------------------------------------------------------------------------
GNOME
Quarterly Report
*GNOME Foundation*
Providing a Free Desktop for the World
July, August, September 2009
Hi GNOME Foundation members and fans,
Q3 is always a big quarter for the GNOME Foundation and this one was
bigger and better than usual. During Q3 we had our annual GUADEC, GNOME
Users and Developers Conference, which we held jointly with Akademy in
the first ever Gran Canaria Desktop Summit! The co-located event was a
huge success with lots of good sessions in both the Akademy tracks as
well as the GUADEC tracks and lots of good cross desktop talks and
conversations that will lead to more collaboration throughout the year.
We hope to co-locate again in the future!
GNOME 2.28 was released in September. Quite a few products had
significant updates in preparation for GNOME 3.0 - including a release
of GNOME Shell! - and a couple of changes were made to improve usability
such as a different default toolbar and turning off menu and button
icons by default. During Q4 the release team will decide if GNOME 3.0
will be in March or November of 2010!
There were a few structural changes in how things work in the GNOME
project. For example, we created a new press team, a subproject under
the marketing team focused on press relationships and press releases, as
well as things like monthly meetings by the Bugsquad team.
The GNOME Accessibility team has been hard at work preparing for GNOME
3.0 by working on accessibility in projects like GNOME Shell, Clutter
and Banshee as well as working on new tools like an onscreen keyboard.
GNOME Mobile had an awesome quarter with great attendance at OSiM Mobile
by GNOME Mobile member companies and the release of products that use
GNOME Mobile technologies like Moblin 2.0 and the Nokia N900. In
addition, LiMO announced that they will soon release phones that use
GNOME technologies!
Our marketing team has been hard at work. Friends of GNOME can now make
monthly contributions in any amount they'd like and we've raised $23,415
so far this year! Their good work will continue and get an extra boost
with a marketing hackfest in November sponsored by Novell and Google.
Speaking of hackfests, next quarter will be a busy one with lots of good
work being done in preparation for GNOME 3.0. We are planning hackfests
around the Boston Summit, one for marketing, Zeitgeist and WebKitGTK+
plus more in the beginning of next year in areas like accessiblity and
video.
Read on to hear what GNOME teams have accomplished in Q3 and what they
are planning for Q4!
Best wishes and happy hacking! Enjoy your GNOME desktop!
*Stormy Peters*
/Executive Director,
GNOME Foundation/
Release Team
Vincent Untz
For the release team, the third quarter started with the last 2.26
release, which went out on July 1st. The focus then quickly became the
2.27 development cycle that would lead to GNOME 2.28.
Five GNOME 2.27 releases were published during those three months, and
the usual freezes (API/ABI, feature, user interface, string) were
applied to help the community focus on getting a high quality release.
In July, a meeting was held where one of the main topics was the new
modules that would be included in GNOME 2.28.
This release contains a good balance between integration of pre-existing
applications (gnome-bluetooth), great new tools (gnome-disk-utility),
and new external dependencies that will allow developers to provide even
more great features (seed, webkit, DeviceKit-disks, libchamplain,
libgdata). GNOME 2.28.0 went out as scheduled on September 23rd.
In parallel of all those releases, we monitored the progress of GNOME on
a few goals like, for example, the cleanup of modules to stop using
deprecated libraries and APIs.
We also modified the release schedule to move the module proposal period
and the decision on module proposals earlier in the cycle, in response
to feedback from some maintainers and also to help evaluate earlier what
GNOME 3.0 would consist of.
Looking ahead, the release team already has a good amount of work
planned for the next quarter: there will of course be a first update to
GNOME 2.28, with 2.28.1 which will be released at the end of October,
and also the first versions of the 2.29 releases. A good number of new
modules were proposed for inclusion during the 2.29 development cycle,
and discussion around those proposals will help the release team decide
what will be going in during a meeting at the beginning of November.
Another meeting in November will be dedicated to GNOME 3.0: we will
evaluate if 3.0 can be ready for March 2010 or if waiting six more
months is needed to ensure that 3.0 is of high quality, as expected by
our community and our users.
Bugsquad Team
Andre Klapper
In August GNOME Bugzilla was updated to version 3.4 by Max-Kanat
Alexander with huge help of Olav Vitters and Owen Taylor. The previous
version was several years old and did not receive any upstream security
fixes anymore. It also had several GNOME-only enhancements that
partially have been ported to 3.4 though some regressions remained. The
server hardware was also improved so timeout issues when running complex
queries do not happen anymore.
