Joining the GNOME Project

Why GNOME?

The GNOME project is an international project, with many people from right around the globe contributing their time and energy 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. While some contributors are in the fortunate situation to be working on GNOME full time, most work as volunteers in their free time, and it is without doubt that the project is fueled by the energy and enthusiasm of this group of people. The success and direction of the project relies on the efforts and ideas of all GNOME contributors, whether they are working full time or only have an hour or two to spare each week.

GNOME is an exciting and very dynamic project to be involved in, with an opportunity to meet some of the best developers and collaborate on cutting edge technology. With the faith shown by many of GNOME's corporate members, from the likes of Red Hat, Sun Microsystems and Ximian, the project has flourished into an excellent example of a successful open source project and a mature, hard working community. There are many reasons why so many people get involved in the project year after year - from peer recognition, education and the obvious benefits of working with a broad range of people, to simply mere curiousity. Most find out that they enjoy it and stay. We hope you will too.

Starting Out

Finding the right level to get involved is not an easy problem. Fortunately due to the large nature of the GNOME project, we need every level of contribution - programmers, graphic artists, documentation writers, translators, web designers, software testers, user interface designers and many, many more. Whatever your particular interests or skills, we can find a place for your contributions.

Often people find it hard to keep up with the rapid pace of GNOME, and it is almost impossible to stay up to date with every part of the project. Due to the nature of the community, which is spread over every timezone, waking up with a full mailbox is a regular occurance! Luckily GNOME is divided up into several smaller teams -

Accessibility

Accessibility is enabling people with disabilities to participate in substantial life activities. In order to make GNOME accessible, work must be done from the base libraries to the end user applications to provide a framework so that people using screen readers, on-screen keyboards and other assistive devices can use the software that we take for granted. Accessibility was cast into the limelight when many laws , such as The Rehabilitation Act were introduced right across the world and remains a very important project within GNOME.

Bugsquad

The GNOME bugsquad are responsible for tracking the quality assurance (QA) for GNOME. They keep track of the current bugs and make sure that important bugs do not go unnoticed by the developer. Along with these duties, they also 'triage' the bug tracking system in GNOME, by which they close out duplicate, unproducible and other not so useful bugs so that these do not clog up the system.

Documentation

Documentation is another very important project, and many underestimate the size of the task at hand. The documentation project aims to provide high quality documentation for use in our desktop and developer platform. There are many end user applications, developer libraries, tutorials and articles that always need documenting.

Translation

GNOME is a worldwide project. While many applications are written originally in some form of English, the majority of people on this planet do not speak English. To reach our audiences, it is important for GNOME to be translated into as many different languages as possible. Not only does this mean end user applications, but also online help, developer documentation and webpages.

Usability

The usability project strives to make the GNOME experience as pleasant as possible. One of the main components of making GNOME usable is by defining and writing a set of user interface guidelines. The usability project works closely with project maintainers to find existing interaction problems through user testing and provides mockups and design ideas to fix them.

Web Design

The GNOME web hackers are responsible for the infrastructure and general maintainance of the Official GNOME Website, but also help to look after several other websites like the GNOME Developers Website.

Graphic Design

GNOME's graphic design community constantly produce high quality graphics for icons, backdrops, login screens and splash screens, to name just a few areas, for use in the GNOME desktop.

Desktop and Developer Platform

While this isn't a team per se, none of the previous teams would exist without the large numbers of people contributing code to the GNOME Desktop and Developer Platform. Whether it is application or library development, or perhaps only bug fixing, there is always lots of work to be done!

The Leap of Faith

By now you should be familiar with the various groups of people making up the GNOME project. You may even have a few ideas to get started. Contributing to GNOME can be a very satisfying experience, yet it can be frustrating at times. With contributors spread right around the world communication is key to the success of GNOME, and there are many forms that people use.

Mailing Lists

The GNOME Mailing Lists are at the heart of the project, and you will invariably find a mailing list that suits your interest. The GNOME mailing lists are run using a program called 'Mailman', which allows you to easily subscribe and unsubscribe, change preferences and view the archives at your leisure. Before getting involved, it is often a good idea to read the mails that are sent for a few days before sending any email. This gives you a good feel for what is acceptable on a mailing list and, perhaps more importantly, the people involved. GNOME is a community, not just a project.

IRC

Often communicating through mailing lists becomes tiresome, and is appropriate for 'live' conversations. Many conversations happen through IRC (Internet Relay Chat), on the GNOME IRC server - irc.gnome.org. Using IRC can be very effective and, like the mailing lists, there are many IRC channels to choose from - #gnome, #docs, #usability, #i18n and #gnome-hackers to name but a few. Most IRC clients will allow you to get a complete list of channels from the server for you to join.

Phone

While IRC and mailing lists are the most used forms of communication, another step up is simply picking up the phone. When communication breaks down, this is a very effective way of getting the ball rolling again. Due to time pressures, teams like the Foundation Board of Directors and Release Team hold regular conference calls.

Face to Face

Meeting face to face is by far the best communication, although the hardest since GNOME is a worldwide conference. Always grab the chance to meet a GNOME contributor, whether that is at a conference like GUADEC or a person is just 'passing through'. This helps to build relationships and the sense of a team spirit.