> I'm still missing a few updates, but here is the Q3 report so far. I'd
Looks really good to me. I still think we could promote the GNOME
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> GNOME
> Quarterly Report
>
> *GNOME Foundation*
> Providing a Free Desktop for the World
> July, August, September 2009
>
> Hi GNOME Foundation members and fans,
>
> Q3 is always a big quarter for the GNOME Foundation and this one was
> bigger and better than usual. During Q3 we had our annual GUADEC, GNOME
> Users and Developers Conference, which we held jointly with Akademy in
> the first ever Gran Canaria Desktop Summit! The co-located event was a
> huge success with lots of good sessions in both the Akademy tracks as
> well as the GUADEC tracks and lots of good cross desktop talks and
> conversations that will lead to more collaboration throughout the year.
> We hope to co-locate again in the future!
>
> GNOME 2.28 was released in September. Quite a few products had
> significant updates in preparation for GNOME 3.0 - including a release
> of GNOME Shell! - and a couple of changes were made to improve usability
> such as a different default toolbar and turning off menu and button
> icons by default. During Q4 the release team will decide if GNOME 3.0
> will be in March or November of 2010!
>
> There were a few structural changes in how things work in the GNOME
> project. For example, we created a new press team, a subproject under
> the marketing team focused on press relationships and press releases, as
> well as things like monthly meetings by the Bugsquad team.
>
> The GNOME Accessibility team has been hard at work preparing for GNOME
> 3.0 by working on accessibility in projects like GNOME Shell, Clutter
> and Banshee as well as working on new tools like an onscreen keyboard.
>
> GNOME Mobile had an awesome quarter with great attendance at OSiM Mobile
> by GNOME Mobile member companies and the release of products that use
> GNOME Mobile technologies like Moblin 2.0 and the Nokia N900. In
> addition, LiMO announced that they will soon release phones that use
> GNOME technologies!
>
> Our marketing team has been hard at work. Friends of GNOME can now make
> monthly contributions in any amount they'd like and we've raised $23,415
> so far this year! Their good work will continue and get an extra boost
> with a marketing hackfest in November sponsored by Novell and Google.
>
> Speaking of hackfests, next quarter will be a busy one with lots of good
> work being done in preparation for GNOME 3.0. We are planning hackfests
> around the Boston Summit, one for marketing, Zeitgeist and WebKitGTK+
> plus more in the beginning of next year in areas like accessiblity and
> video.
>
> Read on to hear what GNOME teams have accomplished in Q3 and what they
> are planning for Q4!
>
> Best wishes and happy hacking! Enjoy your GNOME desktop!
>
> *Stormy Peters*
> /Executive Director,
> GNOME Foundation/
>
>
> Release Team
>
>
> Vincent Untz
>
> For the release team, the third quarter started with the last 2.26
> release, which went out on July 1st. The focus then quickly became the
> 2.27 development cycle that would lead to GNOME 2.28.
>
> Five GNOME 2.27 releases were published during those three months, and
> the usual freezes (API/ABI, feature, user interface, string) were
> applied to help the community focus on getting a high quality release.
> In July, a meeting was held where one of the main topics was the new
> modules that would be included in GNOME 2.28.
>
> This release contains a good balance between integration of pre-existing
> applications (gnome-bluetooth), great new tools (gnome-disk-utility),
> and new external dependencies that will allow developers to provide even
> more great features (seed, webkit, DeviceKit-disks, libchamplain,
> libgdata). GNOME 2.28.0 went out as scheduled on September 23rd.
>
> In parallel of all those releases, we monitored the progress of GNOME on
> a few goals like, for example, the cleanup of modules to stop using
> deprecated libraries and APIs.
>
> We also modified the release schedule to move the module proposal period
> and the decision on module proposals earlier in the cycle, in response
> to feedback from some maintainers and also to help evaluate earlier what
> GNOME 3.0 would consist of.
>
> Looking ahead, the release team already has a good amount of work
> planned for the next quarter: there will of course be a first update to
> GNOME 2.28, with 2.28.1 which will be released at the end of October,
> and also the first versions of the 2.29 releases. A good number of new
> modules were proposed for inclusion during the 2.29 development cycle,
> and discussion around those proposals will help the release team decide
> what will be going in during a meeting at the beginning of November.
