GNOME in the Year of the Monkey

["Tim Ney, GNOME " Foundation <director gnome org>]

GNOME Foundation Activities in the New Year 

LinuxWorld 
Documentation 
Education 
Deployments 
Outreach and Advocacy 
Resources 


*Recent Events 
LinuxWorld, New York 

The GNOME booth at the Javits Convention Center last week reflected the
wider adoption of our free desktop:  GNOME @ LWE, which started from a
small beehive of hackers in one booth five years ago, is now joined by
sharp JDS & XD2 product demos at large Sun and Novell exhibits. This
year, those interested in GNOME who stopped by our booth were from
financial institutions, schools, and government.  They joined the
university computer science students who stopped by the booth looking to
get involved with GNOME.

Thanks to Advisory Board member Stormy Peters and her colleagues at HP 
for providing new banners and signs at the gnome.org booth last week. 
The banners are on their way to Solutions Linux in Paris where Gaël 
Chamboulaud and team <http://www.gnomefr.org/> are organizing the GNOME 
booth.  HP also lent us a desktop machine, terminals and a thin client 
box which ran seemlessly with the help of our friends and their server
at LTSP.org.  When Leslie Proctor and I met with IDG and proposed
clustering the .org booths in one area at LWE in 1999, this was the type
of cooperation & synergy we imagined. Booth support last week was
provided by Leslie, David Chan, Harry Pottash and Patrizia Balestra.  It
was extra helpful when Michael Meeks spent time at the booth lending his
technical noblesse.  Miguel spent some time, too:
http://static.capsi.com/img/photography/2002-08-13/800x600/dscf0130.jpgAs always IDG show management showed GNOME warm hospitality and quick troubleshooting when we had a power problem. 

Most common tech question at booth:  how do I change my icons on RH 9? 


DOCUMENTATION 
*Official GNOME 2 Book [A long time in the making] 
At the LWE, we displayed a galley of the GNOME Developers Manual. 
No Starch Press is publishing an English version of the GNOME 2 
developers manual originally written in German by Matthias Warkus.  In 
exchange for my brokering the licensing of the original from 
Galileo Press and Michael Meeks' donated proofreading, the foundation 
will receive a small royalty donation from sales. We also will receive
wholesale copies of books to sell at trade shows or GUADEC.  Miguel and
Michael are writing a foreward.  The book will be published under the
Creative Commons Non-commercial license and should be available in
March. 

EDUCATION 
Part of the foundation's non-profit mission is to organize educational
activities. 

*GNOME Developers and Users European Conference (GUADEC) 
After last year's conference & mini-expo successfully survived a bum 
global economy, SARS and Iraq War, we've again started the process of
planning a fifth year and are currently welcoming the participation of
Sponsors and Speakers.  GUADEC at Trinity College in Dublin expanded our
stakeholders in GNOME to include government and European Union officials
who joined on the third day. Many of these decision and policy makers
will return to GUADEC in Kristiansand, Norway from June 28-30th.
ComputerScope and Linux Magazines joined OSDN (slashdot & freshmeat) as
Media Sponsors last year with ads and conference coverage. We are
renewing and expanding these partnerships in 2004. 

The dedicated planning committee, local volunteers and cooperative 
Agder University College seek to make this year's GUADEC the best ever. 

*Tutorials 
The board decided not to hold for-fee tutorials this year at GUADEC, so
we are looking for other venues where we could to generate revenue and
fill the void in developer and sysadmin training. Tutorial materials are
needed in the field to grow our developer and ISV base. If you have any
ideas, please contact board list. 

*Summit 
The smaller scale GNOME Summit provides a robust North American 
cornerstone gathering in balance with the larger annual GUADEC.  The
Summit is more of a working gathering than a presentation-focused
conference. Since November's GNOME Summit was held in Brooklyn, New
York, I took the opportunity to produce an appropriate graphic on a
limited number of black t-shirts - a white statue of liberty holding a
gnome logo. 

With the RedHat desktop team now living in Massachusetts, Boston seems a
likely location for the third Summit.  There is, however, a standing 
invitation from Atlanta to host a Summit (if it takes place in the
frostbite season.) 

*Academic studies 
There is a growing academic interest in GNOME by non-technical 
scholars. Researchers at the London School of Economics and Political
Science and the Judge Institute of Management at Cambridge University in
the UK have looked at GNOME in their research. Business students
learning about GNOME does add another dimension of potential GNOME
community members. 

DEPLOYMENTS 
Last year brought two exceptional showcases for GNOME in Europe and 
South America. It is encouraging to know that the GNOME Foundation
strategic meetings and presentations which Miguel, Maddog, Leslie
Proctor and I made to government officials in 2002 impacted the choice
and adoption of GNOME by the public sector. In Chile, I had similar
meetings with government officials and NGOs (non-government
organizations) at the request of GNOME Chile. 

*Extremadura 
Junta de Extremadura, the regional state government in Southern Spain, 
put the free desktop on radar around the globe last year when they
issued a press release with GNOME Foundation announcing the deployment 
of a LinEx milestone - 80,000 computers (and growing) in schools. An
entire delegation of representatives from Junta de Extremadura attended
GUADEC in Dublin. 

