Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap

2010-02-22 Thread Philip Van Hoof
On Mon, 2010-02-22 at 20:27 +0100, Dave Neary wrote:

> Juanjo Marin wrote:
> > * GTK is losing popularity. It is perceived by a lot of people as old
> > and difficult. I think we need any kind of action on this area because
> > is a cornerstone issue. Less programmers means less applications and
> > contributions. We need to care of our platform users in the same way we
> > care of our desktop users. Some people has pointed this in the past, eg
> > [1]
> 
> Perhaps the fact that GTK+ is seen as a cornerstone issue is a
> cornerstone issue... there's no specific reason why GTK+, FLTK or EFL
> would do the job just as well of providing a toolkit.

I agree.

> What's important to GNOME is the vision and the philosophy of open
> access, but that vision has somehow lost the hustle that comes from
> homesteading.

I'm going to decline from commenting much on philosophy this time. Mine
is probably known, and people must be (really) tired of listening to it.

After talking with some of the doers at our conferences, at FOSDEM too,
I believe our doers have a pragmatic, not a puristic philosophy.

That's why I made my earlier comment that our community itself isn't
negative or hostile towards commercial mobile ecosystems.

> > * It seems we have lost the mobile battle. Can we do something about it
> > or simply retreat?. I like the idea of creating more components and some
> > of this components can be added to the GNOME mobile platform.
> 
> Have we lost the mobile battle? It certainly appears that GTK+ has lost
> the mobile battle, but all of the hard work that GNOME hackers have put
> into the middleware platform and components like Gstreamer, Dbus,
> Telepathy and Pulseaudio are now cornerstone parts of both the free
> desktop and the mobile platform.

In mobile we're doing pretty well at the middleware segment.

But indeed ...

> I would agree that the GNOME GUI platform is not exciting application
> developers right now, and that's something we need to fix. And it's not
> an easy problem.

I think that's a self inflected problem. Because for years wasn't Gtk+
(the toolkit) being innovated on. Instead is the focus 'stability'. 

Regretfully we see the same thing in most of the original core
components: the focus isn't innovation. We're not leading.

We are seeing a lot of innovation in middleware, though. I am very, very
pleased that the GUADEC organizers have put a focus on metadata in their
call for papers.


Cheers,


Philip

-- 
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home: me at pvanhoof dot be 
gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org 
http://pvanhoof.be/blog
http://codeminded.be

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Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap

2010-02-22 Thread Richard Stallman
What's important
to GNOME is the vision and the philosophy of open access,

The philosophy of GNOME is that the user should have freedom.
If we talk in terms of "open" or "access" then we omit what is
most important.

Stormy asked people to suggest a vision for 5 years from now.  I can't
contribute to the practical side of that, since foreseeing the future
is not my forte.  But at the philosophical level it is crucial to keep
"freedom for the users" front and center.  What world problem will
GNOME have solved?  The problem of non-free software in the desktop.

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Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap

2010-02-22 Thread Philip Van Hoof
On Mon, 2010-02-22 at 13:39 -0800, Lefty (石鏡 ) wrote:

Hi Lefty,

> I hesitate to reopen this discussion, frankly. Look at the archives for
> December and January.

We need to consider that that wasn't our community.

In that Alberto has a point that our community itself isn't negative or
hostile towards commercial mobile ecosystems.

Cheers,

Philip

> On 2/22/10 1:12 PM, "Alberto Ruiz"  wrote:
> 
> > 2010/2/22 Lefty (石鏡 ) :
> >> Well, we've certainly managed to place GNOME at an enormous disadvantage
> >> with respect to an alternative, quasi-open-source platform, like Android,
> >> largely through a couple of years' worth of inattention and, more
> >> importantly, an ongoing failure to engage with the commercial mobile
> >> ecosystem in any positive and meaningful way. Hopefully, some efforts might
> >> be made to correct that in the coming year; whether or not that actually
> >> happens, or will be effective if it does, is very much up in the air in my
> >> mind.
> > 
> > Do you have any examples of the GNOME community being negative or
> > hostile towards the commercial mobile ecosystem?
> > 
> >> The viewpoint held in some quarters which is directly hostile to such
> >> engagement has been a negative factor for us in the past and continues to 
> >> be
> >> one. Google, for all that its Android efforts have been competitive to
> >> GNOME's interests in the mobile space, has done a much better job here.
> >> 
> >> 
> >> ___
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> >> 
> > 
> > 
> 
> 
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Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap

