Category: Press Release

Made to Share! GNOME 2.28 Released!

September 23, 2009 — GNOME 2.28 enhances Empathy Instant Messaging, adds official Bluetooth support, and improves other applications and the GNOME Developer Platform.

The GNOME Community is excited to announce the immediate availability of GNOME 2.28. Hundreds of volunteers worldwide have worked over the past six months to deliver improvements to the GNOME Desktop and GNOME Developer Platform.

GNOME 2.28 furthers the GNOME mission by making sure people have a free desktop they can use to communicate with their friends using the latest technology.

GNOME 2.28 delivers a number of new feature enhancements to improve the user experience. GNOME 2.28 adds official support for Bluetooth devices for the first time, including mice, keyboards, mobile phones and other peripherals. Bastien Nocera, one of the leading developers of GNOME’s Bluetooth featureset says: “With the addition of the Bluetooth management tools and the enhancements to our Volume Control applications, we’ve given GNOME users access to more hardware features, whilst keeping our design principles.”

Empathy, GNOME’s instant messenger, built on the Telepathy framework, has seen numerous improvements, including the ability to add custom themes, geolocation support for Jabber clients, and the ability for users to share their desktop with their contacts using the GNOME Remote Desktop server and viewer, Vino and Vinagre. “The Telepathy team is proud of the cooperation between the Empathy, Vino and Vinagre developers. Thanks to their work, our users will be able to easily share their desktop with their contacts without having to care about the underlying technical details. This is a great step for us as it marks the first use in GNOME of the collaborative features offered by the Telepathy framework. We hope to soon see more and more applications integrating Telepathy in order to increase the collaborative user experience in the GNOME desktop,” says Guillame Desmottes, one of the main contributors to Empathy.

Other improvements to the GNOME Desktop include:

  • Cheese, the GNOME webcam application, features an all new wide mode for users with netbooks.
  • GNOME’s web browser, Epiphany, fixed a number of long-standing bugs with the switch to Webkit as its engine.
  • The Evince document viewer has been ported to Microsoft Windows®.
  • Gedit has been ported to Mac OS® X.
  • … and more.

For users with accessibility needs, Orca, the GNOME screen reader application, has seen numerous updates, including support for mouseovers, moving the mouse without performing a click, the ability to pronounce mis-spellled words, and more.

The GNOME Developer Platform has seen significant progress in removing deprecated modules and functionality. In GNOME 2.28, there are no longer any applications that depend on esound, libgnomevfs, libgnomeprint, or libgnomeprintui. GTK+, Glib and other GNOME libraries have also seen improvements.

For the full list of changes, please see the release notes at http://library.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/2.28/.

About GNOME

The GNOME Project is creating a complete, free and easy-to-use desktop environment for users, as well as a powerful application development framework for software developers. 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 as well as many mobile platforms like cellular phones and tablets.

The GNOME project has three main goals:

  • Free and open source desktop accessible to all. GNOME is a free desktop available to everyone, regardless of language, physical ability, technical expertise.
  • Development platform. GNOME is a powerful development platform for developing free and open source software applications.
  • GNOME Mobile. GNOME technologies provide a foundation for mobile applications from tablets to cellular phones.

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GNOME promotes Software Freedom Day

The GNOME Community is a excited to promote and participate in Software Freedom Day. Around the world, GNOME community members will be celebrating software freedom and the work that GNOME has done to make a free desktop accessible for all.

Software Freedom is about a technology future that we can trust, that is sustainable, and that supports the basic human freedoms. Untrusted electoral systems can lead to civil unrest and a lack of trust in governing bodies. Proprietary data formats can mean lockout to accessing our own information! Software Freedom can be maintained by transparent systems (such as Free and Open Source Software) that are based on open, secure and sustainable standards including data formats and communication protocols.

In addition, software freedom is about making sure that software can be used by all humanity regardless of the language they speak, the amount of money they have or their physical abilities. And this is where GNOME excels. To provide free software to everyone, GNOME is:

Free.

