Re: Reboot: Strategic goals for GNOME
Hi, On 3 Mar 2010, at 09:09, Dave Neary wrote: Proposed short-to-mid-term goal: Make the GNOME platform exciting to alpha-dog application developers thought leaders. We probably could have had MeeGo be GNOME Mobile, but our project wasn't the obvious place to go, because we don't seem to know what we're providing any more. And so we're losing stewardship (and control) of these great GNOME-related projects to the Linux Foundation, or to Intel Nokia, or to distributions. Focussing in on one area that I can talk about: Qt is perceived by some to be stronger from a business perspective due to the 'more complete' offering: extensive documentation and an SDK. Perhaps more focus on and promotion of GNOME's developer tools/sdk offerings would be a useful meta-goal for the coming year? Somehow enunciating the proposition that you don't need to be an alpha-dog developer to get engaged with GTK etc. For example, I only recently found out about Anjuta: it's presumably a fairly important tool for people developing using GNOME technologies, but look at the results at http://www.google.com/search?q=anjutaas_sitesearch=www.gnome.org (Yes, I know there's a ton of stuff at library.gnome.org, I'm being devil's advocate here ...) Andrew. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reboot: Strategic goals for GNOME
On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 5:35 AM, Andrew Savory wrote: Focusing in on one area that I can talk about: Qt is perceived by some to be stronger from a business perspective due to the 'more complete' offering: extensive documentation and an SDK. Perhaps more focus on and promotion of GNOME's developer tools/sdk offerings would be a useful meta-goal for the coming year? Somehow enunciating the proposition that you don't need to be an alpha-dog developer to get engaged with GTK etc. For example, I only recently found out about Anjuta: it's presumably a fairly important tool for people developing using GNOME technologies, but look at the results at http://www.google.com/search?q=anjutaas_sitesearch=www.gnome.org (Yes, I know there's a ton of stuff at library.gnome.org, I'm being devil's advocate here ...) Looking at Anjuta, I have no idea if it's a great resource to start GTK programming with or not. You say yourself presumably, and that's the greatest nail in the coffin - you're obviously involved in GNOME development and you have *no* idea, you're barely familiar with it either. Otherwise I'm pretty sure you'd use words a little less weasely about it. You don't have to be an alpha dog to realize that GNOME has no blessed development workflow. Currently I don't program in GNOME/GTK. I have no idea how people actually *are*, since GNOME has (almost by intention) no approved development environment (a liveCD full of every Linux development tool known does not count). I assume most of them are probably just writing their code by hand in Vi and passing esoteric arguments to GCC. Serious, I have no idea how real GNOME developers program in GNOME - and my guesses aren't flattering. [If it's anywhere near my guess, then no, I won't be programming in GNOME anytime soon. And I can use Vi just fine, and GCC with some effort.] In other words, I think I have to be an alpha-dog developer, and nothing I've seen convinced me otherwise. There's just too much crud to wade through, pulling together API references, documents on GUI design, etc. (I still have no idea what GtkBuilder is, and if I should even still try making a GUI in Glade or not. I hope you guys really don't write the XML by hand now.) And any tutorial that starts with describing how to manage and link my object files on the command line isn't going to convince me otherwise. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reboot: Strategic goals for GNOME
On 3 March 2010 22:49, Richard Stallman r...@gnu.org wrote: Sugar is a good thing, but it is a different interface -- is it connected with GNOME? Brian Cameron rather neatly explained the technical relationship as 'they use the lower parts of the stack'. Steve Lee OSS Watch ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reboot: Strategic goals for GNOME
On Wed, 2010-03-03 at 18:46 -0500, Jud Craft wrote: On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 5:35 AM, Andrew Savory wrote: Focusing in on one area that I can talk about: Qt is perceived by some to be stronger from a business perspective due to the 'more complete' offering: extensive documentation and an SDK. Correct. I have seen some people saying that Qt was picked over GTK+ by most recent developments of the new Maemo platform because Nokia couldn't buy GTK+, but they could buy Qt. I think that's quite incorrect. AFAICT they had a big problem finding competent developers, and big problems getting GTK+ to become more innovative for mobile use cases. Mobile is changing way faster than GTK+ is, and that's a problem. As I mentioned before in the earlier thread, I think it's a self inflicted problem. Putting the blame on Qt being buyable is being in la la land. Perhaps