• 2001 Election Schedule Announced (10/22/2001)

  The 2001 elections for the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors has been announced. The announcement includes the timeline and details for who is eligible for nomination and to vote.

• Tim Ney Joins GNOME Foundation as Executive Director (08/22/2001)

  The GNOME Foundation is pleased to announce that Tim Ney is joining the GNOME Foundation as its executive director. For more information, see the press release and the announcement sent by Havoc Pennington.

• New Membership Policy Adopted (07/12/2001)

  A new membership qualification policy has been adopted and the GNOME Foundation Membership has been re-opened to new members. If you would like to become a member, please apply here.

• Board Meeting Minutes (biweekly)

  Minutes from the most recent board meeting can always be found in the foundation-announce mailing list archives.

Introduction 
The GNOME project has built a complete free and easy-to-use desktop environment for the user, as well as a powerful application framework for the software developer. GNOME is part of the GNU project, and is free software (some times referred to as open source software.)

The GNOME Foundation will work to further the goals of the GNOME project.

To achieve these goals, the Foundation will coordinate releases of GNOME and determine which projects are part of GNOME. The Foundation will act as an official voice for the GNOME project, providing a means of communication with the press and with commercial and noncommercial organizations interested in GNOME software. The foundation may produce educational materials and documentation to help the public learn about GNOME software. In addition, it may sponsor GNOME-related technical conferences, represent GNOME at relevant conferences sponsored by others, help create technical standards for the project and promote the use and development of GNOME software.

Board of Directors
The GNOME Foundation is run by a Board of Directors, which was elected by the entire GNOME community and consists of Miguel de Icaza, Bart Decrem, Jim Gettys, John Heard, Raph Levien, Federico Mena Quintero, Dan Mueth, Havoc Pennington, Maciej Stachowiak, Owen Taylor and Daniel Veillard. If you would like to contact the Board of Directors, you can email them at board@gnome.org.

Advisory Board
In addition to the Foundation's Board of Directors, there is also an Advisory Board, made up of organizations and companies that are supporting GNOME. The Advisory Board has no decision-making authority but provides a vehicle for its members to communicate with the Board of Directors. Current Advisory Board members include Borland, Compaq, Debian Project, Free Software Foundation, Gnumatic, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, MandrakeSoft, Object Management Group, Red Flag Linux, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, TurboLinux, VA Linux and Ximian.