GNOME is Free Software and part of the GNU project, dedicated to giving users and developers the ultimate level of control over their desktops, their software, and their data. Find out more about the GNU project and Free Software at gnu.org.

Usable.

GNOME understands that usability is about creating software that is easy for everyone to use. GNOME’s community of professional and volunteer usability experts have created Free Software’s first and only Human Interface Guidelines, and all core GNOME software is adopting these principles. Find out more about GNOME and usability at the GNOME Usability Project.

Accessible

Free Software is about enabling software freedom for everyone, including users and developers with disabilities. GNOME’s Accessibility framework is the result of several years of effort, and makes GNOME the most accessible desktop for any Unix platform. Find out more at the GNOME Accessibility Project.

International

GNOME is used, developed and documented in dozens of languages, and we strive to ensure that every piece of GNOME software can be translated into all languages. During the last GNOME Development cycle, the GNOME Desktop was translated into over 40 languages!

Developer-friendly

Developers are not tied to a single language with GNOME. You can use C, C++, Python, Perl, Java, and C#, to produce high-quality applications that integrate smoothly into the rest of your UNIX or GNU/Linux (commonly referred to as Linux) desktop.

Organized

GNOME strives to be an organized community, with a foundation of several hundred members, usability, accessibility, and QA teams, and an elected board. GNOME releases are defined by the GNOME Release Team every six months.

Supported

Beyond the worldwide GNOME Community, GNOME is supported by the leading companies using GNU/Linux and UNIX and many free software projects, including Access, Canonical, Debian, Free Software Foundation, HP, Google, IBM, Igalia, Intel, Motorola, Mozilla Foundation, Nokia, Novell, OLPC, Red Hat, Software Freedom Law Center, Sugar Labs and Sun Microsystems. GNOME is proud to be the default Desktop Environment that powers popular distributions including Ubuntu, Fedora and OpenSolaris.

A community

Perhaps more than anything else, GNOME is a worldwide community of volunteers who hack, translate, design, QA, and generally have fun together.

Please join the GNOME community in celebrating the achievements the free software world has made.

Free Desktop Communities come together at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit

This year’s Gran Canaria Desktop Summit represented the first time the GNOME and KDE communities have co-located their annual conferences in the same location. 852 free software advocates from 46 countries gathered together last month to discuss and enhance the free desktop experience at the first ever Gran Canaria Desktop Summit.

“The Gran Canaria Desktop Summit was a milestone not only for the KDE and GNOME communities, but also for the free desktop in general.” said Cornelius Schumacher, president of KDE e.V., “New collaboration efforts were started and existing ones revitalized. We already have seen results for example in the area of the semantic desktop, and on improving the specification processes on freedesktop.org. I’m sure we’ll see more results in the near future.”

The summit accomplished its goal of increasing co-operation between GNOME and KDE to improve the Free Desktop experience. Throughout the conference there were many examples of successful collaboration including shared technologies, community co-operation and growth of the local free software community.

“I was really excited to see all of the energy at the conference – 800 free desktop supporters in the same building!” said Vincent Untz, Director and Chairman of the GNOME Board. “I heard conversations about search technologies, recruiting developers and marketing. Both our communities benefited and I look forward to seeing the benefits passed on to GNOME users.”

Shared Technology

KDE and GNOME benefit from shared technologies in multimedia, metadata storage, desktop search, application messaging and hardware integration. These shared technologies provide users with improved integration and a consistent user experience. Discussions during the summit resulted in agreements to continue to work on shared technologies, shared interfaces and shared code. In particular, several working sessions around the freedesktop.org initiative resulted in clearer processes for sharing specifications and technologies which will accelerate the ability of both projects and the greater free desktop community to collaborate and communicate with other projects.