more focus on and promotion of GNOME's developer tools/sdk offerings would be a useful meta-goal for the coming year? Yes /me whispers Anjuta Somehow enunciating the proposition that you don't need to be an alpha-dog developer to get engaged with GTK etc. I agree /me whispers Vala For example, I only recently found out about Anjuta: it's presumably a fairly important tool for people developing using GNOME technologies, but look at the results at http://www.google.com/search?q=anjutaas_sitesearch=www.gnome.org (Yes, I know there's a ton of stuff at library.gnome.org, I'm being devil's advocate here ...) Looking at Anjuta, I have no idea if it's a great resource to start GTK programming with or not. You say yourself presumably, and that's the greatest nail in the coffin - you're obviously involved in GNOME development and you have *no* idea, you're barely familiar with it either. Otherwise I'm pretty sure you'd use words a little less weasely about it. GNOME developers (not to use we) don't dogfood Anjuta enough. I know that some developers, like myself, use it on a daily basis. I have also been filing a lot of mini bugs about small problems about it. I must say that the Anjuta team are very responsive compared to other GNOME components when it comes to addressing and fixing those. So I think it's ready for some serious dogfooding. You don't have to be an alpha dog to realize that GNOME has no blessed development workflow. For a project like Tracker it comes down to: git pull git branch newfeature git checkout newfeature Change src/Makefile.am Possibly change configure.ac touch src/newsourcefile.c Create src/newsourcefile.c git add src/newsourcefile.c git commit -a git push origin newfeature /msg #project Hi! I just implemented newfeature in branch newfeature /msg #project Sure, thanks for review, I'll push to master git rebase master -i git push origin newfeature:master git push origin :newfeature Currently I don't program in GNOME/GTK. I have no idea how people actually *are*, since GNOME has (almost by intention) no approved development environment (a liveCD full of every Linux development tool known does not count). I assume most of them are probably just writing their code by hand in Vi and passing esoteric arguments to GCC. Serious, I have no idea how real GNOME developers program in GNOME - and my guesses aren't flattering. [If it's anywhere near my guess, then no, I won't be programming in GNOME anytime soon. And I can use Vi just fine, and GCC with some effort.] With Anjuta's gnome-build integration you can do most of the build environment changes using the popup menus: it'll adapt your Makefile.am without completely rewriting it (being afraid of that is why, I think, most people change Makefile.am manually). In other words, I think I have to be an alpha-dog developer, and nothing I've seen convinced me otherwise. There's just too much crud to wade through, pulling together API references, documents on GUI design, etc. (I still have no idea what GtkBuilder is, and if I should even still try making a GUI in Glade or not. I hope you guys really don't write the XML by hand now.) No, Glade-3, GtkBuilder or the integration in Anjuta And any tutorial that starts with describing how to manage and link my object files on the command line isn't going to convince me otherwise. I think there are some tutorials on subjects like this already, but you're right that it all isn't very coherent. I recall that there was at some point a book written and published about GTK+ development. I think it's quite outdated now. Perhaps a team should step in to bring the sources of that book up to date, and get it republished? Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reboot: Strategic goals for GNOME
Hi, Jud Craft wrote: In other words, I think I have to be an alpha-dog developer, and nothing I've seen convinced me otherwise... There's some confusion about what I meant by alpha dog developer which I caused, obviously, so I should clear it up. To make your platform successful as a developer platform, you need the Cool Kids building for it. Platforms that have had Cool Kid vibes going in the past are OS X, the iPhone, Ruby on Rails, Web 2.0/AJAX/REST/... and even at one stage C. GTK+ (or more generally GNOME) isn't a Cool Kid platform in the way Android, for example is today. To succeed we need the Cool Kids getting excited about us, because they bring lots of useful stuff - cool applications, other developers that follow the Cool Kids, media attention from all the Cool Kids watchers, etc. When I talked about alpha dog developers I'm not talking about guys who eat kernel device drivers for breakfast, I'm talking about developers who get other developers excited about the stuff they're working on. The alpha dog in the pack. The gang leader. The Fonz. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reboot: Strategic goals for GNOME
