Quarterly Report
GNOME Foundation Providing a Free Desktop for the World July, August, September 2009 Hi GNOME Foundation members GNOME 3.0 will be in March or Our marketing team has been hard and fans, September of 2010! at work. Friends of GNOME can now make monthly contributions in any Q3 is always a big quarter for the There were a few structural changes amount they'd like and we've raised GNOME Foundation and this one in how things work in the GNOME $23,415 so far this year! Their good was bigger and better than usual. project. For example, we created a work will continue and get an extra During Q3 we had our annual new press team, a subproject under boost with a marketing hackfest in GUADEC, GNOME Users and the marketing team focused on November sponsored by Novell and Developers Conference, which we press relationships and press Google. held jointly with Akademy in the first releases, as well as things like ever Gran Canaria Desktop Summit! monthly meetings by the Bugsquad Speaking of hackfests, next quarter The co-located event was a huge team. will be a busy one with lots of good success with lots of good sessions work being done in preparation for in both the Akademy tracks as well The GNOME Accessibility team has GNOME 3.0. We are planning as the GUADEC tracks and lots of been hard at work preparing for hackfests around the Boston good cross desktop talks and GNOME 3.0 by working on Summit, one for marketing, Zeitgeist conversations that will lead to more accessibility in projects like GNOME and WebKitGTK+ plus more in the collaboration throughout the year. Shell, Clutter and Banshee as well beginning of next year in areas like We hope to co-locate again in the as working on new tools like an accessiblity and video. future! onscreen keyboard. Read on to hear what GNOME GNOME 2.28 was released in GNOME Mobile had an awesome teams have accomplished in Q3 and September. Quite a few products quarter with great attendance at what they are planning for Q4! had significant updates in preparation OSiM Mobile by GNOME Mobile for GNOME 3.0 - including a release member companies and the release Best wishes and happy hacking! of GNOME Shell! - and a couple of of products that use GNOME Mobile Enjoy your GNOME desktop! changes were made to improve technologies like Moblin 2.0 and the usability such as a different default Nokia N900. In addition, LiMo Stormy Peters toolbar and turning off menu and announced that they will soon Executive Director, button icons by default. During Q4 release phones that use GNOME GNOME Foundation the release team will decide if technologies! Release Team
Vincent Untz
For the release team, the third new external dependencies that will Looking ahead, the release team quarter started with the last 2.26 allow developers to provide even already has a good amount of work release, which went out on July 1st. more great features (seed, webkit, planned for the next quarter: there The focus then quickly became the DeviceKit-disks, libchamplain, will of course be a first update to 2.27 development cycle that would libgdata). GNOME 2.28.0 went out GNOME 2.28, with 2.28.1 which will lead to GNOME 2.28. as scheduled on September 23rd. be released at the end of October, and also the first versions of the Five GNOME 2.27 releases were In parallel of all those releases, we 2.29 releases. A good number of published during those three months, monitored the progress of GNOME new modules were proposed for and the usual freezes (API/ABI, on a few goals like, for example, the inclusion during the 2.29 feature, user interface, string) were cleanup of modules to stop using development cycle, and discussion applied to help the community focus deprecated libraries and APIs. around those proposals will help the on getting a high quality release. In release team decide what will be We also modified the release July, a meeting was held where one going in during a meeting at the schedule to move the module of the main topics was the new beginning of November. Another proposal period and the decision on modules that would be included in meeting in November will be module proposals earlier in the cycle, GNOME 2.28. dedicated to GNOME 3.0: we will in response to feedback from some evaluate if 3.0 can be ready for This release contains a good balance maintainers and also to help evaluate March 2010 or if waiting six more between integration of pre-existing earlier what GNOME 3.0 would months is needed to ensure that 3.0 applications (gnome-bluetooth), great consist of. is of high quality, as expected by our new tools (gnome-disk-utility), and community and our users. Bugsquad Team
Andre Klapper
