press release, link to charter

[Bart Decrem <bart eazel com>]

Hi everyone,

Enclosed is a final draft of the press release announcing the creation
of the GNOME Foundation.

As I have indicated before, it mentions the corporate advisory board
members fairly prominently, since we believe that this is a big part of
the news story.  But the foundation will be controlled by its board of
directors, elected by the hackers.  This release was drafted by a group
of people including the GNOME steering committee and representatives
from the corporate members.  We'd love to get edit suggestions although,
honestly, it'll be difficult to make material changes at this time in
view of the complex sign-off process that changes have to go through
(basically, all companies and organizations listed have to agree to all
changes).  This release is scheduled to go on the news wires on Tuesday
morning, although one major newspaper appears to be readying a story for
publication tomorrow (Monday).

I have incorporated changes to the draft Charter and posted that at
          http://www.decrem.com/gnomefdn.html
- edit suggestions are, as always, welcome.

As has been discussed in other forums, a number of companies will be
announcing at LWE that they are contributing significant technologies to
GNOME.  A second press release will go out on Tuesday to announce those
contributions of technology.  I believe that these announcements will be
included in tomorrow's press story as well.

Cheers,

Bart Decrem



THE GNOME AND LINUX COMMUNITIES AND INDUSTRY LEADERS
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, Object
Management Group, 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 developers and
corporate partners  can come together to coordinate the continued
development of 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 many 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, 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 corporations and other organizations to support GNOME.
Initial members of the Advisory Board include: Compaq, Eazel, Free
Software Foundation, Gnumatic, Helix Code, Henzai, IBM, Object
Management Group, 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.  GNOME is part of the GNU project, an effort to build
a completely free Unix-like operating system better known as GNU/Linux
or Linux.  Additional information is available at www.gnome.org.






Quote Sheet:

"It's 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."

"Compaq is pleased to join the Advisory Board of the GNOME Foundation,
continuing
Compaq's long-time support of the Linux community and open source," said
Glenn Johnson, Director of Compaq's Linux Program Office. "Compaq
expects the foundation will be a valuable forum for us, other vendors,
and customers to contribute to the GNOME Project."

"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," said Dr.
Linas Vepstas,
CEO of Gnumatic Incorporated. "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."

"We created Helix Code to deploy a free, modern and friendly desktop
solution to the world," said Nat Friedman, CEO and co-founder of Helix
Code.  "Helix GNOME has brought a new level of accessibility and
functionality to the hundreds of thousands of users who have installed
our product.  For GNOME, the next step is applications.  Helix Code
comes to the table with Evolution, a comprehensive communications and
information management suite.  Now, industry and developer support has
rallied around the GNOME platform and major contributions are coming in
from all sides.  We will soon offer a total desktop solution that will
reshape the industry. GNOME has arrived."

"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."

"One of the challenges the Linux community is facing is how to integrate
the new applications that are currently being developed with the
established architectures that already exist in most business
enterprises.  GNOME developers have realized that building it around
CORBA allows them to use components that integrate with other
industry-recognized technologies, such as Java and C++.  The OMG is well
aware of the need for vendor-neutral organizations that allow developers
to agree upon standard interfaces.  We look forward to helping the GNOME
Foundation in their mission, " said Dr. Richard Soley, CEO, Object
Management Group.

"About three years 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."