GUADEC will unite GNOME users and developers for an opportunity to discuss the main developments in GNOME technology and the future of open source software. The four conference days feature 40 formal talks, 3 keynotes and a number of lightning talk sessions followed by 4 days of working events and hacking sessions. The conference days will feature GNOME contributors addressing topics in User Experience, Developer Experience and Community Outreach as well as keynote speakers Ethan Lee, Matt Dalio, Cathy Malmrose, and the GNOME Board of Directors.

"GUADEC has become an essential event for the GNOME community, providing a venue for critical issues to be discussed and new community members to integrate fully," said Karen Sandler, Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation.

GUADEC 2013 will be hosted in Brno, the second largest city of the Czech Republic and capital of the region of Moravia. Brno, a city of about 400,000 is a bustling university town and home to major offices of a range of of technology companies including IBM, Motorola, Honeywell and  Red Hat.

GUADEC 2013 is organized in collaboration with Brno University of Technology, Liberix, and Linux v Brně. The conference has received generous sponsorship from Google, Redhat, Ubuntu, Collabora and Igalia.

8 days, 3 Keynotes, 80 presentations

GUADEC 2013 will consist of 8 days, including over 80 presentations, lighting talks, workshops and Birds of a Feather hackfests.

Expected highlights of the conference include:
- Technological innovations in GNOME shell, the desktop environment, web browser, document management, e-mail service, and cloud integration
- Community outreach to new contributors in the Outreach Program for Women, hackerspaces, social media and greater FLOSS community
- Advances in graphics and multimedia applications, including high resolution display, animation and video
- Approaches to maintaining user privacy and security for application developers
- Improved accessibility in user experience in GNOME technology
- Solutions to testing in bug tracking and testing online services

Three keynotes and a presentation by the Board of Directors fill out the schedule.

Ethan Lee (@flibitijibibo) is a Linux game developer who has worked on porting games such as Super Hexagon and Proteus to Linux and is currently working on developing FEZ for Linux. 

Cathy Malmrose founded ZaReason, which distributes computers built with open hardware and preloaded with Linux.

Matt Dalio is the CEO of Endless Mobile, building smartphone software for the needs of the developing world, and the founder of the China Care Foundation.

For more information about GUADEC and the full program, please visit www.guadec.org

Follow our updates via identi.ca and Twitter at @guadec (#GUADEC2013)

About GUADEC

GUADEC (gwädek gwaw-deck) is the primary congress for GNOME users, developers, foundation leaders, individuals, governments and businesses worldwide. The conference is held annually in cities around Europe and brings attendees together to share their experiences and ideas for developing, using and deploying GNOME technologies. 

GUADEC attracts more than 300 key software developers, press, users, businesses and government representatives each year. Presentations are given by leaders, spokespeople, volunteers and motivated developers on a range of topics including the future directions of the GNOME Project, Unix, GNU/Linux, Free and Open Source software, development techniques, cutting edge features and new ideas in culture and technology. 

About GNOME and the GNOME Foundation

GNOME is an international project that works to create a free, open, easy-to-use computer environment with first-class internationalization and accessibility. The GNOME Project was started in 1997 by two university students, Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena. Now, GNOME is an international project that works to create a free, open, easy to use computer environment with first­ class internationalization and accessibility. Built entirely from software approved as free by the Free Software Foundation, GNOME provides all of the common tools users expect from a modern computing environment: web browsers, file managers, multimedia players, e-mail applications, group-ware and games. 

Used by millions of people across the world, GNOME is a popular desktop environment for GNU/Linux and UNIX-type operating systems. The desktop has been utilized in successful, large-scale enterprise and public deployments, and the project’s developer technologies are utilized by a large number of popular mobile device manufacturers. GNOME is the result of collaboration between those companies and volunteers from the public who are dedicated to creating quality free software.

GNOME components form the basic desktop environments on many operating systems, e.g., Oracle's Solaris, Fedora, Canonical's Ubuntu, SUSE, Debian and Linux Mint. GNOME technologies have been adopted for consumer and vertical market products, like: Amazon Kindle ebook readers; TiVo digital video recorders; Nokia Internet Tablets and the N900 mobile phone; TouchTunes digital jukeboxes and GPS navigation devices such as Garmin's and TomTom's devices. 

