A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about setting GNOME goals. The feedback I got was mostly positive and I'm sure that if I forget about this idea, some people will blame me ;-)

So what about starting now? What about moving away from popt and using GOption? You can easily help with this goal by simply verifying if some modules are still using popt. And you can even make a patch since it's very easy to do the migration. More information on the goal and how you can help is on the PoptGOption page.

I know this is a small step. But this is really what the GNOME Goals are about: doing small changes, but trying to do them everywhere.

Let's quickly rock on this goal, because there'll be a new goal in two weeks :-)

GNOME 2.14.0 is out, and there are a lot of reasons to be proud of it. Thanks everyone!

I'd like to send special thanks to some people for the work they did. I'm a bit sad to come with such a tiny list, so make sure to complete it!

• Joachim (I'm still waiting for your blog!) for rocking at updating the documentation. And I've heard he won't stop here... Woohoo!
• Federico and Behdad for the work they did on performance. The difference is more than noticable: it's huge!
• Elijah has survived a snowstorm to release 2.14.0. But I have to say this is only one of his many exploits. Don't we love our fantastic release manager?
• Kjartan. Glynn was right about Kjartan: just look at the results of his 2.14.0 smoketesting. We need more Kjartans!

Now, I can't wait for 2.16. I can already feel the good work we'll all be doing in the next six months.

There are some big names in the GNOME community: those are the names we can find in a lot of quotes in Jeff's email signatures. And you would believe it's hard to get quoted in such a mail. But no, it's not. Everybody can join the GNOME Team and make a difference.

Today, I'm looking for one or two people (maybe more?) who want to make a difference by writing some code. If you dream in C, then you're a good candidate (writing C instead of dreaming in C would qualify too). But if you hate C, come too, my friend, because python is also a great and easy-to-learn language.

Today, I'm looking for co-maintainers for gnome-panel (written in C) and for pessulus (written in python). However, there is an important restriction, an unusual restriction: I'd like the people wanting to co-maintain those modules to not be maintainer of another module. I've been told that fresh new blood tastes better ;-)

The path to co-maintainership is not as long as you would imagine. You can do it. You only have to start contributing and to keep contributing for some time. If you're interested in this, feel free to contact me or to take a look at gnome-panel and pessulus bugs. Pessulus is really easy to start with, and there are also some (many?) not-so-hard gnome-panel tasks.

But don't forget: you can make a difference without writing any code too!