The combination of technologies going under the name HTML 5 have made/are making web technology based applications finally competitive with those built using conventional toolkits such as Qt, GTK+, and the Windows and Mac equivalents. If everything gets done inside or through your browser, it would make toolkits such as GTK and desktop environments such as GNOME obsolete, except as platforms for a browser. Web technology based application is a very broad term. It can include applications that are installed into a browser (they can be nonfree; see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html), and it can include servers. But if the server substitutes for a program you could run on your own machine, that makes it Software as a Service, which is equivalent to proprietary software. It is a bad idea to replace a program you can explicitly install on your own machine -- and which you can therefore also decide not to install -- with a program that either gets installed implicitly or remains on a server outside your control. Perhaps highlighting that will show people why they should continue to install and run local applications, which would then use GNOME. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reboot: Strategic goals for GNOME
2010/3/4 Stormy Peters stormy.pet...@gmail.com: c) Think about developing our own free web alternatives like identi.ca did. I'd especially like to see an open alternative to Dropbox/Ubuntu One. But there are lots and lots of web apps that people use regularly that could use alternatives. Social networking, finances, managing collections, ... Technically, there is: iFolder. It has struggled quite a bit, but it's still completely open and just waiting for someone to Do The Right Thing and get it fixed up a bit and offer a service. The biggest problem that iFolder has is no one is providing hosting for it. It's free software, but it's a bear to get a server running and way more hassle than most users are willing to put up with, even if they have the means to do so. Best, Zonker -- Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier j...@zonker.net About: http://www.dissociatedpress.net/about/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reboot: Strategic goals for GNOME
On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 7:43 AM, Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier j...@zonker.netwrote: Technically, there is: iFolder. It has struggled quite a bit, but it's still completely open and just waiting for someone to Do The Right Thing and get it fixed up a bit and offer a service. The biggest problem that iFolder has is no one is providing hosting for it. It's free software, but it's a bear to get a server running and way more hassle than most users are willing to put up with, even if they have the means to do so. Cool. I think I had heard about it but didn't realize it was free software. GNOME is going to host Snowy. If that works out well, I think we should look at how we could provide hosting to other free and open web services. (It would have to include a plan for raising money for hosting. There are a number of ideas and alternatives that we could explore.) Stormy ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reboot: Strategic goals for GNOME
On 3/4/10 5:46 AM, Richard Stallman r...@gnu.org wrote: If everything gets done inside or through your browser, it would make toolkits such as GTK and desktop environments such as GNOME obsolete, except as platforms for a browser. And if everything gets done on your desktop, it would make browsers and the web obsolete. Except it wouldn't. I don't believe your statement is any more accurate than mine, actually. Web technology based application is a very broad term. It can include applications that are installed into a browser (they can be nonfree; see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html), and it can include servers. But if the server substitutes for a program you could run on your own machine, that makes it Software as a Service, which is equivalent to proprietary software. So, an open source program running on a serverif it substitutes for a program you could run on your own machineis (by virtue of running on a server, I suppose) Software as a Service and hence, proprietary? I'm not following that reasoning. Surely the open-ness or closed-ness of an application depends on the terms under which it's made available, not where it runs. It is a bad idea to replace a program you can explicitly install on your own machine -- and which you can therefore also decide not to install -- with a program that either gets installed implicitly or remains on a server outside your control. Perhaps highlighting that will show people why they should continue to install and run local applications, which would then use GNOME. This is, again, unfortunately short-sighted and not really in touch with the way people use computers. There are plenty of good reasons to have an application on the web and there are plenty of good ones to have an application on the desktop, but it depends on the application. This desktop good/web bad thinking is terribly broad-brushed. If one's application lives on a web site, one can just as readily decide to visit or not to visit