Community Co-operation

In the domains where KDE and GNOME share technology, global teams came together to work on more effective ways of collaborating. Members of both communities came together to discuss issues that affected desktop projects, from recruiting and maintaining bugsquad team members to free desktop marketing efforts to kernel technologies that affect both projects. Teams in areas as diverse as the bug squad, accessibility and multimedia teams shared experiences and knowledge, and resolved to work more closely together. The projects share many values like an interest in providing free accessibility to people around the world that can be accomplished better by working together.

Local Free Software Community

Co-locating GUADEC and Akademy resulted in a large number of key free software developers congregating in Gran Canaria. They attracted developers from related projects world wide and invigorated the local software community. GUADEC-es and Akademy-es took also place during the event, as an effort to increase the number of spanish developers involved. The devolpment of an introductory program in spanish for local students and developers allowed the a record number of local free software supporters showed up – over 300 free software supporters from the Canary Islands showed up to listen, participate and discuss free desktop issues with the GNOME and KDE communities. The Gran Canaria Desktop Summit was supported by the local free software community which includes strong GNOME and KDE presence through GNOME Hispano and KDE España, including support from The Cabildo of Gran Canaria, both local universities (ULPGC and ULL), ESLIC, ASOLIF, and GULIC, among others.

The Gran Canaria Desktop Summit was a success. The conversations that started at the summit will have an impact on the upcoming release of the GNOME and KDE desktops and will continue to foster cooperation between the GNOME and KDE communities. The communities are planning cross desktop hackfests to implement the ideas discussed at the summit. Free desktop users can expect to see the results of this conference in upcoming releases of the GNOME and KDE desktops.

GNOME and KDE plan to join together again in future years to make sure they are working effectively together to share technologies and advance the free desktop. The cooperation and conversations that began between the KDE and GNOME communities will continue into the future and in events like hackfests throughout the year, but next year the conferences will be hosted separately. GUADEC and Akademy hope to see both GNOME and KDE developers at their events as their communities work more closely together on joint technologies.

Both projects believe that the co-location of the GNOME conference GUADEC and the KDE conference Akademy was a successful event that brought the two communities together and they look forward to more co-located events in the years to come.

For more information on the organizations mentioned in this press release:

FAQ

Why did you decide to co-locate in 2009?
The GNOME and KDE communities decided to co-locate Akademy and GUADEC so that they could build the free desktop community and cooperate on technologies that make sense for both desktops.

Why did you decide not to co-locate in 2010?
It’s important to us to continue to build the GNOME and KDE brands. In particular, with the release of GNOME 3.0 coming soon, the GNOME community wants to make sure they can focus on that. Both communities want to co-locate again and hope to bring even more free desktop communities.

Will you co-locate in the future?
Yes. We are talking about co-locating events like hackfests now and plan to co-locate Akademy and GUADEC in a Desktop Summit in the future.

Was the conference a success?
Absolutely. The conference was a success for a community and technology perspective and was instrumental in furthering the free desktop movement.

You said the co-location was a success but you’ve decided not to do it again, why?
When we decided to co-locate GUADEC and Akademy we were unsure if it was something we’d do once or every year or every x number of years. We’ve decided it was a success and we’d like to do it again in the future, but not next year. It’s important to us to continue to build the GNOME and KDE brands. In particular, with the release of GNOME 3.0 coming soon, the GNOME community wants to make sure they can focus on that. We will co-locate again in the future.

Where will GUADEC and Akademy be next year?
We don’t know yet but the call for bids will be going out this week.

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Keynote Speakers Announced for the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit

The GNOME Foundation and KDE e.V. are excited to announce the keynotes for the first ever co-located Akademy and GUADEC, the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit. The Desktop Summit, a conference for users and developers of desktop and mobile technologies, is expecting 1000 desktop technology developers and users. The conference agenda includes over 100 talks as well as BOFs keynote sessions, lightning talks and many opportunities to meet other developers and begin collaborating between projects.

The Desktop Summit will take place July 3-11, 2009 in the Alfredo Kraus Auditorium and the Palacio de Congresos in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria. The venue has facilities for 1000+ people to attend keynotes and multiple simultaneous tracks with plenty of room for an exhibition area and hacking space.

