Sneak preview of my talk next week: “GNOME as the computing platform for the future”
Next week I'm speaking at the South Tyrol Free Software Conference where the theme is "free software for innovative business." If you are in the area, you should come – the conference is free and has good speakers and lots of interesting attendees.
I know you are traditionally supposed to post the transcript of your talk after you give it. However, any feedback I get between now and then can only make the talk better. Also, the real talk, in person, with voice, slides and a chance to ask questions is very different experience than reading it in a blog and commenting. So I think one does not compete with the other.
Here's my talk. As always, comments and questions welcome.
GNOME as the computing platform of the future
Often when people talk about
open source software businesses they immediately think about
companies like Jboss or MySQL, companies that developed open source
software products and then had tremendously successful exits. (Jboss
was acquired for $350 million, MySQL for $800 million.) But these are
just a few of the companies that are successful because of open
source. They are software companies, open source software companies.
But many other companies are also doing well because of open source
software. Here's a few you may not have thought of:
- Supersonic Imagine. They make
scanners that detect breast cancer. They save people's lives. They
are in the medical business. Medical instruments, not software, and
they use open source software (some GNOME technologies) to develop
products that create successful businesses and save lives. - Garmin Nuvo. Here's a company that
also sells a product solution, not software, although software is
very much a part of their solution. Their technology is enabled by
open source software. Again there is GNOME technology in this GPS
device. How do I know that? Not because they contacted GNOME and
bought a support agreement. No, all their use of and support for
open source has gone through normal GNOME channels, primarily source
code repositories and mailing lists or a third party. We know
because they made their source code public and one of the GNOME
developers looked at it and saw they were using GNOME. - Mobile devices. Well, maybe you
would have thought about this one. Most of the new mobile devices
from Nokia's tablets to school science devices are using open source
software on them. In this case GNOME technologies enable companies
to build on existing technologies, changing them and modifying them
to meet their needs. This way they get to market faster (without
reinventing the wheel), build on existing solutions and enable
others to cooperate and work with them, enhancing and strengthening
their solutions. As an example, when I went to the Maemo Summit
(Maemo is the what the software on Nokia tablets is called – it
uses GNOME) I saw non-Nokia people present solutions translating for
doctors, letting police officers use tablets and some really unique
note taking, personal journaling solutions.
I've also seen small consulting
companies spring up to help larger businesses use open source they
way they need to. They might provide assistance or customization or
complete solutions.
So all these companies – and many
more – successfully use GNOME technologies to improve their business.
How does that work? What is GNOME and what about it makes it good for
businesses and society?
I think in order to understand what's
important about GNOME, you have to look at what GNOME is and how and
why GNOME was written.
So what is GNOME? GNOME is … a
desktop, a development platform, a mobile solution toolkit, with some
key characteristics like accessible, internationalized, easy to use.
It's also a lot of applications from music players to email clients.
Why was GNOME written? To create a free
and open source desktop for the world. Over time that has evolved
from desktop as in traditional desktop like the machine on your desk
at home to everything from your laptop to your cell phone to even
your car with its onboard navigation.
How was it written? By the community.
Like traditional open source software, GNOME spans from a core group
of committers to a group of users.
At the core we have people that write
the source code – the committers. These are the people that
actually wrote the project. However, however much work they do, they
don't do it all alone.
The next group is people that make
contributions – they make code suggestions to the committers or
they may contribute in other ways like marketing or answering
questions on the mailing list or supporting the systems or answering
questions on the mailing lists.
For example, one of the things that GNOME
contributors do is man GNOME booths at conferences. They get an event
box – that was put together by a contributor, man the booth for the
conference and then send the event box back or on to the next event.
But committers and contributors are not
all there is. There is also a large user base. Users are very
important. They spread the word of the project and contribute ideas
as well as bug fixes – in a sense they are all testers.
Unlike many open source software
projects, GNOME works really well with companies. It's one of its
strengths. Some of the ways we work with companies:
-
Community is open to companies.
The community is excited and willing to listen to businesses that
would like to use GNOME. When we found out Garmin was using GNOME,
many people blogged and talked about it. The breast scanner company
was invited to our annual conference, GUADEC. -
6 month release cycles. Seems very
simple but it's very crucial to companies and we've gotten a lot of
positive feedback. Companies need to know when a release is coming
out that will contain the feature or patch they need. They used
released versions, not the top of the unreleased stack. By knowing
when releases are coming out, and being able to depend on that date,
they can build plans of their own. -
Accessibility/internationalization.
Several of our core goals help companies meet their customer
requirement.
One thing to note is that while
companies are part of the GNOME community, their participation is
different. They participate by building solutions with and on GNOME
technologies. They hire people who work on GNOME and become part of
the GNOME community and they can sponsor the GNOME Foundation and
participate on the GNOME advisory board. All GNOME project technical
decisions are made by the community – they have a release team that
runs the releases and what goes in them.
All these people the community –
committers and users alike – as well as the companies, have shared
values:
-
Accessiblity
-
Internationalized
-
Access to all
-
Easy to use
-
Beauty
-
Working well with companies
-
Having fun
These values are important to creating
a common culture. All open source software projects and communities
have a unique culture. Some have lots of flaming and arguments,
others are very welcoming. Keep in mind that strong communities build
strong projects. These shared GNOME values create the welcoming,
productive and dedicated community of GNOME. Please come join us as
a user or as a contributor.