Accessibility. GNOME, highlighted for ideals encompassing love, sharing and respecting standards, meets and exceeds accessibility requirements that allow all users, including those with disabilities, to interact with the most modern computer technologies. 
Privacy. GNOME is an alternative to proprietary software systems and is increasingly investing and growing alongside companies and administrations that favor the freedom and privacy of users.

The GNOME Foundation is a US non-profit organization focused on the advancement of GNOME and improving access to technology for all, regardless of geographic location or socio-economic class. It is comprised of hundreds of volunteer developers and industry-leading companies. The Foundation is a member directed 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that provides financial, organizational and legal support to the GNOME project. The GNOME Foundation supports the pursuit of software freedom through the innovative, accessible and beautiful user experience created by GNOME contributors around the world. 

Media Enquiries

Karen Sandler

GNOME Foundation 
Executive Director

E-mail: gnome-press-contact@gnome.org

Phone: +1-617-206-3947

Speaking at the opening of GNOME's annual European conference (GUADEC), Sandler said: "We are excited to have the Linux Foundation join our Advisory Board, and look forward to working closely with them. Their membership in the Advisory Board is a recognition of the value that the GNOME Project brings to the GNU/Linux ecosystem, which is something that we hope to enhance even further in the future."

The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit consortium of leading companies dedicated to promoting the Linux kernel and related Free and Open Source Software technologies. Joining the Advisory Board gives the organization a direct voice within the GNOME Project and will enable it to play a greater role in the future of GNOME.

"Our mission to promote and advance the Linux kernel is aided by our partnerships with key free software projects," said Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation. "GNOME is an important project and we are looking forward to continued collaboration by joining the advisory board."

Dan Frye, who is Vice President of Open Systems Development at IBM and also a board member of the Linux Foundation said, "I'm very pleased that the Linux Foundation will now be part of GNOME's Advisory Board. This is an opportunity for two longstanding influential organizations in the open source community to work together. The Linux Foundation and GNOME have complementary goals, missions, and skills. This relationship should help both organizations and he entire community."

The nonprofit GNOME Foundation is an independent organization committed to supporting the advancement of the GNOME Project and software freedom. It provides financial, organizational and legal support to the GNOME project and helps determine its vision and roadmap. GNOME software is used by millions of people around the world.

More information about GNOME and the GNOME Foundation can be found at www.gnome.org.

The GNOME Community is proud to announce the release of GNOME 3.8, the latest update of the free software desktop environment and developer platform, which continues to refine and redefine the concept of the user experience. Easy to use and incredibly powerful, GNOME delivers amazing performance, stunning graphics and enhanced privacy. GNOME comes with software that’s easy to learn and a pleasure to use.

GNOME 3.8 is the outcome of six months of effort by GNOME developers and their partners and contains 35,936 contributions by approximately 960 people. It provides new features, fixes, and improvements that include a range of applications to satisfy users' needs and new designs that continue to provide the very best in user interaction.

GNOME 3.8 is welcomed by the volunteers and companies who contribute to its success.

“Intel is happy to join the celebration of the GNOME 3.8 release. Many of our engineers are part of the strong community that has once again come together to drive innovation and deliver constant improvement for the Linux desktop.” said Imad Sousou, director of Open Source Technology Center, Intel.

“As a principled distribution, Debian's main goal is to provide our users with the greatest free software out there, bundled as a coherent whole. Thanks to GNOME, our default desktop for many many years,” said Stefano Zacchiroli, Debian Project Leader, “we have been able to offer to our users a free productivity environment which is both visually appealing and easy to use. I wish the GNOME community all the best of luck for GNOME 3.8, which we are looking forward to have in our development release.”

In this release, privacy has become one of GNOME's primary focuses. GNOME 3.8 includes new privacy and sharing settings to allow you to be in control of information on your computer. Additionally, this is the first release to support OwnCloud integration. These new changes will allow you to easily track your activities and protect your personal information, making GNOME more secure than ever.

GNOME's web browser has also seen significant changes, providing a faster and more fluid web experience.

“We're really excited about the 3.8 release,” said a statement issued by Igalia, “in part because Web, the GNOME browser, debuts its WebKit2 backend, something we at Igalia have been working hard on for years. WebKit2 delivers a state-of-the-art web runtime to our platform, with increased responsiveness, security and stability, making Web 3.8 and all the applications using WebKit much more pleasant and exciting to use.”

Other new features presented in GNOME 3.8 include revamped search functionality from the Activities Overview, an updated Application launching view, and a new pressure-activated notification bar.