In August GNOME Bugzilla was (251). Top bug reporters were Pedro verify the fix once it has landed in updated to version 3.4 by Max-Kanat Villavicencio (136 reports), Owen their distribution and if they have Alexander with huge help of Olav Taylor (116), Bastien Nocera (99), some time. Vitters and Owen Taylor. The Colin Walters (92) and Matthias previous version was several years Clasen (87). As there are many modules in old and did not receive any upstream GNOME Bugzilla that have not seen security fixes anymore. It also had The GNOME Bugsquad has started any code changes for years (except several GNOME-only enhancements to have monthly meetings to discuss for translation updates) the that partially have been ported to 3.4 policies and issues. The new policy Bugsquad has started trying to though some regressions remained. to handle old forgotten reports is in identify those obsolete/unmaintained The server hardware was also place and has been revised after modules and contact the improved so timeout issues when feedback from developers. maintainers. Without a response the running complex queries do not UNCONFIRMED bug reports (but remaining reports will probably be happen anymore. not enhancement requests) with one closed as WONTFIX while explaining year without any activity will be set to the reporter that the module is not From July to September, 9227 to NEEDINFO state and reporters maintained anymore and will not reports (bugs + feature requests) will be asked to update the report’s receive any updates. were opened and 8751 were closed. status by testing again on a recent Top bug closers were Akhil Laddha GNOME version. In order to improve workflow the (484 reports), Fabio Durán Verdugo Bugsquad now also has its own (455), Andre Klapper (269), Bastien When reports are closed as "FIXED" module in GNOME Bugzilla to keep Nocera (261) and Matthew Barnes reporters will now kindly be asked to track of assigned tasks. Marketing Team
Paul Cutler
The Marketing Team was active in the ability for subscribers to choose Lastly, Paul Cutler gave a the third quarter with a focus on the their monthly donation amount and presentation at Ohio Linux Fest in GNOME 2.28 release, including launched the GNOME Amazon store September on GNOME 3.0 and helping write the release notes and available at http://www.gnome.org made the slides and presentation the press release announcing /friends/amazon/. The GNOME materials available under a Creative GNOME 2.28. Foundation receives a referral fee Commons license and available for anytime anyone buys something download on the GNOME Marketing A new sub-team, the GNOME Press from the GNOME Amazon Store. Wiki. Team, was created with a focus on engaging the press worldwide and GNOME Journal had two releases in Looking forward to Q4, the Marketing helping write press releases about the third quarter in July and August team is planning a hackfest in GNOME in the news. The Marketing with articles interviews with Owen Chicago in November and plans on Team also chose CivicCRM as a Taylor, Lucas Rocha and Laszlo working on conference and CRM system to help track press Peter; a recap of the Writing Open presentation materials, case studies, contacts. Source Conference; a review of a GNOME 3.0 campaign, the GNOME-DO and Project Hamster GNOME website and more. Jaap Haitsma updated the Friends of and more. GNOME web page, including adding Usability Team
Calum Benson
Several usability-focused sessions already been the subject of an initial team between now and the release took place at the Gran Canaria usability study. of GNOME 3.0. Desktop Summit in July: GNOME 2.28 was released with Matthew Paul Thomas from some notable changes Canonical gave two talks: one on recommended by the usability team: Expected Q4: the regular Ubuntu/GNOME turning off button and menu icons by usability studies that Canonical default, and switching to a different A second usability study on the have started doing, and a lightning toolbar style by default. These potential control center redesign talk on '10 Common GUI changes improve visual consistency, will happen at Sun's usability labs Bloopers'. reduce clutter, and reduce the need in Menlo Park. to continually invent new icons for Jon McCann and Marina every new function that becomes Design review of GNOME's Zhurakhinskaya from Red Hat led available in GNOME. This should Keyboard Preferences dialog (Allan a GNOME Shell Design BOF. also prove beneficial for the Day and Sergey Udaltsov). accessibility themes, allowing them Allan Day ran a BOF session on to provide better icon coverage than A number of usability topics will be tabbed application issues. has been possible up to now. discussed at the Boston hackfest, including: revamping the Human Kristin Travis and Jenya Gestrin A preview of GNOME Shell was Interface Guidelines, finding new from Sun Microsystems released alongside GNOME 2.28. ways to collect usability data for demonstrated the work they've been GNOME Shell will underpin the the GNOME project, and the doing on a potential control center GNOME 3.0 desktop, and will be an possibility of establishing a mobile redesign for GNOME 3.0. This work important focus for the usability usability lab. was started last year, and has Accessibility Team