> Another meeting in November will be dedicated to GNOME 3.0: we will
> evaluate if 3.0 can be ready for March 2010 or if waiting six more
> months is needed to ensure that 3.0 is of high quality, as expected by
> our community and our users.
>
>
> Bugsquad Team
>
>
> Andre Klapper
>
> In August GNOME Bugzilla was updated to version 3.4 by Max-Kanat
> Alexander with huge help of Olav Vitters and Owen Taylor. The previous
> version was several years old and did not receive any upstream security
> fixes anymore. It also had several GNOME-only enhancements that
> partially have been ported to 3.4 though some regressions remained. The
> server hardware was also improved so timeout issues when running complex
> queries do not happen anymore.
>
> From July to September, 9227 reports (bugs + feature requests) were
> opened and 8751 were closed. Top bug closers were Akhil Laddha (484
> reports), Fabio Durán Verdugo (455), Andre Klapper (269), Bastien Nocera
> (261) and Matthew Barnes (251). Top bug reporters were Pedro
> Villavicencio (136 reports), Owen Taylor (116), Bastien Nocera (99),
> Colin Walters (92) and Matthias Clasen (87).
>
> The GNOME Bugsquad has started to have monthly meetings to discuss
> policies and issues. The new policy to handle old forgotten reports is
> in place and has been revised after feedback from developers.
> UNCONFIRMED bug reports (but not enhancement requests) with one year
> without any activity will be set to NEEDINFO state and reporters will be
> asked to update the report’s status by testing again on a recent GNOME
> version.
>
> When reports are closed as "FIXED" reporters will now kindly be asked to
> verify the fix once it has landed in their distribution and if they have
> some time.
>
> As there are many modules in GNOME Bugzilla that have not seen any code
> changes for years (except for translation updates) the Bugsquad has
> started trying to identify those obsolete/unmaintained modules and
> contact the maintainers. Without a response the remaining reports will
> probably be closed as WONTFIX while explaining to the reporter that the
> module is not maintained anymore and will not receive any updates.
>
> In order to improve workflow the Bugsquad now also has its own module in
> GNOME Bugzilla to keep track of assigned tasks.
>
>
> Marketing Team
>
>
> Paul Cutler
>
> The Marketing Team was active in the third quarter with a focus on the
> GNOME 2.28 release, including helping write the release notes and the
> press release announcing GNOME 2.28.
>
> A new sub-team, the GNOME Press Team, was created with a focus on
> engaging the press worldwide and helping write press releases about
> GNOME in the news. The Marketing Team also chose CivicCRM as a CRM
> system to help track press contacts.
>
> Jaap Haitsma updated the Friends of GNOME web page, including adding the
> ability for subscribers to choose their monthly donation amount and
> launched the GNOME Amazon store available at
>
http://www.gnome.org/friends/amazon/. The GNOME Foundation receives a
> referral fee anytime anyone buys something from the GNOME Amazon Store.
>
> GNOME Journal had two releases in the third quarter in July and August
> with articles interviews with Owen Taylor, Lucas Rocha and Laszlo Peter;
> a recap of the Writing Open Source Conference; a review of GNOME-DO and
> Project Hamster and more.
>
> Lastly, Paul Cutler gave a presentation at Ohio Linux Fest in September
> on GNOME 3.0 and made the slides and presentation materials available
> under a Creative Commons license and available for download on the GNOME
> Marketing Wiki.
>
> Looking forward to Q4, the Marketing team is planning a hackfest in
> Chicago in November and plans on working on conference and presentation
> materials, case studies, a GNOME 3.0 campaign, the GNOME website and more.
>
>
> Web Team
>
>
> Lucas Rocha
>
> content here
>
>
> Usability Team
>
>
> Calum Benson
>
> Several usability-focused sessions took place at the Gran Canaria
> Desktop Summit in July:
>
> * Matthew Paul Thomas from Canonical gave two talks: one on the
> regular Ubuntu/GNOME usability studies that Canonical have started
> doing, and a lightning talk on '10 Common GUI Bloopers'.
