GNOME Annual Report 2010

Overview of Quarterly Reports 2010

GNOME Board of Directors, Membership & Elections

Brian Cameron & Tobias Mueller

The GNOME Foundation started the year with 348 members, and ended with 351, peaking in quarter 2 with 382.

The GNOME Board of Directors in 2010 saw Luchas Rocha & Behdad Esfahbod step down in early 2010 who were subsequently replaced by Jorge Castro & Paul Cutler. Elections for the new board ended June 23, 2010. The new board: Brian Cameron, Emily Chen, Paul Cutler, Og Maciel, Germán Póo-Caamaño, Andreas Nilsson, and Bastien Nocera. On March 31, 2010 GNOME 2.3 was released, while GNOME 3 was pushed back to April 2011.

GNOME Foundation received $10,000 grant from Mozilla for accessibility.

Hired a part-time System Administrator, Christer Edwards.

GNOME Foundation & KDE announced that the 2011 Desktop Summit will be held in Berlin, Germany, August 6-12

The LiMO Foundation became a member of the GNOME Foundation’s Advisory Board and the GNOME Foundation will become an Industry Liaison Partner for the LiMo Foundation. LWN and the GNOME Foundation reached an agreement to offer an LWN subscription to every Friend of GNOME subscriber!

Finances

Release Team

Vincent Untz

Main focus of the beginning of 2010 was the final push for the release of GNOME 2.3 on March 29, 2010, the final release of GNOME 2.x. Two subsequent stable releases followed, GNOME 2.31 & 2.32.While GNOME 3 was delayed to April, 2011.

New module proposals for GNOME 3 were clutter and gnome-shell, as well as various applications: deja-dup (a backup tool), mousetrap (an accessibility tool to control the mouse cursor), pdfmod (an application to modify PDF files), rygel (a collection of DLNA services) and simple-scan (a scanning tool)

Also exploring re-organization of module sets which have become unwieldy and given the impression that Bindings are second-class citizens to the Platform. Moreover the encouragement of a strong ecosystem of applications vs integrating all applications into the GNOME ecosystem is paramount.

Monitoring of the development of GNOME 3 has continued as well as new APIs like GSettings and GDBus, landed in our libraries, and the version development versions of GTK+ 3 were released; this triggered the beginning of the migration to those new technologies for various modules.

Since GNOME 3 is usable on various operating systems low-level integration is needed to offer good support for various hardware and multimedia. As a result the release team created the portability matrix which collects information on what is needed to port GNOME as well as the status of various ports currently in development.

Also continued reorganization of various modulesets, focusing on adding libraries that do not offer API/ABI stability while still focusing on stability overall. The decision to make GNOME to encourage a rich ecosystem of applications around gnome vs tying them all into direct integration meant that some modules were turned down (deja-dup, pdfmod, simple-scan) while others (gnome-color-manager, Rygel and gnomee-icon-theme-symbolic) were accepted. Caribou will also replace gok as the on-screen keyboard, and last but not least, the GNOME Shell was officially approved for integration.

System Administration

Paul Cutler

Christer Edwards who joined the Sysadmin team in early 2010 was later hired as a part-time sysadmin, and is now considered a liaison between the main community & sysadmin team. Ray Wang also joined the team this year. A new server (donated by Jeff Schroeder, also of the Sysadmin team) was deployed, and jabber.gnome.org was upgraded to Openfire.

Defined procedures for server downtime/maintenance, instead of doing them ‘as needed’ without public notice. Procedures for maintenance such as “gotchas” are now available and all future downtime will be announced 48 hrs in advance at the blog: http://news.gnome.org and on the devel-announce-list@gnome.org mailing list.

Implemented ‘listadmin’ for moderating mailman queues, dramatically improving efficiency of the Moderators Team and allowing them to moderate all gnome mailing lists in under 15 minutes. Monitoring solution now includes 200+ checks with plans to make info public in Q1 of 2011.

