GNOME Circle Officially Announced For Letting More Apps/Libraries "Join GNOME"

GNOME Circle was talked about earlier this month at the Linux App Summit 2020 while now it's been officially announced.

GNOME Circle is effectively lowering the barrier for allowing new applications and libraries to become part of the GNOME project. Here is how it's summed up in today's announcement:

In the past, to be a part of the GNOME project, development projects needed to be hosted on GNOME infrastructure and follow GNOME’s 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 apply. Projects don’t need to be hosted on GNOME infrastructure, nor do they need to follow GNOME’s release schedule.

Circle projects will be eligible for a range of benefits, including promotion and GNOME Foundation membership, which gives access to travel and marketing funding and services including an @gnome.org email address, blog hosting, video conferencing, and a gnome.org Nextcloud account. Even more benefits are planned for the future.

More details in today's announcement. This new initiative is hosted at circle.gnome.org.