*The Prefeiture of Sao Paolo Telecentros - 
These city community centers are really inspiring with a GNOME desktop 
used by little children and parents for courses, homework and 'free 
time' in the poorest neighborhoods of Sao Paolo. In November, there were
approximately 90 Telecentros in Sao Paolo with a goal of doubling that
number in the next year.  With GNOME translated into Portuguese, the
local team has implemented a successful thin client Debian/GNOME
solution. 

In 2004, we will see more announcements and greater numbers of users 
in Andalucía, Spain and other regions in Europe and South America. 


OUTREACH and ADVOCACY 
*Regionalism 
Parallel to the increased support of GNOME by large global companies and
governments, one of the most encouraging trends last year was the 
formation of grassroots local and regional GNOME support groups and
associations. This distributed ownership of GNOME benefits greatly from
the effort by GNOME Foundation in the form of travel subsidies to GUADEC
and support/presence at local conferences. 

->http://www.gnome.de/
GNOME Deutschland organizers filed an application for founding a 
German association to help organize a presence at events in Germany. 
This organization is not officially connected with GNOME Foundation and 
will operate independently, but cooperatively to promote GNOME. 

->gnomebangalore.org 
GNOME Bangalore was announced on December 1st at Linux Bangalore/2003. 
The group has already attracted over 500 developers and students who
have signed up for source CDs, forums and future GNOME events. 

->http://www.gnome.cl/
GNOME Chile organized a dynamic Chilean Free Software Conference 
finished at the University of Talca that I had the honor of speaking at 
with Rodrigo Moya and Federico Mena Quintero. 

Other national efforts are underway in countries such as Iran and
Malaysia. 

*Speakers Bureau 
User Groups have been a suitable venue for GNOME presentations around 
the U.S.  Last year, Chris Lahey drew the largest audience ever for 
the LUG in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He took the presentation to the Linux
Desktop Conference, where he threw monkeys at journalists with great
precision. In 2004, the Year of the Monkey, we look forward to booking
more GNOME talks at LUGs and conferences. 

*Open Source and Industry Alliance 
The board asked me to move forward with GNOME Foundation becoming a 
member of the OSIA.  The OSIA is based in Washington, D.C. at the 
offices of the Computer & Communications Industry Association and is 
concerned with fostering the adoption of open source in U.S. government.
Please see <http://www.osaia.org> for details.  

The Open Source and Industry Alliance held a BOF at LWE moderated by 
Ed Black, President and CEO of the Computer & Communications Industry 
Association (CCIA) with Rep. Phil Barnhart, sponsor of Oregon's open 
source/open standards bill, Gale Brewer, Council Member of New York City
and chair of Standing Committee on Technology and Brian Behlendorf. 
My takeaway from the session: US citizens need to write (not e-mail)
letters to their elected officials. Never sit with your back to a
lobbyist for proprietary software. 

*Desktop Linux Consortium 
Representatives of the foundation participated in the DLC 
<http://www.desktoplinuxconsortium.org/> first Desktop Linux Conference 
at Boston University. We look forward to their future activities.

*Open Standards/Open Source in the U.S. Public Sector 
Not only governments in Europe or South America can benefit from free 
software. I've participated in several meetings close to home and filed 
written comments to the state of Massachusetts in support of its
implementation of a new "Enterprise Open Standards Policy and Enterprise
IT Acquisition Policy." Hopefully, the policies will be frutifully
implemented and other states in the U.S. will follow Massachusetts'
lead.


RESOURCES 
*New Server 
Thanks to Jim Gettys, Bdale Garbee and HP's Linux and Open 
Source Labs (LOSL) team in Fort Collins for obtaining a much appreciated
new server for GNOME. 

*FootNotes machine 
Luke Stroven currently operates Footnotes and gnomesupport.org on 
a 950Mhz box with 768MB of RAM and a 20 GIG hard drive. The machine 
hosts both the FootNotes site as well as gnomesupport.org. It currently 
averages around 9.5 million hits and 2.5 million page views per month. 
Luke estimates he can operate another 3-6 months on the current 
machine.  He'd like to upgrade to 2.6 GHz or faster single processor 
1 GB RAM, expandable, with a minimum of 40GB hard drive space.  GNOME 
Foundation would like to obtain a new machine for Luke - please let 
me know, if you can help. 

*Desktop Integration Bounty Hunt 
In November, a pilot reward program <http://www.gnome.org/bounties/> was
announced with committed funding from Novell to stimulate work on 
integration. Some of the problems posed have been solved, others remain 
open. 

*Gnumeric Grant 
A $4,000 grant from the Open Source Applications Foundation was awarded 
to be used to develop a test suite to enhance interoperability between 
Gnumeric and other spreadsheet programs. 

*Logo Usage 
The draft of Web guidelines for use of GNOME Trademark to 
foundation-list by Alan Cox number of specific points about the text of 
the TM License Agreement by Alan Cox and others. The foundation's 
attorney is working on a revision to reflect community comments to make
use of the logo as easy as possible, while following trademark law in
protection of this asset. 


The diligence of the foundation board and membership in 2003 was most
effective and I look forward to our continued efforts in 2004.

Regards,

tim

Timothy Ney
Executive Director
GNOME Foundation