BOSTON, Mass — March 04, 2008 — The GNOME Foundation and the Mozilla Foundation announced today that they will increase their collaboration to improve developer support and user experience of desktop applications on GNU/Linux and other free software systems.
The partnership has three aspects:
- The Mozilla Foundation will join the GNOME Foundation advisory board, helping set the long-term direction of the project.
- Mozilla reaffirms its commitment to integrating with the GNOME platform for the XUL development platform, and for Mozilla Firefox.
- The Mozilla Foundation announces a grant of $10,000 to the GNOME Foundation, to be spent on the improvement of the accessibility of the GNOME desktop environment via the “GNOME Outreach Program: Accessibility” program.
“GNOME and GTK+ have been our environment of choice for years. As we move from desktops into the mobile market, we will continue to work with GNOME to ensure that Mozilla and Firefox users on GNOME platforms will have the best experience possible”, according to Mozilla evangelist Chris Blizzard.
“Mozilla and GNOME people have been collaborating for nearly a decade. Together we’ve been able to make contributions to the foundation of each other’s platform – from GTK+ to Cairo to browser desktop integration”, says GNOME Foundation Director Vincent Untz. “But the real story is about two organizations sharing many common values including our shared commitment to innovation and bringing freedom to our user base.”
Both projects actively support open standards and formats. Mozilla contributes to the W3C HTML5 working group and WHATWG working group, in order to ensure an open web platform for all future Internet users. GNOME is a member of the ODF Alliance and works with other desktop projects under the freedesktop.org umbrella to offer the best user experience to desktop users. These involvements aim to create space for innovation and to give freedom to the user.
About GNOME and the GNOME Foundation
GNOME is a free-software project whose goal is to develop a complete, accessible 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 GNU/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 andfoundation.gnome.org.
About Mozilla Foundation
Established in July 2003, the Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization whose mission is to promote choice and innovation on the Internet through the Mozilla project. Mozilla is a global community dedicated to building free, open source products and technologies that improve the online experience for people everywhere. We work in the open with a highly disciplined, transparent and cooperative development process. The Mozilla Corporation organizes the development and marketing of Mozilla products as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation. The Mozilla Foundation is based in Mountain View, California. Learn more about the Mozilla Foundation atwww.mozilla.org/foundation.