GNOME 3.0 Rescheduled for March 2011 Release

The Hague, July 28, 2010 – The GNOME Release Team met at GUADEC on Monday, July 26 and discussed the state of readiness for GNOME 3.0. During these discussions the Release Team decided that GNOME 3.0 needed another release cycle to mature and have pushed back the GNOME 3.0 release to March 2011.

GNOME releases every six months to provide a reliable platform for its community and downstream partners. While it might be possible to release GNOME 3.0 in 2010 by slipping the schedule by a month or two, it makes more sense to stick to GNOME’s release schedule and ensure that GNOME 3.0 lives up to the quality that our community expects.

The GNOME Project will ship GNOME 2.32 in September, along with a preview release of GNOME 3.0. Several of the distributions will ship GNOME 3.0 components that can be used for user previews or developer testing.

GNOME is driven by its goals to provide a quality free software desktop, and we feel that our users and downstream community are better served by holding the GNOME 3.0 release until March 2011. This gives adequate time not only for feature development, but user feedback and testing.

The extra time will be used to improve performance for GNOME Accessibility support, GNOME Shell, and documentation for GNOME 3.0. GNOME 2.32 will still have a number of interesting new features such as color management and UPnP support as well as the usual performance enhancements and bug fixes that have marked GNOME’s timed releases for years.

Stay tuned to the GNOME.org Web site and announcements from the GNOME Project about the status of GNOME 3.0 and what’s coming in 2011.

About GNOME and the GNOME Foundation

GNOME is a free-software project whose goal is to develop a complete, accessible and easy to use desktop for Linux and Unix-based operating systems. GNOME also includes a complete development environment to create new applications. It is released twice a year on a regular schedule.

The GNOME desktop is used by millions of people around the world. GNOME is a standard part of all leading GNU/Linux and Unix distributions, and is popular with both large existing corporate deployments and millions of small business and home users worldwide.

Composed of hundreds of volunteer developers and industry-leading companies, the GNOME Foundation is an organization committed to supporting the advancement of GNOME. The Foundation is a member directed, non-profit organization that provides financial, organizational and legal support to the GNOME project and helps determine its vision and roadmap.

More information about GNOME and the GNOME Foundation can be found at www.gnome.org and foundation.gnome.org.