From July to September, 9227 reports (bugs + feature requests) were
opened and 8751 were closed. Top bug closers were Akhil Laddha (484
reports), Fabio Durán Verdugo (455), Andre Klapper (269), Bastien Nocera
(261) and Matthew Barnes (251). Top bug reporters were Pedro
Villavicencio (136 reports), Owen Taylor (116), Bastien Nocera (99),
Colin Walters (92) and Matthias Clasen (87).
The GNOME Bugsquad has started to have monthly meetings to discuss
policies and issues. The new policy to handle old forgotten reports is
in place and has been revised after feedback from developers.
UNCONFIRMED bug reports (but not enhancement requests) with one year
without any activity will be set to NEEDINFO state and reporters will be
asked to update the report’s status by testing again on a recent GNOME
version.
When reports are closed as "FIXED" reporters will now kindly be asked to
verify the fix once it has landed in their distribution and if they have
some time.
As there are many modules in GNOME Bugzilla that have not seen any code
changes for years (except for translation updates) the Bugsquad has
started trying to identify those obsolete/unmaintained modules and
contact the maintainers. Without a response the remaining reports will
probably be closed as WONTFIX while explaining to the reporter that the
module is not maintained anymore and will not receive any updates.
In order to improve workflow the Bugsquad now also has its own module in
GNOME Bugzilla to keep track of assigned tasks.
Marketing Team
Paul Cutler
The Marketing Team was active in the third quarter with a focus on the
GNOME 2.28 release, including helping write the release notes and the
press release announcing GNOME 2.28.
A new sub-team, the GNOME Press Team, was created with a focus on
engaging the press worldwide and helping write press releases about
GNOME in the news. The Marketing Team also chose CivicCRM as a CRM
system to help track press contacts.
Jaap Haitsma updated the Friends of GNOME web page, including adding the
ability for subscribers to choose their monthly donation amount and
launched the GNOME Amazon store available at
http://www.gnome.org/friends/amazon/. The GNOME Foundation receives a
referral fee anytime anyone buys something from the GNOME Amazon Store.
GNOME Journal had two releases in the third quarter in July and August
with articles interviews with Owen Taylor, Lucas Rocha and Laszlo Peter;
a recap of the Writing Open Source Conference; a review of GNOME-DO and
Project Hamster and more.
Lastly, Paul Cutler gave a presentation at Ohio Linux Fest in September
on GNOME 3.0 and made the slides and presentation materials available
under a Creative Commons license and available for download on the GNOME
Marketing Wiki.
Looking forward to Q4, the Marketing team is planning a hackfest in
Chicago in November and plans on working on conference and presentation
materials, case studies, a GNOME 3.0 campaign, the GNOME website and more.
Web Team
Lucas Rocha
content here
Usability Team
Calum Benson
Several usability-focused sessions took place at the Gran Canaria
Desktop Summit in July:
* Matthew Paul Thomas from Canonical gave two talks: one on the
regular Ubuntu/GNOME usability studies that Canonical have started
doing, and a lightning talk on '10 Common GUI Bloopers'.
* Marina Zhurakhinskaya from Red Hat led a GNOME Shell Design BOF.
* Allan Day ran a BOF session on tabbed application issues.
Kristin Travis and Jenya Gestrin from Sun Microsystems demonstrated the
work they've been doing on a potential control center redesign for GNOME
3.0. This work was started last year, and has already been the subject
of an initial usability study.
GNOME 2.28 was released with some notable changes recommended by the
usability team: turning off button and menu icons by default, and
switching to a different toolbar style by default. These changes improve
visual consistency, reduce clutter, and reduce the need to continually
invent new icons for every new function that becomes available in GNOME.
This should also prove beneficial for the accessibility themes, allowing
them to provide better icon coverage than has been possible up to now.
A preview of GNOME Shell was released alongside GNOME 2.28. GNOME Shell
will underpin the GNOME 3.0 desktop, and will be an important focus for
the usability team between now and the release of GNOME 3.0.
Expected Q4:
* A second usability study on the potential control center redesign
will happen at Sun's usability labs in Menlo Park.
* Design review of GNOME's Keyboard Preferences dialog (Allan Day
and Sergey Udaltsov).
* A number of usability topics will be discussed at the Boston
hackfest, including: revamping the Human Interface Guidelines,
finding new ways to collect usability data for the GNOME project,
and the possibility of establishing a mobile usability lab.
Accessibility Team
Willie Walker
Dr. Joseph Scheuhammer (Adaptive Technology Research Centre at the
University of Toronto) has continued his work with embedding
magnification support in GNOME Shell and has a full screen magnification
prototype working (http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Magnification). This
work is planned to supplant gnome-mag and eliminate a Bonobo/CORBA
dependency.
