The day began with our second keynote of the conference, by Matt Dalio from Endless. Matt spoke passionately about bringing computers to the billions in the world who lack access to them, and his plans to utilize GNOME technologies to do so. It was an inspiring talk, which got an extremely positive response from the audience. During the talk, the stories of real people who currently don't have access to computers and the internet were told, and Matt challenged the GNOME community to develop our software with their needs in mind.

After the keynote, we once again hit the track rooms for another day of talks.

First up, Emmanuele Bassi spoke about the future of Clutter, while in the other room, Tim-Phillip Müller talked about "What's cooking in GStreamer". Emmanuele talked about the current difficulties experienced by both Clutter and GTK+, and the plan to resolve these by merging them. The plan is to make Clutter internal an internal scene graph for GTK+. Emmanuele also issued a health warning for those searching for slide images on the internet. Since the GTK+ hackfest in April, some progress has been made here.

Tim-Phillip described progress within the GStreamer project. He announced that the 1.2 release will be on time for GNOME 3.10, and that 1.4 will bring fewer new features, but more cleanup, QA, polishing and documentation improvements.

GTK+ was a theme for today's talks. After Emmanuele, Tristan van Berkom spoke about the UI developer experience with Glade/GTKBuilder. One of his key messages: "a good developer experience is one which reduces the steps involved in creating software." He demonstrated his recent work with template widgets. We also heard about new work that will allow drag and drop repositioning of controls, and a demo of this raised a big round of applause. Matthias Clasen also gave a talk on GTK+, and showed the audience how to create a new application using GTK+3. This used the standard documentation which is supplied with GTK+, which provides a straightforward step-by-step tutorial

In one of the last sessions of the day, Benjamin Otte gave his talk, called "GTK: To Infinity and Beyond". He talked more about the plans described in Emmanuele's talk, and spoke about the plans for the future. According to Benjamin, our new GTK+ widgets have well thought out APIs and are well tested. He also spoke about plans to ensure stability in GTK+ in the future.

Wayland was another theme for the day. Robert Bradford gave a talk on Wayland, "the future of Linux graphics". That was followed by a Wayland panel discussion, which included Robert, Owen Taylor and Kristian Høgsberg. Here there was much talk of the future and ongoing work to have GNOME 3 and applications running on the new display manager. Many of the details are being worked out, and GNOME is expected to be running on Wayland in the near future.

Finally, we had the annual GNOME Foundation Annual General Meeting. Karen Sandler (the GNOME Foundation Executive Director) opened by welcoming new Foundation members, and encouraged everyone to attend the question and answer session with the Board of Directors on Sunday.

Reports were given by each of the GNOME teams. Allan Day (design team), the Release Team (Andre Klapper), the Bugsquad (Andre Klapper) accessibility (by Juanjo Marin), localization (Petr Kovar), websites (Andreas Nilsson and Fabiana Simões), the membership committee (also Fabiana Simões), marketing (Emily Gonyere), outreach (Marina Zhurakhinskaya), system administration (Andrea Veri) and documentation (Sinhdu Sundar).

There was lots of interesting news during the presentations...

• Jasper St Pierre filed the most patches again for another year.
• Strasburg is the capital of Europe
• Our outreach efforts are going from strength to strength. GNOME now offers internships for women on behalf of 16 organizations.
• GNOME 3.8 supported a total of 52 languages, thanks to the work of our localization teams.
• Andrea Veri, the GNOME sysadmin, is the web team's favourite person in the whole world (and got a big round of applause).
• In 2012 we received more donations from individuals than in any other year previously.

After that we had presentations from our new treasurer and Karen Sandler. And finally, the annual pants award was presented to Allan Day. We expect to see him wearing them for the rest of the conference.

All images courtesy of Jakub Steiner.

GUADEC 2013, GNOME's annual European Conference, kicked off today in a warm and sunny Brno (Czech Republic). This is the main GNOME event of the year, and there are hundreds of contributors here for 8 days of talks and working events.

Everyone arrived early for the conference opening by Karen Sandler. The venue for this year's conference is the Faculty of Information Technology at the Brno University of Technology. It's a lovely modern setting, integrated into a beautiful old courtyard. Lovely place to be on a sunny day. The rubber ducks floating in the fountain were a big hit.

We also got started to a great piece of news, with Karen announcing that the Linux Foundation has joined the GNOME Advisory Board. Read more details on the news post.

After that, we were off with a day of presentations. First up there was our first keynote, by Ethan Lee, who works on porting indie games to Linux. He spoke about the challenges of porting games to Linux, and how we can help by providing better tools and community support.

Then the presentation tracks got started. We have two tracks this year, with 12 presentations by GNOME contributors on each day.

Allan Day talked about the Future of GNOME 3, while in the other room Colin Walters gave a report no the progress of the OSTree project. Allan spoke about the values and aspirations behind the GNOME project, and its mission to provide software freedom for as many people as possilbe. Then he went on to talk about the progress that has been made on improving the GNOME 3 user experience, as well as next steps that are required to make things even better. In the other room, Colin Walters described how the OSTree project is improving the quality of GNOME software. This initiative means that code commits are booted and tested in a virtual machines just minutes after they have been made. He hopes to get this time delay down to mere seconds in the near future.
Next up, Ekaterina Gerasimova and Sindhu Sundar gave an inspiring talk on getting started in GNOME. We also had an update on the status of the GNOME Web browser by Claudio Saavedra.

After that it was time for lunch, where many of us got a proper Czech meal: goulash and dumplings.

The afternoon included a diverse range of talks. Fabiana Simões spoke about to (and how to not) report usability and user experience bugs. Another talk about design was given by Jakub Steiner, who showed off the process behind his impressive animated 3D mockups.

