The GNOME Foundation advisory board is a vehicle for free software-friendly organizations and companies to communicate with the board of directors and help the directors guide the overall direction of GNOME. Based in Spain, Igalia is a company which has been using GNOME technologies and contributing back by getting involved within the community.

“GNOME has been always our main development technology; we first used it for creating a free development framework called Fisterra, and have been progressively increasing our involvement in the project and its strong community since then, contributing with code, documentation, and supporting different GNOME events and initiatives”, said Juan José Sánchez Penas, co-founder of Igalia, who will sit on the board as Igalia’s representative, “We are very pleased to become part of the advisory board, and will try to contribute as much as possible with ideas, work and enthusiasm, always keeping in mind the goal we share with the rest of the community members: making GNOME even better.”

“Igalia has succeeded in identifying a weak point in the GNOME infrastructure – automation of GNOME build and testing – and has pushed the effort from inside the community to fix this problem”, added Vincent Untz, director of the GNOME Foundation and member of the GNOME release team. “Joining the advisory board was the next logical step for a company supporting GNOME and involved in its community, and we are excited to welcome Igalia as an advisory board member. The presence of Igalia and other GNOME-friendly industry leaders, companies and organizations on the advisory board is a tribute to the excellent work of GNOME contributors who produce a top-notch free software desktop environment.”

“This is an important step for Igalia because it consolidates our commitment with GNOME. We have been working with the project for years and now we would like to collaborate with this part of the community”, said Alejandro García Castro, co-founder of Igalia, who will also sit on the board as representative, “Igalia’s goal is to help have a strong community that could get as much collaboration and people around the technology as possible. GNOME is one of the key technologies in the free software world and supporting it as a member of the advisory board is another way to help the free software community.”

About Igalia

Igalia is a company from the south-western Europe (Galicia, Spain), specialized in development of innovative free software technologies and solutions.

Igalia has been increasing its involvement in the GNOME community since its foundation more than five years ago, contributing with code and documentation to various components and applications, and sponsoring and organizing different GNOME events, including international conferences.

In May 2003, the Fisterra project, a framework for developing business applications using GNOME, was published by Igalia. The company has also helped public administrations to increase use of free software and GNOME, and developed or evolved different pieces of software that were required to allow this adoption.

During the last two years, Igalia has applied all its previous experience on free software, Fisterra, and GNOME to the mobile market, performing several projects for relevant international companies.

More information about Igalia can be found at: www.igalia.com.

About GNOME and the GNOME Foundation

GNOME is a free-software project whose goal is to develop a complete, and easy to use desktop for Linux and Unix-based operating systems. GNOME also includes a complete development environment to create new applications. It is released twice a year on a regular schedule.

The GNOME desktop is used by millions of people around the world. GNOME is a standard part of all leading Linux and Unix distributions, and is popular with both large existing corporate deployments and millions of small business and home users worldwide.

Comprised of hundreds of volunteer developers and industry-leading companies, the GNOME Foundation is an organization committed to supporting the advancement of GNOME. The Foundation is a member directed, non-profit organization that provides financial, organizational and legal support to the GNOME project and helps determine its vision and roadmap.

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

Contacts for the media

  • Igalia S.L.
    Juan José Sánchez Penas (A Coruña, Galicia, Spain)
    Email: info@igalia.com
    Phone: +34 981913991

    GNOME Foundation Press Officer
    Jeff Waugh (Sydney, Australia)
    Email: gnome-press-contact@gnome.org
    Mobile: +61 423 989 818