Ben Konrath (Adaptive Technology Research Centre at the University of
Toronto) has begun work on an on-screen keyboard. This work is planned
to supplant the existing GNOME Onscreen Keyboard (GOK) and eliminate a
Bonobo/CORBA dependency.
Ke Wang (Sun Microsystems) has completed the initial development of Java
ATK Wrapper. This work supplants the Java Access Bridge for GNOME and
eliminates a Bonobo/CORBA dependency.
Luke Yelavich (Canonical) continues to work on Speech Dispatcher as a
means to supplant gnome-speech and eliminate a Bonobo/CORBA dependency.
Willie Walker from Sun Microsystems also submitted a patch to make
Speech Dispatcher work on OpenSolaris.
Emli-Mari Nel from OpenGazer
(http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/opengazer/) and Flavio Percoco
Premoli from MouseTrap (http://live.gnome.org/MouseTrap) began
discussions for how they can collaborate with each other to bring low
cost mouse pointer control solutions to the desktop.
Alejandro Piñeiro (Igalia) continues to work on clutter accessibility
and has begun brainstorming ways for integrating AT-SPI support into
GNOME Shell.
Eitan Isaacson migrated the GNU LDTP project to the Python pyatspi
bindings. The GNU/Linux Desktop Testing Project (GNU LDTP) is used by
Mago (http://live.gnome.org/DesktopTesting), and the migration to
pyatspi will enable it to more easily shift to AT-SPI/D-Bus. Eitan also
worked on accessibility to the Banshee music player
(http://monotonous.org/tag/banshee-a11y/?order=ASC).
Xan Lopez (Igalia) and Joanmarie Diggs continued their collaboration on
WebKit accessibility. Progress continues to be made on this very
difficult task.
Mark Doffman (Codethink), Mike Gorse (Novell), and Willie Walker (Sun
Microsystems) continued to hammer away at AT-SPI/D-Bus, working through
a number of difficult design decisions. The team also welcomed help from
the wonderful mind of Michael Meeks (Novell).
Moving forward, the team will continue on their adventure through the
"perfect storm" for GNOME 2.30 accessibility: Bonobo deprecation, GNOME
Shell accessibility, and WebKit accessibility. The team is also
preparing for a GNOME Booth and Hackfest at the CSUN Accessibility
conference in Los Angeles in March 22-27 2010. Please contact the team
at gnome-accessibility-list gnome org if you are interested in
participating.
Documentation Team
Shaun McCance
The third quarter of 2009 saw the release of GNOME 2.28, which included
the new Mallard-based help for Empathy. The team has continued to test
and develop Mallard based on real-world use and feedback from others.
Phil has been actively promoting Mallard, particularly within the Ubuntu
community. His experiences help us to understand what our downstream
partners need from us.
Shaun has been actively developing Yelp 3.0, which has a more
document-focused approach than the current Yelp. This work includes
splitting the core document display system into a separate library which
can be used to build stand-alone help viewers or embed a help viewer
into larger applications.
Art Team
Andreas Nilsson
content here
GNOME Mobile
Dave Neary
GNOME Mobile was present in a number of events this quarter:
* OSiM World, Amsterdam, September 15-16 - One of the premier
conferences for mobile technology and free software. GNOME Mobile
was well represented, with keynote presentations from Nokia, LiMo
and Intel presenting their GNOME Mobile-based platforms, and from
Lefty Schlesinger and Dave Neary, proposing best practices for
building commercial products on free software projects. GNOME
Mobile participants Intel, Novell, Nokia, Igalia and CodeThink
were exhibitors, and Samsung, LiMo, ACCESS, Collabora and Lanedo
were also out in force at the conference.
* Open World Forum, Paris, October 1-2 - Dave Neary presented GNOME
Mobile as part of the FLOSS Mobility track of this conference,
attended by over 1400 people.
A number of GNOME-based devices have been announced or released this
quarter - much of the excitement concerned the Moblin v2 release, and
the announcement of the Nokia N900, a mobile phone & internet tablet
based on Maemo 5 (Fremantle). At OSiM the LiMo Foundation also announced
the forthcoming release of a number of GNOME-based phones.
The GNOME 2.28 and GTK+ 2.18 releases contained some interesting GNOME
Mobile related news. GTK+ 2.18 now supports client-side windows, making
the rendering of GTK+ widgets in Clutter more straightforward, and
WebKit greatly improved its accessibility support. Clutter, GUPnP and
PulseAudio were officially added to the GNOME Mobile release set for 2.28.
