Oracle takeover and GNOME accessibility

[Fernando Herrera <fherrera onirica com>]

Hi,

As you all probably know, Oracle recently bought Sun. Sun has been one
of the largest contributors to the GNOME project during the last
years.

Probably is too early to know how this is going to affect GNOME
project. However this last week we have seen some relevant events:
Oracle laid off two members of the Sun's Accessibility Program Office.

If you have been following GNOME a11y development, probably you can
agree with me that:

- SUN APO contributions have been critical for GNOME success
- SUN a11y developers have not only done a great and impressive work,
but also have been deeply involved with the community.
- Accessibility is a critical component for GNOME 3.0
- The accesibility framework changes for GNOME 3.0 are huge (new
at-spi, dbus migration, etc...) and should be properly tested for a
successful relase.
- Although in the last years we have seen new companies joining the
a11y development effort (like for example igalia), the number of
people woking in a11y is critically low.


So, I would like to ask the board to take this issue very seriously
and try to contact SUN/Oracle representatives in the advisory board
regarding this issue.

Some references:

* An Open Letter to Oracle on the Topic Of Accessibility by Joanmarie Diggs:
   http://blog.grain-of-salt.com/index.php?itemid=394

* Some threads at orca's mailing list:
   http://mail.gnome.org/archives/orca-list/2010-February/msg00055.html
   http://mail.gnome.org/archives/orca-list/2010-February/msg00092.html
   http://mail.gnome.org/archives/orca-list/2010-February/msg00078.html
   http://mail.gnome.org/archives/orca-list/2010-February/msg00112.html


Thanks!

Salu2