Willie Walker
Dr. Joseph Scheuhammer (Adaptive and eliminate a Bonobo/CORBA (http://monotonous.org/tag/banshee- Technology Research Centre at the dependency. Willie Walker from Sun a11y/?order=ASC). University of Toronto) has continued Microsystems also submitted a his work with embedding patch to make Speech Dispatcher Xan Lopez (Igalia) and Joanmarie magnification support in GNOME work on OpenSolaris. Diggs continued their collaboration Shell and has a full screen on WebKit accessibility. Progress magnification prototype working Emli-Mari Nel from OpenGazer continues to be made on this very (http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell (http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk difficult task. /Magnification). This work is planned /opengazer/) and Flavio Percoco Mark Doffman (Codethink), Mike to supplant gnome-mag and Premoli from MouseTrap Gorse (Novell), and Willie Walker eliminate a Bonobo/CORBA (http://live.gnome.org/MouseTrap) (Sun Microsystems) continued to dependency. began discussions for how they can collaborate with each other to bring hammer away at AT-SPI/D-Bus, Ben Konrath (Adaptive Technology low cost mouse pointer control working through a number of difficult Research Centre at the University of solutions to the desktop. design decisions. The team also Toronto) has begun work on an welcomed help from the wonderful on-screen keyboard. This work is Alejandro Piñeiro (Igalia) continues to mind of Michael Meeks (Novell). planned to supplant the existing work on clutter accessibility and has Moving forward, the team will GNOME Onscreen Keyboard (GOK) begun brainstorming ways for continue on their adventure through and eliminate a Bonobo/CORBA integrating AT-SPI support into the "perfect storm" for GNOME 2.30 dependency. GNOME Shell. accessibility: Bonobo deprecation, Ke Wang (Sun Microsystems) has Eitan Isaacson migrated the GNU GNOME Shell accessibility, and completed the initial development of LDTP project to the Python pyatspi WebKit accessibility. The team is Java ATK Wrapper. This work bindings. The GNU/Linux Desktop also preparing for a GNOME Booth supplants the Java Access Bridge Testing Project (GNU LDTP) is used and Hackfest at the CSUN for GNOME and eliminates a by Mago (http://live.gnome.org Accessibility conference in Los Bonobo/CORBA dependency. /DesktopTesting), and the migration Angeles in March 22-27 2010. Please to pyatspi will enable it to more contact the team at gnome- Luke Yelavich (Canonical) continues easily shift to AT-SPI/D-Bus. Eitan [email protected] if you to work on Speech Dispatcher as a also worked on accessibility to the are interested in participating. means to supplant gnome-speech Banshee music player Documentation Team
Shaun McCance
The third quarter of 2009 saw the Phil has been actively promoting document-focused approach than the release of GNOME 2.28, which Mallard, particularly within the current Yelp. This work includes included the new Mallard-based help Ubuntu community. His experiences splitting the core document display for Empathy. The team has help us to understand what our system into a separate library which continued to test and develop downstream partners need from us. can be used to build stand-alone help Mallard based on real-world use and viewers or embed a help viewer into feedback from others. Shaun has been actively developing larger applications. Yelp 3.0, which has a more GNOME Mobile
Dave Neary
GNOME Mobile was present in a exhibitors, and Samsung, LiMo, tablet based on Maemo 5 number of events this quarter: ACCESS, Collabora and Lanedo (Fremantle). At OSiM the LiMo were also out in force at the Foundation also announced the OSiM World, Amsterdam, conference. forthcoming release of a number of September 15-16 - One of the GNOME-based phones. premier conferences for mobile Open World Forum, Paris, October technology and free software. 1-2 - Dave Neary presented The GNOME 2.28 and GTK+ 2.18 GNOME Mobile was well GNOME Mobile as part of the releases contained some interesting represented, with keynote FLOSS Mobility track of this GNOME Mobile related news. GTK+ presentations from Nokia, LiMo conference, attended by over 1400 2.18 now supports client-side and Intel presenting their GNOME people. windows, making the rendering of Mobile-based platforms, and from GTK+ widgets in Clutter more Lefty Schlesinger and Dave A number of GNOME-based devices straightforward, and WebKit greatly Neary, proposing best practices have been announced or released improved its accessibility support. for building commercial products this quarter - much of the excitement Clutter, GUPnP and PulseAudio were on free software projects. GNOME concerned the Moblin v2 release, officially added to the GNOME Mobile participants Intel, Novell, and the announcement of the Nokia Mobile release set for 2.28. Nokia, Igalia and CodeThink were N900, a mobile phone & internet GNOME Events
Stormy Peters (Looking for a new author!)