that web site. In contrast with a local app, a web-based app generally makes no changes to your system, and doesn't require the addition or deletion of anything. But, just so I'm sure I'm clear here, Mr. Stallman, it's my understanding that you don't even actually _use_ the web, in any realistic sense, relying instead on some congerie of email and a back-end rendering server to view static images of individual web pages. Would it be correct to imagine that you haven't used anything like a dynamic web page, or a Web 2.0-style AJAX or Ruby application? If that is indeed the case, as I've been led to understand, it's unclear to me why one might take cues on how GNOME should or shouldn't interact from the web from someone with no actual, practical experience there, any more than I'd expect guidance on how to write an iPhone application from someone who's never so much as picked up an iPhone. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reboot: Strategic goals for GNOME
On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 9:55 AM, Stormy Peters stormy.pet...@gmail.com wrote: GNOME is going to host Snowy. If that works out well, I think we should look at how we could provide hosting to other free and open web services. (It would have to include a plan for raising money for hosting. There are a number of ideas and alternatives that we could explore.) It seems to me there's a continuing need to 1) raise awareness about GNOME, 2) raise money for GNOME, and 3) provide services around open tools so users don't need to host their own servers, etc., to benefit from services like Snowy, iFolder, etc. Somewhere in there should be a self-sustaining model to raise money for the hosting and GNOME, and provide Free as in Freedom services for users in the bargain... Best, Zonker -- Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier j...@zonker.net About: http://www.dissociatedpress.net/about/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reboot: Strategic goals for GNOME
On 3/4/10 7:22 AM, Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier j...@zonker.net wrote: Somewhere in there should be a self-sustaining model to raise money for the hosting and GNOME, and provide Free as in Freedom services for users in the bargain... It's a nice idea, but I don't see any self-sustaining model that's appreciably different than buy a cloud server from Amazon, hire someone(s) to administer and support it on behalf of a million different users with a million different applications, and then charge those users a premium over what they'd pay Amazon individually to make up the administration and support costs and, ideally, leave a little money left over for GNOME. I'm not sure that's realistic; I am, however, pretty well-convinced that there's little likelihood of saving anyone any money there. For what it's worth, I pay under $200 a year for what amounts to unlimited bandwidth hosting for multiple domains on a virtual server with up to 20GB of space. (A co-located, dedicated server will typically run anywhere from $200 to $1000 a month, and up, exclusive of administrative costs, etc.) I'm likewise not sure that simply having an interested group get together and purchase their _own_ virtual server for their own uses is any more or less free than another alternative... ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reboot: Strategic goals for GNOME
On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 4:11 PM, Lefty (石鏡 ) le...@shugendo.org wrote: But, just so I'm sure I'm clear here, Mr. Stallman, it's my understanding that you don't even actually _use_ the web, in any realistic sense, relying instead on some congerie of email and a back-end rendering server to view static images of individual web pages. can you stop being an ass just for the sake of being an ass? You can disagree with what RMS says of course, is the attitude that makes people tired, in the sentence here above you are not criticizing a point of you that you might not like, you are just being a smart ass thinking wow I'm fighting Mr. Stallman what a hero. Stop this non-sense on this list please? -- Gian Mario Tagliaretti GNOME Foundation member gia...@gnome.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reboot: Strategic goals for GNOME
Hi all! Looking at Anjuta, I have no idea if it's a great resource to start GTK programming with or not. You say yourself presumably, and that's the greatest nail in the coffin - you're obviously involved in GNOME development and you have *no* idea, you're barely familiar with it either. Otherwise I'm pretty sure you'd use words a little less weasely about it. You don't have to be an alpha dog to realize that GNOME has no blessed development workflow. It doesn't have and that's probably not a big problem in general. But the problem is that there is no blessed starting point for the tool that should be used to get started. I know many of the more experienced developers have used vim/emacs/gedit for years and won't change their workflow from one day to another. From the side of the anjuta team we