2010-02-22 Thread Lefty (石鏡 )
I hesitate to reopen this discussion, frankly. Look at the archives for
December and January.


On 2/22/10 1:12 PM, "Alberto Ruiz"  wrote:

> 2010/2/22 Lefty (石鏡 ) :
>> Well, we've certainly managed to place GNOME at an enormous disadvantage
>> with respect to an alternative, quasi-open-source platform, like Android,
>> largely through a couple of years' worth of inattention and, more
>> importantly, an ongoing failure to engage with the commercial mobile
>> ecosystem in any positive and meaningful way. Hopefully, some efforts might
>> be made to correct that in the coming year; whether or not that actually
>> happens, or will be effective if it does, is very much up in the air in my
>> mind.
> 
> Do you have any examples of the GNOME community being negative or
> hostile towards the commercial mobile ecosystem?
> 
>> The viewpoint held in some quarters which is directly hostile to such
>> engagement has been a negative factor for us in the past and continues to be
>> one. Google, for all that its Android efforts have been competitive to
>> GNOME's interests in the mobile space, has done a much better job here.
>> 
>> 
>> ___
>> foundation-list mailing list
>> foundation-list@gnome.org
>> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
>> 
> 
> 


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Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap

2010-02-22 Thread Martyn Russell

On 22/02/10 20:26, Andy Tai wrote:

seems gtk+'s object model overhead (for example, object method
invocation) is too high, especially visible on mobile platforms... it
should be possible to optimize to reduce this overhead...


I agree with Emmanuele.
Please provide evidence when making wild accusations.

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Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap

2010-02-22 Thread Martyn Russell

On 22/02/10 19:27, Dave Neary wrote:

Hi,


Hi,


* It seems we have lost the mobile battle. Can we do something about it
or simply retreat?. I like the idea of creating more components and some
of this components can be added to the GNOME mobile platform.


Have we lost the mobile battle? It certainly appears that GTK+ has lost
the mobile battle,


I don't think that's so true. Just because Nokia decided to buy 
Trolltech because it could be bought, doesn't mean the rest of the world 
agrees.



but all of the hard work that GNOME hackers have put
into the middleware platform and components like Gstreamer, Dbus,
Telepathy and Pulseaudio are now cornerstone parts of both the free
desktop and the mobile platform.


Dare I mention Tracker amongst those other projects? ;)

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Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap

2010-02-22 Thread Alberto Ruiz
2010/2/22 Lefty (石鏡 ) :
> Well, we've certainly managed to place GNOME at an enormous disadvantage
> with respect to an alternative, quasi-open-source platform, like Android,
> largely through a couple of years' worth of inattention and, more
> importantly, an ongoing failure to engage with the commercial mobile
> ecosystem in any positive and meaningful way. Hopefully, some efforts might
> be made to correct that in the coming year; whether or not that actually
> happens, or will be effective if it does, is very much up in the air in my
> mind.

Do you have any examples of the GNOME community being negative or
hostile towards the commercial mobile ecosystem?

> The viewpoint held in some quarters which is directly hostile to such
> engagement has been a negative factor for us in the past and continues to be
> one. Google, for all that its Android efforts have been competitive to
> GNOME's interests in the mobile space, has done a much better job here.
>
>
> ___
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> foundation-list@gnome.org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
>



-- 
Un saludo,
Alberto Ruiz
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Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap

2010-02-22 Thread Lefty (石鏡 )
On 2/22/10 11:27 AM, "Dave Neary"  wrote:
> 
>> * It seems we have lost the mobile battle. Can we do something about it
>> or simply retreat?. I like the idea of creating more components and some
>> of this components can be added to the GNOME mobile platform.
> 
> Have we lost the mobile battle?

