Author: Felipe Borges

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Help GNOME defend its trademark against Groupon

Recently Groupon announced a new tablet-based platform named “GNOME”. If you’re reading this, you probably already know that GNOME has been a big and popular free software project for the past 17 years, *and a registered trademark since 2006*.

It’s outrageous that a billion dollars company such as Groupon would not have heard of GNOME before. Even after the GNOME Foundation got in touch with them, they insisted and filed more trademark applications [1][2][3].

We have to file formal proceedings to oppose 10 of these trademark applications by December 3, 2014.  We will need 80k USD to oppose the registration of the first set of 10 applications. Thus, we need your help to raise these funds!

I already donated and hope you will too! Please, help us by donating today and spread the word through social media using the hashtag #defendGNOME!

GNOME can accept donations by paypal, check, bank/wire transfer, Flattr and Bitcoin.

UPDATE: After raising more than our 80k goal in less than 24 hours, Groupon announced that they’re now abandoning all of their 28 pending trademark applications. We did it!

Stay tuned for future updates in this matter.

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Attending GUADEC 2014

It’s been one of the toughest semesters I’ve ever gone through. I’m writing my graduation thesis, working, watching the World Cup, and taking classes. Besides all of that, I’ve been working hard to finish my duties before the end of July because that’s when we are having GUADEC.

Everything is ready for GUADEC 2014 in Strasbourg, France.

I’m attending the Documents & Photos BoF. Also, I’d like to engage in some GNOME Music hacking as well. And last but not least, I will be revenging Brazil in our annual football match.

I’d like to thank the GNOME Foundation and the travel committee for sponsoring my trip.

gnome_foundation_sponsor

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FISL 15!

The latest edition of FISL was a blast! Even though I have noticed a smaller number of attendees compared to 2013, it is quality rather than quantity that matters.

We had less GNOMErs this year as well, but our community was definitely nicely represented. At day one, Luciana Fujii gave a talk about GLib, GObject and more G* stuff.

On day two, Adorilson Bezerra and I have conducted the GNOME Community Meeting. At first, Adorilson introduced GNOME 3.12 and, after that, I’ve presented a lightning talk about Gjs development. At the end of our Community Meeting we had an open space to discuss GNOME as a whole. It was all broadcasted live and recorded, you can check it out here (Portuguese audio).

I hope to see you all again next year at FISL 16!

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GNOME 3.12 Released!

The GNOME Project has released GNOME 3.12 today. Congratulations to all the approximately 1140 contributors that made 34236 really awesome changes in this release.

Bastian Hougaard and Karen Sandler (GNOME Executive Director) have made an Introducing GNOME 3.12 video, check it out!

Don’t forget to check the release notes. If you’re a hardcore Fedora user, you can get GNOME 3.12 using Richard Hughes’ rpm repository.

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Changes

One of my New Year’s Resolution has been achieved. It’s been two months now since I started working at Parafernalia Interativa. We’re building with Endless Mobile an operating system to power computers in the developing world, and it’s GNOME-based. It’s a very exciting job because I get to work with really cool hackers, and we use pretty much GNOME technologies.

I can’t say much about the amazing things we are building yet, but you’ll know about it soon!

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Bye 2013! Happy 2014!

When a new year comes, it’s time to reflect (not regret) and set up new goals.

With this in mind, I have to say that last year was the best year ever… so far! I have attended FISL 14 in Porto Alegre, GUADEC in Czech Republic and gave a lot of talks. Speaking of that, I forgot to blog about the talk I gave at Latinoware which was an introduction to GNOME Application Development with Javascript (Gjs). And after that, I was invited to give a short introduction to Free Software and share my experiences as a student developing FOSS (mentioning my Google Summer of Code participation in 2012 and my involvement with the GNOME community) at my university. Everything was a blast!

For 2014, I want to intensify my GNOME contributions, read 50 books, graduate o/*, and (after that) find a first job. 😉

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GUADEC 2013

My journey starts by crossing the Atlantic Ocean and fighting its most dangerous threads. Basically monsters, dragons, and pirates. In Lisbon, Portugal, I have stepped ashore. My sailing days were over. However, my destiny was still far from being fulfilled. So I have sailed to Prague, Czech Republic. I got there in a few hours, but my luggage did not. Fortunately it magically appeared 24 hours after at the GUADEC dorms in Brno. :O

Fantastic literature apart, I have had an awesome time at GUADEC. Between August 1st and August 4th, we have had a special keynote every morning followed by a whole day of talks. Besides, we have had some parties in the evenings: in the very first day in a full-dedicated nightclub, and on day 3 at the local Starobrno brewery (generously funded by Mozilla).

From August 5th to 8th, BoFs and hackfests! I have spent some time working with the GNOME Music crew. Met the guys in-real-life and was introduced to new ones.

I could not forget to mention the blistering heat in Brno. It was hotter than my homeland hottest days. But the best way to soften the heat if you are in Czech Republic is by having a beer or even a Kofola (I had never drank it before. Loved it).

At last but not least, I want to thank the GNOME Foundation for sponsoring my attendance at the conference. I hope to see you all fellow GNOMErs again next year, and to practice my french at GUADEC 2014 in Strasbourg!

gnome_foundation_sponsor

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Programming Marathon training at UFSC

July was a very busy month for me. I’ve attended FISL14 and a Winter School of Programming Marathon at UFSC, Florianópolis. Now I’m blogging from GUADEC in Brno, Czech Republic.

Since I’m still a student, I’m able to participate in programming marathons. Me and two more friends created a team and we’ve started to train weekly. We intend to participate firstly in a regional competition which entitles to compete in the national programming marathon which entitles to compete the World Finals. We are, definitely, aiming low. Let’s just have some fun at least!

During a week (July 22nd – 26th), we have had competitions daily — every morning — and in the afternoons we had lectures about algorithms and data structures related to the problems we have seen in the morning. Pretty interesting approach!