Hi Paolo, 2010/6/2 Paolo Borelli <[email protected]>: > On Wed, 2010-06-02 at 00:37 +0100, Lucas Rocha wrote: >> The long term plan for the GNOME applications that were removed from the >> Desktop, Admin and Dev Tools modulesets is to simply highlight the >> high-quality >> applications using the GNOME platform through our communication channels >> (release notes, website, etc). There will be no "official" apps anymore and >> no >> 'Applications' moduleset in the GNOME releases. The goal here is be more open >> with the app developer community around GNOME and to highlight all the nice >> things that can be created using our platform. > > > Personally I think the idea of giving up on having an Applications > moduleset is a very unfortunate decision for multiple reasons: > > - first and foremost it will drive away fresh forces from gnome: most > of new developers get involved in writing code for applications and > feeling "officially part of gnome" is a determining factor in getting > more involved in desktop-wide hacking, in the community mailing lists, > join the foundation and so on > > - Cross-application hacking will slowly vanish, slowly ruining the > quality and consistency of the gnome desktop. For instance until a few > years back we had ui revisions for all gnome application each cycle > which ensured consistency and quality... I think we should work on > getting this kind of thing back (especially since gnome 3 will bring > some changes to the ui!) instead this decision will make each > application go its own way > > - QA effort will be impacted: I used to run a full jhbuild version of > gnome all the time and I don't anymore and I think I am not the only > one... This is a problem on its own (and something the RT should work > on!), but if "jhbuild build" does not build a full desktop anymore (or > if it takes 2 days to build because it pulls in 6 media players) we are > once again moving in the wrong direction > > - A particular note goes to also giving up on the Dev Tools moduleset: > new developers ask all the time about which tools should they use to > hack on gnome, the dev tools moduleset was starting to become a decent > answer to that (though I certainly wish it provided a more complete > development environment and more tools were added, eg sysprof). Giving > up on creating an official moduleset is a step back since we cannot say > "Want to hack on gnome? Here are the tools of the trade" > > > > I am really sorry to say it, but this feels like the gnome chronic > inability to make decisions: we are not able to pick RhythmBox or > Banshee, we are not able to deal with Zeitgeist being on LaunchPad, > etc... so the only decision we are able to make is to cop out on making > decisions.
I don't see this as a move to avoid decisions. It's more about being inclusive with app developers. Why do we have to choose between high-quality competing apps? If they follow GNOME guidelines, use our platform, are well implemented, have a lively user community, I'd prefer to have both considered as first-class citizens in GNOME. I would only care about not having competing implementations of the same thing in desktop core which is the part where we actually want to have more control. --lucasr _______________________________________________ desktop-devel-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