We seem to have forfeited a sizeable chunk of it to date, unfortunately.

> It certainly appears that GTK+ has lost
> the mobile battle, but all of the hard work that GNOME hackers have put
> into the middleware platform and components like Gstreamer, Dbus,
> Telepathy and Pulseaudio are now cornerstone parts of both the free
> desktop and the mobile platform.

Well, we've certainly managed to place GNOME at an enormous disadvantage
with respect to an alternative, quasi-open-source platform, like Android,
largely through a couple of years' worth of inattention and, more
importantly, an ongoing failure to engage with the commercial mobile
ecosystem in any positive and meaningful way. Hopefully, some efforts might
be made to correct that in the coming year; whether or not that actually
happens, or will be effective if it does, is very much up in the air in my
mind.

The viewpoint held in some quarters which is directly hostile to such
engagement has been a negative factor for us in the past and continues to be
one. Google, for all that its Android efforts have been competitive to
GNOME's interests in the mobile space, has done a much better job here.


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Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap

2010-02-22 Thread Emmanuele Bassi
Do you have *any* number to back up these kind of assertions? Because if you
do I'd really like to have them. Otherwise it's just made up nonsense, and I
can play that game too. For instance, GObject is 400% faster than any other
similar object system*.

Ciao,
Emmanuele.



* if implemented on top of carrier pidgeons using UV ink and a blacklight

On 22 Feb 2010 20:26, "Andy Tai"  wrote:

seems gtk+'s object model overhead (for example, object method invocation)
is too high, especially visible on mobile platforms... it should be possible
to optimize to reduce this overhead...

On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 11:27 AM, Dave Neary  wrote:

> Hi,
>
>
> >
> > Juanjo Marin wrote:
> >
> > > * It seems we have lost the mobile battle. Can we do something about
> ...
>

Andy Tai, a...@atai.org
Happy New Year 2010 民國99年
自動的精神力是信仰與覺悟
自動的行為力是勞動與技能

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Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap

2010-02-22 Thread Andy Tai
seems gtk+'s object model overhead (for example, object method invocation)
is too high, especially visible on mobile platforms... it should be possible
to optimize to reduce this overhead...

On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 11:27 AM, Dave Neary  wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Juanjo Marin wrote:
>
> > * It seems we have lost the mobile battle. Can we do something about it
> > or simply retreat?. I like the idea of creating more components and some
> > of this components can be added to the GNOME mobile platform.
>
> Have we lost the mobile battle? It certainly appears that GTK+ has lost
> the mobile battle, but all of the hard work that GNOME hackers have put
> into the middleware platform and components like Gstreamer, Dbus,
> Telepathy and Pulseaudio are now cornerstone parts of both the free
> desktop and the mobile platform.
>
> I would agree that the GNOME GUI platform is not exciting application
> developers right now, and that's something we need to fix. And it's not
> an easy problem.
>
> Cheers,
> Dave.
>
> --
> Dave Neary
> GNOME Foundation member
> dne...@gnome.org


Andy Tai, a...@atai.org
Happy New Year 2010 民國99年
自動的精神力是信仰與覺悟
自動的行為力是勞動與技能
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Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap

2010-02-22 Thread Stormy Peters
I do agree that we need a vision and a long term roadmap.

When I ask about goals or vision, most people respond with something very
specific and technical. I feel like we need to have a bigger vision that is
universally shared.

Where will GNOME be in 5 years? What will it do? What products/projects will
be a part of it? Who will be using it? What world problem will it have
solved?

