GNOME Circle officially unveiled to allow more apps and libraries to join GNOME

In the middle of last week there was a news related to the GNOME project, more specifically a little important one that they did not announce with great fanfare, such as the GNOME 3.38.2 release. A few moments ago, the same project announced something, but this does seem more important: they have called it Gnome Circle, and here we are going to try to explain a little above what it is and what they hope to achieve with this initiative.

GNOME Circle was something they mentioned at the last Linux App Summit 2020, but now its presentation is official. Originally, it was created to facilitate new applications and libraries to become part of the project GNOME, which would make the famous graphical environment, used by default in the main versions of distributions such as Fedora or Ubuntu, improve in compatibility.

GNOME Circle will improve compatibility, among others

In addition to the statement, the project has opened a page for this initiative, which we can access from this link. And the first thing we read is just that: «Applications and libraries that extend the GNOME ecosystem«. Explained in another way and by themselves:

In the past, to be part of the GNOME project, development projects had to be hosted on the GNOME infrastructure and follow the GNOME development rules. This created a barrier to entry for many developers who were focused on their own personal projects. GNOME Circle aims to change that by lowering barriers and building relationships with developers who are doing great things with the GNOME platform. To become members, projects must simply be open source software and use the GNOME platform. Both applications and development libraries can be applied. Projects do not need to be hosted on the GNOME infrastructure, nor do they need to follow the GNOME release program.

Undoubtedly, this will translate into a better future for GNOME users, but… I'm sticking with KDE.