this: Gnome (disambiguation)

GNOME is part of the GNU Project and can be used with various Unix-like operating systems, most notably Linux, and as part of Java Desktop System in Solaris.

The name originally stood for GNU Network Object Model Environment, though this acronym is deprecated.

Aims

The GNOME project puts heavy emphasis on simplicity, usability, and making things “just work”. The other aims of the project are:

• Freedom—to create a desktop environment that will always have the source code available for re-use under a free software license.
• Accessibility—ensuring the desktop can be used by anyone, regardless of technical skill or physical disability.
• Internationalization and localization—making the desktop available in many languages. At the moment GNOME is being translated to over 100 languages.
• Developer-friendliness—ensuring it is easy to write software that integrates smoothly with the desktop, and allow developers a free choice of programming language.
• Organization—a regular release cycle and a disciplined community structure.
• Support—ensuring backing from other institutions beyond the GNOME community.

History

In 1996, the KDE project was started. Although KDE was free software, it relied on the then non-free Qt widget toolkit. Members of the GNU project became concerned with the use of such a toolkit for building a free software desktop environment. In August 1997, two projects were started in response to KDE: the Harmony toolkit (a free replacement for the Qt libraries) and GNOME (a different desktop without Qt and built entirely on top of free software). The initial project leaders for GNOME were Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena.

In place of the Qt toolkit, GTK+ was chosen as the base of the GNOME desktop. GTK+ uses the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), a free software license that allows GPL-incompatible software (including proprietary software) to link to it. The GNOME desktop itself is licensed under the LGPL for its libraries, and the GPL for applications that are part of the GNOME project itself. Having the toolkit and libraries under the LGPL allows applications written for GNOME to use a much wider set of licenses (including proprietary software licenses). While Qt is dual-licensed under both the QPL and the GPL, the freedom to link proprietary software with GTK+ at no charge makes it differ from Qt. However proponents of the free software philosophy deem the LGPL a disadvantage for free software developers. Using the ordinary GPL for a library gives free software developers an advantage over proprietary developers: a library that they can use, while proprietary developers cannot use it.