GNOME 3.8 also includes a large number of bug fixes and enhancements. Many usability details have been addressed that provide a more polished experience, including improvements to the notifications system, lock screen, and overview. Many of these changes were made as part of the second round of the Every Detail Matters initiative, which fixed nearly 60 usability bugs during the 3.8 development cycle.

GNOME 3.8 for the first time comes with GNOME Classic for those who prefer a traditional desktop experience. GNOME Classic configures the desktop to include popular GNOME 2 features but with the underlying power of GNOME 3 technologies. The GNOME Classic experience is further enhanced by GNOME's growing library of community created extensions.

“GNOME 3 is elegant by default and extremely configurable by design,” said Karen Sandler, Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation. “The release of GNOME Classic is evidence of the ability to customize GNOME through extensions and demonstrates how our developers have listened and responded to feedback from the community.”

These changes and many others in GNOME 3.8 are detailed in the 3.8 release notes.

A screenshot pack for GNOME 3.8 is available to download.

About GNOME

GNOME was started in 1997 by two then-university students, Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena Quintero. 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 around the world, it is the most popular environment for GNU/Linux and UNIX-type operating systems. GNOME's software has been utilized in successful, large-scale enterprise and public deployments.

The GNOME community is made up of hundreds of contributors from all over the world, many of whom are volunteers. This community is supported by the GNOME Foundation, an independent non-profit organization that provides financial, organizational and legal assistance. The Foundation is a democratic institution that is directed by its members, who are all active GNOME contributors. GNOME and its Foundation works to promote software freedom through the creation of innovative, accessible, and beautiful user experiences.

Knowledge of the GNOME development process will be required to carry out the work.

The tasks should be set out in each of the bids, with the goal of enabling accessibility of documents such as PDFs, word processing documents, and HTML content.

The non-exhaustive list of modules and software projects that could be involved in enhancing accessibility for GNOME is as follows:

• poppler (PDF rendering library)
• libxps (XPS rendering library)
• evince (PDF and XPS reader for GNOME)
• WebKitGTK (HTML rendering library used in Web, Yelp, and Evolution amongst others)
• GNOME Documents (document viewer for local and remote documents in GNOME)

The money available for the project is $30,000 ($10,000 from the Mozilla Corporation, $20,000 from our Friends of GNOME campaign). The bid selection will be made by a group including professional consultants with GNOME-related experience and GNOME Foundation Board members.

Bids should include:

• a list of specific tasks to be achieved and the list of components impacted
• details of your research into what level of accessibility the targeted end-user modules have.
• a time line and schedule for the whole project
• references to previous GNOME or accessibility related work.

Note that the goal of the GNOME Foundation for this project is upstream acceptance of the various modifications made during the project.

Please send your proposals to karen AT gnome DOT org with the subject line ”A11y of Documents Bid” by March 15, 2013.

GNOME, which until the Summer of 2012 ran the program without other organizations, is benefiting from the program in measurable ways. 17% of GUADEC 2012 attendees were women (41 woman), compared to only 4% (6 women) among attendees affiliated with GNOME three years earlier at the Desktop Summit 2009. In a recent survey of Free Software newcomers to 12 organizations, 50% of GNOME respondents were women whereas only 6% of the respondents from other organizations were women (with 15% being the next highest concentration). Moreover, GNOME had 22 female respondents, which was a greater number than the 20 female respondents from all of the other organizations combined.

Interns from the most recent completed round of the Outreach Program for Women added to the long list of accomplishments of the 47 women who took part in the program since December 2010.

The dramatic increase in participation of women in GNOME and our experience with the Outreach Program for Women show that there are many women interested in contributing to Free Software and that reaching out to them with targeted opportunities is an effective way to help them get involved. We anticipate the expansion of the program will create a big shift in the demographic of Free Software contributors.

The collaborative application process, during which the applicants are asked to work on a small contribution to the project they are applying to work on with the help from the mentors, has been a cornerstone of the program since its first round. All accepted participants successfully completed the required contribution and showed that they have both passion and skills to work on their chosen projects. Coordinators and mentors from all participating organizations have done a tremendous job in helping scale the program and welcoming all applicants into their communities.

Red Hat is sponsoring seven internships - three for Fedora and one each for Deltacloud, GNOME, JBoss, and OpenStack. "GNOME's Outreach Program for Women has already been effective at increasing participation of women in Free Software, and it's exciting to see it expand to more communities that Red Hat contributes to," said Brian Stevens, CTO and Vice President of Worldwide Engineering at Red Hat. "Red Hat is proud to provide sponsorship, coordination and engineering mentors for this transformative effort."

