ROUGH draft of GNOME 3.0 press release (request for comments)

[Sumana Harihareswara <sumanah panix com>]

With Sri's help, I've written a very rough draft for the GNOME 3.0 press 
release.  Please comment, critique, and suggest edits within the next 36 
hours (before about 8am Wednesday, US East Coast time).  I'm waiting on 
quotes from Miguel & Stormy -- as soon as I get one of them, I'm going 
to insert it somewhere reasonable and start sending this out to the 
longer-lead-time journalists on our lists (print people), as we're 
already behind schedule.

My major questions:
1) Is everything accurate?
2) Should I move the general "what is GNOME" paragraph to, perhaps, the 
second paragraph instead of the last?

(Tomorrow I can look at the whole thing with a fresh eye and start 
improving the prose.)

-Sumana


Groton, MA, April 6 2011:  Today the GNOME Desktop project releases 
GNOME 3.0, its first major release in nine years.  A revolutionary new 
user interface, new features for developers, and a stronger 
accessibility foundation make this a historic moment for the Linux desktop.

The GNOME 3 platform consists of the GNOME Shell and the GNOME 3 
development foundation.  The GNOME Shell reimagines the user interface 
for the next generation of the Free & Open Source desktop. The 
innovative GNOME Shell allows users to focus on tasks while minimizing 
distractions such as notifications, extra workspaces, and background 
windows.

Jon McCann, one of GNOME Shell's designers, describes it as 
"ineffable...We've taken a pretty different approach in the GNOME 3 
design that focuses on the desired experience and lets the interface 
design follow from that.... With any luck you will feel more focused, 
aware, effective, capable, respected, delighted, and at ease."  GNOME 
Shell aims to "[h]elp us cope with modern life in a busy world. Help us 
connect, stay on track, feel at ease and in control. [To help us be] 
informed without being disrupted."

The GNOME 3 development foundation includes improvements in the display 
backend, a new API, and improvements in  search, user messaging, system 
settings, and streamlined libraries.  GNOME 2 applications will continue 
to work in the GNOME 3 environment without modification, allowing 
developers to move to the GNOME 3 environment at their own pace.  The 
GNOME 3 release notes include further details.

Matt Zimmerman, Ubuntu CTO at Canonical, praises GNOME 3: "In the face 
of constant change, both in software technology itself and in people's 
attitudes toward it, long-term software projects need to reinvent 
themselves in order to stay relevant.  I'm encouraged to see the GNOME 
community taking up this challenge, responding to the evolving needs of 
users and questioning the status quo."

In addition to improvements in user experience and the application 
development framework, this release marks GNOME making its accessibility 
framework available to other desktop environments.  GNOME has always 
been a leader in accessibility, making GNOME 3 a usable and productive 
environment for everyone.  The new release enables applications 
developed for other desktop environments to be just as accessible as 
native GNOME applications on GNOME 3.  GNOME strengthens its legendary 
accessibility foundation, and accelerates the pace of innovation across 
the Linux desktop.

GNOME 3 is the cumulative work of five years of planning and design by 
the GNOME community.  McCann notes: "Perhaps the most notable part of 
the design process is that everything has been done in the open. We've 
had full transparency for every decision (good and bad) and every change 
we've made. We strongly believe in this model. It is not only right in 
principle it is just the best way in the long run to build great 
software sustainably in a large community."

In partnership with Novell, Red Hat, other Linux distributors, schools 
and governments, and user groups, GNOME 3 will reach millions of users 
around the world.  Over 3500 people have contributed changes to the 
project's code repositories, including the employees of 106 companies.  
GNOME 3 includes innumberable code changes since the 2.0 release 9 years 
ago.

Users and fans of GNOME have planned more than a hundred launch parties 
around the world.  Users can download GNOME 3 from gnome3.org 
immediately, or wait for Linux distributions to carry it over the coming 
months.  GNOME 3 continues to push new frontiers in user interaction.

The GNOME Project was started in 1997 by two then-university students, 
Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena. Their aim: to produce a free (as in 
freedom) desktop environment. Since then, GNOME has grown into a hugely 
successful enterprise. Used by millions of people across the world, it 
is the most popular desktop environment for GNU/Linux and UNIX-type 
operating systems. The desktop has been utilised in successful, 
large-scale enterprise and public deployments, and the project's 
developer technologies are utilised in a large number of popular mobile 
devices.  For further comments and information, contact the GNOME press 
contact team at gnome-press-contact gnome org.

[will add: quotes from: Miguel de Icaza & Stormy Peters (both have 
agreed to provide quotes)]