Lennart Poettering spoke to a very hot and packed auditorium about "Sandboxed applications for GNOME". This was one of the most popular talks of the day. Lennart spoke about the progress to date, and set out a nine point plan for what needs to happen next.

We also had a number of talks on community building and outreach. Flavia Weisghizzi talked about the challenges faced by new contributors. She argued that we need to make women contributors more visible, and that we need to offer more support and mentoring opportunities. She described the fantastic progress that GNOME has made including women in the project: 17%, compared with 5% in Ubuntu and 2.5% in Debian. Sri Ramkrishna spoke about his ongoing outreach efforts. His advice: be sincere, be patient, make complainers into doers by filing bugs and contributing to the project. Meg Ford also gave a talk about outreach, and described here work to build a GNOME group in Chicago.

At the end of the day, Alex Larsson demonstrated his new hi-resolution display support work for GNOME 3. Brian Vibber, who donated a laptop to help with this work, got a round of applause from the audience.

GUADEC 2013 has got off to a fantastic start. There is a great atmosphere here, and lots of new contributors. Expect more posts in the coming days.

This year, we continued the tradition of a yearbook with the GNOME Outreach Program Yearbook 2013. In this book, you will find all participants from the Outreach Program for Women January-April 2013, the Outreach Program for Women June-September 2013 and Summer of Code 2013 . Furthermore, all students and interns who will be at this years GUADEC are highlighted with a badge. Please take the time to get to know our newest contributors!

Download the GNOME Outreach Program Yearbook 2013

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."

Joining the GNOME Advisory Board will give the Linux Foundation the organization a direct voice within the GNOME Project and will enable it to play a greater role in the future of GNOME.

Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation, said "Our mission to promote and advance the Linux kernel is aided by our partnerships with key free software projects. 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 is also a board member of the Linux Foundation said, "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 the entire community."

Read the press release

It's off the IRC channels and mailing lists and into the halls of the Brno University of Technology for over 200 GNOME users and developers this week. GUADEC, GNOME's annual European conference, kicks off today in sunny Brno where members of the GNOME community are convening to discuss and develop GNOME technologies, meeting old friends and make new ones.

GUADEC 2013 will take place August 1 through August 8 with 4 keynotes, 80 presentations and 4 working days of hackfests and BoF (Birds of a Feather) sessions. Stay tuned for our daily digests of the events happening across the conference.

Read more in our press release.

[Image by Jan Symon (Jan Symon) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons]

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.

By Jan Symon (Jan Symon) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Members of the GNOME project are gathering in Brno, Czech Republic, for their annual European conference (GUADEC). The event starts on Thursday 1 August. There will be four core days of presentations, including talks on Linux gaming, Wayland, design, GTK+, documentation, LibreOffice, application sandboxing, and much much more. The full schedule can be found on the GUADEC website.

This is the main GNOME event of the year and, as with every year, is set to be educational, inspiring and a lot of fun.

For those who are already in Brno, a welcome event is being held today Ventana Café between 16:00 and 21:00. This is right across the the street from this year’s venue at the Faculty of Information Technology. Drinks and snacks will be provided, and conference badges will be handed out.

If you won't be at GUADEC this year, don't worry: you can follow all the action online. There will be regular reports on gnome.org (subscribe here). You can also keep track of the conference on Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus. Just follow the GNOME account, and look out for the #guadec hashtag.

One person who we are especially grateful to is Gavin Ferris, who was a particularly generous contributor to the fund raising campaign. We recently spoke to Gavin about his reasons for donating to GNOME.

How long have you been using GNOME, Gavin?

About 6 years ago, I began dual-booting my Windows laptops with Ubuntu, so I first started using GNOME 2 then. I stuck with Ubuntu until about nine months ago, when the whole shopping lens and "We have root" thing made me uneasy about the direction Canonical was heading. I tried a few other distros at that point, and selected Gentoo; now all my development boxes run it with GNU/Linux and Gnome 3.6.3, other than a few headless servers running a stock Debian install.

We're really interested to hear about why you chose to donate to GNOME. Why donate now?

For community-based, open-source development to work smoothly, a number of key frameworks have to exist. The 'desktop' GUI (and supporting ecosystem) is, of course, [one] such key framework. It's vital that a vendor- and distro-independent offering is available in this space which provides: a) a great (i.e., modern and feature-rich) experience to the user, and b) a supportive, structured development platform for the programmer; and I think GNOME fills both roles well...

I believe those of us who can afford to contribute financially—and who value using free and open-source software on a daily basis—should be willing to do so. Also, seen through the, ahem, prism of recent news, GNOME's privacy campaign is timely and its philosophy refreshing. Hence my decision to donate.

Do you have a favorite thing about GNOME?

The shell extensions architecture is cool, and I think it has finessed many of the usability criticisms originally levelled at GNOME 3, without making the overall system too fragmented.

What would you like to see in GNOME in the future?

Two things spring to mind (bear in mind I'm on 3.6.3 - but having read the reviews I think these are still relevant for 3.8):

First, I think it'd be great to offer the user a clear choice about what data gets transmitted by installed software components, across the network and between each other, in a way that is easy to use and proactive. ... such a feature would be an important differentiator unique selling proposition for GNOME. I'm hopeful the proposed privacy enhancements will provide at least some of this functionality.

Second, I think a major issue with GNOME is its lack of an integrated "software-centre" application properly linked into the Activities-view search... I guess this is really kind of a convoluted upvote for GNOME Software :)

Those are the main things I'd like to see in GNOME. But the main thing I'd like to see GNOME in are my phone and tablet! Hey, if Ubuntu can do it...

Thanks Gavin!

Once again we'd like to thank Gavin for his generous donation, as well as taking the time to speak to us.