As you may be aware, this year I attended GUADEC, the GNOME User And Developer European Conference. This is my first time here, so I have many thoughts to share.
Warning: this is a highly reflexive and textual post. If you’re into images and tech stuff, this post may not suit you.
The first impression I had: I’m dealing with highly skilled people, and I wasn’t truly aware of that. GNOME achieved wonderful things, not only in terms of technology but also regarding software freedom and community engagement. You probably won’t find many commercial Gtk+ applications, but you’ll find tons of GStreamer-based apps and devices, which is part of the GNOME stack.
GNOME is not only about developers, code and license. It is also much more than a community that share the same vision. GNOME, as I understand it now, is an ideal of making things possible with technology. It’s not only about the license your code is released on, nor a certain stereotype of free software developer. Freedom is a core value since, without it, we’re not making things possible. GNOME enables people.
This GUADEC, I met many of the contributors that work on GNOME behind the scenes. After talking with many of them, I concluded my impression #2: we’re inpired, and we inspire others. We’re inspired to make good code, good choices, good interfaces. We inspire people to not give up when the situation is against you, and continue to improve things.
This wouldn’t be possible without the awsome contributors. I wish I’ll be able to work as hard as they did, to help and make the best GNOME desktop ever (and if there’s someone out there wishing to sponsor me for that, let’s talk!)
This year, GUADEC taught me many lessons, and gave me many ideas on how to contribute more and better. This wouldn’t be possible without the kind sponsorship by the GNOME Foundation. I’m now attending the (awsome) BOF sessions, which already resulted on improvements.
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