> * Marina Zhurakhinskaya from Red Hat led a GNOME Shell Design BOF.
> * Allan Day ran a BOF session on tabbed application issues.
>
> Kristin Travis and Jenya Gestrin from Sun Microsystems demonstrated the
> work they've been doing on a potential control center redesign for GNOME
> 3.0. This work was started last year, and has already been the subject
> of an initial usability study.
>
> GNOME 2.28 was released with some notable changes recommended by the
> usability team: turning off button and menu icons by default, and
> switching to a different toolbar style by default. These changes improve
> visual consistency, reduce clutter, and reduce the need to continually
> invent new icons for every new function that becomes available in GNOME.
> This should also prove beneficial for the accessibility themes, allowing
> them to provide better icon coverage than has been possible up to now.
>
> A preview of GNOME Shell was released alongside GNOME 2.28. GNOME Shell
> will underpin the GNOME 3.0 desktop, and will be an important focus for
> the usability team between now and the release of GNOME 3.0.
>
>
> Expected Q4:
>
> * A second usability study on the potential control center redesign
> will happen at Sun's usability labs in Menlo Park.
> * Design review of GNOME's Keyboard Preferences dialog (Allan Day
> and Sergey Udaltsov).
> * A number of usability topics will be discussed at the Boston
> hackfest, including: revamping the Human Interface Guidelines,
> finding new ways to collect usability data for the GNOME project,
> and the possibility of establishing a mobile usability lab.
>
>
> Accessibility Team
>
>
> Willie Walker
>
> Dr. Joseph Scheuhammer (Adaptive Technology Research Centre at the
> University of Toronto) has continued his work with embedding
> magnification support in GNOME Shell and has a full screen magnification
> prototype working (
http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Magnification). This
> work is planned to supplant gnome-mag and eliminate a Bonobo/CORBA
> dependency.
>
> Ben Konrath (Adaptive Technology Research Centre at the University of
> Toronto) has begun work on an on-screen keyboard. This work is planned
> to supplant the existing GNOME Onscreen Keyboard (GOK) and eliminate a
> Bonobo/CORBA dependency.
>
> Ke Wang (Sun Microsystems) has completed the initial development of Java
> ATK Wrapper. This work supplants the Java Access Bridge for GNOME and
> eliminates a Bonobo/CORBA dependency.
>
> Luke Yelavich (Canonical) continues to work on Speech Dispatcher as a
> means to supplant gnome-speech and eliminate a Bonobo/CORBA dependency.
> Willie Walker from Sun Microsystems also submitted a patch to make
> Speech Dispatcher work on OpenSolaris.
>
> Emli-Mari Nel from OpenGazer
> (
http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/opengazer/) and Flavio Percoco
> Premoli from MouseTrap (
http://live.gnome.org/MouseTrap) began
> discussions for how they can collaborate with each other to bring low
> cost mouse pointer control solutions to the desktop.
>
> Alejandro Piñeiro (Igalia) continues to work on clutter accessibility
> and has begun brainstorming ways for integrating AT-SPI support into
> GNOME Shell.
>
> Eitan Isaacson migrated the GNU LDTP project to the Python pyatspi
> bindings. The GNU/Linux Desktop Testing Project (GNU LDTP) is used by
> Mago (
http://live.gnome.org/DesktopTesting), and the migration to
> pyatspi will enable it to more easily shift to AT-SPI/D-Bus. Eitan also
> worked on accessibility to the Banshee music player
> (
http://monotonous.org/tag/banshee-a11y/?order=ASC).
>
> Xan Lopez (Igalia) and Joanmarie Diggs continued their collaboration on
> WebKit accessibility. Progress continues to be made on this very
> difficult task.
>
> Mark Doffman (Codethink), Mike Gorse (Novell), and Willie Walker (Sun
> Microsystems) continued to hammer away at AT-SPI/D-Bus, working through
> a number of difficult design decisions. The team also welcomed help from
> the wonderful mind of Michael Meeks (Novell).