So where do we go from here? GNOME has
a great community, lots of developers, contributors and users. It's
deployed on 14 million systems world wide, it has great foundations,
it's internationalized, accessible, and easy to use and has a good
format for working with companies with its advisory board and six
month release cycles. So where do we go from here?
We will continue to make our desktop
easy to use and accessible to all.
In GNOME 3.0 we will focus on user
experience among other things. As people use the internet and web 2.0
apps more, what they expect from their desktop will be different. We
need to make sure the world of the internet and your personal device
– be it a laptop, netbook or phone – interact seemlessly as you
expect them to.
Speaking of netbooks. Netbooks are
taking off – they are providing affordable computing to people. Eee
PCs along will bring 2.4 million more users to the Linux desktop this
year. GNOME Mobile – GNOME technologies are used in many of the
worlds leading mobile phone brands. Building on open source
technologies enables them not only to get to market faster but to
offer cheaper and more open solutions – I believe it is netbooks
and cellular phones that will reach most of the world before the
traditional desktop. 100% penetration in Europe. Most of the
developing country will have cell phones before they have reliable
power.
Multimedia. People are changing the way
they interact with their computer and they are also changing the way
they use their computer. Videos, through sites like YouTube, are
extremely popular these days. People have the ability to make their
own. Virtually everyone in the developing world has access to a video
camera. How many of you have a cell that will take video? It's
replacing tv and pictures. Not to mention music, podcasts, etc.
The world is changing and you need free
and open source software to keep up. You can't afford to develop an
application from scratch and you can't build a business without
participation from everyone. Users want to be creative – they want
to interact with their applications. Using GNOME as your computing
platform and development platform gives you want you need to build
the businesses of the future and gives your customers what they need
to live fruitful lives.
Related posts:
- What’s your vision of GNOME? The GNOME Foundation's mission is to provide a free desktop...
- What should the GNOME Foundation accomplish in 2010? We’ve been working on the GNOME Foundation’s goals for 2010....
- What would you say about the State of GNOME? Against my dad's best advice, I'm going to admit that...
- Stormy’s update: Week of November 30th This is my update for work done for the...
- Stormy’s Update: Week of July 5th Cross posted from the GNOME Foundation blog where you can...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
I can find no company called Supersonic Image in my brief google search but I did find one called Supersonic Imagine. Is that the company you meant?
[Reply]
Hey Stormy, awesome post – You really are a great addition to the Gnome community. I look forward to your slides going up – Very cool stuff and the future of Gnome is going to be very exciting, regardless of the underlying hardware
[Reply]
Friends don’t let friends use Gnome. Seriously! It’s limiting and just plain ugly. Use KDE, instead. Even Linux Torvalds agrees.
[Reply]
Sugar, Maemo, Ubuntu ME, Openmoko, Garmin,.. many incompatible stacks for small devices, no unique API, no GSM module,.. I still don’t see a free Windows Mobile alternative, is this a success for GNOME?
[Reply]
“Speaking of netbooks. Netbooks are taking off – they are providing affordable computing to people.”
They also provide a new mobility option for everyone, including people who could afford the more expensive tools. I already own a big, expensive laptop yet I felt a need for the size and weight of the netbook. I don’t think I will ever use the big laptop again : if I want the computing power, I can either use the desktop (for the keyboard comfort) or use ssh and tap onto its power from the network.
In my opinion, the regular laptop is dead but doesn’t know it yet. In the future we’ll probably have cellphones with USB and HDMI connectors that will plug into a “station” that features a keyboard and screen for those who need it.
Seriously, why should we own two different computing devices when you could have a “station” system with a screen and keyboard and the basic mobility device on the other hand ?
[Reply]
So in next weeks’, ECB monetary policy meeting, Trichet is expected to have a dovish stance in regards to future policy. http://web2.blogtells.com/2008/10/25/how-public-key-generate-and-store/
[Reply]
“Seriously, why should we own two different computing devices when you could have a “station” system with a screen and keyboard and the basic mobility device on the other hand ?”
Because multi-function devices are, inevitably, crap.
[Reply]
“Because multi-function devices are, inevitably, crap.”
The most typical example of a multi-function device is a PC
The iPhone is probably the best example of a working multi-function mobile device on the market.
Both are far from crap already, (wrt PC depends on what you’re using), and the multi-function mobile device market is still in its early evolutionary phase.
[Reply]
That sounds like a pretty nice talk.
I like GNOME, I’m using it right now.
I’m not very familiar with a lot of the talk’s content, but I was reading it aloud to get a sort of feel for what it might be like to actually hear it presented, and to be in the position of orator. I noticed a couple of awkward moments in the text, which you might’ve adjusted by now:
“However, however much work they do… ” However however?
“So where do we go from here?” shows up twice, on either end of the same paragraph.
It also seems that “accessibility” and “access to all” are somewhat similar points.
There is a typo in the last paragraph, “Using GNOME as your computing platform and development platform gives you want you need…” instead of “what you need.”
I say this all with utmost respect, to help you give a great talk. I wish that I could be there to hear it, best of luck!
[Reply]