GNOMG

Welcome to the official new GNOME board!

As we just posted on gnome.org, the Elections Committee announced the official results of the GNOME elections this week. The new board members are:

• Emmanuele Bassi
• Joanmarie Diggs
• Seif Lotfy
• Shaun McCance
• Tobias Mueller
• Andreas Nilsson
• Bastien Nocera

It’s a lot of commitment and effort to serve as a Director, so these people (and all of the candidates) deserve a big thank you. In particular, the outgoing directors need special mention – Brian Cameron, Ryan Lortie, Stormy Peters, and Germán Póo-Caamaño all have worked so hard and have given so much over the past year(s). Join me in thanking them!

Help GNOME reach its accessibility fundraising goal!

We just posted this item on gnome.org:

We’re closing in on our goal of $20,000 for our accessibility campaign. If you haven’t already, take a look at the testimonial by Diego Sánchez that we’ve been lucky to include. As Diego says, GNOME 3 has really helped him: “I’m happy because I can now use the computer in my classroom without any assistance.” Our accessibility team‘s work has made a big difference in many people’s lives, but we still have a long way to go. Help us make our goal and donate now via our Friends of GNOME program!

If you haven’t given the our accessibility campaign already, I encourage you to do so! I am so inspired by the work that Alejandro Piñeiro, Joanmarie Diggs, Juan José Marin and the rest of the team do. Thanks again to Robert Cole and Diego Sánchez for allowing us to highlight how much GNOME and GNU/Linux has meant to them.

Exciting personal news!

As some of you know already, I’ve got good news – I’m pregnant! I’ve put off blogging about it, as I hate sharing personal information online (yes, I really hate talking about my heart condition but I feel like it’s worth it to underscore the importance of software freedom). It’s time that I informed the whole GNOME community though, so that you all know what’s going on. I’m due in September, which means that I’ll be pretty pregnant at GUADEC.

If you do the math and count back, you’ll notice that I was extremely busy during my first trimester with loads of travel and major projects. Luckily, I felt great so it was easy to work whole-heartily on stuff I feel so passionately about. For some reason, the past month hasn’t been as easy so there have been times that I’ve struggled to stay on track for GNOME. While I’ve been forced to cut down on my travel during this time and turn down talks that I would have loved to give, I’m definitely planning on going to GUADEC. I’m also going to try to make it to OSCON, but I’ll have to see how my health is. I don’t think I remember seeing any pregnant speakers at other free software conferences, so I wish I could go to more.

I thank you for your understanding and support, and will do my best to put in that extra effort through the rest of my pregnancy.

On a geekier note – I’m excited to bring another free software and GNOME user into the world!

GNOME 3.4 is here!

I’m so excited that GNOME 3.4 has been released. There is a lot of good information in the press release and the release notes that were published today. GNOME 3.4 is great – it’s much more polished and also fixes a number of small things that make a much better user experience (including some users found annoying in the previous GNOME 3 releases).

Some of the improvements include:

• Smoother scrolling, better systems settings
• Document search
• Video calling added to Empathy
• More intelligent pop-ups and message tray
• Better accessibility support
• Sleek and zippy Epiphany (which is also renamed to “Web”)
• Better hardware support
• A lot of small enhancements made through our Every Detail Matters effort

Since version 3.2 six months ago, GNOME received 41,000 contributions made by 1,275 people – incredible! Many thanks to the whole GNOME community for working together on this release, and to Matthias Clasen, Allan Day, Andreas Nilsson and Andre Klapper for working so hard on all of the coordination to get the release out the door.

Make 2012 the Year of Accessibility for GNOME!

I’m incredibly excited – today we launched a fundraising campaign for accessibility work on GNOME. Accessibility is so important, and it’s exactly the kind of software that must be free and open. It’s also the kind of group effort that is well suited for nonprofit free software development – truly making software for the public good. Check out the information about the campaign and especially read Robert Cole’s story.

I’ve been so moved by the dedication of the a11y team. I hope we raise a lot of money so they can tackle all of their goals to improve GNOME’s accessibility. Please donate to the campaign now and tell your friends! I can think of no better way to get into the holiday spirit!

The Future of Linux Mint

Ryan pointed me in the direction of the latest post on the Linux Mint blog. It’s an interesting and thoughtful description of what’s in the works for Linux Mint 12. As Clem puts it, “the future of Linux Mint is Gnome 3”. It’s definitely worth reading in full, and I look forward to seeing where Linux Mint “Lisa” goes!