New cycle, what we achieved and what's to come.

2015 was a year of quiet but continuous progress for the Trisquel project. With no major release scheduled for the period, we focused on improving the build system and server infrastructure, making the distro more reliable through quicker and more traceable updates. Our long time sysadmin Santiago Rodriguez took on the big task of taking the original build scripts that produce all our packages and fitting them into a continuous integration system and improved the build environment with pbuilder -for packages- and live-build -for images.
 
This year will bring us Trisquel 8, codename "Flidas". We have already started the development, aiming to produce the first testing images in a couple of months followed by a final release not long after the upstream distro (Ubuntu 16.04) is released in April. Editions will continue to include a main GTK-based desktop, a lighter environment and a Sugar based image, but we hope to extend that list with new additions. Stay tuned!

On the financial side we continued to get a steady support through our very generous community. Thank you so much everybody for sustaining our work with your donations! This past year we received 8100€ through donations, memberships and partnerships (it was 7790€ in 2013€ and 8795€ in 2014). (In addition, we continued to get Bitcoin donations that can be tracked here) Like previous years, most of that income has been saved to build a fund to provide financial stability, which as the year ended amounted 20.517€ (plus ~7.000€ in Bitcoin at market value). Thanks again for this incredibly generous support!

Our expenses included the infrastructure costs (3 rented servers with an annual cost of 1090€) and travel fare for LibrePlanet. But for the first year the funds started to be used for the main purpose of economically sustaining the development work. More precisely, I received a 500€ stipend on the months of October 2014 to May 2015 (4.000€). On a personal note, the reason I'm not taking an stipend any more is because my work is being now sustained by a full time position as Senior sysadmin at the Free Software Foundation, where I started working recently after moving to the USA. So I'm now in a job situation more compatible with the project, while also enjoying new support possibilities from people who understand our ideals (and use Trisquel in all their infrastructure).

Last year was one of big changes in the lives of several of us involved in the project, so the quiet development phase was a good fit. This year we are in a nice position to do great things, starting with a memorable release and visible improvements in the community involvement.

Ruben.