During the third quarter of 2009 Open Source World, San GNOME Booth. Stormy Peters will GNOME was present in these Francisco, August 11 - 14: give a keynote. events: GNOME speakers: Stormy Peters, Jono Bacon, Joe 'Zonker' Boston Summit, Cambridge MA, Gran Canaria Desktop Summit, Brockmeier Oct 10-12. The GNOME Summit July 3-11, Gran Canaria, Spain. will once again be held in Boston, The GNOME European Users and Red Hat Summit, Chicago, Sept 1 on the MIT campus. The location Developers Conference co-located - 3: Substantial GNOME-related and dates have now been with Akademy! A huge success! content confirmed, and the summit will take place on October 10 - 12 in GNOME Hispano organised OSiM World, Amsterdam. GNOME MIT's Sloan Building in Cambridge GUADEC-ES, also known as presence: Dave Neary, Lefty MA. GUADEC Hispana, Gran Canaria, Schlesinger, Ari Jaaksi, Imad Spain, July 8-10 Sousou presenting, LiMo, Moblin & Maemo Summit, Amsterdam, Oct Maemo related content. 10-12: Substantial GNOME Mobile Community Leadership Summit, related content July 18 - 19. GNOME presence: Software Freedom Day. Dave Neary, Lefty Schlesinger, September 19, 2009. GNOME Jordanas Regionales de Software Jono Bacon, Jorge Castro, Joe issued a press release and there Libre (JRSL). There will be several 'Zonker' Brockmeier, Bradley were many free software related GNOME contributors there, Kuhn, Simon Phipps events, including a mini-summit on including Willie Walker. women's participation in the free FLOSS Foundations meeting, July software movement that the Free Fórum do GNOME in Latinoware 20. Dave Neary organising, Simon Software Foundation and the at Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil, October Phipps, Bradley Kuhn, Aaron GNOME Foundation are 22-24. Williamson present co-hosting. GNOME Day in Encuentro Linux OSCON, July 20-24, 2009, San LinuxCon, Portland OR, Sept 21 - at Valparaíso, Chile, October Jose, USA. GNOME presence 23 22-24. included presenters: Stormy Peters, Dave Neary, Paul Cooper, Future events include: In addition GNOME is planning many Rob Bradford, Chris Lord, Karen hackfests for Q4 2009. Please let Sandler (SFLC, GNOME's Utah Open Source Conference, the organizers know if you are lawyers), Simon Phipps, and Salt Lake City, USA, Oct 8-10. interested in attending. more. Christer Edwards will be hosting a Zeitgeist, November 2009, Bolzano, WebKitGTK+, December 2009, A /14/csun-hackfest-and-exhibition- Italy, Seif Lotfy, Daniel Siegel, Coruña, Spain, Juan José Sánchez call-for-participation. http://live.gnome.org Penas. /ZeitgeistHackFest2009. Usability, Dave Richards Accessibility, March 2010, CSUN, Marketing, November 2009, San Diego, USA, Eitan Isaacson, Video, Benjamin Otte Chicago, USA, Paul Cutler. http://monotonous.org/2009/10 Finances
Germán Póo-Caamaño
Income Expenses $950 Bharath Aharya $12,500 GUADEC-UK (closing $3,640 GCDS Keynoters: $950 Akhil Laddha Birmingham books) $1,356 Robert Lefkowitz $578 Ian Marcinowski * $29 Interest $1,516 Walter Bender $632 Tobias Mueller * $1,000 Novell's sponsorship of $768 Richard Stallman $605 Symeon Xenitellis * 2008 Boston Summit after $16,698 GCDS Travel: $514 Bastien Nocerra * hours event $1,500 Jonh Wendell $420 Clemens Buss $5,000 New Advisory Board Member Fee $1,200 Vinicius Depizzol $1,000 Paul Cutler $10,000 Access Advisory Board $1,050 Srinivasa Ragavan $486 Documentation Summit: Member Fee (check, to be $826 Shreyas Srinivasa $486 Milo Casagrande deposited) $609 Anne Østergaard $20,160 Administrative: $4,462 Friends of GNOME $409 Ruben Vermeersch $15,848 Payroll $400 Daniel Siegel $160 Paychex $275 Kaser Felix $429 Bank wire fees $1,050 Marina $1,218 Annual Report Design Zhurakhinskaya & Printing $1,000 Andrew Overholt $361 Postcard printing $800 David Jordan $18 Baby gift for Kristian $950 Og Maciel $2,121 AMS (insurance $1,250 Raphael Nunes premiums) $6 Postage
* There was an error in those reimbursements. The bank sent the US dollar amount in foreign currency (ie. instead of USD$350 in one instance, they sent GBP350.) Bank had sent a retrieval request for the three latter ones and then it was necessary to fix the issue. Travel Committee
Germán Póo-Caamaño
