Re: Software Freedom Day Press Release

[Paul Cutler <pcutler gnome org>]

Comments in-line (I couldn't figure out the best way to edit this, I need more coffee this morning).

Stormy - this looks great, thanks for doing this, especially at the last minute.  The reason this has been on my radar was a blog post I read a year ago that took us to task for not doing something like this.

Paul

On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 8:34 AM, Stormy Peters <stormy gnome org> wrote:

On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 9:27 AM, Paul Cutler <pcutler gnome org> wrote:
>
> * Press Release for Software Freedom Day (We didn't do this last year, and it's probably a good opportunity to highlight GNOME's role in free software as a desktop, including translations, accessibility, etc)
>

Here's a first draft. All comments and feedback welcome. We need to
get this out tomorrow!

GNOME promotes Software Freedom Day
September 19, 2009

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.

(Comment - nice job, really like the analogy)
 

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, not about piling on features. 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.

(I would stop in the first sentence after "use":  GNOME understands that usability is about creating software that is
easy for everyone to use.)
 

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.

(Comment - can we include a link to the Accessibility Project or say at http:// etc)
 

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.

Add something like - During the last GNOME Development cycle, the GNOME Desktop was translated into over 40 languages.  (48 languages had 80% strings translated)
 

Developer-friendly

Developers are not tied to a single language with GNOME. You can use
C, C++, Python, Perl, Java, even C#, to produce high-quality
applications that integrate smoothly into the rest of your Unix or
GNU/Linux (commonly referred to as Linux) desktop.

(I'd remove the "even" from C# and add _javascript_).
 

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
and are scheduled to occur every six months.

(I'd removed "scheduled" from the last sentenced - have we ever missed a 6 month dev cycle?)
 

Supported

Beyond the worldwide GNOME Community, GNOME is supported by the
leading companies in GNU/Linux and Unix, including HP, IBM, Mandriva,
Novell, Red Hat, and Sun.

(Can we add something like - "GNOME is proud to be the default Desktop Environment that powers popular Linux distributions including Ubuntu and Fedora)?
 

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.

GNOME people will be celebrating Software Freedom Day at: [Need more links!]
http://www.andreasn.se/blog/?p=104
http://blog.tomeuvizoso.net/2009/09/free-education-as-in-free-speech.html
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