The Wikimedia Foundation was a popular organization this round. For its applicants, it defined an open and participatory application process, in which applicants added their information to a common wiki page and members of the community provided endorsements and feedback on the wiki pages for individual applicants. "We're delighted to participate in GNOME's Outreach Program for Women," said Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. "The whole point of Wikipedia is that everyone can contribute, and for it to reach its full potential requires participation from everybody, including women. The GNOME outreach program has proven to be a practical solution for engaging women -- one that really works."

Google continues to be a dedicated sponsor of the program, providing general funds for internships beyond the ones individual organizations were able to sponsor. "It is incredibly exciting to watch GNOME's Outreach Program for Women expand so quickly and so well," said Cat Allman, Program Manager at the Open Source Programs Office at Google. "This new involvement by other projects and organizations is a tribute to the skill and dedication of the GNOME team that created the program, particularly Marina Zhurakhinskaya and Karen Sandler, who organize it."

The participants are asked to blog about their work at least once every two weeks during the internships. Their blogs are linked to on the program page and are aggregated on the Women in Free Software planet, in addition to being aggregated on the planets of their respective organizations.

The GNOME Foundation invites Free Software organizations and companies that support Free Software to join the next round which will take place from June to August, and have an application deadline in April. Please let Marina Zhurakhinskaya and Karen Sandler know if your organization is interested or if you have any questions by the end of February.

About GNOME and the GNOME Foundation

The GNOME Project was started in 1997 by two then-university students, Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena Quintero. Their aim: to produce a free (as in freedom) desktop environment. In the 15 years since then, the project has grown into a hugely successful enterprise. Used by millions of people across the world, GNOME is a popular desktop environment for GNU/Linux and UNIX-type operating systems. The desktop has been utilized in successful, large-scale enterprise and public deployments, and the project’s developer technologies are utilized by a large number of popular mobile device manufacturers.

The GNOME Foundation is an organization committed to supporting the advancement of GNOME. It is comprised of hundreds of volunteer developers and industry-leading companies. The Foundation is a member directed 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that provides financial, organizational and legal support to the GNOME project. The GNOME Foundation supports the pursuit of software freedom through the innovative, accessible and beautiful user experience created by GNOME contributors around the world. Find out more about GNOME and the GNOME Foundation through their websites: www.gnome.org / foundation.gnome.org
Become a Friend of GNOME today! Visit this link: http://www.gnome.org/friends/

Media Enquiries

Karen Sandler
GNOME Foundation Executive Director
email: gnome-press-contact@gnome.org
phone: +1-617-206-3947

The GNOME Foundation is excited to announce that GUADEC (the GNOME User and Developer European Conference), will be held in Brno, Czech Republic from August 1-8, 2013.
Brno is an excellent location for the Foundation's primary annual conference and associated hackfests due to its very strong Free Software community and numerous local IT businesses.
The organizing team for GUADEC 2013 will consist of the local GNOME team, the Brno University of Technology, Liberix (a Czech non-profit organization which supports free software in the Czech Republic), and Red Hat Czech.

"We are thrilled to have GUADEC 2013 in Brno and hope to see you all in our amazing city." says Florian Nadge, from the local Brno organizing team.

During this year's bidding process, the GNOME Foundation received a second outstanding proposal. As a result, the Board of Directors is also pleased to announce that GUADEC 2014 will be held in Strasbourg, France. Scheduling earlier will give the Strasbourg local team more time to prepare the conference, which has been asked for by previous organizing teams.

"We are proud to be able to host GUADEC not only in France, 15 years after the first GUADEC in Paris, but also in a city that is central to Europe." says Alexandre Franke, organizer of GUADEC 2014.

"GUADEC has become an essential event for the GNOME community, providing a venue for critical issues to be discussed and new community members to integrate fully," said Karen Sandler, Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation. "Both Brno and Strasbourg promise to provide excellent experiences and I know we will especially benefit from being able to plan more than a year in advance for 2014."

A call for GUADEC 2013 conference papers will be issued early in 2013. Other announcements will also be made at that time with details about the CFP and session tracks.