Free Software is highly valued on the Canary Islands. Hence, the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit 2009 is supported by the Cabildo de Gran Canaria, the local government, that has provided much logistical and financial support.

Current confirmed keynotes are:

  • Richard Stallman, Free Software Foundation
  • Walter Bender, Executive Director, Sugar Labs
  • Robert Lefkowitz (known as “r0ml”), Distinguished Engineer of the ACM
  • Jakub Pavelek, Nokia

The keynotes were chosen to inspire conference attendees and to encourage collaboration. Over the past few years, GNOME and KDE have been cooperating in order to make choices and application development easier for end users, distributors and ISVs. An increased amount of technology is shared between the desktop, making cross-desktop application integration easier. By holding their annual developer flagship events in the same location, KDE and GNOME will foster cooperation and discussion between their developer communities. In addition many other desktop technology groups have expressed interest in attending and we expect to have participants from many technology projects that touch on the open source desktop and mobile space.

The Desktop Summit welcomes all users and contributors of Desktop Summit and expects attendees from the GNOME and KDE communities as well as related projects and companies that use desktop technologies.

For more information see www.grancanariadesktopsummit.org.

Registration is free and we look forward to meeting desktop enthusiasts at the conference. You can register at: http://www.grancanariadesktopsummit.org/user/register.

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Gran Canaria Desktop Summit Platinum sponsors announced: Nokia’s Qt Software and Maemo

The KDE and GNOME communities are happy to announce the Platinum sponsors of the upcoming Gran Canaria Desktop Summit. Nokia’s Qt Software and Maemo will be the main sponsors of the event, which will be held from 3rd to 11th of July 2009 in Las Palmas on Gran Canaria, Spain.

“Nokia’s Qt Software and Maemo have both had significant involvement with the KDE and GNOME communities. The contributions these communities have made to us is extremely valuable and we wanted to show our support by sponsoring the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit,” said Aron Kozak, Nokia, Qt Software’s head of web and community. “We are looking forward to this event and to spend more time meeting and speaking with people there.”

The Gran Canaria Desktop Summit is a co-hosted event around the Free Desktop, featuring Akademy and GUADEC, KDE’s and GNOME’s yearly flagship conferences. The programme is being finalised at present, with much of it already confirmed, see published. The KDE and GNOME communities are very grateful for Nokia’s support of the event, and are looking forward to productive sessions in the respective conference tracks and the cross-desktop sessions that will provide a strong foundation for improved collaboration across these Free software projects.

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Sugar Labs, the nonprofit behind the OLPC software, is joining the GNOME Foundation

BOSTON, Mass — December 22, 2008 — Sugar Labs, a member of the Software Freedom Conservancy, is joining the GNOME Foundation as part of the GNOME Advisory Board. Sugar Labs creates software for young children used on platforms like the One Laptop Per Child’s XO. Sugar is based on the GNOME platform and relies on technologies like GTK+ and Telepathy.

“The resources made available by the GNOME project have been essential to the development of the Sugar learning platform”, says Walter Bender, executive director of Sugar Labs. “The Sugar community looks forward to working more closely with the GNOME Foundation on topics such as GNOME Mobile and an upstream collaboration framework.” Walter Bender will be representing Sugar Labs on the GNOME Advisory Board.

GNOME forms the basis of many platforms such as Sugar, Maemo, and GNU/Linux distributions like Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and also delivers the desktop platform offered by companies such as Novell, Red Hat and Sun Microsystems. GNOME is actively cooperating with the makers of these platforms in order to make sure that they can use GNOME technologies as efficiently and effectively as possible and to enable cross-fertilization of resources. Members of the GNOME Advisory Board help the GNOME Foundation work with partner companies effectively and they also get a chance to collaborate with each other on their use of GNOME technologies.

