Hi,
First, I would like to ask to Tim Perdue whether he is in favor of such
a merge:
I think you were thinking about merging with the Savannah[Savane]
codebase, while the FSF asked to help them use GForge the Savannah[.
gnu.org] website. But actually you never told us your thoughs about
merging with the Savane software as it is now.
Let alone the Savane team decision, are you for or against the merging
proposition?
(Maybe this could be cross-posted to GForge's mailing-list?)
Merging can only be done if both parties are willing to do it,
so no need to discuss if the GForge people are actually against
merging...
Now on to the actual reply:
On 2004.04.17 19:36, Mathieu Roy wrote:
How do you propose to get rid of these three issues:
>> - The approach in matter of code design is not the same
>> - The approach in matter of user interface is not the same
>> - The approach in matter of licensing is not the same.
I suggested a solution for licensing.
I am not familiar enough with the code to tell about the other
points :/
I do not see any benefit in this merge if this just about trashing
things -it will be, because apart from the historical common base (1
line of code nowadays) and the main purpose, there is nothing common-
apart from saving the face of some people that made damn
unexplainable decisions when they had several way more important
issues to deal with first.
I removed the FSF people from the Cc: list. We are among Savane
developers :)
The fact there is no common code does not prevent us from taking the
best parts from each project to form a new one. I do not thing about
upgrade, but fusion.
But frankly, the only reason we are talking about that is completely
unrelated to Savane and Gforge: it is just because savannah.gnu.org
is in dead-end that this issue is brought, because some people like
to make decision but are not here to do the job and ask others to
cope with it.
I think there isn't much to say apart from that. I'm not interested
in dealing with others persons mistakes.
I mentioned merging to you before I knew about FSF past and present
decisions related to Savane. savannah.gnu.org is actually unrelated to
my involment in this discussion.
Licensing was my main concern, but since this point is clearer now, we
can consider merging more seriously.
I'm happy that both KDE and GNOME exists, and as matter of fact I'm a
wmaker user... So I have nothing against some work duplication, if it
brings different products. It does not mean that I'm not in favor of
collaboration, like KDE and GNOME people are trying to do now.
Actually, I would rather like to have one better WM with Gnome's
initial licensing approach, KDE's skinability, WMaker's screens
management, Enlighnenment's graphical design, the scriptability of
Stumpwm, the keyboard-only of ratpoison, etc.
Of course, this represents heavy work, but there are enough WM
developer to do it. And some choices appear antagonist, but the user
could load different configurations, or customize the WM, to choose the
features they want, and the program could load only the dynamic
libraries it needs.
Merging is the way to have more complete products.
I am a Gnome user, but I often regret the time when it was possible to
simply get FVWM2's exact focus behavior (which is still possible with
WMaker) or to better customize some other features, like GDM (it still
can be done by modifying the configuration file, but it is less easy
nonetheless).
The lastest version of Gnome tends to concentrate on the basic user
needs, but I am sure that if all WM developers worked on the same WM,
they could concentrate on that aspect as well as on the advanced users
expectations.
There are also extreme limits, eg I do not think such a WM could have a
memory footprint as light as Twm's.
Do you think merging Savane and GForge really presents such a limit?
--
Sylvain