>
> Moving forward, the team will continue on their adventure through the
> "perfect storm" for GNOME 2.30 accessibility: Bonobo deprecation, GNOME
> Shell accessibility, and WebKit accessibility. The team is also
> preparing for a GNOME Booth and Hackfest at the CSUN Accessibility
> conference in Los Angeles in March 22-27 2010. Please contact the team
> at
gnome-accessibility-list@... if you are interested in
> participating.
>
>
> Documentation Team
>
>
> Shaun McCance
>
> The third quarter of 2009 saw the release of GNOME 2.28, which included
> the new Mallard-based help for Empathy. The team has continued to test
> and develop Mallard based on real-world use and feedback from others.
>
> Phil has been actively promoting Mallard, particularly within the Ubuntu
> community. His experiences help us to understand what our downstream
> partners need from us.
>
> Shaun has been actively developing Yelp 3.0, which has a more
> document-focused approach than the current Yelp. This work includes
> splitting the core document display system into a separate library which
> can be used to build stand-alone help viewers or embed a help viewer
> into larger applications.
>
>
> Art Team
>
>
> Andreas Nilsson
>
> content here
>
>
> GNOME Mobile
>
>
> Dave Neary
>
> GNOME Mobile was present in a number of events this quarter:
>
> * OSiM World, Amsterdam, September 15-16 - One of the premier
> conferences for mobile technology and free software. GNOME Mobile
> was well represented, with keynote presentations from Nokia, LiMo
> and Intel presenting their GNOME Mobile-based platforms, and from
> Lefty Schlesinger and Dave Neary, proposing best practices for
> building commercial products on free software projects. GNOME
> Mobile participants Intel, Novell, Nokia, Igalia and CodeThink
> were exhibitors, and Samsung, LiMo, ACCESS, Collabora and Lanedo
> were also out in force at the conference.
> * Open World Forum, Paris, October 1-2 - Dave Neary presented GNOME
> Mobile as part of the FLOSS Mobility track of this conference,
> attended by over 1400 people.
>
> A number of GNOME-based devices have been announced or released this
> quarter - much of the excitement concerned the Moblin v2 release, and
> the announcement of the Nokia N900, a mobile phone & internet tablet
> based on Maemo 5 (Fremantle). At OSiM the LiMo Foundation also announced
> the forthcoming release of a number of GNOME-based phones.
>
> The GNOME 2.28 and GTK+ 2.18 releases contained some interesting GNOME
> Mobile related news. GTK+ 2.18 now supports client-side windows, making
> the rendering of GTK+ widgets in Clutter more straightforward, and
> WebKit greatly improved its accessibility support. Clutter, GUPnP and
> PulseAudio were officially added to the GNOME Mobile release set for 2.28.
>
>
> GNOME Events
>
>
> Stormy Peters (Looking for a new author!)
>
> During the third quarter of 2009 GNOME was present in these events:
>
> * Gran Canaria Desktop Summit, July 3-11, Gran Canaria, Spain. The
> GNOME European Users and Developers Conference co-located with
> Akademy! A huge success!
> * GNOME-es organised GUADEC-es after GUADEC, July 8 - 10
> * Community Leadership Summit, July 18 - 19. GNOME presence: Dave
> Neary, Lefty Schlesinger, Jono Bacon, Jorge Castro, Joe 'Zonker'
> Brockmeier, Bradley Kuhn, Simon Phipps
> * FLOSS Foundations meeting, July 20. Dave Neary organising, Simon
> Phipps, Bradley Kuhn, Aaron Williamson present
> * OSCON, July 20-24, 2009, San Jose, USA. GNOME presence included
> presenters: Stormy Peters, Dave Neary, Paul Cooper, Rob Bradford,
> Chris Lord, Karen Sandler (SFLC, GNOME's lawyers), Simon Phipps,
> and more.
> * Open Source World, San Francisco, August 11 - 14: GNOME speakers:
> Stormy Peters, Jono Bacon, Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier
> * Red Hat Summit, Chicago, Sept 1 - 3: Substantial GNOME-related content
> * OSiM World, Amsterdam. GNOME presence: Dave Neary, Lefty
> Schlesinger, Ari Jaaksi, Imad Sousou presenting, LiMo, Moblin &
> Maemo related content.