Configured HTTPS Strict Transport Security for all GNOME domains requirng SSL. Supported browsers will now auto-connect to SSL, bypassing http entirely. Supported domains are: bugzilla, mango, live (wiki), mail (mailman), nagios, snowy and RT.

GNOME Events

Stormy Peters

Ben Konrath and Fernando Herrera represented GNOME and provided GNOME training at IDLELO 4 (Fourth African Conference on FOSS and the Digital Commons). Subsequently a mailing list (developing-world-list@gnome.org) was started to foster discussion & promotion of free software in the developing world.

The Hague proved a great venue for the hugely successful GUADEC conference held there July 26-30. Planning began in earnest for the release of GNOME 3, which was announced to have slipped to April 2011. Travel sponsorships were awarded for 60 attendees.

GUADEC 2010 will be held in The Hague, Netherlands July 26-30, 2010. Neary Consulting will hold a training session for $1500 on: Development tools, including source control, profiling, IDE integration, and maybe a word on mobile development environments; Overview of the GNOME Platform; Best technical practices for GNOME development - a practical half-day development workshop where people have an assignment to accomplish; and Social issues of free software development - working with the upstream community, using community mailing lists effectively, evaluating risks associated with community governance, etc. GNOME Foundation will earn 40% and Neary Consulting will earn 60% .

The GNOME.Asia Summit was co-hosted with COSCUP, was a success with over 60 speakers, 977 participants, 25 sponsors, 10 news outlets, 10 exhibitors, and 100 volunteers. A Taiwan GNOME Users Group is in the process of being formed.

Jonh Wendell and Antonio Fernandes represented GNOME this year at ENSOL 2010.

Fernando Herrera and Benjamin Konrath were sponsored to conduct GNOME Training at Idlelo.

Accessibility

Bryen Yunashko

A number of team members travelled to San Diego, California in March 2010 to attend the first ever a11y hackfest there, as well as manning GNOME’s booth at CSUN. Thanks to Eitan Isaacson for organizing it and to Willie Walker who led many of the sessions.

Going forward the team intends to focus on accessibility issues in GNOME 3/GNOME Shell and working with projects such as Project Possibility, HFOSS.org developing strong relations with students and users as they develop their skills with accessible technology

• Daniel Garcia has been implementing the AtkText text interface in Evince and Poppler

• Mario Sanchez continues to work on adding full accessibility support to WebKitGtk

• Emmanuele Bassi integrated Cally into Clutter beginning with version 1.4
• Cally's creator, Alejandro Piñeiro, has also been working with Dan Winship, GNOME Shell developer
• David Teyssiere has been collaborating with Joaquim Rocha on OCRFeeder development
• Joseph Scheuhammer continued his work on GNOME Shell's built-in magnifier

• Mike Gorse made progress on AT-SPI2, the D-Bus-based implementation of AT-SP
• Javier Hernandez, Juanje Ojeda, and Alejandro Leiva have nearly finished with the implementation of the new profiles system they have been working on for Orca
• Joanmarie Diggs added support for a system voice into Orca.
• Fernando Herrera made many improvements to DOTS, GNOME's braille translator; ported gnome-mag from Bonobo to D-Bus and from Gtk+ 2 to Gtk+ 3.

The Guadalinfo Accessible Projects of the Junta de Andalucía in Spain, was a tremendous help, providing dozens of bug fixes, for which the Accessibility Team is extremely appreciative.

Art & Usability Teams

Hylke Bons, Calum Benson, Allan Day, Andreas Nilsson

All designs were moved to a public repository (http://gitorious.org/gnome-design) which can be accessed using Sparkleshare (a file sharing program emphasizing collaboration for engineers, which was one of many tools developed at the Usability Hackfest in London) rather than Dropbox. Also started holding weekly design ‘office hours’ on #gnome-design. Lapo Calamandrei and Jakub Steiner finished off the new icon themes for GNOME 2.3 which have been under development for some time now.