Find more information

For more information about GUADEC please visit the event website: www.guadec.org
Follow our updates via identi.ca / Twitter at: @guadec

About GNOME and the GNOME Foundation

The GNOME Project was started in 1997 by two then-university students, Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena Quintero. Their aim: to produce a free (as in freedom) desktop environment. In the 15 years since then, the project has grown into a hugely successful enterprise. Used by millions of people across the world, GNOME is a popular desktop environment for GNU/Linux and UNIX-type operating systems. The desktop has been utilized in successful, large-scale enterprise and public deployments, and the project’s developer technologies are utilized by a large number of popular mobile device manufacturers.
The GNOME Foundation is an organization committed to supporting the advancement of GNOME. It is comprised of hundreds of volunteer developers and industry-leading companies. The Foundation is a member directed 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that provides financial, organizational and legal support to the GNOME project. The GNOME Foundation supports the pursuit of software freedom through the innovative, accessible and beautiful user experience created by GNOME contributors around the world. Find out more about GNOME and the GNOME Foundation through their websites: www.gnome.org / foundation.gnome.org
Become a Friend of GNOME today! Visit this link: http://www.gnome.org/friends/

Media Enquiries

Karen Sandler
GNOME Foundation Executive Director
email: gnome-press-contact@gnome.org
phone: +1-617-206-3947

GNOME.Asia Summit was held in Beijing, Ho-Chi-Minh City, Taipei, Bangalore and Hong Kong respectively over the last five years. The Summit's preference is to find new locations each year as we spread GNOME throughout Asia, and we are looking for local organizers to rise to the challenge of organizing an excellent GNOME event. The GNOME.Asia committee will assist in the process, but there is a definitive need for individuals to be actively involved and committed to the planning and delivery of the event.

You can learn more about GNOME.Asia Summit at our official website: http://www.gnome.asia

For those of you who would be interested in hosting the next GNOME.Asia Summit in 2013 you are hereby invited to submit a formal proposal to the gnome-asia-committee-list <at> gnome <dot> org . The deadline for the proposals is October 28, 2012. Please email your proposal to gnome-asia-committee-list <at> gnome <dot> org. We might invite you to present your proposal in more details over our regular IRC meetings, or send you additional questions and requests. Results will be announced by the second week of November, 2012.

The conference will require availability of facilities for one week, including a weekend, during the 2nd quarter of 2013 (between March and June). Final event dates should avoid other key free software conferences or other events that may have conflict and will be confirmed together with other GNOME teams which might get involved.

Key points which proposals should consider, and which will be taken into account when deciding among candidates, are:

• Local community support for hosting the conference.
• Venue details. Information about infrastructure and facilities to hold the conference should be provided.
• Information about how internet connectivity will be managed.
• Lodging choices ranging from affordable housing to nicer hotels, and information about distances between the venue and lodging options.
• The availability of restaurants or the organization of catering on-site, cost of food/soft drinks/beer.
• The availability and cost of travel from major Asian and European cities.
• Local industry and government support.
• Please provide a reasonably detailed budget.
• Provide plans for fundraising at a local level.

Please check the GNOME.Asia Summit check list and howtos when putting together a proposal. Please also feel free to contact gnome-asia-committee-list <at> gnome <dot> org if you have any questions.

Please help to spread the words and we are looking forward to hearing from you soon!

“The GNOME Foundation is proud to present this latest GNOME release, and I would like to congratulate the GNOME community on its achievement”, said Andreas Nilsson, President of the GNOME Foundation. “I am especially happy about our advancements in accessibility and internationalization with this release. GNOME 3.6 is an important milestone in our mission to bring a free and open computing environment to everyone.”

The new version of GNOME 3 will be included in the upcoming releases of partner distributions. “We are excited by the new features in this latest GNOME release, as well as the overall improvement in quality that has been achieved”, said Robyn Bergeron, Fedora Project Leader. “I am confident that Fedora users will enjoy an enhanced experience as a result of the work done by the GNOME community. This new GNOME release includes important new features, like improved accessibility support, the new Boxes application and extended Online Accounts integration. The GNOME community has done a great job for 3.6, and I encourage them to maintain the rapid pace of development that we have witnessed in recent releases.”

The latest version of GNOME 3 was made possible by the ongoing investment in the GNOME project by its partners. Robert McQueen, CTO & Co-Founder of Open Source consultancy Collabora, said: "Collabora is pleased to see the continuing evolution of GNOME with each release raising the bar on usability and quality. GNOME's focus on tight integration moves it closer to the vision of a modern, powerful, and easy-to-use desktop. We remain committed to the GNOME project and its community."