> * Software Freedom Day. September 19, 2009. GNOME issued a press
> release and there were many free software related events,
> including a mini-summit on women's participation in the free
> software movement that the Free Software Foundation and the GNOME
> Foundation are co-hosting.
> * LinuxCon, Portland OR, Sept 21 - 23
>
> Future events include:
>
> * Utah Open Source Conference, Salt Lake City, USA, Oct 8-10.
> Christer Edwards will be hosting a GNOME Booth. Stormy Peters will
> give a keynote.
> * Boston Summit, Cambridge MA, Oct 10-12. The GNOME Summit will once
> again be held in Boston, on the MIT campus. The location and dates
> have now been confirmed, and the summit will take place on October
> 10 - 12 in MIT's Sloan Building in Cambridge MA.
> * Maemo Summit, Amsterdam, Oct 10-12: Substantial GNOME Mobile
> related content
> * "Jornadas Regionales de Software Libre"¹ Willie Walker will also
> be representing the GNOME project
>
> In addition GNOME is planning many hackfests for Q4 2009. Please let the
> organizers know if you are interested in attending.
>
> # Zeitgeist, November 2009, Bolzano, Italy, Seif Lotfy, Daniel Siegel,
>
http://live.gnome.org/ZeitgeistHackFest2009.
> # Marketing, November 2009, Chicago, USA, Paul Cutler.
> # WebKitGTK+, December 2009, A Coruña, Spain, Juan José Sánchez Penas.
> # Accessibility, March 2010, CSUN, San Diego, USA, Eitan Isaacson,
>
http://monotonous.org/2009/10/14/csun-hackfest-and-exhibition-call-for-participation.
> # Usability, Dave Richards
> # Video, Benjamin Otte
>
>
> Finances
>
>
> Germán Póo-Caamaño
>
> *Income*
> amount what for
>
> *Expenses*
> amount what for
>
>
> Travel Committee
>
>
> Germán Póo-Caamaño
>
> During Q3, the travel committee added a new member: Bharath Acharya. He
> has been a very enthusiastic contributor and has already helped several
> people out with their travel sponsorships.
>
> Between the end of July and August, we reimbursed the four contributors
> who attended to the Documentation Summit.
>
> At the same time, we wired reimbursements to GUADEC sponsored
> contributors. Most of them between July 30 and August 10. There was an
> issue with the currency used at the bank, which finally was solved.
> There are two pending reimbursements to contributors who have not yet
> sent their receipts. It is worth mentioning that one contributor decided
> to withdraw his sponsorship request.
>
> We have also been managing requests for events of the next quarter, such
> as the Zeitgeist hackfest at Bolzano and the Boston Summit.
>
> For Bolzano, we booked the accommodation for eleven contributors and
> processed their applications.
>
> In the case of Boston Summit, we processed the requests for two
> contributors. Unfortunately, one of them had problems getting a US visa.
> On the other hand, the other contributor was able to attend without any
> problem, and he wrote several good reports about his participation on
> Boston Summit.
>
> We have already started processing the requests for the Marketing Team
> hackfest which will be held in Chicago next November. Sooner rather than
> later we will start to processing the WebkitGtk+ hackfest.
>
>
> I18n Team
>
>
> author here
>
> content here
>
>
> Membership & Elections Committee
>
>
> Bruno Boaventura
>
> The Membership and Elections Committee would like to inform you about
> our activities in 2009/Q3:
>
> We have received 10 applications for new GNOME Foundation membership,
> plus 38 applications for renewing the membership. During the same period
> 24 members haven't renewed their membership and we ended with 353
> members. You can see a full list of members at
>
http://foundation.gnome.org/membership/members.php . The new members are:
>
> Carl James Collier
> Halton Huo
> Javier Jardón Cabezas
> Milo Casagrande
> Tim Horton
> Will Thompson
> Alexander Gabriel
> Henrique Paulino Machado
> Jerry Tan
>
> You can see a full list of members at
>
http://foundation.gnome.org/membership/members.php.
>
> If you have any further question, do not hesitate to ask us on
>
membership-committee@....
>
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