At the GNOME UX Hackfest in London, Garrett LeSage, Jakub Steiner and Hylke Bons took the first steps towards a new visual style & theme for GNOME 3. Thomas Wood and Benjamin Berg took the first steps to create the technical foundation on which the new designs will rely. The hackfest was one of the largest ever with more than 30 attendees.

A new project called Design Hub was spawned at the GNOME UX hackfest, thanks in large part to Máirín Duffy of Red Hat and Robby Clements & Josh Adams of Isotope 11 (http://live.gnome.org/UsabilityProject/Whiteboard/DesignHub)

Andreas Nilsson, Allan Day and Hylke Bons participated in a Ubuntu Developer Summit session titled 'Working Better with Upstream', where they had a productive exchange about the User Experience Advocates project. A subsequent discussion on this topic took place on the GNOME Usability mailing list and at GUADEC.

Design concepts for Epiphany, Nautilus & Evolution were created, after being discussed at GUADEC. The usability team later produced and sought feedback on some of the high-level design concepts for Nautilus and Evolution.

Nautilus was redesigned by Hylke Bons, Garrett Le Sage, Lapo Calamanderi Allan Day, as originally discussed at GUADEC, including layout & icons. Cosimo Cecchi implemented designs for a new sidebar and connect to server dialog.

Vinicius Depizzol worked on the new GNOME and GUADEC websites, while Andreas Nilsson released a new banner for GNOME 2.3 and redid the GNOME Store’s layout.

Symbolic icons were merged into GTK+ and gnome-icon-theme updates

Design and usability work began on the new GNOME 3 Control Center, gnome-shell, theme and wallpapers, as well as initial GNOME 3 UI patterns.

The Art Team produced the website for the GNOME 3 T-Shirt design competition.

A number of IRC meetings were held in November to advance production of the GNOME 3 Human Interface Guidelines, logs of which are available.

Bugsquad

Andre Klapper

Updated per bugzilla

Documentation

Shaun McCance

Four Mallard documents were completed for GNOME 2.3, while preparing for the coming GNOME 3. Shaun McCance hosted the Desktop Help Summit a small gathering of key documentation folks from GNOME, KDE, XFCE, Fedora, and Ubuntu.

Shaun McCance and Richard Johnson proposed a common place for documentation to be installed as well as a standard reference format. This will help allow third party developers to integrate documentation with the desktop, and allow distributors an easier way to both create & manage documentation. Afterwards a planning session for the upcoming Mallard-based help files for GNOME 3.0, where internet connectivity & managment were the focus.

Continued planning GNOME desktop help in Mallard, and Phil Bull started writing first desktop help files, with help from Cristopher Thomas. Others worked on help files for Banshee, Gedit, Rythmbox, Evince, Color Code, & Tomboy.

Held an all-day BOF event at GUADEC to map out documentation for GNOME 3, where Anjuta documentation and developer documentation in general was discussed.

Desktop help has been progressing thanks in large part to April Gonzales and Cristopher Thomas, though some parts are still a moving target.

Paul Cutler finished the Banshee help. Milo Casagrande began work on the Rhythmbox help and updated the Empathy help. Phil Bull created new help for Evince.

Two OPW interns (Natalia Andrea Ruz Leiva &Tiffany Antopolski) worked hard on GNOME 3 documentation. As part of GSoC Jason Lo worked on converting the Character Map help to Mallard.

A rewrite of Evolution documentation is in progress (by Andre Klapper, Barbara Tobias, Phil Bull and April Gonzales), for which Andre has done planning, as discussed at GUADEC.

Phil Bull began work on the new documentation style guide, and converted the usability team's new HIG material to Mallard.

GNOME Mobile

Dave Neary

Intel & Nokia have announced the MeeGo project (based on GNOME Mobile), with plans to release the initial source. Nokia proposed enabling porting of GNOME applications to MeeGo.

Localization

Petr Kovar

The Coordination team once headed by two spokespeople has been changed to be led by a larger team, and other teams must now receive the approval of two Coordination team members.