During Q3, the travel committee currency used at the bank, which applications. added a new member: Bharath finally was solved. There are two Acharya. He has been a very pending reimbursements to In the case of Boston Summit, we enthusiastic contributor and has contributors who have not yet sent processed the requests for two already helped several people out their receipts. It is worth mentioning contributors. Unfortunately, one of with their travel sponsorships. that one contributor decided to them had problems getting a US withdraw his sponsorship request. visa. On the other hand, the other Between the end of July and August, contributor was able to attend we reimbursed the four contributors We have also been managing without any problem, and he wrote who attended to the Documentation requests for events of the next several good reports about his Summit. quarter, such as the Zeitgeist participation on Boston Summit. hackfest at Bolzano and the Boston At the same time, we wired Summit. We have already started processing reimbursements to GUADEC the requests for the Marketing Team sponsored contributors. Most of For Bolzano, we booked the hackfest which will be held in them between July 30 and August accommodation for eleven Chicago next November. 10. There was an issue with the contributors and processed their Membership & Elections Committee
Bruno Boaventura
The Membership and Elections Committee would like to inform you about our activities in 2009/Q3:
We have received 10 applications for new GNOME Foundation membership, plus 38 applications for renewing the membership. During the same period 24 members haven't renewed their membership and we ended with 353 members. You can see a full list of members at http://foundation.gnome.org/membership/members.php . The new members are:
Carl James Collier Javier Jardón Cabezas Tim Horton Alexander Gabriel Machado Halton Huo Milo Casagrande Will Thompson Henrique Paulino Jerry Tan
You can see a full list of members at http://foundation.gnome.org/membership/members.php.
If you have any further question, do not hesitate to ask us on [email protected]. Women Outreach Marina Zhurakhinskaya The GNOME community is http://live.gnome.org/GnomeWomen involved with free and open source interested in increasing women /OutreachProgram software projects. participation in the project. The goals are to increase the visibility of the Máirín Duffy, Stormy Peters, Hanna Máirín Duffy, Stormy Peters, existing women contributors and to Wallach, Chris Ball, Brian Cameron, Hanna Wallach, Chris Ball, and create a support system for Paul Cutler, Diego Escalante Urrelo, Marina Zhurakhinskaya encouraging women participation. and Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier have participated in the IRC meeting on The gnome-women-list has been been providing great feedback and #gnome-women discussing the used as the main communication ideas about the Women Outreach Women Outreach Program. Hanna channel and there has been a round Program and have been putting Wallach and Chris Ball, who were of introductions, a call for authors for together plans for the GNOME the organizers of the Women a GNOME Journal issue with articles Journal issue with articles by Summer Outreach Program in by women, and a discussion about a women. 2006, shared their experiences new Women Outreach Program on it. with the program. There were the following events and The purpose of the Women Outreach interviews related to the GNOME Marina Zhurakhinskaya led the Program is to encourage women women outreach: Women Outreach / Marketing participation in GNOME throughout session at the Boston Summit. Máirín Duffy, Stormy Peters, and the year and to create internship Emiy Chen were interviewed in Izabel Valverde and Luciana opportunities in the summer. We Rikki Kite's series of interviews Freitas attended Latinoware. They need to raise money for the stipends with women in free software in the gave a talk about GNOME and for the summer participants and a Linux Magazine ROSE Blog. GNOME women outreach to the donations page has been set up for audience interested in getting that at http://projects.gnome.org Máirín Duffy, Stormy Peters, more involved with free and open /outreach/women Máirín Duffy has Hanna Wallach, and Marina source software projects and created the graphic for the page Zhurakhinskaya participated in the emphasized that women should banner. FSF mini-summit on women in feel more comfortable to get Free Software held in Boston on In addition to the donations, we are involved. September 19, 2009. currently looking for people The plans for the next quarter interested in mentoring the Stormy Peters attended the Grace include a November issue of the participants and creating the Hopper Women in Computing GNOME Journal with articles by necessary resources that will help conference. She represented women, further fund-raising activity, the new contributors to get started. GNOME on a panel attended by creation of the program resources There is a mentor sign up section on women interested in getting more and search for the participants. the program wiki page