Richard:
The "Linux Standards Base" is a plan to develop a specification for the GNU system. Not, in this case, for the GNU/Linux combination, just for GNU, because these specs don't concern the kernel, Linux. It is purely for GNU, but they call GNU "Linux". If we want to develop specs for the GNU system, let's organize it under the auspices of GNU. I have good relations with some KDE developers. We can set it up.
The deeper issue here is interface stability, and I think that we need to have a good understanding of where we are, and where we want to go before we can move forward. Personally, I think the LSB project is not the ideal avenue for the short-term. Their requirements for test cases for each interface is causing them to review older versions of the GNOME libraries, not the latest versions that most modern distros ship. Over time, the LSB may well catch up, but this is likely going to be a process that takes years to complete. I welcome the attention they are giving to helping make the desktop interfaces more stable, but I think it is really the desktop module maintainers who define what stability means. At Sun, we are taking the position that a core set of GNOME Platform libraries are Stable, including atk, pango, glib, GTK+, and at-spi (needed for writing acessible technology, or AT, applications). Since platform libraries have stability guarantees and the maintainers of these modules have a good history of keeping the interfaces truly stable, Sun is comfortable with this. In addition Sun believes the FreeDesktop specificiations for Desktop file integration, and MIME integration are stable, and we are considering making the Icon Integration specification as Stable. We think that this set provides a reasonable set of interfaces for anyone to write an application and integrate it into the desktop. If the GNOME community were comfortable with this sort of stance, then there is really no reason why the GNOME desktop couldn't claim to support this degree of integration as Stable today. In fact, I would argue that we already do. As we approach our GNOME 2.16 release, there is no history of serious interface breakage. The biggest problem with GNU desktop stability is, in my opinion, an issue of communication. The GNOME and FreeDesktop projects do a poor job of communicating to its users what interfaces should be relied upon. I think some work is needed in order to truly provide a welcoming environment. Most importantly: 1. The FreeDesktop specification page is a hodgepodge of different specifications, and it isn't clear which specifications are "blessed". Note that most of them are at pre 1.0 versions. I The FreeDesktop specification page says "freedesktop.org is not a standards body. The naming of this page is a historical accident, and will take a bit of wiki lifting behind the scenes to fix." "http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards Obviously this doesn't inspire a great deal of confidence. I understand that the Portland project is working on this, but progress seems to be slow going. http://portland.freedesktop.org/wiki/ I believe there are only a handful of specifications where most end users require stability, and there should be a focus on making a more formal commitment to these. 2. Note that GNOME System Admin Guide, http://www.gnome.org/learn/ You will see that quite a few interfaces that are exposed are, in fact, not specified anywhere. If the GNOME project thinks it wise to recommend users to use these interfaces, they should probably be specified somewhere with some sort of assurance that the interfaces will not break on upgrade. Or, if there is concern that they might break, this should be clearly communicated as a warning. Many of these exposed interfaces are GNOME specific. More effort could be made to determine if these interfaces should be specified in a desktop-neutral (FreeDesktop) fashion so the same interfaces work for all desktops. For example, application configuration integration. Currently GNOME and KDE have different configuration management systems. It would be nice if end-users could use a single interface for changing and accessing their configuration settings for all applications. In my opinion, this is perhaps one of the biggest interface disconnects on the desktop. 3. The GNOME and KDE communities should make more of an effort to explain to end-users the advantages and disadvantages of choosing one desktop over the other, and provide guidance regarding which interfaces should be used by end-users. For example, are all GNOME Platform libraries recommended for end-use, or are some of them really intended only to be used within the GNOME consolidation? I would argue that really only a subset of them should be given a recommendation for use. This is why Sun only suggests end users depend on some of them. I think the bulk of these issues are related to the overall lack of good communication between KDE and GNOME, so if you feel that you would be able to help get the right people together to work on these sorts of problems, then that would be great. Perhaps if you wanted to get involved with the Portland project, that would be a better forum for making progress on this topic. I think the FreeDesktop group may be the closest thing today to a "GNU" standards body that you are looking for. Brian _______________________________________________ foundation-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