always tried to provide a tool for new developers or from people migrating from windows. We have made major improvements over the last version but of course things are not perfect. But every new user (who files bugs) will help us to get better. But remember that only 4 people really work on anjuta and they all do that in their leisure time. That said, there is a lack of tutorial for getting started in GNOME development, for example explaining the complete workflow from zero to a complete distributable (at least tarball) application in anjuta. I was very disappointed that the Ubuntu people were basing their Opportunistic developer-stuff on command-line stuff mainly. So yes, writing such a tutorial, maybe for C, Python and Vala would be a great thing. If someone wants to step up (shouldn't be difficult with mallard) I will provide him any help I can. Regards, Johannes signature.asc Description: Dies ist ein digital signierter Nachrichtenteil ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reboot: Strategic goals for GNOME
On 3/4/10 9:07 AM, Gian Mario Tagliaretti gia...@gnome.org wrote: On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 4:11 PM, Lefty (石鏡 ) le...@shugendo.org wrote: But, just so I'm sure I'm clear here, Mr. Stallman, it's my understanding that you don't even actually _use_ the web, in any realistic sense, relying instead on some congerie of email and a back-end rendering server to view static images of individual web pages. can you stop being an ass just for the sake of being an ass? Okay, just for the record, that would be an unmotivated public personal attack here. In case anyone's keeping score. Please note that I haven't called anyone names, just requested a clarification of what I understand to be the facts here. My understanding is that Mr. Stallman doesn't use a web browser, instead mailing individual URLs to a server, which renders a static page image and mails that back. I would take the position that this sort of interaction with the web is unrepresentative of the way that people in general, even just GNOME people in general, actually use it (is this surprising?), and that someone whose sole interaction with the web is through this sort of mediation might well not get what it's actually about. Is this actually a controversial suggestion? I'm surprised, frankly. If you were to give me advice on how to conduct a telephone conversation, when you'd personally never used anything other than a telegraph and Morse code, semaphore flags, or smoke signals, I'd probably feel much the same way. You can disagree with what RMS says of course, is the attitude that makes people tired, in the sentence here above you are not criticizing a point of you that you might not like, you are just being a smart ass thinking wow I'm fighting Mr. Stallman what a hero. I'd suggest that you attempt to avoid making assumptions about my attitude, something which email communicates very poorly. (For your part, you might even be capable of disagreeing with me without recourse to pointless insults, but this particular message sadly provides no evidence one way or the other.) For the record, my attitude is largely one of dismay and disbelief. I'll try to remember to point out these things, to avoid misunderstandings. So no, I'm expressing a serious concern over a conversation which has touched on the general subjects of social media and web-based services in which we've seen claims that the CIA controls Facebook and probably shares all its users' information with them, just for starts, as well as the notion that software running on a web server is somehow inherently less free than software running on a desktop. I'm frankly having difficulty making sense of that, which is what led to my question. Stop this non-sense on this list please? In all fairness, I didn't start the nonsense, I'm simply attempting to make some sense of it. It is, after all, a discussion list. If people don't want things actually to be discussed here―and let me again point out that, of the two of, one is actually discussing things, and one is simply indulging in personal attacks and name-calling; I'll let you work out who's who―they probably shouldn't post them in the first place. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reboot: Strategic goals for GNOME
2010/3/4 Lefty (石鏡 ) le...@shugendo.org: Now that the blood have drained from the brain cells, Okay, just for the record, that would be an unmotivated public personal attack here. In case anyone's keeping score. Please note that I haven't called anyone names. You are right, please accept my apologies for the personal attack, I should'n have done that. Apologies also to the list for the wreck of the thread, and in particular to Dave which will have to reboot again the interesting thread. Back in the cage. Best -- Gian Mario Tagliaretti GNOME Foundation member gia...@gnome.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reboot: Strategic goals for GNOME
