BOSTON, Mass. – November 25, 2003 – The third annual GNOME Summit wrapped up yesterday, drawing a record number of GNOME developers to the NYLXS Education Center at Kings Games, and Brooklyn College in New York City.
The GNOME Summit is an intensive working laboratory where members of the GNOME project get together to discuss development issues and demonstrate their work. The summit gives developers from around the globe,who work together via the Internet, a chance to meet face-to-face, accelerating the development and planning work that will lead to future GNOME innovations. Accessibility, quality assurance and usability initiatives were among the many topics covered during the conference.
“GNOME developers have two gatherings a year,” said Timothy Ney, executive director of the GNOME Foundation. “We meet in Europe at GUADEC and in the United States and the GNOME Summit. Meeting together helps us focus and accelerate our work on the GNOME desktop and developer platform. The dedicated volunteers who helped put together the GNOME Summit deserve a very big congratulations for the success ofthis year’s gathering.”
The GNOME Summit featured three days of sessions, as well as a keynote by Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation. More than 120 GNOME developers attended.
One highlight of the event was the announcement that the GNOME Foundation is launching first-ever opensource desktop integration bounty hunt.
“The goal of this contest is to help improve the level of integration between some of the core components ofthe Linux desktop,” said Havoc Pennington, former GNOME Foundation board member and systems developer, desktop/UI tech lead at Red Hat. “Our specific aim is to improve the experience of collaboration in the desktop environment. We believe that communicating and working with other people is not simply a function of a single application that sits in a rectangular window on your screen, but is one of the primary functions of a computer.”
A number of specific tasks have been set out in the Desktop Integration Bounty Hunt, each carrying its own cash value. More information on the bounty can be found at www.gnome.org/bounties.
The next gathering of GNOME developers and users will be at GUADEC, which will be held in Kristiansand, Norway in late June. More information on GUADEC can be found at www.guadec.org.
About GNOME
GNOME is a free software project that is developing a complete, easy to use desktop for GNU/Linux (more commonly known as Linux), BSD, Solaris, HP-UX and a variety of other Unix and Unix-like operating systems. The GNOME desktop is used by millions of people around the world. More than 700 computer developers, including over 100 full-time, paid developers, contribute their time and effort to the project.
About the GNOME Foundation
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 provides organizational, financial and legal support to the GNOME project and helps determine its vision and roadmap. GNOME is an entirely free user environment for desktops, networked servers and portable Internet devices. The modern architecture and design of GNOME includes a technically advanced application development platform and a powerful end-user desktop environment. Major leading software industry and computer manufacturers support the GNOME development effort, which is led by a worldwide community of volunteers. More information on GNOME is available at www.gnome.org.