The GNOME Project

Description

The GNOME Project is the community behind the GNOME desktop environment and the software platform upon which it is based. It is supported by the GNOME Foundation which deals with administrative tasks but does not get directly involved in technical decisions. The GNOME project is home to many critical infrastructure libraries and tools, that are relied upon by many FOSS users and developers. It includes a cohesive desktop environment, core apps, a design system, a platform to build third party apps, low-level components of the Linux desktop, and more. It also provides developer tools used by an app ecosystem of hundreds of apps built on the platform toolkit and design patterns. Lot 1: The GNOME Project is the community behind the GNOME desktop environment and the software platform upon which it is based. It is supported by the GNOME Foundation which deals with administrative tasks but does not get directly involved in technical decisions. The GNOME project is home to many critical infrastructure libraries and tools, that are relied upon by many FOSS users and developers. It includes a cohesive desktop environment, core apps, a design system, a platform to build third party apps, low-level components of the Linux desktop, and more. It also provides developer tools used by an app ecosystem of hundreds of apps built on the platform toolkit and design patterns. While it remains critical and important, and it continues to be actively developed, lack of public interest funding has left gaps in the project as the market focuses more on cloud and IoT. This proposal was put together with members of the GNOME community in order to modernise the platform, improve tooling and accessibility, and support some features that are in the public interest. By investing in the GNOME project, the STF is contributing to its mission to support the FOSS ecosystem by improving a critical part of its infrastructure. The project is divided into 8 milestones: 1. Encrypt user home directories individually 2. Increase the range and quality of hardware support 3. Modernize platform infrastructure 4. Improve quality assurance and development tooling 5. Improve the state and compatibility of accessibility 6. Design a new accessibility stack for the Linux desktop 7. Maintenance and modernization of security components 8. Secure APIs for Wayland/Flatpak