Changes in the structure of the translation teams ended with the departure of the Slovak team leader. It was also discussed whether non-legal translators should translate legal notices & licenses.

Andre Klapper represented the GNOME Translation Project at the AGM meeting at GUADEC, where he gave a talk on "Identifying software projects and translation teams in need" providing an overview of the data which was gathered & combined from Damned Lies, GNOME Bugzilla and other relevant sources.

Gil Forcada conducted the GNOME i18N Survey by sending a questionnaire on August 13 to every GTP language coordinator, and collecting answers for two weeks. Out of 120 coordinators, 36 answered. Gil subsequently presented the results A brief analysis of the results were included.

GTP language teams have been busy worked hard to provide l10n support for the new GNOME stable release 2.32.

Discussion on translation of schema files with separate gettext domains/catalogs occurred, as well as the price of splitting up smaller translation teams vs the eventual need to make significant changes to i18n infrastructure.

The team prefers to work on l10n support within current i18n and SCM infrastructure. Translators were most concerned about quality, string freeze periods & release schedules, as well as expecting developers/maintainers to integrate material within a suitable, timely manner. Proposals were made to require DL infrastructure on l10n.gnome.org, auto-commit translations to repos not hosted on git.gnome.org & generally specify l10n requirements for official modules more precisely.

Marketing

Paul Cutler

The press team welcomed Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier as its new team lead, and Andreas Nilsson launched the new GNOME Store at: http://www.zazzle.com/gnome. Lucas Rocha & Andreas also helped the sysadmin team with fundraising for gnome.org

Finally GNOME Journal saw two releases in the first quarter. Issue 18 focused on multimedia with reviews of PiTiVi and Banshee, while Issue 19 was a standard issue and included an interview with Juan José Sánchez Penas of the GNOME Advisory Board.

Marketing team kicked off Q2 with a hackfest in Zaragoza, Spain. Focusing on creating & delivering videos and othe rmaterials to promote GNOME 3. Stormy Peters later initiated a review to determine what worked best there. Travel sponsorships for 8 attendees were provided.

A new t-shirt design proposed by Brian Cameron was worked on as well as promoting the GNOME page on Facebook and the GNOME Foundation was granted non-profit status on Youtube thanks to Bryen Yunashko.

Womens’ Outreach

Marina Zhurakhinskaya

Several women from GNOME participated in a track on women in free software at the Libre Planet conference hosted by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) March 19-21 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The first ever women’s dinner was held at GUADEC with 15 in attendance. Marina gave short presentations to the GNOME Advisory board and Annual General Meeting re: OPW efforts.

GNOME encouraged women to apply to Google Summer of Code (GSoC), 5 of whom eventually did so. Of those five, two (Christina Boumpouka & Emil Elvin Yildiz) were eventually selected. Christina worked on the GNOME-Shell, while Emel unfortunately dropped out of the program.

The GNOME Foundation allocaed $25,000 towards the new Outreach Program for Women, which saw its first round begin December 15, 2010, running through March 15, 2011. Eight strong candidates were selected, sponsored by Google (4), GNOME Foundation (3) and Collabora (1):

Plans for the next round (May - August 2011) are in the works, with plans to run OPW concurrently with GSoC with the same deadlines for application, in the hopes of attracting more candidates.

Stormy Peters attended the first Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing (Sept 28-Oct 2, 2010), and organized the first Free & Open Source Software booth & participated in the Open Source Track. Heidi Ellis was also in attendance (she is working on Caribou at Western New England College as part of GNOME’s a11y and HFOSS program)

Máirín Duffy designed an outreach program as part of the FSF Womens’ Caucus “Bringing free software to girls and young women” with Deborah Nicholson and the Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts & Red Hat. A 10 week course, teaching girl scouts about free & open source software was taught in Boston, Massachusetts, October - December, 2010. The excellent handout materials can be downloaded and disseminated by anyone interested from: http://mairin.wordpress.com/2011/01/26/girl-scouts’-digital-media-course-materials which can be used for teaching similar courses by anyone interested.