“The GNOME Foundation is excited to have Sugar Labs join the advisory board.” says Stormy Peters, executive director of the GNOME Foundation. “Sugar embodies the GNOME mission of making sure technology is available to anyone, not just technical people, regardless of culture, financial well-being or physical ability. The interface provided by Sugar offers an innovative way to interact with technology and the internet. This work is heavily influencing the GNOME community as they think about potential ways to improve GNOME in the future.”

About Sugar Labs

Sugar Labs is a non-profit foundation which serves as a support base and gathering place for the community of educators and software developers who want to extend the platform and create Sugar-compatible applications. Sugar provides an interface to engage young children in the world of learning that is opened up by computers and the Internet. Sugar is licensed under the GPL and uses GTK+ and Telepathy. For more information see http://sugarlabs.org.

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Gran Canaria Desktop Summit 2009 to be held July 3-11, 2009

The inaugural Desktop Summit, uniting the flagship conferences of the GNOME and KDE communities, GUADEC and Akademy, will be held in Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, Spain the week of July 3-11, 2009.

The conference will be hosted by Cabildo, the local government of Gran Canaria.

The GNOME and KDE communities will use this co-located event to intensify momentum and increase collaboration between the projects. It gives a unique opportunity for key figures to collaborate and improve the free and open source desktop for all. Please visit the official web for further information:

http://www.grancanariadesktopsummit.org/

GNOME Foundation adds industry leaders to advisory board

BOSTON, Mass — November 3, 2008 — The GNOME Foundation announced today that Motorola and Google are joining the GNOME Advisory board and sponsoring the GNOME Foundation.

With these two new additions to its advisory board, the GNOME Foundation continues to strengthen its industry support and shows that the support for free and open source software is growing – especially in the mobile space with technologies like GNOME Mobile. The additional funds and resources will be used to on programs that support GNOME’s goal of universal access such as accessibility outreach programs, usability studies and internationalization efforts. GNOME is building on its strength of an accessible desktop to enable universal access to technology through desktops, netbooks, and mobile devices.

“Google is proud to support the many endeavors of our colleagues in Free and Open Source software development.” said Chris DiBona, Open Source Programs Manager. “We’re pleased to continue our collaboration with the GNOME Foundation through our membership on the Foundation’s Advisory Board.”

“For mobile Linux, Motorola believes in open standards and open source technologies,” said Christy Wyatt, Vice President, Software Platforms and Ecosystem, Motorola. “The GNOME Foundation allows us to expand our reach to the vibrant GNOME communities and be active in projects that we currently utilize from the GNOME stack, SQLite, GStreamer, and Bluez to name a few.”

“Advancements in open source mobile technology continue to provide new and beneficial applications while enriching features for developers and end users in software, on desktops and mobile devices,” said Bdale Garbee, Chief Technologist and Linux Chief, Open Source & Linux Organization, HP, and an advisory board member of GNOME. “The addition of new sponsors and advisory board members empowers GNOME to continue its efforts to make exciting progress in free and open source mobile technologies. Working with new sponsors like Google and Motorola, we bring the strengths of open source software to the mobile industry.”

Comprised 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.

The GNOME Project is creating a complete, free and easy-to-use desktop environment for users, as well as a powerful application development framework for software developers. 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 as well as many mobile platforms like cellular phones and tablets.

The GNOME project has three main goals:

  • Free and open source desktop accessible to all. GNOME is a free desktop available  to everyone, regardless of language, physical ability, technical expertise.
  • Development platform. GNOME is a powerful development platform for developing free and open source software applications.
  • GNOME Mobile. GNOME technologies provide a foundation for mobile applications from tablets to cellular phones.

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

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GNOME and KDE to Co-locate Flagship Conferences on Gran Canaria in 2009

Istanbul, Turkey, July 13, 2008: The GNOME Foundation and KDE e.V. today announced that they will hold their yearly conferences, GUADEC and Akademy in 2009 in Gran Canaria. The conferences will be separate events, but co-located and hosted by the same organizers, the Cabildo of Gran Canaria and its Secretary of Tourism, Technological Innovation and Foreign Trade.