GNOME Events
Stormy Peters (Looking for a new author!)
During the third quarter of 2009 GNOME was present in these events:
* Gran Canaria Desktop Summit, July 3-11, Gran Canaria, Spain. The
GNOME European Users and Developers Conference co-located with
Akademy! A huge success!
* GNOME-es organised GUADEC-es after GUADEC, July 8 - 10
* Community Leadership Summit, July 18 - 19. GNOME presence: Dave
Neary, Lefty Schlesinger, Jono Bacon, Jorge Castro, Joe 'Zonker'
Brockmeier, Bradley Kuhn, Simon Phipps
* FLOSS Foundations meeting, July 20. Dave Neary organising, Simon
Phipps, Bradley Kuhn, Aaron Williamson present
* OSCON, July 20-24, 2009, San Jose, USA. GNOME presence included
presenters: Stormy Peters, Dave Neary, Paul Cooper, Rob Bradford,
Chris Lord, Karen Sandler (SFLC, GNOME's lawyers), Simon Phipps,
and more.
* Open Source World, San Francisco, August 11 - 14: GNOME speakers:
Stormy Peters, Jono Bacon, Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier
* Red Hat Summit, Chicago, Sept 1 - 3: Substantial GNOME-related content
* OSiM World, Amsterdam. GNOME presence: Dave Neary, Lefty
Schlesinger, Ari Jaaksi, Imad Sousou presenting, LiMo, Moblin &
Maemo related content.
* Software Freedom Day. September 19, 2009. GNOME issued a press
release and there were many free software related events,
including a mini-summit on women's participation in the free
software movement that the Free Software Foundation and the GNOME
Foundation are co-hosting.
* LinuxCon, Portland OR, Sept 21 - 23
Future events include:
* Utah Open Source Conference, Salt Lake City, USA, Oct 8-10.
Christer Edwards will be hosting a GNOME Booth. Stormy Peters will
give a keynote.
* Boston Summit, Cambridge MA, Oct 10-12. The GNOME Summit will once
again be held in Boston, on the MIT campus. The location and dates
have now been confirmed, and the summit will take place on October
10 - 12 in MIT's Sloan Building in Cambridge MA.
* Maemo Summit, Amsterdam, Oct 10-12: Substantial GNOME Mobile
related content
* "Jornadas Regionales de Software Libre"¹ Willie Walker will also
be representing the GNOME project
In addition GNOME is planning many hackfests for Q4 2009. Please let the
organizers know if you are interested in attending.
# Zeitgeist, November 2009, Bolzano, Italy, Seif Lotfy, Daniel Siegel,
http://live.gnome.org/ZeitgeistHackFest2009.
# Marketing, November 2009, Chicago, USA, Paul Cutler.
# WebKitGTK+, December 2009, A Coruña, Spain, Juan José Sánchez Penas.
# Accessibility, March 2010, CSUN, San Diego, USA, Eitan Isaacson,
http://monotonous.org/2009/10/14/csun-hackfest-and-exhibition-call-for-participation.
# Usability, Dave Richards
# Video, Benjamin Otte
Finances
Germán Póo-Caamaño
*Income*
amount what for
*Expenses*
amount what for
Travel Committee
Germán Póo-Caamaño
During Q3, the travel committee added a new member: Bharath Acharya. He
has been a very enthusiastic contributor and has already helped several
people out with their travel sponsorships.
Between the end of July and August, we reimbursed the four contributors
who attended to the Documentation Summit.
At the same time, we wired reimbursements to GUADEC sponsored
contributors. Most of them between July 30 and August 10. There was an
issue with the currency used at the bank, which finally was solved.
There are two pending reimbursements to contributors who have not yet
sent their receipts. It is worth mentioning that one contributor decided
to withdraw his sponsorship request.
We have also been managing requests for events of the next quarter, such
as the Zeitgeist hackfest at Bolzano and the Boston Summit.
For Bolzano, we booked the accommodation for eleven contributors and
processed their applications.
In the case of Boston Summit, we processed the requests for two
contributors. Unfortunately, one of them had problems getting a US visa.
On the other hand, the other contributor was able to attend without any
problem, and he wrote several good reports about his participation on
Boston Summit.
We have already started processing the requests for the Marketing Team
hackfest which will be held in Chicago next November. Sooner rather than
later we will start to processing the WebkitGtk+ hackfest.
I18n Team
author here
content here
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
Halton Huo
Javier Jardón Cabezas
Milo Casagrande
Tim Horton
Will Thompson
Alexander Gabriel
Henrique Paulino Machado
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
membership-committee gnome org