GNOME 3.6 has also been receiving praise from well-known figures in the Free Software world. "GNOME 3.6 provides a stronger, easier to use foundation for the enterprise desktop", said Michael Meeks, Distinguished Engineer, SUSE, "I love the intense polish, bug fixing, attention to detail, and particularly LibreOffice's improved look with the new gtk+ theme".

The new features presented in GNOME 3.6 include a revamped notification system, updated Activities Overview, improved Accessibility support, integrated input sources for using different languages, and enhanced Files and Web applications. It also includes general improvements to the GNOME 3 user experience as well as many smaller enhancements and bug fixes. With 3.6, the GNOME Project continues its focus on improving the GNOME 3 user experience with each release.

Ensuring that all users can take advantage of GNOME 3 is a major focus for the latest GNOME release. New advancements in accessibility support and an integrated input methods system mean that everyone will be able to use GNOME, regardless of their physical abilities or languages.

You can find out more about the changes that are included in GNOME 3.6 in the release notes, which were made available today.

GNOME was started in 1997 by two then-university students, Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena Quintero. 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 around the world, it is the most popular environment for GNU/Linux and UNIX-type operating systems. GNOME's software 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.

The GNOME community is made up of hundreds of contributors from all over the world, many of whom are volunteers. This community is supported by the GNOME Foundation, an independent non-profit organization that provides financial, organizational and legal assistance. The Foundation is a democratic institution that is directed by its members, who are all active GNOME contributors. GNOME and its Foundation works to promote software freedom through the creation of innovative, accessible, and beautiful user experiences.

John Sullivan, the Executive Director of the Free Software Foundation which joins this year as a new sponsor, commented, "The Free Software Foundation is proud to sponsor an internship in GNOME's Outreach Program for Women. The free software movement is about freedom for everyone, but we have a long way to go to make that a reality. This program's past achievements in expanding the community by welcoming and retaining newcomers have moved us closer to that goal, and we can't wait to hear this summer's success stories."

This is also the Conservancy's first participation in the program. It is sponsoring its own participant for the Twisted Project. Twisted maintainer and mentor Jessica McKellar said, "Programs like this encourage free and open source communities to reflect on how to be more welcoming and supportive of people of all backgrounds. The success of the GNOME Outreach Program for Women has been tremendously inspiring; I am pleased that Twisted is joining it in tackling stereotypes in open source head-on this summer while working with our new contributors on some exciting projects."

Previous rounds of the program have been very successful, and have helped in other mentorship and outreach efforts of the project. When GNOME started the current Outreach Program for Women two years ago, it had an initial list of nine mentors from eight projects who were eager to help with the program. Connecting newcomers with mentors who can guide them in their initial contributions proved to be the most important aspect of the outreach effort. For that reason, GNOME recently moved the list of mentors that was built up for the Outreach Program for Women to be a part of the GNOME Love initiative. There are now 37 mentors from 22 projects who any newcomer can contact any time throughout the year in this ever-growing list. The GNOME team also started a page on the Google Summer of Code wiki that contains links to such lists of mentors in many free software organizations. That page currently has 15 organizations. In addition to being a general resource to point students looking for an organization to join to, the list is also used to spread the word about Google Summer of Code and mentorship opportunities among technical women groups at many universities.

The Outreach Program for Women demonstrated that an initial contribution to the project by an applicant increases their involvement with the project, prepares them for the work during the internship period, and serves as an important selection criteria. This year, GNOME also required the students applying for Google Summer of Code in GNOME to make a contribution to the project they are applying to work on, not just to supply a link to a bug they fixed in any free software project. As a result, all successful applicants demonstrated their ability to work on the project they proposed and discussed their proposal with their potential mentor.

The GNOME community is very proud of the accomplishments of the last round's Outreach Program for Women participants, which include the following:

• Kasia Bondarava committed Belarusian translations for 35 GNOME modules. With her help, Belarusian translation coverage went from 67% to 88%, making Belarusian a new officially supported language. She also made a comprehensive comparison of different translator tools and advocated for better translator comments.
• Christy Eller has tremendously improved the web development process in GNOME and created the new Friends of GNOME pages.
• Susanna Huhtanen created comprehensive developer documentation about writing GNOME applications in JavaScript.
• Patricia Santana Cruz added support for sharing videos and images with different online services, improved hotplug connection of camera devices, and added recorded time when making a video in the Cheese webcam application.
• Sophia Yu ported Swell Foop game from JavaScript to Vala, completely reworking its implementation, and updated several other games to use new GNOME APIs.