“The GNOME community is very excited about the co-hosted GUADEC and Akademy” says Behdad Esfahbod, president at the GNOME foundation, “GUADEC has traditionally been a very important chance for our community to meet in person, build great working relationships and make new friends. We’re looking forward to having the opportunity to extend those relationships to our KDE colleagues at Akademy/GUADEC.”

KDE e.V.’s vice-president Adriaan de Groot adds “KDE e.V. is looking forward to a co-located conference, where the GNOME and KDE communities can mingle and cooperate as never before in one location. Gran Canaria is uniquely located at the junction of Europe and Africa, close to the Americas and is a fitting place for a historic ‘meet-your-neighbours’ conference.”

GUADEC and Akademy 2009 will be held on Gran Canaria, an island of the Canary Islands archipelago. The tentative schedule plans the event from Friday, July, 3rd until Saturday, July 11th 2009 in the Alfredo Kraus auditorium and the adjacent Congress Palace in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

This co-located event will turn Gran Canaria into the capital of Freedesktop.org development for a whole week next summer.

While there were other excellent bids, the GNOME foundation and KDE e.V. have settled on Gran Canaria because of its position as Port to Africa and the excellent circumstances for holding such an event there. Unfortunately, having three proposals, two have to be rejected. The proposals from Tampere in Finland and Coruna in Spain were close contenders. Both foundations would like to thank those organisers for the work they have put into their proposals and encourage them to consider their cities for conferences in future years.

The conference organiser’s Wiki has extensive information about the planned conferences on the Canaries.

About GNOME and the GNOME Foundation

The GNOME desktop is a free, easy to use, accessible and internationalized desktop for Linux and Unix-based operating systems used by millions. GNOME is a standard part of all leading GNU/Linux and Unix distributions, and is popular with both large existing corporate deployments and small business and home users. GNOME also includes a complete development environment which provides the core platform for thousands of applications.

The GNOME Foundation is an organization committed to supporting the advancement of GNOME, comprised of hundreds of volunteer developers and industry-leading companies. 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. The GNOME Foundation is supporting the pursuit of Software Freedom through the innovative, accessible, and beautiful user experience created by GNOME contributors around the world. It’s a fun and inviting community, so if you’re reading this and wondering what you can do to help promote Software Freedom, contributing to GNOME is a great way to start! More information about GNOME and the GNOME Foundation can be found at www.gnome.org and foundation.gnome.org.

GNOME Foundation sponsoring members include Access, Canonical, Debian, the Free Software Foundation, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Igalia, Imendio, Intel, Mozilla, Nokia, Novell, OLPC, Opened Hand, Red Hat, and Sun Microsystems, with legal pro bono work provided by Software Freedom Law Center and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich Rosati.

About KDE and the KDE e.V.

KDE is an international technology team that creates free and open source software for desktop and portable computing. Among KDE’s products are a modern desktop system for Linux and UNIX platforms, comprehensive office productivity and groupware suites and hundreds of software titles in many categories including Internet and web applications, multimedia, entertainment, educational, graphics and software development. KDE software is translated into more than 60 languages and is built with ease of use and modern accessibility principles in mind. KDE4’s full-featured applications run natively on Linux, BSD, Solaris, Windows and Mac OS X.

KDE e.V. is the organization that supports the growth of the KDE community. Its mission statement — to promote and distribute Free Desktop software — is provided through legal, financial and organizational support for the KDE community. KDE e.V. organises the yearly KDE World Summit “Akademy”, along with numerous smaller-scale development meetings.

More information about KDE and the KDE e.V. can be found at www.kde.org and ev.kde.org.

