hi all.. from the "what the heck is taking him so bloody long?!" department comes the HTML versions of the documents. they are pretty plain jane, but this way individual projects can integrate them easily into their website's look and feel.
what we need now is: o Provide these files on the OSDL desktop architects website o Projects to add these to their web sites o Make an announcement about it to get more projects on board o Consider hosting a central registry at the OSDL D-A site for projects that support the documents (Google could probably help there eventually, of course ;) o Get the FreeDesktop.org ball rolling to make the document a reality progress is being made within the GNOME side of things as well, with people within Novell now helping guide things a bit as well as the GNOME accessibility team taking up the charge. this is good news. -- Aaron J. Seigo GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43 Full time KDE developer sponsored by Trolltech (http://www.trolltech.com)Title: The Open Source Desktop: A Commitment To Commonalities
The Open Source Desktop: A Commitment To Commonalities
A Recognition of our Successes
When we started working on what would eventually come to be popularly referred to as "the open source desktop", most regarded it as an amazingly ambitious concept. Over the years thousands of volunteers and passionately creative people proved that it was possible. In the process of creating this software we formed a thousand projects with nearly as many unique perspectives, technology answers and identities.
These successes have expanded our horizons: more developers, more users, more ambitious goals. To meet the new challenges that are emerging, we must evolve how we work as a community without breaking the traditions that have brought us this far.
A Recognition of our Challenges
We have greater expectations for our software than ever before. Some wish to set new records in terms of usability, stability, beauty and performance while others wish to bring the notions of software freedom and openness to the world at large. In the process we are pushing the envelope of what is possible given our current methods at nearly every turn.
ISVs producing both open and closed source software are looking for greater clarity and direction. Users are looking for better hardware support and advanced graphics capabilities. System integrators are looking for easier means to roll out and support open source desktops. Users with disabilities are looking for computers that are fully accessible to them. We want to do things we've only yet dreamed of.
To reach these goals it is increasingly neccessary that we work together as a stronger team. We need a unified approach to the hardware driver challenge. We need to pool our relatively scarce graphics expertise to extend the relevant systems we share to the next level. We also need to agree on which common, non-differentiating technologies to share to increase consistency without diminishing our individual projects' identities and goals.
This will better equip us to meet the global appetite for technology that makes up our audience. There are a huge number of potential teammates for us in this world, many of whom have yet to make even their initial technology choices.
A Proposal and Commitment
Therefore as a community we propose to engage each other and reach beyond our own borders to address our common challenges by creating more cooperative endevours that reflect the values and mechanisms of the community we collectively hail from: the open source desktop.
Specifically ... we are committing to creating a healthy and productive technology incubator in the form of freedesktop.org by augmenting its past successes with a set of light-weight processes that work the way we do within our own projects. We aim at address issues of implementation standardization to increase software interoperability; provide standard access mechanisms to desktop data and services for ISVs; improve our graphics software architecture; pool our HCI efforts and more.
Specifically ... we will be making greater use of public communications commons such as OSDL and encourage our individual marketing organs to collaborate. As individual projects, our public messaging should reflect not only the source project, but also harmonize with common themes that work to support the open source desktop as a whole.
Specifically ... we will amplify our participation in efforts led by organizations such as the Free Standards Group to bring about powerful open standards for the platform that address critical needs such as accessibility.
Specifically ... we pledge our support to these and other efforts that improve the open source desktop by utilizing the multiplicity of strengths that are to be found throughout the community. We believe that efforts that respect our diversity while encouraging cooperation are key to fulfilling our aspirations of making the open source desktop the best computing platform availalable.
Things You Can Do Now
As a member of an open source desktop project, consider showing your support by engaging in one or more of these suggested activities:
- Go to freedesktop.org and get involved with one or more of the proposed technologies. Bring new proposals that you feel are appropriate to the table.
- Look through your program's codebase for one fix you can pass back upstream to your dependent libraries, desktop environment, etc. and work to get it accepted and incorporated upstream.
- Round up key contributors from your project and visit another project that is related in some way. Engage them in a discussion of how you can make your two projects better collaborators.
- Add your project's name to this document and publish it on your website.
The Open Source Desktop: A Common Stance
Plurality and Current Success
There are a large number of successful open source software groups working on various desktop technologies. These groups often have specific goals, different perspectives and unique identities. Our technologies are not shared at every level. This plurality of approaches and projects has given us an astounding variety of software which in combination stands on its own merits as evidenced by the millions of people who use it daily around the world.
