There is something I've been meaning to bring up for a few weeks now and I'll take Tango as an excuse to finally do it.
Gnome has come a long way since Gnome 2.0 and continues to improve all the time. Changes such as Tango, Cairo, DBUS, Gstreamer, Project Ridley and many other initiatives are slowing but surely making Gnome 2.x better very very different, to the point where it could be almost unrecognisable from Gnome 2.0. I hope you will forgive the word play in my subject line but in many ways it seems like Gnome 2.x could continue on quite happily with releases every six months or so until infinity (okay not literally but practically) with no sign of when Gnome 3.0 might ever happen. At the moment the best answer to the question of Gnome 3.0 seems to be "maybe later". Gnome 3.0 (Topaz) not happen if there is no plan*. The way I see it there are two major problems to be solved which I would summarise as Developer expectations and user expecations. Developers have made a commitment to keep ABI stability during the Gnome 2.x cycle. This is a good thing. This commitment could be extended if there was a Gnome 3.0 and to make myself clearer I repeat the point that Gnome 3.0 does not need to mean breakage or some wildly new radical idea. Development is evolutionary not revolutionary. [1] User expectations shot wildly through the roof when the first murmer of 3.0 were mentioned. The work of Project Topaz brilliantly (in my humble opinion) helped manage those expecations. New ideas and energy were directed into Gnome 2.x where possible and other ideas were left to cool. Which brings us to the present where Gnome 2.16 will be the next release and 3.0 is not planned yet. Managing expecations and keeping them realistic (but optomistic) will always be an issue. I understand the majority** of developers are not particularly interested by version numbers but I believe enough people do care about it that it is worth discussing what can be done and when it might be appropriate to go to the next major version number. It is mostly marketing, but given a little thought it could be made meaningful and need not be just a superficial gesture to those who care too much about labelling, it could be significant and techincally justifiable. I return to my point about Gnome being quite different from what it was and all the change that have happened. A developer (an Independant Software Vendor (ISV) for example) could create an acceptable gnome 2.x application but using older APIs that are supported but not exactly the ideally recommended choices. Gnome 3.0 could be taken as an oportunity to clarify best practice and appeal to ISVs which has been previously mentioned as something people were interested in. Gnome 3.0 could be taken as a way to celebrate all the progress and encourage people to take another look. Maybe it will be a year or two before Gnome 3.0 happens but I hope developers will reconsider Gnome 3.0 and see it as an opportunity and begin to make plans or clarify when it might be appropriate to bump the major version number in recognition of how far Gnome has come and how much as been achieved. Sincerely Alan Horkan Inkscape http://inkscape.org Abiword http://www.abisource.com Open Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org Alan's Diary http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/ * Plan in the vaguest possible sense, the release team and community leaders taking a decision is still a plan even if done at short notice. ** I assume a majority but I may be mistaken, perhaps there value of marketing is understood even though most would rather focus on the real work. [1] Havoc Pennington said it better already http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2005-May/msg00142.html I drafted the first version of this message before I saw the comments on planet gnome but it seems I'm not the only one thinking about 3.0: http://blogs.gnome.org/view/newren/2006/04/18/0 _______________________________________________ desktop-devel-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
