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

[Sumana Harihareswara <sumanah panix com>]

This is the second draft of the GNOME 3.0 press release, and I'm about 
ready to send it out.  If you have any major concerns or find 
inaccuracies, please send me your comments ASAP.  I will start sending 
it to reporters after 14 hours or so (about 8am Wednesday, US East Coast 
time).
-Sumana Harihareswara
GNOME Marketing

Groton, MA, April 6 2011: Today, the GNOME Desktop project released 
GNOME 3.0, its most significant redesign of the computer experience in 
nine years. A revolutionary new user interface and new features for 
developers make this a historic moment for the free and open source desktop.

Within GNOME 3, GNOME Shell reimagines the user interface for the next 
generation of the Free & Open Source desktop. This innovative interface 
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, says of the design team, 
"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." The result: "With any luck you will feel more focused, 
aware, effective, capable, respected, delighted, and at ease." GNOME 
Shell aims to "help us cope with modern life in a busy world. Help us 
connect, stay on track, feel at ease and in control."  GNOME Shell, he 
says, will keep users "informed without being disrupted."

The GNOME 3 development platform includes improvements in the display 
backend, a new API, 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."

Miguel de Icaza, one of GNOME's founders, celebrates the new release: 
"GNOME continues to innovate in the desktop space.  The new GNOME Shell 
is an entire new user experience that was designed from the ground up to 
improve the usability of the desktop and giving both designers and 
developers a quick way to improve the desktop and adapt the user 
interface to new needs. By tightly integrating Javascript with the GNOME 
platform, designers were able to create and quickly iterate on creating 
an interface that is both pleasant and exciting to use. I could not be 
happier with the results."

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 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 innumerable 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 to try it 
immediately, or wait for 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.