNOME Foundation is an organization committed to supporting the advancement of GNOME. The Foundation is a member directed, non-profit organization that provides financial, organizational and legal support to the GNOME project and helps determine its vision and roadmap.

More information about GNOME and the GNOME Foundation can be found at www.gnome.org andfoundation.gnome.org.

Media Enquiries

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