The GNOME Community is a excited to promote and participate in Software Freedom Day. Around the world, GNOME community members will be celebrating software freedom and the work that GNOME has done to make a free desktop accessible for all.
Software Freedom is about a technology future that we can trust, that is sustainable, and that supports the basic human freedoms. Untrusted electoral systems can lead to civil unrest and a lack of trust in governing bodies. Proprietary data formats can mean lockout to accessing our own information! Software Freedom can be maintained by transparent systems (such as Free and Open Source Software) that are based on open, secure and sustainable standards including data formats and communication protocols.
In addition, software freedom is about making sure that software can be used by all humanity regardless of the language they speak, the amount of money they have or their physical abilities. And this is where GNOME excels. To provide free software to everyone, GNOME is:
Free.
GNOME is Free Software and part of the GNU project, dedicated to giving users and developers the ultimate level of control over their desktops, their software, and their data. Find out more about the GNU project and Free Software at gnu.org.
Usable.
GNOME understands that usability is about creating software that is easy for everyone to use. GNOME’s community of professional and volunteer usability experts have created Free Software’s first and only Human Interface Guidelines, and all core GNOME software is adopting these principles. Find out more about GNOME and usability at the GNOME Usability Project.
Accessible
Free Software is about enabling software freedom for everyone, including users and developers with disabilities. GNOME’s Accessibility framework is the result of several years of effort, and makes GNOME the most accessible desktop for any Unix platform. Find out more at the GNOME Accessibility Project.
International
GNOME is used, developed and documented in dozens of languages, and we strive to ensure that every piece of GNOME software can be translated into all languages. During the last GNOME Development cycle, the GNOME Desktop was translated into over 40 languages!
Developer-friendly
Developers are not tied to a single language with GNOME. You can use C, C++, Python, Perl, Java, and C#, to produce high-quality applications that integrate smoothly into the rest of your UNIX or GNU/Linux (commonly referred to as Linux) desktop.
Organized
GNOME strives to be an organized community, with a foundation of several hundred members, usability, accessibility, and QA teams, and an elected board. GNOME releases are defined by the GNOME Release Team every six months.
Supported
Beyond the worldwide GNOME Community, GNOME is supported by the leading companies using GNU/Linux and UNIX and many free software projects, including Access, Canonical, Debian, Free Software Foundation, HP, Google, IBM, Igalia, Intel, Motorola, Mozilla Foundation, Nokia, Novell, OLPC, Red Hat, Software Freedom Law Center, Sugar Labs and Sun Microsystems. GNOME is proud to be the default Desktop Environment that powers popular distributions including Ubuntu, Fedora and OpenSolaris.
A community
Perhaps more than anything else, GNOME is a worldwide community of volunteers who hack, translate, design, QA, and generally have fun together.
Please join the GNOME community in celebrating the achievements the free software world has made.