However as each of our islands of technology have grown from being separate shores of achievement, their borders have begun to meld and form a continent of software that is widely regarded and referred to as "the open source desktop". This is a momentous achievement that few outside of our community believed possible when we began.
Commonalities and Future Success
Beyond our shared appreciation for Free and Open Source software, we have a number of common goals and needs and which can be best, and in some cases only, solved when we work together.
We recognize that users as well as 3rd party developers require a consistent experience. We recognize the daunting tasks that remain before us, such as hardware driver availability, improving the graphics technology layers we all share and ensuring that our software is accessible to to those with disabilities.
It is therefore our resolve to address our common needs by pooling resources and avoiding technological collisions that benefit no one. We believe that by combining our talents and efforts we can accomplish more in less time, produce better results and increase the level of enjoyment derived from participation.
The Path Proposed
To achieve this vision we commit to:
- going beyond our own borders while respecting our unique identities and needs
- participating in organizations that reflect the communities we hail from
- harmonizing our public messages in support of the open source desktop as a whole
Specifically ... we are committing resources to a productive technology incubator in the form of freedesktop.org by augmenting its past successes with community feedback and stakeholder driven policies. We are taking aim at issues such as common mimetype activation, standard access mechanisms to desktop data and services and more.
Specifically ... we will be making greater use of common public communications entities such as OSDL and encouraging our marketing arms to collaborate more.
Specifically ... we will amplify our participation in efforts led by organizations such as the Free Standards Group to bring about powerful open standards for the platform that address critical needs such as accessibility.
Specifically ... we will support what works for us all, laying aside our differences in the process to achieve the most ambitious goal we've ever dared tackle: to make the open source desktop a mainstream phenomenon.
Title: freedesktop.org: A Working Proposalfreedesktop.org: A Working Proposal
Why freedesktop.org and The Status Quo
freedesktop.org was created by our community for our community: the open source desktop. We enjoyed a rapid succession of early successes and have had a continued stream of commonly useful specifications and technologies emerge from it. Most importantly, freedesktop.org was erected to reflect not external needs and requirements but our own processes.
We do recognize that the current organization, as such currently may or may not exist, is sub-optimal. However we also maintain that the concept of a shared technology incubator is in itself valid. Therefore we make the following proposal to steer freedesktop.org towards being a more practical and productive place for the creation and improvement of shared technologies. This will in turn result in the happy by-product of providing a more coherent set of products for our users, industry and 3rd party developers.
The Proposal, Part 1: Stakeholders First
Web based collaboration software will be provided at freedesktop.org wherein individual participants from projects engaged in open source desktop development may create identities. These identities will then be used to mark the interest and implementation level of the respective projects in the specifications and software available on freedesktop.org. This will raise the visibility of participation (or lack thereof) in specific approaches and allow reporting and change notification to be automated.
Combined with responsible introductions of new specifications and technologies, as a community we will be able to measure the status and health of any given technology when it comes to shared support. This in turn exposes consensus or lack thereof. Once a given specification has reached a critical level of support, currently generally defined as having the support of both of the primary desktop projects (KDE and GNOME) as well as any primary stakeholder projects (e.g. X.org for X related technologies), then these technologies will be handed off to a standards body for formalization and announcement. We propose the FSG and OSDL respectively for these formalization activities.
The goal is to add as little overhead as possible to the processes while allowing us to easily monitor collaboration and measure when a given technology has matured to the point that it can and should be codified.
The Proposal, Part 2: An Advisory Committee
A committee made up of members from the leading desktop projects will be formed to aid in communication and, when necessary, conflict resolution that may arise around freedesktop.org activities.
We recognize that the majority of open source desktop developers are generally supportive of but lacking in time and motivation to keep up with every development at freedesktop.org. Therefore the committee will provide community triage to ensure that the proper people from the relevant communities and spheres of influence are involved. This will ensure that the proper people are involved allowing the stakeholder-driven process to work.
As an institution, the committee will not itself make technology decisions nor steer the specification processes, though individuals on the committee may be personally involved in various freedesktop.org efforts.
Measurements of Success
Near term success will be measured in the level of support for freedesktop.org within the open source community and the rate and quality of specifications that emerge. Mid-term, the level of satisfaction of open source desktop users and ISVs will be an important metric.
But the ultimate measure of success will be found in the enjoyment and energy levels of those participating in freedesktop.org as it is from that wellspring that the momentum we are all looking for will emerge.
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