On Mar 4, 2010, at 12:09 PM, Gian Mario Tagliaretti gia...@gnome.org wrote: 2010/3/4 Lefty (石鏡 ) le...@shugendo.org: Now that the blood have drained from the brain cells, Okay, just for the record, that would be an unmotivated public personal attack here. In case anyone's keeping score. Please note that I haven't called anyone names. You are right, please accept my apologies for the personal attack, I should'n have done that... Thanks, apology accepted. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reboot: Strategic goals for GNOME
On Wed, 2010-03-03 at 04:35 -0600, Andrew Savory wrote: Hey Andrew, Focussing in on one area that I can talk about: Qt is perceived by some to be stronger from a business perspective due to the 'more complete' offering: extensive documentation and an SDK. Perhaps more focus on and promotion of GNOME's developer tools/sdk offerings would be a useful meta-goal for the coming year? Somehow enunciating the proposition that you don't need to be an alpha-dog developer to get engaged with GTK etc. For example, I only recently found out about Anjuta: it's presumably a fairly important tool for people developing using GNOME technologies, but look at the results at http://www.google.com/search?q=anjutaas_sitesearch=www.gnome.org (Yes, I know there's a ton of stuff at library.gnome.org, I'm being devil's advocate here ...) How about if we'd promote the GNOME devtools distribution more? Its website is hardly inviting, it's not themed like the rest of gnome.org at this moment: http://projects.gnome.org/devtools/ I think it deserves a tab on the homepage gnome.org and more attention. Perhaps have a blog aggregator that is maintained by somebody who cherry picks blog items from planet-gnome (and other sources), so that only the technical and development related articles appear? -- I noticed several people asking for a technical-only blog aggregator. The maintainer of that website could also be responsible for taking interviews of GNOME developers. For asking developers of popular libraries to write an article about how to use their library. And then to style that article and put it on the developer's website. All GNOME programmers should be involved and take up responsibility. I remember the GNOME Scaffolding project and the increased interest in things like this. I think gnome-build was created back then, and GtkSourceView's origin can probably also be traced back to that period? Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reboot: Strategic goals for GNOME
On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 3:00 PM, Richard Stallman r...@gnu.org wrote: It seems to me there's a continuing need to 1) raise awareness about GNOME, 2) raise money for GNOME, and 3) provide services around open tools so users don't need to host their own servers, etc., to benefit from services like Snowy, iFolder, etc. Let's not be in a rush to invite users to use servers -- even our own -- instead of their own computers. That is the wrong direction to go. It is something our users want, and even expect. Wrong is a loaded word. If we make an effort to be a truly Free Network Service [http://autonomo.us/], there are a lot of benefits to users. I am not trying to say that the risks you mention do not exist. But they can be addressed in time (by features like encryption, as you mention below). In the meantime, users are free to not use the service, or to set up their own servers under their own control running the Snowy software. For instance, consider Snowy: Snowy is a web application for synchronizing, viewing, sharing, and editing your Tomboy notes online. It is designed to power an upcoming Tomboy Online free web service where any Tomboy user can make an account. It can also be used on your own personal server. Snowy is AGPL-licensed and written in Python using the Django framework. Synchronizing and sharing the notes are not SaaS, though editing might be SaaS. So at least some of this service is basically ok, provided Gnote can also use it (because Tomboy's dependence on C# is a problem). The REST API used for syncing is being developed in the open in collaboration with other interested parties, including other Tomboy-compatible applications like Tomdroid and Conboy, and server software like Ubuntu One and Midgard2. There is nothing preventing the Gnote developer from implementing this API, or contributing to its development. The reason we specifically talk about Tomboy here is because it is a part of the GNOME Desktop Suite. Even better, can Gnote be adapted to communicate these data via email, I wonder? Then it would not need a server at all. People could optionally encrypt the email using GPG for full privacy. Email certainly requires a server. Encrypting user data is something I'd like to explore for Snowy in the future (see Mozilla's Weave project for a good example of how this might be done). I won't be working on this feature until we've gotten a bit further in development and deployment, but anyone is welcome to contribute that feature earlier if it interests them. Storing everything encrypted will have an impact on the ability for Snowy to provide certain features that users expect in