[fdn-ann] Final draft for approval

[Greg Corrin <gcorrin eazel com>]

All,

The final draft follows. Thanks for your patience and comments during
our review process.

Please reply to me when your organization has approved this press
release. If there are objections or necessary wording changes, let me
know directly. Also, those companies that have not submitted a quote,
need to do so ASAP - if your quote is not on this sheet, I may have lost
it in my huge inbox so please send it again : )

Regards,
Greg|650.940.2026


INDUSTRY LEADERS AND THE GNOME AND LINUX COMMUNITIES
JOIN TO CREATE THE GNOME FOUNDATION

-Developers and Corporations Unite to Advance GNOME as the Leading Open
Source Desktop Environment-

LinuxWorld Expo, San Jose, CA -- August 15, 2000 --The GNOME project
today announced the creation of the GNOME Foundation.  In addition,
industry leaders and organizations including Compaq, Eazel, Free
Software Foundation, Gnumatic, Helix Code, Henzai, IBM, Red Hat, Sun
Microsystems and VA Linux have announced their support for the
foundation, with the goal of advancing the availability of this
easy-to-use, open source, desktop environment.

"The GNOME Foundation marks a major step forward for the GNOME project,"
said Miguel de Icaza, founder of the GNOME project.  "As GNOME continues
to gain momentum, we needed a forum where the GNOME hackers and industry
leaders can come together to help develop GNOME.  The support of these
industry leaders will help us to achieve our dream of building a fully
free, easy to use desktop environment that will be used by millions of
people."

The foundation will help set the technical direction of the GNOME
project, promote the broad adoption of GNOME on Linux and Unix desktops
and offer a forum for industry leaders to contribute to GNOME. The
Bonobo component project, GTK toolkit development, Pango
internationalization, and GNOME Office integration and other projects
will be embraced under the GNOME organization.  The foundation will be
modeled on the Apache Foundation, with a board of directors elected by
the hundreds of volunteer GNOME developers.

GNOME Advisory Board
The GNOME project also announced the creation of an Advisory Board which
will allow corporate partners to support GNOME. Initial members of the
Advisory Board include: Compaq, Eazel, Free Software Foundation,
Gnumatic, Helix Code, Henzai, IBM, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems and VA
Linux.

About GNOME and the GNOME Foundation
The GNOME project has built a completely free and easy-to-use desktop
environment, as well as a powerful application framework for software
developers on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems.   The GNOME
Foundation will provide organizational, financial and legal support to
the GNOME project, and help determine its vision and roadmap.
CollabNet, the leading provider of collaborative software development
services based on open source principles, is helping to organize the
GNOME Foundation.  Additional information is available at www.gnome.org.







Quote Sheet:

"Its always great to see companies coming together and working to bring
open source technologies to the next level," said Brian Behlendorf, CTO
& co-founder, CollabNet.  "The creation of the Gnome Foundation will
help move Linux beyond the operating system to becoming a viable desktop
application and CollabNet is excited to be participating in this
process."

"Much like the Apache Project before it, GNOME is benefiting from the
interest of both developers and commercial entities," said Mike Boich,
CEO and co-founder of Eazel. "The GNOME Foundation can only help to
accelerate that trend. Eazel is delighted to be a member of the
Foundation and to be building software on the GNOME platform."

"Gnumatic Incorporated sees the Gnome Foundation as a major key to the
creation of desktop and home user applications for Linux.  By providing
a stable desktop development platform for Linux, applications such as
GnuCash, the personal finance manager being developed by Gnumatic, will
benefit from the broad array of standard Gnome technologies."

"By partnering with industry leaders in the GNOME Foundation, IBM
continues
its strong commitment to open standards and a clear vision of Linux as
the driving force for the evolution of e-business," said Daniel Frye,
program director, IBM Linux Technology Center.  "IBM believes this
partnership will help enable innovation and will accelerate development
of the Linux desktop."

"About three ago, Red Hat created the Red Hat Advanced Development Labs
(RHAD Labs) to support open source software on the desktop and became
the first commercial company to make a contribution to GNOME
development," said Bob Young, Chairman and co-founder of Red Hat. "With
the formation of the GNOME Foundation, GNOME is truly coming of age in
terms of market momentum.  We are excited about the opportunities for
GNOME and open source, and we look forward to working with the new
members to the GNOME community, like Eazel, Helix, Sun Microsystems and
others, as they bring applications and technology to the GNOME desktop
environment."

"Sun is thrilled to be joining the GNOME Foundation and we plan to adopt
GNOME as the future desktop for Solaris," said Marco Boerries, vice
president and general manager of webtop and application software at Sun
Microsystems, Inc.  "We are committed to contributing significant
engineering resources to the GNOME project and will work closely with
the other GNOME members to ensure continued reliability and quality."

"VA Linux Systems has been proud to make GNOME available on our systems
for years," said Dr. Larry M. Augustin, president and CEO of VA Linux
Systems.  "GNOME is representative of the kind of creativity and
engineering that is available from the Open Source development
community. We have a number of engineers who have worked on GNOME and
GTK technology for some time, and are pleased to extend our GNOME
efforts by joining the GNOME foundation."