The detailed accomplishments of all 11 program participants can be found at https://live.gnome.org/GnomeWomen/OutreachProgram2011/Accomplishments

Over three quarters of the women involved in the program have stayed connected to the GNOME community. Better still, Outreach Program for Women participants have a strong tradition of becoming mentors in GNOME. Luciana Fujii Pontello and Ekaterina Gerasimova mentored Google Summer of Code and Outreach Program for Women participants in previous rounds. Tiffany Antopolski, Anita Reitere and Srishti Sethi mentored Google Code-In participants. This round, Christy Eller will co-mentor a Web Development intern and Tiffany Antopolski will mentor four Documentation interns, three of whom will be working on Developer Documentation along with Tiffany. Many former participants have also presented at free software conferences and local events to raise awareness about GNOME and their work. Many have helped with the outreach program by spreading the word about it, improving the materials available about the program, and guiding new applicants.

The Outreach Program for Women is organized by Marina Zhurakhinskaya, with help and support from Karen Sandler, Rosanna Yuen and the GNOME Board of Directors. The essential work is done by the program’s mentors in helping the applicants and eventual participants contribute to their projects. For more information about the Outreach Program for Women, visit http://projects.gnome.org/outreach/women

GNOME was started in 1997 by two then-university students, Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena Quintero. 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 environment for GNU/Linux and UNIX-type operating systems. GNOME's software has been utilized in successful, large-scale enterprise and public deployments, and the project’s developer technologies are utilized in a large number of popular mobile devices.

The GNOME community is made up of hundreds of contributors from all over the world, many of whom are volunteers. This community is supported by the GNOME Foundation, an independent non-profit organization that provides financial, organizational and legal assistance. The Foundation is a democratic institution that is directed by its members, who are all active GNOME contributors. GNOME and its Foundation works to promote software freedom through the creation of innovative, accessible, and beautiful user experiences.

Matthias Clasen, who oversaw the completion of the release, said: “The GNOME Release Team is proud to present this latest release of GNOME 3. The GNOME project has been delivering major improvements with every release since 3.0, and our emphasis on feature-driven development is yielding excellent results. The new version includes some significant new features, as well as many smaller enhancements. In all, 3.4 is a great leap forward for GNOME 3 and we hope that our users enjoy it.”

New features being introduced in GNOME 3.4 include a new documents search facility, smooth scrolling, new application menus, video calling, and Windows Live online account integration.

GNOME's applications have received significant updates for this release. The GNOME web browser, which is now known as Web, has a beautiful new interface for 3.4, as well as significant performance improvements. Documents and Contacts, both of which integrate with online accounts, have also received updated interfaces and new features. These application enhancements are the result of a major development drive which is in the process of creating a new suite of modern and stylish GNOME 3 applications.

3.4 takes the quality of GNOME 3 to a new level, and includes a huge number of smaller changes and refinements. There are updated interface components, a much more polished visual theme, better hardware support, a multitude of bug fixes and many other minor improvements. This all adds up to a major step forward in the quality of the GNOME 3 user experience. A new GNOME initiative, called "Every Detail Matters" has been instrumental in accelerating this enhancement drive.

You can find out more about the changes that are included in GNOME 3.4 in the release notes, which were made available today.

GNOME 3.4 has been already been greeted with enthusiasm. Jos Poortvliet, openSUSE community manager said, “openSUSE congratulates the GNOME community on another milestone in the 3.0 series. It is great to see how the innovative vision underlying GNOME 3 is showing more and more with each release. GNOME forms an important part of the openSUSE distribution and we look forward to shipping this as part of our next release!”

GNOME was started in 1997 by two then-university students, Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena Quintero. 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 environment for GNU/Linux and UNIX-type operating systems. GNOME's software 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.

The GNOME community is made up of hundreds of contributors from all over the world, many of whom are volunteers. This community is supported by the GNOME Foundation, an independent non-profit organization that provides financial, organizational and legal assistance. The Foundation is a democratic institution that is directed by its members, who are all active GNOME contributors. GNOME and its Foundation works to promote software freedom through the creation of innovative, accessible, and beautiful user experiences.

Official screenshot packs of the release are available to download.