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GNOME hires Stormy Peters as Executive Director

The GNOME Foundation Aims to Attract New Users and Developers, Grow Project, and Give the World a Free and Open Source Desktop that Rocks

Istanbul, Turkey, July 7, 2008: The GNOME Foundation today announced the hiring of Stormy Peters as Executive Director. Stormy, a well-known industry analyst with extensive experience at Hewlett Packard and OpenLogic, will work on accelerating the adoption of GNOME and strengthening the Foundation by attracting new industry members and community contributors. “Hiring Stormy represents a major step for GNOME”, said Luis Villa, a Director of the GNOME Foundation. “With her unique background and experience, she’ll be a natural at growing industry support for the project and connecting interested parties to our community.”

Stormy’s combination of industry expertise and community background will be a great fit for GNOME. “Stormy is one of the most well respected members of the open source industry and community.” says Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation, “Her unique ability to work with both community volunteers and commercial industry members across a variety of open source projects will serve the GNOME Foundation well.”

The GNOME community has an active global developer base and industry players focused on providing an easy to understand user experience on PCs and mobile devices. The past year there has seen tremendous growth in the number of devices that ship with GNOME- mass-market laptops, phones, and even GPS devices. Hiring Stormy as executive director will help GNOME capitalize on this momentum, exactly at a time when more of the world is realizing the value of combining free and open source software with great user experiences, while also helping GNOME consolidate its traditional strengths in enterprise and other large-scale deployments.

Stormy has also been involved in the GNOME community for a long time, having been one of the founding members of the GNOME Foundation Advisory Board in 2000. She has remained involved with GNOME since then, keynoting the GNOME User and Developer European Conference (GUADEC) in England in 2007. Stormy is enthusiastic about joining the GNOME Foundation full time. “I’m very excited to have the chance to help the GNOME community show the world how the GNOME desktop is changing the future of computing.” Stormy will continue in an advisory role at OpenLogic.

Simon Phipps, Chief Open Source Officer at Sun and GNOME Foundation Advisory Board Member says, “As a key supporter of GNOME, especially in connection with OpenSolaris, Sun is delighted to welcome Stormy to her new position. It is extremely gratifying to see the GNOME Foundation grow to the point where it needs an Executive Director to drive additional industry support and further increase adoption of GNOME. We look forward to working with Stormy in her new role to help her achieve this goal.”

About Stormy Peters

Stormy Peters joins the GNOME Foundation from OpenLogic where she founded and managed their OpenLogic Expert Community. Previously, Stormy worked at Hewlett-Packard (HP) where she founded and managed the Open Source Program Office where she was responsible for HP’s open source strategy, policy and business practices. Stormy joined HP as a software engineer in the Unix Development Lab after graduating from Rice University with a B.A. in Computer Science.

Stormy is a frequent keynote speaker on business aspects of Open Source Software at major conferences such as the Open Source Business Conference and the O’Reilly conferences, as well as government organizations such as the United Nations and the European Union. Stormy is involved in GNOME and free and open source software because it is changing the world and the community is full of smart, passionate people!

About GNOME and the GNOME Foundation

The GNOME desktop is a free, easy to use, accessible and internationalized desktop for Linux and Unix-based operating systems used by millions. GNOME is a standard part of all leading GNU/Linux and Unix distributions, and is popular with both large existing corporate deployments and small business and home users. GNOME also includes a complete development environment which provides the core platform for thousands of applications.

The GNOME Foundation is an organization committed to supporting the advancement of GNOME, comprised of hundreds of volunteer developers and industry-leading companies. 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. The GNOME Foundation is supporting the pursuit of Software Freedom through the innovative, accessible, and beautiful user experience created by GNOME contributors around the world. It’s a fun and inviting community, so if you’re reading this and wondering what you can do to help promote Software Freedom, contributing to GNOME is a great way to start! More information about GNOME and the GNOME Foundation can be found at www.gnome.org and foundation.gnome.org.

GNOME Foundation sponsoring members include Access, Canonical, Debian, the Free Software Foundation, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Igalia, Imendio, Intel, Mozilla, Nokia, Novell, OLPC, Opened Hand, Red Hat, and Sun Microsystems, with legal pro bono work provided by Software Freedom Law Center and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich Rosati.

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