an efficient manner, so I would not be surprised if many users would choose features over absolute privacy. They make that choice every day when they use Gmail and Facebook. We can simultaneously work toward providing a compelling service and protecting our users' freedom, but both goals take time and effort. This approach would require some programming, but that would only have to be done once; it would spare GNOME the continuing effort of running a server, and enable users to avoid depending on one. I am curious to see what effort and expense will be required by GNOME to host Tomboy Online. But the reality for users is that they care about the features that are most easily enabled by a hosted service. I feel it would be foolish of us to keep waiting (aka, losing) until a perfect non-server solution was available. But as always, patches welcome. Sandy ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reboot: Strategic goals for GNOME
On Thu, 2010-03-04 at 17:45 -0800, Lefty (石鏡 ) wrote: On 3/4/10 3:00 PM, Richard Stallman r...@gnu.org wrote: Let's not be in a rush to invite users to use servers -- even our own -- instead of their own computers. That is the wrong direction to go. [...] I doubt that as many as 10% of the people who maintain a blog or share pictures on Flickr or Picasa could do it if they had to run their own server to support those activities, and it seems unreasonable to suggest that they should. What could GNOME do to change that? Maybe we need a peer-to-peer distributed blogging system, for example? Publish my content on the GNOME cloud, without losing my own copy of it and without losing ownership of it... In any case, I'm under the impression that a search warrant or similar order is generally required in the US to get information regardless of whether it's from a hosted service or from your personal computer; certainly the police can't simply call up Facebook and ask for information on random people and expect to get it. They can and they do, as has been widely covered by the media. The vast majority of people who use computers--and I'm not referring to people who download source and build their own versions of things--are quite happy to, for example, have Wordpress or Livejournal maintain their blogs for them, and there's absolutely no reason for them to attempt to host it themselves. They are also happy to use Microsoft Word, and other proprietary software. But that does not mean we should abandon GNOME. Instead, we need to make it easier for people to follow the more open path. Liam -- Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/ Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/ Ankh: irc.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org www.advogato.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reboot: Strategic goals for GNOME
On 3/4/10 6:08 PM, Liam R E Quin l...@holoweb.net wrote: On Thu, 2010-03-04 at 17:45 -0800, Lefty (石鏡 ) wrote: In any case, I'm under the impression that a search warrant or similar order is generally required in the US to get information regardless of whether it's from a hosted service or from your personal computer; certainly the police can't simply call up Facebook and ask for information on random people and expect to get it. They can and they do, as has been widely covered by the media. Well, given this wide coverage, which I've somehow completely missed, there shouldn't be much challenge to your producing an actual citation to support the existence of this kind of activity (specifically Facebook handing over information on users to law enforcement without a subpoena or a warrant). I only ask because it seems in complete contradiction to their stated privacy policy. The vast majority of people who use computers--and I'm not referring to people who download source and build their own versions of things--are quite happy to, for example, have Wordpress or Livejournal maintain their blogs for them, and there's absolutely no reason for them to attempt to host it themselves. They are also happy to use Microsoft Word, and other proprietary software. But that does not mean we should abandon GNOME. Instead, we need to make it easier for people to follow the more open path. Nobody's suggested that anyone abandon GNOME. In the case of Microsoft Word, there are credible and workable open source alternatives readily available. In the case of a Wordpress blog that one doesn't have to host and administer on one's own (along with the overhead of maintaining a domain registration, a web server, security issues, etc.), or a Livejournal, or a Flickr site, or Facebook, there's no alternative that we can offer, other than Don't do that!, it would seem. Correct me if you feel I'm mistaken here. I don't see Don't do that! Do whatever you can manage from your personal computer as best you can as being a terribly compelling message, myself. Rather than making it easier for people for follow the more open path, you encourage them to find other means to do the things they _want_ to do. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