Stormy

On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 12:41 PM, Alberto Ruiz  wrote:

> 2010/2/22 Dave Neary :
> > Have we lost the mobile battle? It certainly appears that GTK+ has lost
> > the mobile battle, but all of the hard work that GNOME hackers have put
> > into the middleware platform and components like Gstreamer, Dbus,
> > Telepathy and Pulseaudio are now cornerstone parts of both the free
> > desktop and the mobile platform.
> >
> > I would agree that the GNOME GUI platform is not exciting application
> > developers right now, and that's something we need to fix. And it's not
> > an easy problem.
>
> I'd like to add a bit of an optimistic overtone here.
>
> GTK+ might not be exciting for mobile developers, but I don't think
> none of the companies "supporting it" were seriously pushing the
> toolkit into that direction rather than monkey patching it to make it
> work well enough. So I'd say that GTK+ has gained very little in that
> regard as all this time it's mostly RedHat supporting the
> maintainership weight of the stack and the ones pushing it forward as
> a company over the years.
>
> However, GTK+ is still the de-facto toolkit for the X.org platform,
> people aiming to write apps that integrates well with the Linux
> desktop, choose GTK+, sure it has many issues, but it has also many
> great things and a rock solid code base.
>
> In a broader sense, I think that maybe we should put back our focus on
> promoting the stack as what it really has been and still is for most
> people, a platform to create great desktop applications for the Linux
> platform.
>
> --
> Un saludo,
> Alberto Ruiz
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Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap

2010-02-22 Thread Alberto Ruiz
2010/2/22 Dave Neary :
> Have we lost the mobile battle? It certainly appears that GTK+ has lost
> the mobile battle, but all of the hard work that GNOME hackers have put
> into the middleware platform and components like Gstreamer, Dbus,
> Telepathy and Pulseaudio are now cornerstone parts of both the free
> desktop and the mobile platform.
>
> I would agree that the GNOME GUI platform is not exciting application
> developers right now, and that's something we need to fix. And it's not
> an easy problem.

I'd like to add a bit of an optimistic overtone here.

GTK+ might not be exciting for mobile developers, but I don't think
none of the companies "supporting it" were seriously pushing the
toolkit into that direction rather than monkey patching it to make it
work well enough. So I'd say that GTK+ has gained very little in that
regard as all this time it's mostly RedHat supporting the
maintainership weight of the stack and the ones pushing it forward as
a company over the years.

However, GTK+ is still the de-facto toolkit for the X.org platform,
people aiming to write apps that integrates well with the Linux
desktop, choose GTK+, sure it has many issues, but it has also many
great things and a rock solid code base.

In a broader sense, I think that maybe we should put back our focus on
promoting the stack as what it really has been and still is for most
people, a platform to create great desktop applications for the Linux
platform.

-- 
Un saludo,
Alberto Ruiz
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Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap

2010-02-22 Thread Dave Neary
Hi,

Juanjo Marin wrote:
> * GTK is losing popularity. It is perceived by a lot of people as old
> and difficult. I think we need any kind of action on this area because
> is a cornerstone issue. Less programmers means less applications and
> contributions. We need to care of our platform users in the same way we
> care of our desktop users. Some people has pointed this in the past, eg
> [1]

Perhaps the fact that GTK+ is seen as a cornerstone issue is a
cornerstone issue... there's no specific reason why GTK+, FLTK or EFL
would do the job just as well of providing a toolkit. What's important
to GNOME is the vision and the philosophy of open access, but that
vision has somehow lost the hustle that comes from homesteading.

> * It seems we have lost the mobile battle. Can we do something about it
> or simply retreat?. I like the idea of creating more components and some
> of this components can be added to the GNOME mobile platform.

Have we lost the mobile battle? It certainly appears that GTK+ has lost
the mobile battle, but all of the hard work that GNOME hackers have put
into the middleware platform and components like Gstreamer, Dbus,
Telepathy and Pulseaudio are now cornerstone parts of both the free
desktop and the mobile platform.

I would agree that the GNOME GUI platform is not exciting application
developers right now, and that's something we need to fix. And it's not
an easy problem.

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
Dave Neary
GNOME Foundation member
dne...@gnome.org
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